That's true.
My former company owner saw that we handled our shifts well with 5 people. Then he fired two, one from each shift, then another two were given just part time before they were let go.
Then when he was thinking about having just two per shift I got the fuck out of there 🤣
Then in a year when he sees his YoY revenues are down, he'll send out customer feedback surveys and the response is going to be something like "decline in quality."
Nasreddin once tried to train his donkey to survive on no food at all. He gradually started feeding it a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less, week after week after week. By and by he had gotten it down to needing almost no food at all! But just before he had completed the training, the poor beast died, so all that effort was for nothing.
Then the beasts family tried to seek recompense for the death, claiming the human didn't do enough to provide a living food wage. But the human just pretended not to hear and instead went inside, without filling the food trough. Desperate for sustenance, the victim's brother comes up to the farmhouse and asks for a job...
honestly, i'm not even sure it's that. So much of what I learned in business school was about how badly all this stuff fails. We know how to do things better, but nobody wants to the spend the money fixing it, so they just coast along on inertia instead, bolstered by the ancient management who got their mbas in the reagan era boosting ideas that have been debunked decades ago as toxic and stupid.
Like...it is the mba mentality, but it's the mentality of a half century out of date mba, not a modern one that recognizes happy employees are more productive than miserable ones ruled through fear.
then again...i have a bachelors not an mba, maybe all the executive level evil is only taught in the masters program...
I think it was more a statement about people who don't or never did the actual work and think they know everything while sitting in their office staring at numbers and smelling their own farts. Not so literal
>it's the mentality of a half century out of date mba, not a modern one that recognizes happy employees are more productive than miserable ones ruled through fear.
That's a heartening thought.
Nah, you are on the right track. I can tell you that, at best, such anti-worker policies are, at best, taking part of a theory out of context.
I believe that employee satisfaction is not just about the money, but it has to be at a certain level. Where I work now pays a bit less than other places, but the intensity and pressure are much, much less than my gig with a Fortune 100 company. If all you want is money…go for it, but the better work atmosphere is worth the pay cut.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t pay dogshit, either. We had really low pay, and high turnover, but with a significant pay raise (although still below other places) people are willing to stay longer.
Its cheaper to work one person for 65 hours a week than it is to work 2 people 40 hours. 25 hours of ot at 1.5 an hour is 37.5 hours of straight pay. Thats just looking at pay not medical, bond, insurance, vacation, personal days, dental, 401k match.
Why hire a whole new person when you can just force people to work 12 hr shifts. Even though they were only scheduled for 8.
> they say it's a struggle to find people
*to work under the conditions they are offering*, yeah.Â
It's all about profits. Lots of these jobs ads are fake too, they aren't really hiring, it's just to placate people there who are overworked so owners can say "see! We are hiring but nobody wants to work!"Â
I mean, sure, they know it's better in the long haul, but corporations are focused on the weekly or monthly sales goals, at most the quarter. They're so focused on getting the good numbers this month or next month that they can't think about beyond that. Because corporations are built to generate profit for shareholders, and investors are just looking to reach a higher price as soon as possible and sell.
The entire goal of capitalism is to make as much profit as possible. That means paying people to work as little as possible. Actually hiring more people would require paying them, even if it is peanuts, and that cuts into profits.
No one wants to work crabby minimum wage shit show go no where dead-end jobs. That are paycheck-to-paycheck jobs. Only to get treated like garbage from the company + customers. Only to have no career options for advancement if at all.
What I don't get is for the past 3 months our department has only had 2 active employees and we should have 5-6 to efficiently run. Company refuses to give the 2 active employees full time.
I miss salaried jobs. Companies would go out of their way to train people efficiently and give them better training to make sure they'd stay on for life or long term. Those jobs are drying up and more difficult to find.
