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Disgusting Behavior From Kid Who Cooks Your Whopper..His Way
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northway

Joined: 05 Jul 2010

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 6:42 pm Post subject:

Yeah, I wasn't really taking one side or the other, just pointing out that it's there. It strikes me as six one way, half a dozen another, with the consumer probably breaking even in the end.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:50 pm Post subject:

soomin wrote:

Also, how much do you think a pizza really costs to make? Most pizza places take a pre-made circle out of a box, throw some toppings on it, and toss it in an oven. If not, the ingredients that go into a pizza are not expensive... a bunch of flour with a little sugar, salt, yeast, oil and water thrown in. The customer pays a lot more than what the pizza is technically worth because they are also paying for the gasoline that drove the ingredients to the store, the rent on the building, the electricity and other utilities, taxes, and then they have to pay the worker, all while still making a profit.

It's not about despising workers, it's about having a reasonable understanding that the products are inexpensive and that people will only pay so much for convenience (guess who's not making dinner tonight?) or for an experience ("Wow! Look at that guy throw the pizza dough in the air, Mom!").

I don't think its about the skills level needed. Its more about compensating people appropriately for their time.

$16/hour may be a bit high, but $8/hour is definitely too low.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 8:03 pm Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

Quote:

people are generally good. Pay the average fellow a decent wage and treat them like a fellow human being (instead of a replacable tool), and they're not going to be acting out.

Why do you believe this?

Because people demonstrably desire respect, and react positively when they receive it. Are we seriously going to sit here and pretend that treating people like trash doesn't affect how they behave?

Steelrails wrote:

Don't you know the story of "Give a Mouse a Cookie".

Yes, yes, how ridiculous of me to not formulate my world views based on some fictional story.

Steelrails wrote:

And if what you were saying is true, then the richest 1% of Americans and other wealthy peoples would be the most generous and law-abiding and surely not do things like pursue Ponzi-schemes, engage in insider trading, and start illegal wars for oil.

Yes, if one were to be maximally ungenerous to me, and pretend that the points I have made in this thread exist purely in a vaccuum, one might understandably deduce that. Because, however, my case does not exist in a vaccuum, but is rather a single component in a larger social-improvement vision, I can also point out that excessive wealth also erodes empathy, causing an entirely separate sort of problem. This is why mitigating wage disparity is such a potent social solution; it simultaneously addresses problematic behavior at the bottom of society and at the top of society.

Although this discussion was initiated by an event in the fast food industry, the core of my case is ultimately that people need to be paid living wages. It's good for the entire society, even the upper classes in the long term. But it's so easy for cranks to rush to dismiss such concerns; so easy to just spit on the working classes.

Steelrails wrote:

But rewarding ownership often is rewarding labor. For example, someone who works as a plumber, saves their money and works long hours, then uses that money to open their own plumbing business, shouldn't they earn money in proportion to the labor they put in?

You're confused. There is a clear distinction between money earned in the capacity of a laborer, and money earned in the capacity of an owner. This is true even when the owner is also a laborer. A man who simultaneously owns and manages a restaurant is earning money through two avenues:

1) The value he creates as a manager.
2) The value he manages to extract from his employees in his ownership capacity, represented by the difference in the amount of value his employees actually create, and the value of what he pays them.

A plumber who starts his own business and works solo is a pure laborer, and should be treated as such with regards to my position; he's not drawing income from anyone elses labor, and as such, he can't really be said to be an "owner" in the means I'm talking about. A plumber who opens his own business, hires several other plumbers, and keeps a portion of their earnings, on the other hand, is the sort of owner I'm talking about.

My entire case revolves around the proposition that we need a stronger focus on labor and a lesser focus on non-productive ownership. Management, although currently over-valued due to an easily-duped populace, is a form of labor. Ownership is not.

Steelrails wrote:

The owner is producing ...

