avatarJonathan Morris Schwartz

Summary

The article discusses the impact of rising wages, inflation, and changing consumer behavior on the service industry and the broader economy.

Abstract

The article "The Guy At the Donut Shop Quit on the Spot" delves into the cycle of service workers quitting due to poor treatment and low pay, leading to worsening customer service and increased costs for consumers. It suggests that the traditional middle-class lifestyle is becoming unaffordable for many, with only the wealthiest able to maintain it. The piece criticizes the expectation for entry-level workers to provide perfect service despite minimal wage increases, which are insufficient to motivate exceptional performance or to elevate employees into the middle class. It also reflects on the societal pressure to spend on holidays and gifts, driving unnecessary consumption that is unsustainable and beneficial primarily to the top 1%. The author proposes a reevaluation of materialism and a shift towards valuing human interactions and kindness over excessive spending, suggesting that this could lead to a more appreciative society and a healthier economy.

Opinions

  • The cycle of service workers quitting due to poor treatment and low wages is exacerbating the decline in customer service quality.
  • Increasing wages alone are not a panacea for motivating service workers or ensuring their entry into the middle class.
  • The expectation for perfect service at low costs is unrealistic and contributes to worker dissatisfaction and turnover.
  • Society's pressure to overspend on holidays and gifts perpetuates a consumer-driven economy that primarily benefits the wealthy.
  • The current economic model, which relies on overconsumption by the poor and working middle class, is unsustainable.
  • A cultural shift away from materialism and towards valuing human interactions could lead to a more equitable and sustainable economy.
  • The author suggests that the economy would benefit from a reevaluation of the necessity of excessive materialism and holiday spending.
  • The article implies that the service industry's challenges are symptomatic of broader economic issues that require systemic solutions.

The Guy At the Donut Shop Quit on the Spot

Who’s gonna make your coffee? And at what cost?

Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

That 16-year-old cashier you’re yelling at is somebody’s “little girl or boy”

  1. People quit.
  2. Customers get angry.
  3. More people quit.
  4. Customers get angrier.
  5. Even more, people quit.
  6. Middle-class working folks don’t have the time, energy, or money to wait around for hours for soggy burgers and cold fries.
  7. Restaurants, retail stores, and hospitality sectors will no longer service the “average” family —because the cost of the service or product will have to be raised so high, only the rich will afford the lifestyle we’ve all grown accustomed to experiencing.
  8. About 10% of the population will be able to afford what we consider the American Dream; 90% will live a lower standard of living than most other developed nations.
  9. If those of us in the lower 90% accept our lot in life…fine. But I have a sneaking suspicion, most people aren’t interested in offering their children an ever-decreasing standard of living — as we define it.
  10. Those willing to work hard and “pull themselves up from their bootstraps” will always survive — but at what cost…and who’s giving out the bootstraps?

Commerce

Almost every day, I see a customer in a store, coffee shop, or restaurant talking to a cashier or entry-level service provider like they’re a farm animal or someone’s doormat.

“I asked for no tomatoes or onions…I’m allergic and already took a bite, I could die ya know…” the customer rants at the 17-year-old who’s only desire is to get home, finish her English homework, and text her boyfriend.

“This is bullshit,” another customer shouts. “I’ve been waiting for over an hour.”

It is true, with wages going up, there are opportunities to make more money.

But going from $9 to $13 an hour puts a little more cash in people’s pockets but does not usher folks into the middle class. That extra $4 an hour is nice but not enough to motivate a teenager to make sure your coffee, burger, or chicken sandwich is perfectly prepared every time.

If we keep these “fast food wage wars” going, it’s only going to feed and fuel increasing inflation.

If a burger joint has to pay $20 an hour for someone to flip their burgers, don’t expect a lot of choices on the dollar menu — expect a $15 burger…that you’ll still have to wait an hour for….and still won’t be prepared the way you wanted.

Wages and prices will come down you say. Hahaha. If restaurants can’t turn a profit by paying $15 an hour to their entry-level staff, what is $8 an hour is going to accomplish? Cheaper burgers, but you have to flip them yourself?

A self-fulfilling, downward spiral of poor service and tempers

Remember, it’s not the trust fund babies slinging grease and taking crap from angry customers, it’s the working class serving their fellow working-class compadres.

Put bluntly, we’re torturing the people who can least afford to be tortured.

Most rich people I know haven’t eaten fast food since McDonald's offered their 1976 Bicentennial Olympic collector cups.

With Amazon, the need to go into an actual store is greatly reduced or eliminated.

As a thought experiment, let’s stipulate prices are going to go higher at the same time customer service is becoming almost nonexistent. What are the consequences?

Simple. People will buy less stuff, eat out less, and stay home more.

