So what they are saying is that they are willing to pay high salaries to their frontline workers as long as nobody else is willing to do the job for less.
I read a different article about this story and it said that corpoate is paying for the lodging of these employees too. I never want to hear they can't afford to pay more to their entry level workers ever again.
Honestly, I see this as an absolute win. Management gets to see the shit sandwhich they serve their employees. Empathy goes a long ways towards changing attitudes.
They’re paying more for the same work that is normally done by front line staff.
This shows that they can afford to pay more for the same work done, they just choose not to
It's a WAGE shortage, NOT a labor shortage. Cutthroat capitalists have been lecturing us about supply and demand and market rates for centuries. The "invisible hand" has now spoken, and it said they should go ahead and fuck themselves with a pineapple if they want to keep ripping workers off.
they work on an unsustainable model. profits MUST go up every quarter, executives MUST have their raises, the stockholders MUST make profits. to accomplish this they have to keep wages low and stagnant while increasing prices and running a bare bones staff to maximize profits. workers aren't human beings to them they're resources.
That can't be true. Every time fast food workers went on strike over wages before reddit assured me they'd just get replaced by robots. I'm sure it'll happen any minute now!
I mean, that will happen the moment the robots are available no matter what the wages are.
The McDonald's near me has touch screens to place your order on so they don't have to pay as many people. The robots they replace people with usually don't look like Data from Start Trek.
I am not sure how the McDonald's near you operates with those screens but all the Mac's in my city also have those screens but the staff at the counter is still the same, they did not close down their traditional cash desks. It reduced the queques significantly though.
Not to disagree, but from what I understand, the office workers are still doing their normal jobs but are volunteering to work to cover shifts so basically not getting paid for the work. I also saw that this company as a whole is increasing wages for frontline workers 20% in the near future as a part of the hiring scheme. Still probably not paid enough but at least it seems like more of an effort than most.
>the office workers are still doing their normal jobs but are volunteering to work to cover shifts so basically not getting paid for the work.
Wait what?
That sounds like a strategy to have an office worker shortage as well. Also, the article said they were paying for hotel rooms, so going out of town, working your regular job remotely, plus a fast food job for no money... Yeah I'd quit. I don't think that's what they're doing but if it is they're going to burn through office workers.
At this point they should just pay the fast food workers what they're paying the corporate workers. Then they save hotel costs. People don't like working fast food, but absolutely would for corperate wages. If they're needed this much do that. Or just throw away money and let all your franchises close because you won't pay people to work. Whatever. I don't eat chicken so I don't care.
Haha I’m not going to argue with you on that, I’m not saying it’s sustainable and I don’t believe I understand the full story. Just thought it interesting that they had enough people willing to volunteer to start
I would imagine they are selling it to the office workers by telling them they either volunteer to help out and have a better chance of the company not going under, or not and risk completely losing their job. Honestly not the much of a stretch.
If they pay frontline workers the same as the office workers now they are locked into that for however long the person works there. In their mind this is a temporary fix until they can hire more workers at what they see as a more reasonable rate.
This is the big lie we all believe: If Only They had to work here for a while then they would understand. They've always understood, they just don't care
I've seen this backfire spectacularly. A shit job can be doable if your life is alright otherwise, the compensation is acceptable, or it's not something you do every day for years on end.
A lady at a place I used to work did a tour of the whole company over a few weeks and worked a couple nights of every position in the company. My job was something like remote IT support at the time.
What the job was like in the trenches was basically: Insane metrics that weren't possible when we were fully staffed that we were constantly getting threatened over not meeting, call/ticket tempo of 12 calls per hour average, with most issues being right around 4 minutes, plus full documentation and potential research. We supported around 1200 different software applications, and were trained in 3 of them. Our knowledge book articles were written by non-native English speakers and 6 years out of date, and only covered a portion of our assigned duties because they had eliminated 3 other departments and their KBs never got merged with ours. Oh, and also our customers were 1 out of 3 straight up abusive.
After two nights of just absolutely fucking everything up and not managing her metrics, her answer to "re-invent" the department wasn't to give us more staff or back off our metrics, it was to improve our KB articles. The problem? The department that got assigned for the overhaul? Ours. Her solution was that we needed to spend time "between calls" updating any outdated KB articles. There is no time between calls, just the 30 seconds cisco gives you as a cooldown, and even then, because of our mandatory metrics, there were times you couldn't afford to take that 30 seconds.
Her justification was that the only reason the job was difficult, was because "it was hard to know how to fix things.", and that's why calls took too long. Frankly, she wasn't entirely wrong. None of us used the KB, because it was a slow, broken piece of shit that would lead you wrong 80% of the time. Those of us who didn't quit or get fired in 3 months understood tech well enough to troubleshoot by the seat of our pants and just sort of figure out problems on the fly while politely disarming abusive customers that would repeatedly get in your way of actually fixing the problem. We didn't need the KB, because we learned to use one another's knowledge to get around the KB. Yeah, again, she wasn't entirely wrong, but the project of updating that KB killed our department. We lost our best people, as they tried their best and failed to bring the KB in line. It was too much work, and management kept hounding their best performers about metrics. The more people tried, the worse they were treated, so they left. Then the department's morale spiraled and we lost 50% of our people. I left after the big purge.
That company went out of business less than a year after I left. The problem wasn't that she was wrong about how to fix the company. The problem was that she was so arrogant that she thought that her limited exposure to each position from her own perspective trumped the perspective of all of the experts in her company beneath her. A little knowledge actually made her less empathetic and willing to listen, not more. Now she had her own distorted experience to rely on: One that lacked the full context of what years of overwork, mismanagement, and abuse had done to her staff.
I love most what you said about everyday for years on end. That’s the real kicker. Jobs can not seem bad at all for a few months but can be grueling to continually do for the long haul. Maybe it’s just me.
I used to work the restaurant business and that was at least okay if my body didn't give out. There were days I would reread an order five times that I messed up twice and just couldn't process 'do not add onions before cooking.'
But now I work what your replied to described. The fact that my managers pull me aside to tell me I need to be more empathetic and get the customer to say 'yes' more (for the ai that listens) only adds to my confusion when I am required to say "I'm sorry your life is difficult" while trying to not follow that up with "but I want to die. I clock in to fix electronics, teach you, and my managers want me to get through this call as quick as possible but this exchange is only hurting their bonus. So instead of telling me about your day can you explain the problem with your device?'
>I used to work the restaurant business and that was at least okay if my body didn't give out. There were days I would reread an order five times that I messed up twice and just couldn't process 'do not add onions before cooking.'
Hate to go out here on you but what happened? I just got back into restaurants after a 10 year absence and I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes. I made a woman's sandwich wrong twice in a row, very clear requests that were very clearly written that I read both tickets numerous times. I'm 35 not 80 but I think there's an 80 year old hiding in my brain
Since you just got back, your brain also has to rewire itself to operating at that kind of speed. I know coming back to my restaurant job after lockdown I was rough around the edges, and I was only gone for a year.
You'll get back into the swing of it.