False. The owner, in his capacity as owner, produces nothing; he merely purchases and retains. It is those acting in a labor capacity which produce everything. Now, sometimes owners also act to some extent as laborers, and those individuals can be legitimately said to have produced something, but they do so as laborers themselves, not as owners.

Society needs to get over its worship of owners.

Steelrails wrote:

Labor is slapping a piece of meat between two buns (and often the owner is right along there as well). Tell me who did more labor?

1) I have no idea why you're so eager to demean the common working man.

2) Without the man actually preparing the product, the actual value produced is zero. That ought to tell us what we need to know.

Steelrails wrote:

Quote:

Plenty of legal chicanery exists to protect owners from "all the liability." Hell, ever hear of an LLC?

And yet ownership and corporations still face stiff legal penalties time and time again.

Notice how you disingenously slipped "and corporations" into the phrase "ownership and corporations?" That's where you ceded the point to me and admit that owners have very little real liability, because the phrase "And yet ownership still faces stiff legal penalties time and time again," -- the phrase that actually responds to what I said -- is obviously false. Ownership very rarely faces stiff legal penalties because of what the corporate interests they own do. Corporations are set up to shield the ownership from any real liability, taking the hit in their place (and corporations are exceptionally good at taking hits in contrast to a genuine human being).

Please try to be more intellectually honest if you want to discuss this with me.

Steelrails wrote:

Uh, no, I worked at a fast food place for 10 years, and as a full-on manager for 4. Sorry, but it doesn't matter how much you pay and respect people, some people will just do whatever suits them.

Alright, this is good. It means I can cut past all the rest of your "case" and just ask a few simple questions to prove my point:

1) What was the average wage paid to your workers during your tenure as manager?
2) How often did you substantially increase that wage and then monitor the results?
3) What percentage of your workers were under the age of 18?

I am completely confident that the answers to the above two questions will reinforce my position. I'd even go as far as to say that concise, clear, numeric answers to the above three questions -- lacking editorialization, thank you -- are the only response I'm especially interested in hearing at the moment.

Last edited by Fox on Sun Jul 22, 2012 8:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

northway

Joined: 05 Jul 2010

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 8:05 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

soomin wrote:

I don't think its about the skills level needed. Its more about compensating people appropriately for their time.

$16/hour may be a bit high, but $8/hour is definitely too low.

This provides a useful graphic to that effect: http://billmoyers.com/2012/04/02/making-the-rent-on-minimum-wage/.

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 12:03 am Post subject:

Quote:

So you are the owner of a widget factory. In order to produce your widgets, who produces the raw materials? The laborer? No, it is the owner.

If the raw materials turn out to be substandard, who is left holding the bag? The owner or the laborer?

Quote:

1) What was the average wage paid to your workers during your tenure as manager?

For drivers? 5.25 (minimum wage) + tips. Worked out to about $15 per hour for drivers.

For cooks $9 an hour + customer walk in tips and free meals.

Quote:

2) How often did you substantially increase that wage and then monitor the results?

Employee-Trainees were started at minimum wage, after 45 days were bumped up to 7. One year later they could make 9.

Quote:

3) What percentage of your workers were under the age of 18?

Maybe 9%

From our drivers making 15 (at least, sometimes more) we would get such reputable behaviors as theft, drinking and driving, drinking and smoking weed, shooting up in the bathroom, complaints of racism, unsanitary food handling, discriminatory service practices, fights, showing up late, no-call no-shows, haphazard adherence to company procedure, and more and la piece de resistance is that one employee decided to rob the store at gunpoint.

Obviously, paying the guy 15 bucks an hour wasn't enough. He wanted to make 500 bucks an hour.

And guess, what paying 30 bucks an hour means squat if your employees are on meth or H.

Quote:

I am completely confident that the answers to the above two questions will reinforce my position. I'd even go as far as to say that concise, clear, numeric answers to the above three questions -- lacking editorialization, thank you -- are the only response I'm especially interested in hearing at the moment.

And may I ask your experience in owning and running a business or in management in the food industry?