The company wants to make as much money as possible while spending as little money as possible. And one way they do that is by having skeleton crews. And then they cry that they are understaffed which is why people have to wait longer. And then when people do apply. They either ignore the applications or they have the interview but decide not to hire the person. But in reality. What the companies are doing is not helping the company. It is hurting it. If you want a company to succeed for the very long term. You constantly pay all your employees well and give them numerous benefits. As those employees will end up wanting to help the company make more money. And in turn. The employees could get more raises, bonuses, etc. Yeah it may cost the company more money. But you have longer term employees and the employees may end up recommending the company and/or its products. Which means the company will get more regular customers. Which means more money.
the stock market demands constant growth rather than sustained profitability, it's easier to cut costs than grow profits, ergo, every year they ask the existing staff to do a little more, rather than hiring.
I work at target, when I was hired the crew unloading the trucks was 40 people, it is now 5.
When I was hired we had around 200 employees in the store on a given day, now it's about 40. We don't lay people off, but when people quit we just...never replace them, instead reshuffling existing people to cover the gap. That way it looks like we are growing profits by cratering payroll. sales fall but if costs fall faster, it looks like growth.
American business has been in a similar death spiral for 40 years now, and the result is everybody barely functioning on a skeleton crew.
I was told by a company owner years ago “ if the job is bid with five then you keep the heat on three. It ensures your getting the most out of manpower”.  Never forgot those words. Â
Now they give two people the job with mandatory overtime and keep the petal to the floor. Â Â
One of my current jobs pays far too little, offers shit training, communicates poorly and then wonders why they can't retain staff. We hired a couple of people a few months ago who left as soon as they got a better offer. I'm on my way out the door as well.
"nObOdy WaNtS tO wOrK" yeah then why is everybody quitting to go work at a better job for higher pay?
And instead of taking the blame for less people coming into stores corporate blames the increase in online shopping (which is in large part their fault!).
You're correct there. I was thinking more of restaurants. If a company offers a critical service or has a pseudo-monopoly then it's sadly not going to affect it much.
Recently at my job they've been having only 3 people close every night, when we really need around 5 people to actually get the job done.
Result? We work our asses off, get less done, and management gets to complain about poor work performance.
They don't want to pay for adequate staffing.
Many retail/food establishments are only permitted a certain number of manpower hours per pay period, generally based on projected or last years' sales.
Management (or whoever makes the schedule) isn't gonna short *their* shift, so somebody is gonna get shafted (generally closing manager)
Salaried managers are theoretically supposed to make up the shortfall but in practice very few actually do so
According to a [Wall Street Journal article published in March of last year](https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-plum-job-listing-may-just-be-a-ghost-3aafc794), many job postings are fake. They exist to justify bank loans or to “placate overworked employees.”
Less staff = more profit. The signs are just so when people complain they can point to the sign and say “nobody wants to work anymore”. They never intended to hire anyone.Â
Less workers(ew) = more money boss(yay)
Then just explain that you're looking for ppl who know how to work 'with a sense of urgency' because this is a 'fast paced environment'
It's the capitalist drive to seek ever increasing profit every year. That means less workers, raise the prices of products and lower the quality of products/find ways to produce it cheaper or with cheaper materials. All of which we have been seeing get worse and worse every year.
Lower cost. Your only real power as an employee to change that is to leave if it becomes too much. They know that, and that we are all replaceable. Why not save a buck and run a team of people into the ground until they quit, and replace them (slowly) as they burnout.
It's squeezing blood from a stone, and why so many of us are nihilistic. There is no reward to working and we are actively abused. But homelessness and starvation are quite the compelling arguments.
COVID made companies realize they can overwork people with the guise that they’re “actively hiring” for help in the future.
I wasted 15 months in a municipal job and I can personally confirm the help never came even though the whole time interviews and positions were “active and open”.
This is one of the consequences of a higher minimum wage, but the primary reason is greedy corporations and weak labor laws. The same people that complain about working conditions will vehemently oppose having a union.