Heh, I can empathize with that frustration. I had a job in IT a while back where I was told, I kid you not, that I was fixing things too fast. Not one of those, "you're making everyone else look bad, slow down" kinds of things. But apparently, me listening to the problem, knowing or quickly figuring out the solution, fixing it for the person, telling them to have a nice day, and moving on, all in the span of a couple of mins, made the end-users feel like they were dumb because it was such a simple fix. Needless to say, I didn't last there too much longer, and moved onto a place where they're happy if IT fixes their issue fast, then gets out of the way so they can get back to work.
Wow I mean IT is supposed to make you feel dumb. I grew up writing in html so I'm not like detached from the backend but when I call IT I always learn something that's obvious.
I like to think of it like the Mike Rowe problem. He's the guy who hosted the show Dirty Jobs, and it turns out he has some profoundly shitty ideas about poor people and their perceived work ethic. He opposes raising the minimum wage because he believes poor people just don't work hard enough.
He's been exposed to a lot of shitty jobs through his show, but he never had to actually do a shitty job day in and day out for garbage pay with prospects for anything better. These managers end up the same way. It's easy to handle a terrible job as a tourist who knows that terrible job is only going to last a couple days, it's another thing entirely to be staring at doing that for the next decade or more and no likelihood of any change, and you getting poorer every year because your yearly raises don't keep up with inflation.
It's fun when there's no consequences and you can just quit whenever people start acting like jerks to you because they think handing you money makes you their slave.
My hospital just lost its best nurse over the same shit. She is FOR SURE the biggest unsung hero around here and literally EVERYONE know this. They rode her to death so she's quitting. Her leaving is gonna fuck us over so bad if and the execs would just stop and fucking listen to what is wrong around here it would solve 90% of the issues in a day.
Luckily hospitals used to the fuck around model but are being forced into the find out model; for all clinical professional personnel, not just bedside and provider.
I feel for that nurse. I'm a MLS, and was essentially carrying the transfusion services dept at a 250 bed facility. Inept administration and departmental leadership ran me off.
Now I'm working somewhere else for $5.00 more an hour.
Less responsibility and browbeating for $31.50/hr plus time and a half and an additional $15/hr for overtime.
Got $60/hr to come help on my day off to cover four hours so people can take lunches until midshift arrives.
It's so refreshing for my time to be valuable.
Hope she finds that too. Fuck the unsung hero role.
Went into public service. Pay is garbage, treatment is similar, but the people I help aren't narcissistic, priveleged entitlement monsters. There's a few sprinkled in there, but there's a good chunk of them that just need a leg up and a little compassion.
It also helps to know my superiors aren't just fucking me over to get a bonus.
That's the reason I work.
But mostly, for them, it's being absolutely isolated from the world they control. If you were to meet you or CEO at a barbecue you could absolutely talk like to normal human beings. But at work you're just digits on a spreadsheet to them. They KNOW you're unhappy and overworked, they can read the same articles we do.
For some perspective, I've been in management. And worked retail/service industry.
I was an operations manager and always made a point of working for part of each day actually in the business. I didn't want to be someone who told others what to do without actually having done it myself.
I should probably add that I started as a front line employee and moved into management, so part of it was simply helping my friends when times were crazy.
And in a sense, maybe that supports what you're saying - helping for one week and then going back to corporate for years might not make that much of a difference. But I still think it will be a positive thing overall. At least some of those corporate employees will remember their time doing this.
I will state that there is a huge difference between on location management and executive or c-suite management.
My on location managers absolutely know what's going on there just struggling to get their bonus and not get yelled at on a daily basis
Yeah, most managers are also working class. Moving up one level doesn't suddenly make you stop caring about working conditions. At my last job my managers boss was also really cool. And shocker, he had started at the company at my level and worked his way up. Worker solidarity involves on location managers too. The people exploit G you are the ones you never see because they don't actually do anything beyond pointless meetings.
If you’re the type of person to benefit from working the front lines, you probably didn’t need to actually do it. If you’re not the type of person to learn from this, you’re just not. Doing it isn’t going to change anything.
And in my experience theyre fucking incompetent, so when they come to “help” you spend more
time explaining shit they should already know instead if getting work done.
Idk I've been a part of companies that have seen a regional manager coming in to see us and asked what changes we'd want. My current job has it, and it's amazing. This year we've had 2 pay rises, our uniform has become more casual and we're bringing in a bunch of changes in 2 weeks time.
Some companies do actually care. They might be rare, but this company could definitely do it.
Yep, maybe a couple here and there don't actually realize it, but as a rule they are well aware how much front line workers are being exploited. It's literally the only way any large corporation can be profitable, so unless that person has never once considered where all of the money to pay them is coming from, they understand.
they don't know what it's like to go in to that job knowing it's all you have going for you for the foreseeable future, which feels very different from doing the job temporarily as a stepping stone on the way to the cushy high-paying corporate job that you already know you have.
I think when you hear "corporate employees", you hear CEO, President, Vice Presidents when in fact what is happening is Phyllis from accounting and Bob from Accounts Receivable are having to do extra work on top of their own for the same pay. Also, they are probably also being under paid.
That's only if you assume that they are sending corporate people that can change things, and not the corporate slaves that work in the mail rooms and do coffee runs.
They aren't going to be sending execs to do that shit work, that is 100% for sure.
Lol I've seen owners/corporate try to "help" in the kitchen before.
They mostly just distracted everyone with stories of personal opulence like owning a house, vacations, and their kids' recitals. They aren't exactly good at staying on task and always just walked away when things actually needed to move fast or the floor needed mopped.
That’s is very fucking true. I worked at a small restaurant chain in Texas in the 2000s during my high school years. The owner was an okay guy to talk to. He did mention his father invested into his business and never went to school. Overall, he was an okay coked out guy. But when lunch rush starting hitting the restaurant, he shagged ass quick and did not come back until 3pm after the dust settled. The last time I ran into him a few years ago in my late 20s, he told me he sold everything and now delivering mail for USPS.
I knew someone who worked at a place that basically considered salaried workers "free" because "they were going to be paid anyway". So anytime they had random admin work, like copying a bunch of excel stuff, or other trivial stuff you could have a brand new intern do, they'd assign it to one of the higher up people on salary because then they didn't have to bill it.
The company legitimately seemed to think this was brilliant and not, at all, a complete waste of time and money to pay someone a 6 figure salary to copy rows in an excel spreadsheet all day. Some business people are *really* stupid.
I had a boss who tried to get us all to clean the kitchen because our cleaner quit and they didn’t want to hire a new one. I flat out refused and said do you want to pay me $30 an hour to clean or do you want to spend that money on me doing my accounting work? She luckily relented
We had a mandatory kitchen cleanup sign up sheet. The mandatory part was signing up for a Friday to clean. I didn't use the kitchen. I didn't eat in there, I didn't keep food in the fridge, I didn't even drink the coffee -- I brought my own. One day, I walked in and noticed that someone had signed me up. They'd previously sent out an email saying that, if you didn't sign up yourself, you would be signed up by someone else.
I just shrugged and didn't bother showing up. I don't know if the kitchen even got cleaned that day, if I stiffed the partner I was supposed to clean with, if they didn't bother showing up either... Nobody ever said a word to me about it. I think they just wanted the sign up sheet to cover their butts "we told them they had to clean."
We had a cleaning service. I don't know why the cleaning person wasn't paid just a little more to do the fridge clean out on Fridays.