You have completely discounted the other factors which may result in dysfunctional employee behavior.

Your ideas sound great in theory, but I find them faith-based and dogmatic in your firm belief in them.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:19 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

Quote:

So you are the owner of a widget factory. In order to produce your widgets, who produces the raw materials? The laborer? No, it is the owner.

Are you fricking serious? The raw materials aren't produced by owner, they are produced by other laborers. Miners, in the case of metals or ores. Lumberjacks, in the case of wood. Technicians, in the case of more complex components. Owners don't produce anything in their capacity as owners. Even the money they use to buy the raw materials produced by other laborers is ultimately derived from the labor of their own workers.

Forget it. Once you begin to pretend that factory owners use their magic powers to conjure raw materials out of thin air, you clearly aren't even taking this conversation remotely seriously. Perhaps you and Soomin can team up on some Ayn Rand fan-fiction in which John Galt uses his magic powers to single-handedly create raw materials for his factory ex nihilo as a demonstration of his capitalistic divinity, but I'm not wasting further time reading this garbage.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:26 am Post subject:

I asked for these numbers, so it would be unfair of me to leave then uncommented upon. If there was anything of genuine insight between the utter trash that opened Steel's previous post and this segment of it, I didn't notice it in the skim.

Steelrails wrote:

Quote:

1) What was the average wage paid to your workers during your tenure as manager?

For drivers? 5.25 (minimum wage) + tips. Worked out to about $15 per hour for drivers.

For cooks $9 an hour + customer walk in tips and free meals.

Right, so in no cases a living wage upon which one could reasonably support a family. As predicted.

Steelrails wrote:

Quote:

2) How often did you substantially increase that wage and then monitor the results?

Employee-Trainees were started at minimum wage, after 45 days were bumped up to 7. One year later they could make 9.

Yes, so you raised them from a terrible wage to a slightly less terrible wage over the course of a year, meaning you have no available data about how they would behave if paid decently. As anticipated.

Steelrails wrote:

Quote:

3) What percentage of your workers were under the age of 18?

Maybe 9%

So a large work force of ill-treated, poorly paid adults. What a shock that you'd have a lot of problems with them. Wait, it's not a shock at all, because it's exactly what I said would be the case.

Steelrails wrote:

From our drivers making 15 (at least, sometimes more) we would get such reputable behaviors as theft, drinking and driving, drinking and smoking weed, shooting up in the bathroom, complaints of racism, unsanitary food handling, discriminatory service practices, fights, showing up late, no-call no-shows, haphazard adherence to company procedure, and more and la piece de resistance is that one employee decided to rob the store at gunpoint.

A non-living wage plus an extremely low respect job, and these are the guys you are holding up as well treated?

Steelrails wrote:

Obviously, paying the guy 15 bucks an hour wasn't enough. He wanted to make 500 bucks an hour.

Yes, ridiculously extreme hyperbole. An master stroke.

That's enough for me. Thanks for the information, it perfectly confirms my world view.

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 4:27 pm Post subject:

Quote:

So who made the initial purchase of the raw materials? The workers or the owner?

Quote:

Yes, ridiculously extreme hyperbole. An master stroke.

That's enough for me. Thanks for the information, it perfectly confirms my world view.

So I must ask again, any experience in business ownership or in restaurant management?

Your world view is based on theory and ideology and faith, not on observable fact.

Not to mention your deeply flawed view that if you raise wages you won't increase prices or have any other problems, say inflation or a lack of investment and innovation.

And again, you completely ignore the other factors beyond wages that would lead to dysfunctional employee behaviors.

Not all employees are primarily motivated by respect or work ethic. Many are motivated by sex, drugs, or other reasons.

young_clinton

Joined: 09 Sep 2009

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 4:10 pm Post subject:

Wages clearly need to be reasonable. I think the people that argued against the minimum wage in the 7 US range were pretty avaricious and wacko for the most part. An individual has the right to a decent living and ability to make sufficient savings from his labor.

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