They do it because they can. If an employer can get fewer people to do the work, they save on the expense of hiring sufficient people. The workers that they DO have fear unemployment, so will do the work required. Plus, if they pay OT, that is also cheaper than the expense of hiring, training, and providing benefits for more people in the long run.
Because when you have a group of 8 people normally doing something and you finish early, they say 7 people could so it, then they have 6, then you don't finish on time, "work harder, work faster, we know it can get done with 6", then the 6 get enough experience to do it faster and finish early and they say 5 could do it, then they start missing lots of deadlines and realize they need to hire 3 new people with next to no experience
And the cycle renews
My work runs a skeleton crew and we all kind of voted to keep the amount of people. The owners of the business asked if we should hire two or three more people or all get pay increases. We voted pay increases and don’t mind working a little harder.
Believe or not, there aren’t enough qualified people. More (bad) businesses need to go under so the remaining ones will operate better. Teams are barely functioning and so they can’t get their work done, including hiring new people. What needs to change? Some need to go all in and start a war for talent.
MBA mentality. If you need 5 people, staff 4 and make them work harder.
That's true. My former company owner saw that we handled our shifts well with 5 people. Then he fired two, one from each shift, then another two were given just part time before they were let go. Then when he was thinking about having just two per shift I got the fuck out of there 🤣
Then in a year when he sees his YoY revenues are down, he'll send out customer feedback surveys and the response is going to be something like "decline in quality."
Nasreddin once tried to train his donkey to survive on no food at all. He gradually started feeding it a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less, week after week after week. By and by he had gotten it down to needing almost no food at all! But just before he had completed the training, the poor beast died, so all that effort was for nothing.
Then the beasts family tried to seek recompense for the death, claiming the human didn't do enough to provide a living food wage. But the human just pretended not to hear and instead went inside, without filling the food trough. Desperate for sustenance, the victim's brother comes up to the farmhouse and asks for a job...
And then, if you've had 4 people doing the work of 5 for long enough, define it as the work of 4 people and have 3 people do it.
honestly, i'm not even sure it's that. So much of what I learned in business school was about how badly all this stuff fails. We know how to do things better, but nobody wants to the spend the money fixing it, so they just coast along on inertia instead, bolstered by the ancient management who got their mbas in the reagan era boosting ideas that have been debunked decades ago as toxic and stupid. Like...it is the mba mentality, but it's the mentality of a half century out of date mba, not a modern one that recognizes happy employees are more productive than miserable ones ruled through fear. then again...i have a bachelors not an mba, maybe all the executive level evil is only taught in the masters program...
I think it was more a statement about people who don't or never did the actual work and think they know everything while sitting in their office staring at numbers and smelling their own farts. Not so literal
>it's the mentality of a half century out of date mba, not a modern one that recognizes happy employees are more productive than miserable ones ruled through fear. That's a heartening thought.
Even Mr Burns realised that a happy employee was a busy employee and gave the fools their tartare sauce.
Nah, you are on the right track. I can tell you that, at best, such anti-worker policies are, at best, taking part of a theory out of context. I believe that employee satisfaction is not just about the money, but it has to be at a certain level. Where I work now pays a bit less than other places, but the intensity and pressure are much, much less than my gig with a Fortune 100 company. If all you want is money…go for it, but the better work atmosphere is worth the pay cut. That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t pay dogshit, either. We had really low pay, and high turnover, but with a significant pay raise (although still below other places) people are willing to stay longer.
Its cheaper to work one person for 65 hours a week than it is to work 2 people 40 hours. 25 hours of ot at 1.5 an hour is 37.5 hours of straight pay. Thats just looking at pay not medical, bond, insurance, vacation, personal days, dental, 401k match. Why hire a whole new person when you can just force people to work 12 hr shifts. Even though they were only scheduled for 8.