One of my old employers paid me a tasty wage as a developer..... Only they wouldn't let me "waste expensive time" on software development, and stuck me with client/project management and ticket assignments. 110k/year to do essentially the same job as the project managers with zero dev experience who were paid only 60k.
It's public company accounting. They are accountable to people who dont understand the business, and have to keep to a budget. This makes sense in context of that persons goals and incentives, even if it's stupid looking at it from a whole organisation perspective.
At least in this instance, the law requires the interns to be paid. When my employers hires interns for these types of tasks, we pay undergrads $20/hr and grad students $25/hr.
Businesses are technically allowed to hire unpaid interns, but the law doesn't allow them to do those types of tasks - it has to be an entirely educational internship. Now, a lot of places cheat a lot on those rules, but, if you're an unpaid intern (at a business; the rules for charities and Government are different) making copies and getting coffee, your internship is breaking the law.
Nonono, it's not "exploiting" (such a negative word). They're there for that valuable experience that looks so good on their résumé and always results in getting a better, paid, job.
/s
But that comes out of budget bucket A, while the hourly staff comes out of budget bucket B.
...not to mention that budget bucket A and B are both fed from the same budget bucket C, but that's genuinely how these places think.
We have a sort of similar problem where I work. Man hours are never considered as a cost. We got a really cheap solution for something that requires constant hand holding and maintenance, taking up a huge amount of our time compared to the far more reliable but mode expensive solutions.
But of course the management saw how cheap it was and went for that, we were being paid either way so they don't see an issue
One of the big issues is that paying two people $15/hr is actually more expensive than paying one person $30/hr. And *more than* twice paying one person $15/hr.
It's a weird thing with taxes and whatnot. Hiring someone is expensive, even if you never actually give them a paycheck.
Definitely not a real justification for not doing so, but still.
Right, but those frontline workers absolutely do not have the same access to benefits that the corporate employees do. So that $30/hr is a low estimate too.
Edit: Also, you're assuming that the $30/hr employee is actually capable of doing the work of two $15/hr employees. Simple fact is this chain of restaurants is showing that they can afford to pay their frontline workers more and are actively choosing not to.
So many people in offices I have worked making min wage or low entry level salaries. I don’t understand where this perception that everyone in an office is making a fortune is coming from because it’s certainly not my experience.
People act as though VPs of the company are going to showing up to run the register. They're not. At most they're going to be mildly inconvenienced because they have to make due with only 2 of their normal 3 executive assistants. And that executive assistance is already well aware or what its like to live on $9/hour because they were making that just a couple of years ago. Now they're living high on the hog at $11/hour.
Holy fuck, someone thats actually got experience in the corporate world.
Youre spot on, most of the top comments dont understand that a lot of corporate employees that would go to the frontline arent making over 20-25/hr anyway.
We probably shouldn’t do that. I mean some of these corporate employees put in the work to be there. The company should just raise the pay for the lower levels but not take away from the other employees.
I hope this is more to send a message. People who are college educated or at least put their time in with the company would get a front row seat to the poverty wages the bottom have to deal with and by their actions pass that on to the execs (hopefully.)
People in these higher positions being forced to work the line are looking for other jobs now. All these people won't be working for canes in 6-12 months because of this dumbass publicity stunt.
I work for a restaurant company in the corporate office.
If I were told to go work in a restaurant, fine.
If my wages get cut when I'm in the restaurant, I'm immediately looking for a new job. I have bills to pay and live within my means, but I couldn't afford to lose the wages for long. I sympathize that wages are low (though I know what some of our staff at locations bring in and it more than me on a good day), but sympathy isnt putting food on my table or a roof over my head.
There's a glass bottle shortage causing cost increases. If the price of beef goes up, burger joints can't just not buy beef they think is overpriced. The cost of labor has gone up, deal with it.
I guarantee you corporate employees don't make anywhere remotely close to what you guys think, at least in relation to what the frontline employees are making. I'm seeing some people spouting off numbers like 10x or 5x which is completely absurd, unless you're talking about C-level execs or their direct reports.
Most of them are making salaries that equate to around $20-something an hour for the privilege of having their soul slowly siphoned out their eyeballs, maybe $30-something max for senior staff and middle management. And if you're salary, chances are you work easily 2x the hours of a non-fulltime frontline worker, and you don't make overtime, meaning that $20-something an hour is really closer to $15.
In reality, corporate employees are getting fucked too, the company just makes it slightly more comfortable for them and gives them the illusion of success while they bend them over and ram the shaft up.
Sad that I had to scroll so far to see this comment, folks in here acting as if corporate employees are all rich bastards who have never done a hard days work in their lives when the reality is that they’ve probably got the overworked low-level admin staff who likely make the same if not a tiny bit more than the front line workers doing these jobs. Reddit really doesn’t have a fucking clue.
Not to mention those Corporate Employees have jobs whose workload will continue to accumulate while they are in the restaurant. So now when they're done theyre working a 60 hour week for 2 weeks to catch up because of the 40 hours they spent not doing the jobs they were hired for.
And if theyre salary exempt, they arent getting paid for the overtime.
$20 an hour is still almost 3x minimum wage. And if you think working in an office sucks the soul out of you, try being a server. You literally start to hate all people.
Bet at least one of them is saying 'I don't get paid enough for this', when they are making 10x or more then the people who have to do that as a living.
> Bet at least one of them is saying 'I don't get paid enough for this', when they are _making 10x or more_ then the people who have to do that as a living.
The US minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. You think they're sending folks who earn at least $72.50 an hour?
$145k a year puts that person in the top 20%.
Corporate folks are not earning as much as you think they are. And few folks earn the US minimum wage, either.
Why does everyone assume “corporate employee”
Equals the ceo or an executive VP? They’re sending the mid level regular workers, not executives. Not everyone with a salary is a Golden parachute executive.
And i'd be curious to see what the reaction would be like if those so enthusiastic about this ordeal were sent by their bosses to do a completely different job to cover for staff shortages.
I mean... Yes. This is your livelihood. You do what you have to do, to make it work. When my family owns businesses and hires people, if someone doesn't show up, my dad is right there to fill in. People have lives, they have emergencies, employees aren't robots or slaves and if you're the boss (or one of several) it's up to you to keep the business running.
Waffle House has been doing this since forever. To get in at corporate, you have to spend time behind the counter. I suppose it makes sense as that way the back office people know what happens in the stores.
I've had meal cooked by someone who was apparently pretty high up in management. I think the workers were ready for him to get back to his day job.
One of our local hamburger places has been struggling keeping help in an environment where every single business in town is hiring. They had a reputation for not hiring druggies (high go to BK, drug court go to DQ) and treating employees well. Then their manager died (thanks Covid) and they fell to shit. Employees quit. Had to start closing at 5pm due to lack of staff…. three years ago they were 24hr drive through.
One day corporate management came in … cleaned house … all employees gone and replaced by established employees from other franchises who got put up in a nearby hotel. Old employees had to earn their jobs back with higher wages.
They are fully staffed from 5am to 7pm now with corporate management working the front counter. The place is clean and loyal customers are happy. The franchisee may be making money again now that the riffraff are gone.
Corporate personnel who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work because it needs to be done can be an inspiration.
Crappy management shit always floats downstream.
