Semi-Breaking News: Companies Care More About Money Than Human Beings

This really shouldn’t even be a thing we need to acknowledge anymore.

The last time HBO’s Last Week Tonight did a business hit piece, aimed at McKinsey, I got this relatively-good article out of it:

Last night, they did this on dollar-stores (I.e. Dollar Tree, Family Dollar) ahead of the retail mayhem that is “Black Friday:”

The segment does a good job showing all the problems with Dollar Tree and others, including:

1. They sometimes only staff one person per shift, so it’s impossible to run the register and stock at the same time — and thus the stores end up looking awful.
2. They are only designed to exploit marginal economic communities. (I think most people knew this.)
3. 92% of their employees make less than $15/hour.
4. Their store managers are literally going on TikTok and begging for help, and no one seems to care.

And, in some ways, why would they? One of these major brands made $2.4 billion last year. The other made $1.6 billion. In such contexts, the executives are set. They understand the business model — offer cheap things to less-fortunate people and drive new stores in the right areas — and they also know that less-fortunate people don’t always care about how awful a store looks, because they want stuff that allows them to continue to make ends meet.

A lot of it comes back to this executive mindset attitude:

We ascribe and prescribe a lot of sentiments into the “Executives need to care about this” or “Executives should care about this” bucket, most notably recently with COVID and social justice. The thing is: life is short, tenures at companies is short, and your tenure as an executive is maybe the shortest thing of all — especially in a time where “cancellation” can seem to come for many. People, when in these roles, maximizes what makes their life better. Talking about “love for customers” and “we’re all a family here” are just air cover things to discuss. Most people are chasing what will make them feel more relevant and important and successful.

As such, Dollar Tree will always exist. And if for any reason they go bankrupt, another similar thing will exist. Money matters. People? Not as much.