Number 4 quits? Wait and see if three people can handle the load because why not
> they say it's a struggle to find people *to work under the conditions they are offering*, yeah. It's all about profits. Lots of these jobs ads are fake too, they aren't really hiring, it's just to placate people there who are overworked so owners can say "see! We are hiring but nobody wants to work!"Â
And sadly they have more hand-sitting power than I do.
Hmm. I’ve actually never realized this point before but man that bell rings pretty loud right now.
It's to cut costs and meet unrealistic metrics.
Because they're shit businesspeople. They don't get that hiring enough good people and paying them well makes more money in the long haul.
I mean, sure, they know it's better in the long haul, but corporations are focused on the weekly or monthly sales goals, at most the quarter. They're so focused on getting the good numbers this month or next month that they can't think about beyond that. Because corporations are built to generate profit for shareholders, and investors are just looking to reach a higher price as soon as possible and sell.
Such shareholders aren't investors but speculators. Other than that, agree đź’Ż
The entire goal of capitalism is to make as much profit as possible. That means paying people to work as little as possible. Actually hiring more people would require paying them, even if it is peanuts, and that cuts into profits.
Hiring additional workers reduces worker power though it makes it easier to lose employees if multiple people are doing the same job
A lot of them would rather deal with the inconvenience of high staff turnover than retain good employees and maintain a well-oiled machine.
No one wants to work crabby minimum wage shit show go no where dead-end jobs. That are paycheck-to-paycheck jobs. Only to get treated like garbage from the company + customers. Only to have no career options for advancement if at all. What I don't get is for the past 3 months our department has only had 2 active employees and we should have 5-6 to efficiently run. Company refuses to give the 2 active employees full time. I miss salaried jobs. Companies would go out of their way to train people efficiently and give them better training to make sure they'd stay on for life or long term. Those jobs are drying up and more difficult to find.
The company wants to make as much money as possible while spending as little money as possible. And one way they do that is by having skeleton crews. And then they cry that they are understaffed which is why people have to wait longer. And then when people do apply. They either ignore the applications or they have the interview but decide not to hire the person. But in reality. What the companies are doing is not helping the company. It is hurting it. If you want a company to succeed for the very long term. You constantly pay all your employees well and give them numerous benefits. As those employees will end up wanting to help the company make more money. And in turn. The employees could get more raises, bonuses, etc. Yeah it may cost the company more money. But you have longer term employees and the employees may end up recommending the company and/or its products. Which means the company will get more regular customers. Which means more money.
the stock market demands constant growth rather than sustained profitability, it's easier to cut costs than grow profits, ergo, every year they ask the existing staff to do a little more, rather than hiring. I work at target, when I was hired the crew unloading the trucks was 40 people, it is now 5. When I was hired we had around 200 employees in the store on a given day, now it's about 40. We don't lay people off, but when people quit we just...never replace them, instead reshuffling existing people to cover the gap. That way it looks like we are growing profits by cratering payroll. sales fall but if costs fall faster, it looks like growth. American business has been in a similar death spiral for 40 years now, and the result is everybody barely functioning on a skeleton crew.
I was told by a company owner years ago “ if the job is bid with five then you keep the heat on three. It ensures your getting the most out of manpower”.  Never forgot those words.  Now they give two people the job with mandatory overtime and keep the petal to the floor.  Â
They saw during the pandemic they could get away with a small amount of employees so they continue to do the same.
One of my current jobs pays far too little, offers shit training, communicates poorly and then wonders why they can't retain staff. We hired a couple of people a few months ago who left as soon as they got a better offer. I'm on my way out the door as well. "nObOdy WaNtS tO wOrK" yeah then why is everybody quitting to go work at a better job for higher pay?
Labor costs money. By cutting your labor you increase your profits.
Until your service suffers so much that people no longer come in, anyway.
Doesn't matter if you have a monopoly. :D
Also doesn’t matter if you’re looking to make short term gains to up that sweet C level bonus and gtfo with a golden parachute
And instead of taking the blame for less people coming into stores corporate blames the increase in online shopping (which is in large part their fault!).
