Nobody Wants to Work (for Terrible Companies) Anymore!
The ongoing tone-deaf debate over a lack of workers.
The co-founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, made headlines again for saying a bunch of tone-deaf stuff about young people and frontline workers. As a hardcore Trumper and capitalist shill, he griped about how he doesn’t want the “woke generation” leading businesses and spending money on things like diversity and climate mitigation. He claimed, without evidence, that those things don’t impact the bottom line, and also that focusing on mitigating climate change has caused most of our problems today.
“We need leaders who are basically thinking about the shareholders and their employees, and how well the shareholders are doing and their employees,” he said without a hint of irony. “And I think today it’s all about woke diversity, things that don’t hit the bottom line.”
Other random quotes included things like “They’re entitled, they’re given everything.” and “The government, in many cases, if you don’t work, you get as much money as when you did work…And so you get this laziness, which you have, and it’s basically a socialistic society.”
And, of course, he pulled out the old classic that “Nobody wants to work anymore, especially office people…They want to work three days a week. It’s incredible. How do you have a recession when you have people that don’t want jobs?”
Of course, this is clearly one of the major reasons that small businesses are failing aside from inflation, according to him, anyway. “Take a pizzeria shop: He can’t find anybody to work. He’s working 12, 14, 18 hours a day and he may not be able to make it.”
Of course, it has nothing to do with bad management and bad managers, nor does it have anything to do with national companies like Domino’s and Pizza Hut squeezing prices and pushing out small rivals. Workers obviously never leave companies because the management sucks, the benefits are bad, and better pay can be found elsewhere. Nope, it’s all the woke generation’s fault for not having any kind of work ethic.
Look, unabashed capitalists like Marcus have created this weird hellscape where workers are utilizing a major point of capitalistic principles in the job hunt: supply and demand. There are more jobs available than there are workers right now, so workers can afford to be picky and choose jobs that have better pay and benefits. Of course, because this doesn’t benefit the owner/shareholder class, they’re pissy about it and claim that “nobody wants to work anymore.”
No, dumbass, nobody wants to work for you anymore. Companies that offer good pay and benefits are flush with workers and applications; companies that offer bad pay and benefits for labor-intensive work are the ones struggling right now. I live in a relatively low-cost area of the country, and when I see Mcdonald’s advertising jobs starting at $13.50 an hour, I laugh.
These days, $13.50 an hour isn’t nearly enough to cope with the general public all day every day — at least, not at Mcdonald’s. The level of abuse that I would experience at a typical fast-food joint isn’t worth it for that joke of an hourly rate.
Look, for those of you who own businesses and disagree with me, continuing to think that “nobody wants to work anymore,” look at yourself in the mirror. You are the reason that “nobody wants to work anymore.” More often than not, people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers and toxic workplaces. Nobody likes a shitty boss, and if you think that “nobody wants to work anymore,” then you are the shitty boss.
On the flip side, people are often happy to work for less than optimal wages if the management and company culture are good. I’ve known many people who work for less than they could get because their bosses and companies are fantastic. The nonprofit and small business worlds are full of those people, but even bigger corporations can get that kind of loyalty with the right culture.
Look, whether or not he likes it, the “woke” generation is going to take over at some point, so Bernie Marcus and people like him are going to have to deal with it. The times they are a-changin’, as the saying goes, and Marcus is 93 at this point, so as far as I’m concerned, his opinions on business are long out of date. At this point, he can either get with the new generation’s groove or shut up and get out of the way.
Be well out there.
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