And this means our consumer-driven economy is screwed.

The reason the American Dream has been extended and expanded so wonderfully over the last century is a strange self-brainwashing of ourselves to spend tons of money every: Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays, St. Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.

Think for a moment of the genius of a holiday like Christmas. Most of the population — voluntarily — spends their year-long savings on presents, travel, hotels, food, and libations (funny tasting egg nog.) If you live long enough you inevitably start giving (and getting) the same gifts over and over.

When someone asks, “What do you get someone who already has everything?” the logical answer is, “Absolutely nothing.” Yet we still drive ourselves crazy, buying people stuff they don’t need, so they can buy us stuff they think we need, but probably don’t.

We go as far as making people feel awful if they forget a birthday or holiday or don’t spend enough on a gift.

We’ve accepted and swallowed the notion that spending money on stuff is how we celebrate life, demonstrate our appreciation for others, and maintain the economy.

Consumer out

If people stop spending money on every holiday ever invented, we will no longer be a consumer-driven economy.

By making it economically necessary to spend more money than we can afford on things people don’t typically need, we’ve hoisted ourselves on our own petard.

Our economy consists of a few people with tons of money who hide it away in tax shelters while the remaining 95% of us are stuck paying ever-increasing prices for smartphones, tablets, video games, jewelry, housing, rent, food, and energy.

Our economy survives because the poor and working middle class consume like they’re rich. And our rich consume like they’re poor.

It is not sustainable.

Strapless boots

If I sold you a pair of shoes without laces and asked you to lace them up, you’d ask, “With what?”

As jobs and careers bifurcate from traditional vocational and post-secondary educational pathways, it is no longer as simple as telling your children, “Stay in school, study hard, and you’ll be successful in life.”

If you want children to tie their own shoes, they need laces.

That could mean some form of universal income. But more likely will require a major shift in how we think, feel, and depend on materialism.

Summary

Making people feel inferior if they don’t spend a fortune on Christmas, birthdays, Valentine's, Easter, and just to show their appreciation, is the most effective brainwashing experiment ever created.

We’re now at a point where regular, working-class folks can barely afford food, housing, and energy costs. How in the hell are they gonna shell out thousands more for nonsensical, unappreciated gifts to many who can’t afford to reciprocate….but do anyway.

The Catch-22 is our economy depends on us overextending ourselves through grotesque levels of consumption.

And the irony is, this unnecessary overconsumption doesn’t create wealth for anyone other than the top 1%.

The rest of us end up with lots of Christmas sweaters, chocolate hearts, coffee mugs, computers, and neckties — and negative wealth, represented on our credit cards and a myriad of other installment debt payments….that many of us will never repay.

Solutions

We’ve all heard the expression, “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” But that’s referring to someone who INVESTS money in a product or service as a business in hopes of generating a profit.

The expression isn’t, “You’ve got to max out your credit card so Johnny gets a video game player, Mary gets her laptop, and Sarah gets a new smartphone every year.”

Spending money you don’t have — no matter how stimulating it may be to the economy — only benefits the very top wealthy banks and corporations.

There has to be a revolution in the way we value money and materialism.

A man only needs so many neckties or football jerseys.

A woman only needs so many purses and pairs of shoes.

Tens of millions of hard-working folks are getting agitated because they can’t get their frappucino, donut, or burger fast enough — creating an impossibly hostile work environment and making things infinitely worse.

It’s just a damn burger. The fries aren’t that great.

Maybe instead of buying the same box of chocolates over and over again, we start getting creative in the ways we show appreciation for those we love.

How about a “free” back massage, or a handwritten note of all the reasons why someone is important in our life.

What if we just said to our loved ones, “This year I’m going to make you something for your birthday.” Or, “For your birthday, I’d like to babysit your kids so you and your husband can have a date night out.”

I can see economists all over the country pulling their hair out at this prospect, “The country will go broke,” they’ll say, “We’re a consumer-driven economy,” they’ll cry.

Maybe our economy would come to a screeching halt if we all stopped spending money on every foolish holiday.

But whatever you want to call this inflation-wage-war thing we’re experiencing, it can’t end well. Does anyone believe inflation is simply going to reverse itself? Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell told us he was just kidding when he said inflation was just “transitory.”

Maybe it’s time to reassess how vital excessive materialism is to our economy.

Perhaps we can begin to place more value on human interactions, kindness, giving someone a lift up, and simply being there when someone needs us to hold their hand.

Even better, maybe we can tweak our economic system so the person flipping your burger feels just as appreciated as the richest Wall Street banker.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it looks like they’ve hired another donut guy. I gotta place my order quickly — he already looks burnt out.

Economics
Work Life Balance
Money
Humanity
Wealth
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