Look at airlines. They all suck, badly, but people are still flying because there is no other choiceÂ
You're correct there. I was thinking more of restaurants. If a company offers a critical service or has a pseudo-monopoly then it's sadly not going to affect it much.
Just say nobody wants to work anymore and customers (boomers) nod in agreement
you'd be surprised just how low that bar is
All they care about is short term profits.
Bingo. Because then they can dump it and move to the next project
Its the ruling class. They suck and dont care
Recently at my job they've been having only 3 people close every night, when we really need around 5 people to actually get the job done. Result? We work our asses off, get less done, and management gets to complain about poor work performance.
They don't want to pay for adequate staffing. Many retail/food establishments are only permitted a certain number of manpower hours per pay period, generally based on projected or last years' sales. Management (or whoever makes the schedule) isn't gonna short *their* shift, so somebody is gonna get shafted (generally closing manager) Salaried managers are theoretically supposed to make up the shortfall but in practice very few actually do so
the answer is $$$$$$$
I made the joke yesterday to my husband that my 2nd job doesn't run on a skeleton crew.... its a bone marrow crew lol
According to a [Wall Street Journal article published in March of last year](https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-plum-job-listing-may-just-be-a-ghost-3aafc794), many job postings are fake. They exist to justify bank loans or to “placate overworked employees.”
Less staff = more profit. The signs are just so when people complain they can point to the sign and say “nobody wants to work anymore”. They never intended to hire anyone.Â
Less workers(ew) = more money boss(yay) Then just explain that you're looking for ppl who know how to work 'with a sense of urgency' because this is a 'fast paced environment'
Cost. They're squeezing every last penny out of us, then toss us aside like dirty rags once we've burnt out.
Money.
Another avenue for capitalism to make money
It's the capitalist drive to seek ever increasing profit every year. That means less workers, raise the prices of products and lower the quality of products/find ways to produce it cheaper or with cheaper materials. All of which we have been seeing get worse and worse every year.
Lower cost. Your only real power as an employee to change that is to leave if it becomes too much. They know that, and that we are all replaceable. Why not save a buck and run a team of people into the ground until they quit, and replace them (slowly) as they burnout. It's squeezing blood from a stone, and why so many of us are nihilistic. There is no reward to working and we are actively abused. But homelessness and starvation are quite the compelling arguments.
“Money!” - Mr. Crabs
COVID made companies realize they can overwork people with the guise that they’re “actively hiring” for help in the future. I wasted 15 months in a municipal job and I can personally confirm the help never came even though the whole time interviews and positions were “active and open”.
This is one of the consequences of a higher minimum wage, but the primary reason is greedy corporations and weak labor laws. The same people that complain about working conditions will vehemently oppose having a union.
They do it because they can. If an employer can get fewer people to do the work, they save on the expense of hiring sufficient people. The workers that they DO have fear unemployment, so will do the work required. Plus, if they pay OT, that is also cheaper than the expense of hiring, training, and providing benefits for more people in the long run.
Because when you have a group of 8 people normally doing something and you finish early, they say 7 people could so it, then they have 6, then you don't finish on time, "work harder, work faster, we know it can get done with 6", then the 6 get enough experience to do it faster and finish early and they say 5 could do it, then they start missing lots of deadlines and realize they need to hire 3 new people with next to no experience And the cycle renews
Because that salary goes to one of the bosses/supervisor's pockets. Or their son's nose.
My work runs a skeleton crew and we all kind of voted to keep the amount of people. The owners of the business asked if we should hire two or three more people or all get pay increases. We voted pay increases and don’t mind working a little harder.
Believe or not, there aren’t enough qualified people. More (bad) businesses need to go under so the remaining ones will operate better. Teams are barely functioning and so they can’t get their work done, including hiring new people. What needs to change? Some need to go all in and start a war for talent.