Submitted by zoom_zip in antiwork

these have been showing up all over the place.

i've gone through a real cycle of thoughts with these. my first thought was "good". but then i started seeing the same sign showing up with the exact same wording, and it got me thinking something weird was going on.

all the comments on these posts generally position it as a good thing. good. capitalists can't exploit their workers for shitty wages. good. people are realising that they can stand up against that shit. good. nobody wants to get shouted at by a jumped up mcdonalds middle manager, burning themselves on deep fat fryers trying to rush out a discount carcass mcwhopper to an entitled customer at 3am for minimum wage. good. people are standing up for being loopholed into working through a global pandemic.

but then i thought actually, this doesn't make any sense. because if they really wanted workers, they would increase the wage, right? that's how their dumb system is supposed to work. so, okay, they've crunched the numbers and realised that closing the store entirely is preferable to paying their employees higher wages. because they know that increasing the wage means they can never go back. they can never go back to exploiting people for the least amount possible. they are scared that if they pay more, people won't accept being exploited anymore. people will realise that they need you more than you need them.

so they think, okay we will take a temporary loss now by closing the store, rather than taking a long-term loss by paying our employees more wages. and this way we get to play the victim. we get to say "oh boohoo, these entitled workers don't want to work for us. sorry you can't get your carcass mcwhopper. blame these entitled workers."

but then i thought something else. someone said to me: good. hopefully these things will shut for good. hopefully this is the end of fast food. hopefully nobody will work for them and they have to close for good. and i thought... shit. are they waiting for a government bail-out?

are they doing this because instead of increasing the wage, they know that they can just say "oh no! the whole industry is collapsing! government pls!" and get bailed out on the taxpayer dime?

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cammie wrote (edited )

WE ARE SHORT STAFFED.

sure, this is good because that's less wages paid for more work. And sure, we were aiming for this level of work/wages ratio eventually. But it's bad because we got here faster than we had time to adjust for so our workers may not have become enured to this level of overwork yet. Please give us time. With some training they'll come good.

PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH THE STAFF THAT DID SHOW UP.

not because we care about the staff, no, we want you to adjust your expectation because the only winners here are us, and the customers should not feel entitled, they should be patient with the remaining staff. That way the customers get to feel good too, they are helping our business in these trying times, and by helping us they help our staff. Our remaining staff are morally responsible enough to be here and keep working for us, so by helping our business the customers are morally good.

NO ONE WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE.

don't you know about one of the pillars of economics, that welfare and government handouts makes people lazy, and disincentivises a healthy work ethic. Look what has happened to us hard working business owners that still value our work ethic. We are suffering because of the immoral sloth of the poor people who are now content to remain poor because they got a taste of that easy welfare money.
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kin wrote

I agree on what are you saying, and the way I see it this is just one more symptom that we are facing a post Capitalist economy. I remember reading here some chronicles by Bifo Berardi and Agamben that she'd some light in the early days of Covid-19.

Small and medium businesses are dying because we don't have a Capitalist market anymore, even Big business are struggling. Only billionaires are thriving

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