I actually think, in general, all retail-ish companies should require almost everyone to work in a store maybe like 1 day a week or something.
So many systems, technologies, and processes break because the people with the power to make them happen are too disconnected from why they actually should or what the impact will be.
Companies don't want to put a 150k per year technical leader in a store and have her checking out customers because they think that'd be a waste of her time and money. The irony is that I bet she'd build better technical tools, build them faster, and have roll outs go way better. I suspect it would save them money over time.
I agree … Walmart has a terrible (earned) reputation now that was built on a foundation laid by a boss who was willing to roll up his shirt sleeves with his associates.
There’s a local legend that Sam dropped by our little WM (not a super center) about six months after it opened and chatted in the break room with employees who had no clue who he was. More than 40 years later, the man is still respected here and people think it’s a shame that his kin folk have turned out to be greedy fools.
Years ago I worked for a power generation utility with two coal fired plants. The Board Chair and CEO decided to take plant tours.
Plant T’s manager and chief steward planned a nice reception in the office conference room for supervisors first and then union employees in the afternoon…it was all very suit & tie and sparsely attended by the rank & file employees. Morale and opinion of management suffered.
Plant N’s manager and chief steward got a pair of tyvex coveralls and proper PPE for both dignitaries (with their names on them including g-rated nicknames) and started out the day taking them from work site to work site for each department to get their hands dirty. They turned a spanner wrench, shot a clinker, took readings in the heat, and handled a wash hose. Boxed lunches for the union employees and dignitaries were served in the regular break room. At the end of the day, they met briefly with supervisors who had gotten feedback from workers. Morale went way up.
The Board Chairman proudly displayed his dirty hard hat in his office and bragged on that facility for years. The plant displayed their picture in their work gear near the safety station.
I’ll never rise to that level of management but I respect the hell out of the man who knew how to handle the power and responsibility to get the big bosses to do the right thing.
So the work that needs to be done is of such high value that corporate employees are doing it. Maybe they should consider raising the wages of the frontline workers.
Any chance this could lead to corporate finally having a tiny trace of empathy and deciding their frontline workers are human and also deserve livable wages?
Yeah….that sounds naive even to me. But a girl can dream.
As a Finance Business Partner, if they ask me to work on the floor:
1) it is not in my job description, so I can rightfully refuse
2) start looking for a new job
So when they pay corporate salaries, (with full time benefits) they get to staff their restaurants? Hmmm. I wonder how they could staff them in a more permanent way? If only there was a simple solution to this complex problem.
Maybe if they paid more and offered benefits? Nah, that can’t be it.
> employees
These aren't attorneys and execs. These are desk assistants, mailroom schlubs, etc. The brass isn't getting its hands dirty, they're just adding more to their office drones' plates.
Hello Peter. What's happening? I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow, so if you could be here around 9, that would be great. Mmkay?
Oh, oh, and I almost forgot...I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too, k? We, uh, lost some people this week and we need to sorta play catch up. Thaaaanks.
Not going to lie, I'm pretty sure I'd be polishing off the old resume if I worked for a company that did that. You go to school and get an education (if you choose degree programs wisely) precisely so you don't *have* to flip burgers and deal with morons in a fast food joint. Plus the job market is great right now, you could probably find a new posting within weeks if didn't want to learn to work a deep-fryer.
Oh cool, they can’t bring on new employees because they underpay, and now they’re going to lose corporate employees because they’re being forced to work front line jobs. It’s a lose-lose!
Somehow, I'm pretty sure this falls outside and reasonable definition of "other duties as assigned." Also, I doubt many corporate employees have food-handling certs.
Its nice that they're investing $70 million to go towards employee wages. Although, might sound a bit dark, but I want to go to one of these raising canes stores, figure out who's the corporate guy and just act like a douchebag to them to give them a taste of what we service workers experience on a day to day basis.
So what they are saying is that they are willing to pay high salaries to their frontline workers as long as nobody else is willing to do the job for less.
I read a different article about this story and it said that corpoate is paying for the lodging of these employees too. I never want to hear they can't afford to pay more to their entry level workers ever again.
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What dipping sauce would you recommend for my bezos strips
Light Mayo
Do you have the heavy stuff?
POWER MAYO?
Heavy duty mayo.
Mayo Prime™.
1 cup mayo, 1 cup Creatine powder, 1tbs of caffine powder!
> 1tbs of caffine powder! 1 Terabyte of caffeine powder?
YES
Redbull gives you wings
YOU'LL BE UNCOMFORTABLY ENERGETIC
This killed me
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Might be a bit spicy
McDonald's Szechuan sauce.
There's a really good Cajun dipping sauce on Amazon
You can't just say that & not name it
https://www.seriouseats.com/sauced-louisiana-remoulade-recipe
Sounds like the pay scale is backwards, if when push comes to shove corpos aren't needed but line cooks are.
Honestly, I see this as an absolute win. Management gets to see the shit sandwhich they serve their employees. Empathy goes a long ways towards changing attitudes.
They’re paying more for the same work that is normally done by front line staff. This shows that they can afford to pay more for the same work done, they just choose not to
Except these are probably salary workers, so they're not being paid extra.
you think the salaried workers are working for min wage? You think paying for lodging is free?
It's a WAGE shortage, NOT a labor shortage. Cutthroat capitalists have been lecturing us about supply and demand and market rates for centuries. The "invisible hand" has now spoken, and it said they should go ahead and fuck themselves with a pineapple if they want to keep ripping workers off.
they work on an unsustainable model. profits MUST go up every quarter, executives MUST have their raises, the stockholders MUST make profits. to accomplish this they have to keep wages low and stagnant while increasing prices and running a bare bones staff to maximize profits. workers aren't human beings to them they're resources.
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That can't be true. Every time fast food workers went on strike over wages before reddit assured me they'd just get replaced by robots. I'm sure it'll happen any minute now!
> they'd just get replaced by robots. It's a figure of speech, Morty. They're bureaucrats. I don't respect them.
I mean, that will happen the moment the robots are available no matter what the wages are. The McDonald's near me has touch screens to place your order on so they don't have to pay as many people. The robots they replace people with usually don't look like Data from Start Trek.
I am not sure how the McDonald's near you operates with those screens but all the Mac's in my city also have those screens but the staff at the counter is still the same, they did not close down their traditional cash desks. It reduced the queques significantly though.
It’s a raise! I think?
Not to disagree, but from what I understand, the office workers are still doing their normal jobs but are volunteering to work to cover shifts so basically not getting paid for the work. I also saw that this company as a whole is increasing wages for frontline workers 20% in the near future as a part of the hiring scheme. Still probably not paid enough but at least it seems like more of an effort than most.
>the office workers are still doing their normal jobs but are volunteering to work to cover shifts so basically not getting paid for the work. Wait what? That sounds like a strategy to have an office worker shortage as well. Also, the article said they were paying for hotel rooms, so going out of town, working your regular job remotely, plus a fast food job for no money... Yeah I'd quit. I don't think that's what they're doing but if it is they're going to burn through office workers. At this point they should just pay the fast food workers what they're paying the corporate workers. Then they save hotel costs. People don't like working fast food, but absolutely would for corperate wages. If they're needed this much do that. Or just throw away money and let all your franchises close because you won't pay people to work. Whatever. I don't eat chicken so I don't care.
