We’ve had people come in thinking that we were like the baking shows you see on Netflix, just making fun cute things all day. They get scared of the work. A lot of younger applicants have a distinct air of entitlement, that their work is so incredibly valuable, even though they’ve never had working experience before. I can’t (literally can’t) pay these people huge wages. They don’t provide enough value, and no customer is willing to pay the associate price increases to the product to compensate the wage increase. If everyone agreed that paying $10 on a croissant was acceptable, then sure we could pay more, but it’s not purely the decision of the business owners.
I’m aware that we could just increase prices, pay better wages, etc. But there’s a very real risk to the business when making a large price change. We sell to a lot of other businesses, and they are sensitive to price changes. So while I’d love to hire and pay people extremely well, we can’t simply decide to pay more and have it work.
All that said, about half our employees are quite young (not teens though). They are usually the most energetic and willing to learn, but they are also the most unreliable (ghost, quit with no notice, untruthful about time off, etc). Managing people is way harder than it looks…