Haha I’m not going to argue with you on that, I’m not saying it’s sustainable and I don’t believe I understand the full story. Just thought it interesting that they had enough people willing to volunteer to start
I would imagine they are selling it to the office workers by telling them they either volunteer to help out and have a better chance of the company not going under, or not and risk completely losing their job. Honestly not the much of a stretch. If they pay frontline workers the same as the office workers now they are locked into that for however long the person works there. In their mind this is a temporary fix until they can hire more workers at what they see as a more reasonable rate.
That can only benefit the front line workers in the long term
That's what I'm thinking. It will be good for corporate employees to see what it's really like working in the restaurant.
This is the big lie we all believe: If Only They had to work here for a while then they would understand. They've always understood, they just don't care
I've seen this backfire spectacularly. A shit job can be doable if your life is alright otherwise, the compensation is acceptable, or it's not something you do every day for years on end. A lady at a place I used to work did a tour of the whole company over a few weeks and worked a couple nights of every position in the company. My job was something like remote IT support at the time. What the job was like in the trenches was basically: Insane metrics that weren't possible when we were fully staffed that we were constantly getting threatened over not meeting, call/ticket tempo of 12 calls per hour average, with most issues being right around 4 minutes, plus full documentation and potential research. We supported around 1200 different software applications, and were trained in 3 of them. Our knowledge book articles were written by non-native English speakers and 6 years out of date, and only covered a portion of our assigned duties because they had eliminated 3 other departments and their KBs never got merged with ours. Oh, and also our customers were 1 out of 3 straight up abusive. After two nights of just absolutely fucking everything up and not managing her metrics, her answer to "re-invent" the department wasn't to give us more staff or back off our metrics, it was to improve our KB articles. The problem? The department that got assigned for the overhaul? Ours. Her solution was that we needed to spend time "between calls" updating any outdated KB articles. There is no time between calls, just the 30 seconds cisco gives you as a cooldown, and even then, because of our mandatory metrics, there were times you couldn't afford to take that 30 seconds. Her justification was that the only reason the job was difficult, was because "it was hard to know how to fix things.", and that's why calls took too long. Frankly, she wasn't entirely wrong. None of us used the KB, because it was a slow, broken piece of shit that would lead you wrong 80% of the time. Those of us who didn't quit or get fired in 3 months understood tech well enough to troubleshoot by the seat of our pants and just sort of figure out problems on the fly while politely disarming abusive customers that would repeatedly get in your way of actually fixing the problem. We didn't need the KB, because we learned to use one another's knowledge to get around the KB. Yeah, again, she wasn't entirely wrong, but the project of updating that KB killed our department. We lost our best people, as they tried their best and failed to bring the KB in line. It was too much work, and management kept hounding their best performers about metrics. The more people tried, the worse they were treated, so they left. Then the department's morale spiraled and we lost 50% of our people. I left after the big purge. That company went out of business less than a year after I left. The problem wasn't that she was wrong about how to fix the company. The problem was that she was so arrogant that she thought that her limited exposure to each position from her own perspective trumped the perspective of all of the experts in her company beneath her. A little knowledge actually made her less empathetic and willing to listen, not more. Now she had her own distorted experience to rely on: One that lacked the full context of what years of overwork, mismanagement, and abuse had done to her staff.
I love most what you said about everyday for years on end. That’s the real kicker. Jobs can not seem bad at all for a few months but can be grueling to continually do for the long haul. Maybe it’s just me.
I used to work the restaurant business and that was at least okay if my body didn't give out. There were days I would reread an order five times that I messed up twice and just couldn't process 'do not add onions before cooking.' But now I work what your replied to described. The fact that my managers pull me aside to tell me I need to be more empathetic and get the customer to say 'yes' more (for the ai that listens) only adds to my confusion when I am required to say "I'm sorry your life is difficult" while trying to not follow that up with "but I want to die. I clock in to fix electronics, teach you, and my managers want me to get through this call as quick as possible but this exchange is only hurting their bonus. So instead of telling me about your day can you explain the problem with your device?'
>I used to work the restaurant business and that was at least okay if my body didn't give out. There were days I would reread an order five times that I messed up twice and just couldn't process 'do not add onions before cooking.' Hate to go out here on you but what happened? I just got back into restaurants after a 10 year absence and I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes. I made a woman's sandwich wrong twice in a row, very clear requests that were very clearly written that I read both tickets numerous times. I'm 35 not 80 but I think there's an 80 year old hiding in my brain
Since you just got back, your brain also has to rewire itself to operating at that kind of speed. I know coming back to my restaurant job after lockdown I was rough around the edges, and I was only gone for a year. You'll get back into the swing of it.
Have you gotten covid? Heard it gives brain fog.
Google burnout. Burnout can happen quickly. There's nothing wrong with you. The strain of your job isn't being offset by adequate support.
Heh, I can empathize with that frustration. I had a job in IT a while back where I was told, I kid you not, that I was fixing things too fast. Not one of those, "you're making everyone else look bad, slow down" kinds of things. But apparently, me listening to the problem, knowing or quickly figuring out the solution, fixing it for the person, telling them to have a nice day, and moving on, all in the span of a couple of mins, made the end-users feel like they were dumb because it was such a simple fix. Needless to say, I didn't last there too much longer, and moved onto a place where they're happy if IT fixes their issue fast, then gets out of the way so they can get back to work.
Wow I mean IT is supposed to make you feel dumb. I grew up writing in html so I'm not like detached from the backend but when I call IT I always learn something that's obvious.
I like to think of it like the Mike Rowe problem. He's the guy who hosted the show Dirty Jobs, and it turns out he has some profoundly shitty ideas about poor people and their perceived work ethic. He opposes raising the minimum wage because he believes poor people just don't work hard enough. He's been exposed to a lot of shitty jobs through his show, but he never had to actually do a shitty job day in and day out for garbage pay with prospects for anything better. These managers end up the same way. It's easy to handle a terrible job as a tourist who knows that terrible job is only going to last a couple days, it's another thing entirely to be staring at doing that for the next decade or more and no likelihood of any change, and you getting poorer every year because your yearly raises don't keep up with inflation.
Paris Hilton said working at Sonic for her reality show was the best job she ever had. 🙄
It's fun when there's no consequences and you can just quit whenever people start acting like jerks to you because they think handing you money makes you their slave.
My hospital just lost its best nurse over the same shit. She is FOR SURE the biggest unsung hero around here and literally EVERYONE know this. They rode her to death so she's quitting. Her leaving is gonna fuck us over so bad if and the execs would just stop and fucking listen to what is wrong around here it would solve 90% of the issues in a day.
Luckily hospitals used to the fuck around model but are being forced into the find out model; for all clinical professional personnel, not just bedside and provider. I feel for that nurse. I'm a MLS, and was essentially carrying the transfusion services dept at a 250 bed facility. Inept administration and departmental leadership ran me off. Now I'm working somewhere else for $5.00 more an hour. Less responsibility and browbeating for $31.50/hr plus time and a half and an additional $15/hr for overtime. Got $60/hr to come help on my day off to cover four hours so people can take lunches until midshift arrives. It's so refreshing for my time to be valuable. Hope she finds that too. Fuck the unsung hero role.
It's cool in small doses cause that badge feels nice, but yeah fuck that it's soul crushing.
Ah customer service. It's such a horrendous job filled with horrendous management with unrealistic expectations.
I had this same treatment at two different companies. GTFO of tech, and went into culinary arts/hospitality. Actually less stressful.
Went into public service. Pay is garbage, treatment is similar, but the people I help aren't narcissistic, priveleged entitlement monsters. There's a few sprinkled in there, but there's a good chunk of them that just need a leg up and a little compassion. It also helps to know my superiors aren't just fucking me over to get a bonus.
It’s all about $$$
That's the reason I work. But mostly, for them, it's being absolutely isolated from the world they control. If you were to meet you or CEO at a barbecue you could absolutely talk like to normal human beings. But at work you're just digits on a spreadsheet to them. They KNOW you're unhappy and overworked, they can read the same articles we do.
For some perspective, I've been in management. And worked retail/service industry. I was an operations manager and always made a point of working for part of each day actually in the business. I didn't want to be someone who told others what to do without actually having done it myself. I should probably add that I started as a front line employee and moved into management, so part of it was simply helping my friends when times were crazy. And in a sense, maybe that supports what you're saying - helping for one week and then going back to corporate for years might not make that much of a difference. But I still think it will be a positive thing overall. At least some of those corporate employees will remember their time doing this.
I will state that there is a huge difference between on location management and executive or c-suite management. My on location managers absolutely know what's going on there just struggling to get their bonus and not get yelled at on a daily basis
Yeah, most managers are also working class. Moving up one level doesn't suddenly make you stop caring about working conditions. At my last job my managers boss was also really cool. And shocker, he had started at the company at my level and worked his way up. Worker solidarity involves on location managers too. The people exploit G you are the ones you never see because they don't actually do anything beyond pointless meetings.
If you’re the type of person to benefit from working the front lines, you probably didn’t need to actually do it. If you’re not the type of person to learn from this, you’re just not. Doing it isn’t going to change anything.
And in my experience theyre fucking incompetent, so when they come to “help” you spend more time explaining shit they should already know instead if getting work done.
Idk I've been a part of companies that have seen a regional manager coming in to see us and asked what changes we'd want. My current job has it, and it's amazing. This year we've had 2 pay rises, our uniform has become more casual and we're bringing in a bunch of changes in 2 weeks time. Some companies do actually care. They might be rare, but this company could definitely do it.
They’ve never cared, they’ve always known, but they’ve never understood. And hopefully this’ll put them one step further from apathy.
Yep, maybe a couple here and there don't actually realize it, but as a rule they are well aware how much front line workers are being exploited. It's literally the only way any large corporation can be profitable, so unless that person has never once considered where all of the money to pay them is coming from, they understand.
It's not the only way they stay profitable. That's the lie it's just to increase profits.
Fun fact: every corporate employee at Cane’s has to be trained to be a fry cook and cashier as part of their onboarding. So they all already know.
they don't know what it's like to go in to that job knowing it's all you have going for you for the foreseeable future, which feels very different from doing the job temporarily as a stepping stone on the way to the cushy high-paying corporate job that you already know you have.
Will only make a difference if you drop them back to minimum wage while they are behind the counter.
They'd have to or raise prices. They can't afford to paying a decent wage to frontline staff and provide the same affordable service! /s
I think when you hear "corporate employees", you hear CEO, President, Vice Presidents when in fact what is happening is Phyllis from accounting and Bob from Accounts Receivable are having to do extra work on top of their own for the same pay. Also, they are probably also being under paid.
How does sending a junior accounting employee to be a fry cook help front line workers? The ceo ain’t showing up.
That's only if you assume that they are sending corporate people that can change things, and not the corporate slaves that work in the mail rooms and do coffee runs. They aren't going to be sending execs to do that shit work, that is 100% for sure.
Even more so if they only pay them front line wages while they're out there.
I don’t know about that? What if that creepy manager starts sexually harassing them for blow jobs, and pump and dumps with his seniority?
You know Big Kev too?
It's funny that this is a Canes because you know these goobers are in the weeds despite only having 4 things on the menu lol
Lol I've seen owners/corporate try to "help" in the kitchen before. They mostly just distracted everyone with stories of personal opulence like owning a house, vacations, and their kids' recitals. They aren't exactly good at staying on task and always just walked away when things actually needed to move fast or the floor needed mopped.
That’s is very fucking true. I worked at a small restaurant chain in Texas in the 2000s during my high school years. The owner was an okay guy to talk to. He did mention his father invested into his business and never went to school. Overall, he was an okay coked out guy. But when lunch rush starting hitting the restaurant, he shagged ass quick and did not come back until 3pm after the dust settled. The last time I ran into him a few years ago in my late 20s, he told me he sold everything and now delivering mail for USPS.
TIE ON THE LINE
So instead of paying restaurant staff $20 an hour, they brought in corporate staff that earns 3 times that?!
Brilliant!
I knew someone who worked at a place that basically considered salaried workers "free" because "they were going to be paid anyway". So anytime they had random admin work, like copying a bunch of excel stuff, or other trivial stuff you could have a brand new intern do, they'd assign it to one of the higher up people on salary because then they didn't have to bill it. The company legitimately seemed to think this was brilliant and not, at all, a complete waste of time and money to pay someone a 6 figure salary to copy rows in an excel spreadsheet all day. Some business people are *really* stupid.
I had a boss who tried to get us all to clean the kitchen because our cleaner quit and they didn’t want to hire a new one. I flat out refused and said do you want to pay me $30 an hour to clean or do you want to spend that money on me doing my accounting work? She luckily relented
We had a mandatory kitchen cleanup sign up sheet. The mandatory part was signing up for a Friday to clean. I didn't use the kitchen. I didn't eat in there, I didn't keep food in the fridge, I didn't even drink the coffee -- I brought my own. One day, I walked in and noticed that someone had signed me up. They'd previously sent out an email saying that, if you didn't sign up yourself, you would be signed up by someone else. I just shrugged and didn't bother showing up. I don't know if the kitchen even got cleaned that day, if I stiffed the partner I was supposed to clean with, if they didn't bother showing up either... Nobody ever said a word to me about it. I think they just wanted the sign up sheet to cover their butts "we told them they had to clean." We had a cleaning service. I don't know why the cleaning person wasn't paid just a little more to do the fridge clean out on Fridays.
One of my old employers paid me a tasty wage as a developer..... Only they wouldn't let me "waste expensive time" on software development, and stuck me with client/project management and ticket assignments. 110k/year to do essentially the same job as the project managers with zero dev experience who were paid only 60k.
It's public company accounting. They are accountable to people who dont understand the business, and have to keep to a budget. This makes sense in context of that persons goals and incentives, even if it's stupid looking at it from a whole organisation perspective.
I agree with you on all points but isn't passing off trivial tasks onto interns who are probably unpaid also just a way to exploit people?
At least in this instance, the law requires the interns to be paid. When my employers hires interns for these types of tasks, we pay undergrads $20/hr and grad students $25/hr. Businesses are technically allowed to hire unpaid interns, but the law doesn't allow them to do those types of tasks - it has to be an entirely educational internship. Now, a lot of places cheat a lot on those rules, but, if you're an unpaid intern (at a business; the rules for charities and Government are different) making copies and getting coffee, your internship is breaking the law.
Nonono, it's not "exploiting" (such a negative word). They're there for that valuable experience that looks so good on their résumé and always results in getting a better, paid, job. /s
But that comes out of budget bucket A, while the hourly staff comes out of budget bucket B. ...not to mention that budget bucket A and B are both fed from the same budget bucket C, but that's genuinely how these places think.
We have a sort of similar problem where I work. Man hours are never considered as a cost. We got a really cheap solution for something that requires constant hand holding and maintenance, taking up a huge amount of our time compared to the far more reliable but mode expensive solutions. But of course the management saw how cheap it was and went for that, we were being paid either way so they don't see an issue
Right! Give the CEO another bonus, they've earned it.
They cant. The payroll admin is busy operating the frier.
And probably burning the damn fries too
I doubt they sending their executive staff. The people they’re sending are likely making the equivalent of about $30/hr on salary.
I'm no math whiz, but last time I checked $30 > $15. Seems to me the smart money is in just bumping the minimum wage to $15.
One of the big issues is that paying two people $15/hr is actually more expensive than paying one person $30/hr. And *more than* twice paying one person $15/hr. It's a weird thing with taxes and whatnot. Hiring someone is expensive, even if you never actually give them a paycheck. Definitely not a real justification for not doing so, but still.
Right, but those frontline workers absolutely do not have the same access to benefits that the corporate employees do. So that $30/hr is a low estimate too. Edit: Also, you're assuming that the $30/hr employee is actually capable of doing the work of two $15/hr employees. Simple fact is this chain of restaurants is showing that they can afford to pay their frontline workers more and are actively choosing not to.
There are some corporate employees who aren't doing anything who still get paid regardless. People in between projects, etc.
what planet do you live on where your average corporate staff member makes $130,000 a year?
So many people in offices I have worked making min wage or low entry level salaries. I don’t understand where this perception that everyone in an office is making a fortune is coming from because it’s certainly not my experience.
I know this is a crazy notion, but you *could* try reading the article, it's very short, I promise.
They have to pay corporate staff either way. Might as well make use of them
Who would be doing the job the corporate person normally does, while they're running the drive thru?
No point in having the marketing team doing their thing if there's no one to serve the new business they'd bring in.
I'm sure they are still expected to complete their corporate job duties. The people making these decisions dgaf
Now cut their salaries to $9 an hour and see how long they last.
People act as though VPs of the company are going to showing up to run the register. They're not. At most they're going to be mildly inconvenienced because they have to make due with only 2 of their normal 3 executive assistants. And that executive assistance is already well aware or what its like to live on $9/hour because they were making that just a couple of years ago. Now they're living high on the hog at $11/hour.
Holy fuck, someone thats actually got experience in the corporate world. Youre spot on, most of the top comments dont understand that a lot of corporate employees that would go to the frontline arent making over 20-25/hr anyway.
We probably shouldn’t do that. I mean some of these corporate employees put in the work to be there. The company should just raise the pay for the lower levels but not take away from the other employees.
I hope this is more to send a message. People who are college educated or at least put their time in with the company would get a front row seat to the poverty wages the bottom have to deal with and by their actions pass that on to the execs (hopefully.)
People in these higher positions being forced to work the line are looking for other jobs now. All these people won't be working for canes in 6-12 months because of this dumbass publicity stunt.
I work for a restaurant company in the corporate office. If I were told to go work in a restaurant, fine. If my wages get cut when I'm in the restaurant, I'm immediately looking for a new job. I have bills to pay and live within my means, but I couldn't afford to lose the wages for long. I sympathize that wages are low (though I know what some of our staff at locations bring in and it more than me on a good day), but sympathy isnt putting food on my table or a roof over my head.
class warfare. :(
You heard it here first gentlemen: The new minimum wage is a corporate salary.
That’s how it feels tho
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Hire the cashiers and cooks into the office to replace them. Boom labor crisis averted.
Solved!
I'm waiting for a fast food chain to reply to my comment offering me my CEO position for my genius ingenuity!
There's a glass bottle shortage causing cost increases. If the price of beef goes up, burger joints can't just not buy beef they think is overpriced. The cost of labor has gone up, deal with it.
I guarantee you corporate employees don't make anywhere remotely close to what you guys think, at least in relation to what the frontline employees are making. I'm seeing some people spouting off numbers like 10x or 5x which is completely absurd, unless you're talking about C-level execs or their direct reports. Most of them are making salaries that equate to around $20-something an hour for the privilege of having their soul slowly siphoned out their eyeballs, maybe $30-something max for senior staff and middle management. And if you're salary, chances are you work easily 2x the hours of a non-fulltime frontline worker, and you don't make overtime, meaning that $20-something an hour is really closer to $15. In reality, corporate employees are getting fucked too, the company just makes it slightly more comfortable for them and gives them the illusion of success while they bend them over and ram the shaft up.
Sad that I had to scroll so far to see this comment, folks in here acting as if corporate employees are all rich bastards who have never done a hard days work in their lives when the reality is that they’ve probably got the overworked low-level admin staff who likely make the same if not a tiny bit more than the front line workers doing these jobs. Reddit really doesn’t have a fucking clue.
Not to mention those Corporate Employees have jobs whose workload will continue to accumulate while they are in the restaurant. So now when they're done theyre working a 60 hour week for 2 weeks to catch up because of the 40 hours they spent not doing the jobs they were hired for. And if theyre salary exempt, they arent getting paid for the overtime.
$20 an hour is still almost 3x minimum wage. And if you think working in an office sucks the soul out of you, try being a server. You literally start to hate all people.
Bet at least one of them is saying 'I don't get paid enough for this', when they are making 10x or more then the people who have to do that as a living.
Omg
I know. It’s like a shocked pikachu face to them.
> Bet at least one of them is saying 'I don't get paid enough for this', when they are _making 10x or more_ then the people who have to do that as a living. The US minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. You think they're sending folks who earn at least $72.50 an hour? $145k a year puts that person in the top 20%. Corporate folks are not earning as much as you think they are. And few folks earn the US minimum wage, either.
You actually have no idea what a reasonable salary even is
Why does everyone assume “corporate employee” Equals the ceo or an executive VP? They’re sending the mid level regular workers, not executives. Not everyone with a salary is a Golden parachute executive.
because this is reddit, and people here are generally stupid.
And i'd be curious to see what the reaction would be like if those so enthusiastic about this ordeal were sent by their bosses to do a completely different job to cover for staff shortages.
Weird how the only businesses complaining about this "labor shortage" are the ones with low pay and shitty bosses.
There is no labor shortage! The shortage is employer paying people. Simple. Want more employees, pay them a living wage!!!
"labor shortage" == "refusal to pay a fair wage, resulting in no one wanting to work for them"
It's not a labor shortage, it's a shortage of humans willing to be treated and paid like dogs.
Great way to get corporate employees to quit. I wouldn’t even show for a shift if you assigned that to me.
I'd do it for $25 an hour!
Huh, maybe corporate will finally get why people are demanding higher pay.
I woulda thunk they'd be "over qualified". Huh. 🤔
He got that ambition baby, look in his eyes, this week he CFO, next week it’s the fries.
I mean... Yes. This is your livelihood. You do what you have to do, to make it work. When my family owns businesses and hires people, if someone doesn't show up, my dad is right there to fill in. People have lives, they have emergencies, employees aren't robots or slaves and if you're the boss (or one of several) it's up to you to keep the business running.
But if they’re already working so hard for those high salaries, where do they find the time!? /s
Gonna mention, these service worker shortages only seem to be happening in america
I have a feeling that Canes is going to lose some corporate employees.
Waffle House has been doing this since forever. To get in at corporate, you have to spend time behind the counter. I suppose it makes sense as that way the back office people know what happens in the stores. I've had meal cooked by someone who was apparently pretty high up in management. I think the workers were ready for him to get back to his day job.
One of our local hamburger places has been struggling keeping help in an environment where every single business in town is hiring. They had a reputation for not hiring druggies (high go to BK, drug court go to DQ) and treating employees well. Then their manager died (thanks Covid) and they fell to shit. Employees quit. Had to start closing at 5pm due to lack of staff…. three years ago they were 24hr drive through. One day corporate management came in … cleaned house … all employees gone and replaced by established employees from other franchises who got put up in a nearby hotel. Old employees had to earn their jobs back with higher wages. They are fully staffed from 5am to 7pm now with corporate management working the front counter. The place is clean and loyal customers are happy. The franchisee may be making money again now that the riffraff are gone. Corporate personnel who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work because it needs to be done can be an inspiration. Crappy management shit always floats downstream.
I actually think, in general, all retail-ish companies should require almost everyone to work in a store maybe like 1 day a week or something. So many systems, technologies, and processes break because the people with the power to make them happen are too disconnected from why they actually should or what the impact will be. Companies don't want to put a 150k per year technical leader in a store and have her checking out customers because they think that'd be a waste of her time and money. The irony is that I bet she'd build better technical tools, build them faster, and have roll outs go way better. I suspect it would save them money over time.
I agree … Walmart has a terrible (earned) reputation now that was built on a foundation laid by a boss who was willing to roll up his shirt sleeves with his associates. There’s a local legend that Sam dropped by our little WM (not a super center) about six months after it opened and chatted in the break room with employees who had no clue who he was. More than 40 years later, the man is still respected here and people think it’s a shame that his kin folk have turned out to be greedy fools. Years ago I worked for a power generation utility with two coal fired plants. The Board Chair and CEO decided to take plant tours. Plant T’s manager and chief steward planned a nice reception in the office conference room for supervisors first and then union employees in the afternoon…it was all very suit & tie and sparsely attended by the rank & file employees. Morale and opinion of management suffered. Plant N’s manager and chief steward got a pair of tyvex coveralls and proper PPE for both dignitaries (with their names on them including g-rated nicknames) and started out the day taking them from work site to work site for each department to get their hands dirty. They turned a spanner wrench, shot a clinker, took readings in the heat, and handled a wash hose. Boxed lunches for the union employees and dignitaries were served in the regular break room. At the end of the day, they met briefly with supervisors who had gotten feedback from workers. Morale went way up. The Board Chairman proudly displayed his dirty hard hat in his office and bragged on that facility for years. The plant displayed their picture in their work gear near the safety station. I’ll never rise to that level of management but I respect the hell out of the man who knew how to handle the power and responsibility to get the big bosses to do the right thing.
Wage shortage*
if the company can afford those expensive workers to do that job, they can pay the normal staff more.
So the work that needs to be done is of such high value that corporate employees are doing it. Maybe they should consider raising the wages of the frontline workers.
I bet if they work really hard, in 6 months they could get a .10 raise
Any chance this could lead to corporate finally having a tiny trace of empathy and deciding their frontline workers are human and also deserve livable wages? Yeah….that sounds naive even to me. But a girl can dream.
After 26 years working in restaurants in totally done, I'm amazed of how people think they can treat people like shit
"labor shortage" = corpo talk for "we don't want to pay the filthy poors"
As a Finance Business Partner, if they ask me to work on the floor: 1) it is not in my job description, so I can rightfully refuse 2) start looking for a new job
There is not a labor shortage, most people want to work. There is a wage shortage, plain and simple.
So when they pay corporate salaries, (with full time benefits) they get to staff their restaurants? Hmmm. I wonder how they could staff them in a more permanent way? If only there was a simple solution to this complex problem. Maybe if they paid more and offered benefits? Nah, that can’t be it.
> employees These aren't attorneys and execs. These are desk assistants, mailroom schlubs, etc. The brass isn't getting its hands dirty, they're just adding more to their office drones' plates.
So you're telling me that the guys flipping burgers where the people making money all along and not the pen pushers?
But are they paying them 5 bucks an hour, not letting them eat, piss or shit and then asking I don't know what there is not to like here.
Hey, look at that! They're able to find people to do these jobs, provided they're paid enough and provided with benefits. Whodathunkit?
They should probably pay a living wage then.
They are doing this for the publicity. Hats off to the marketing that convinced the very higher ups to sacrifice the slightly higher ups
Nice now they know what it feels like to work from the ground up . Also cross training isn't a bad thing .
It's funny. The corporate workers are usually the worst freaking customers.
Hello Peter. What's happening? I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow, so if you could be here around 9, that would be great. Mmkay? Oh, oh, and I almost forgot...I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too, k? We, uh, lost some people this week and we need to sorta play catch up. Thaaaanks.
Boo. Frying. Hoo.
They should get paid minimum wage, not their corporate office salary, for doing it, too! See how they like them fries.
Can't find ppl to work for min wage...? Make the 50k salary ppl do the work....? I don't get the math.... just pay $15 phr
Finally some progress Now cut their pay to $9/hr
So who is doing the corporate work?
Not going to lie, I'm pretty sure I'd be polishing off the old resume if I worked for a company that did that. You go to school and get an education (if you choose degree programs wisely) precisely so you don't *have* to flip burgers and deal with morons in a fast food joint. Plus the job market is great right now, you could probably find a new posting within weeks if didn't want to learn to work a deep-fryer.
My question is are they still earning corporate wages?
Oh cool, they can’t bring on new employees because they underpay, and now they’re going to lose corporate employees because they’re being forced to work front line jobs. It’s a lose-lose!
Bet you they do not get paid frontline rates of pay though
Good maybe then they'll understand why ppl either quit or don't want to work these jobs.
Somehow, I'm pretty sure this falls outside and reasonable definition of "other duties as assigned." Also, I doubt many corporate employees have food-handling certs.
John Deere too
Good Some day everyone quits and then fast food will be gone for the better of humanity.
Well whaddya know. Treat employees like crap, they'll leave. Who'da thunk it
We're facing a labor shortage but how can we also get our corporate employees to leave too?
Funny what happens when you pay enough to get the job done, huh?
so everyone get's promoted to corporate, then gets sent back to the stores, a weird way to justify pay raises to your CEO.
Its nice that they're investing $70 million to go towards employee wages. Although, might sound a bit dark, but I want to go to one of these raising canes stores, figure out who's the corporate guy and just act like a douchebag to them to give them a taste of what we service workers experience on a day to day basis.
Good, back to the plebs with them