A few anecdotes collected from social media combined with an interview doesn’t constitute a widespread trend.
Regardless: Rage quitting a bad job may feel good, but it almost never accomplishes anything positive. Bad employers see a rage quit episode not as an indictment of their management practices, but as confirmation that the employee was a bad apple whose opinions can be disregarded.
If you must escape a company ASAP for whatever reason, submitting a calm resignation with little or no notice is going to send a stronger message than performing one last childish act on the way out. Nobody likes losing a good, professional employee. But if your last act is immature and difficult, they will be glad you’re gone.
Spoken like a true impulsive employee who can't even begin to understand how strategic decisions are made or how humans organize in larger organizations such as corporations.
Yeah that's a fair point that I didn't consider; you're probably right.
Unfortunately, workers are still shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. Having emotional outbursts is always the wrong move and it's one that might haunt you well into your professional future.
I thought everyone understood the strategy is to use the excess supply of labor to push people to their limit and squeeze them as much as possible. And in commodity businesses with low profit margins, businesses that do not squeeze as much as possible get crushed by those that do.
Ah yes, you can fire the employee at any time without severance, but how dare we not give two weeks notice, or be more understanding about why the owners schedule late and pay next to nothing, and treat us like disposable trash (spoiler alert- its profit).
That's fine, you can sit high and mighty on your chair. I'm sure as in most things life, it will reward you with a fresh batch of what you call suckers (aka people who have no other choice) to exploit. Generally speaking though, I don't think over large swaths of time your point of view has proven to be sustainable. It did and will crumble eventually, being a sucker (see definition above) has an expiration on it.
Retail workers individually have 0 sway in corporate anything. They're just a cog.
And if your (mental) health is in jeopardy at your job, quit. Literally. Clock out and walk out. You're not a slave, although with the screaming fits I've been subjected to and seen, they certainly think so.
> The phenomenon of rage-quitting is as old as work itself. Some people prefer to end things with a bang, not a whimper. So things like bridge-burning, walking off sans a two weeks' notice, or even making a scene are nothing new when leaving a workplace.
So it seems to include just leaving immediately as well as making a scene.
> It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective.
Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth.
> According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, about half of the families of front-line fast-food workers depend on public programs, compared with 25 percent of the American workforce.
That being said... the "bit of perspective" likely holds some weight. Many adults having no experience in this kind of hourly work simply do not know what it is like, and make judgements that demonstrate the lack of perspective.
> Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth.
The hyperlink's text claims it is a myth, but the linked article does not refute the idea that working this kind of job is considered by our culture to be a significant growth step for teenagers.
I think it used to be, but has become a form of more regular employment for older people over time.
People are now busy forcing their kids through various pre-college resume polishing activities/clubs/sports/courses/etc rather than making some minimum wage over the summer..
Anyway one could do a little google instead of just replying in the negative without backing.
"In 2019, 35.8% of teens worked over the summer. As recently as 2000, more than half (51.7%) of U.S. teens could expect to spend at least part of their summer vacation lifeguarding, selling T-shirts, dishing up soft-serve ice cream or otherwise working for pay."
I’m glad. I want services to cost more, I want restaurants to cost the dollar more a plate it takes to pay a living wage, I want for my purchases to stop being subsidized by people on food stamps working two jobs.
TBF - your federal income tax is subsidizing it. So, you are paying for it, just indirectly, and probably disproportionately (either over or under paying).
Which is the problem. Food stamps are seen as a moral failing, and the richer you get the easier dodging taxes becomes. I’d rather money flow more directly into pockets (higher wages) than indirectly (food stamps, Medicaid) so the market can be more efficient.
We are on the same page - just pointing out how the system works.
It is important to point out that the current system is designed to maximize employment.
It's easy to have a bunch of services that are subsidized by the top 10% paying >50% of >25% of low-paid service workers' wages (through income tax that pays for SNAP, HUD, etc).
Since people are dependent on income for a living - if demand for services drops because the average person is unwilling to pay an extra 25% for services - then these service workers need to be employed elsewhere.
Would there be jobs for them?
Your other option is to just give them money to do nothing - and the average person gets less services.
This doesn't seem ideal for anyone beside the people getting paid to do nothing - who would maybe be 2-3% of the population. And it seems especially unfair for the people who would keep their job - and instead of getting paid to not provide services - they have to actually provide the services!
You are missing the other half of the equation. If all services just cost more that will just result in inflation. I think you want the cost ratio of services jobs to other jobs to increase. That would mean you would want non-service income to be able to buy less services.
Not all non-service income, just the income of the standard boogey-men, those very loosely defined as the 1%. Basically those whose income is primarily from capital rather than from labour, and other classes of rentiers.
Piketty was wrong you know, in his book, he argues that the capital income increase (compared to labor income) mean that all productivity gains since the 70s were captured by the capital. But he argue that taking the GDP numbers (inflation-adjusted). Because production is hard to mesure with other tools than GDP/GNI. But other economists argues that GDP - especially since QE, but truthfully since the 90s - do not mesure productivity increase, but a mix of productivity and asset inflation (and GDP is only corrected with "regular" inflation).
So Piketty was wrong. Capital income not only captured all productivity increases since the 70s, it even ate through labor income in proportion.
The only marker that can equalize thing in our capitalist, market-oriented economies is a higher rate of inflation. We should aim for that. We need regular inflation superior than asset inflation.
Usually you can get the cost ratio of services jobs to other jobs to adjust by increasing the lowest wage, i.e. minimum wage.
But… yes. I would like for non-service income (like mine) to be able to buy less services. I grew up poor and made it to the top quintile, and yes, I would like for the gap between where I came from and where I got to slim down more. It would be great if more pressure could hit the top 1%, but if to get there I’m paying, I’m ok with that.
I always got the impression that many of these systems were designed to push workers to near breaking point on the assumption that there would always be others to replace them.
I am curious whether job satisfaction is actually down or whether people just now have a path to leaving.
In Switzerland, where labour is very expensive, it doesn't get more expensive, places are just closed. Supermarkets are open 8.30 a.m. to 7 p.m. (during the week, they close earlier on Saturday) and the burrito place close at 11 p.m..
That's how it was in the US not that long ago (~20-25 years ago). Then Wal-Mart starting doing 24/7, and McDonalds, and most other businesses didn't match that but did significantly expand their hours.
As someone who's never thought the massively-expanded store hours since the late 90s were a good thing, that's great news. Going back to the only things open 24/7 being some gas stations and maybe the odd pharmacy or urgent care (which, most of those aren't 24/7 now, and I'd rather they be than a lot of the things that are) would be fine. McDonalds doesn't need to be 24/7. Wal-Mart doesn't need to be 24/7. I can't go shop at Costco at 10pm on a weekday, or 7pm on a Sunday, and you know what? That's OK.
"But what about shift workers?" we got by before by doing our shopping on off days, including and perhaps especially people who worked normal 8-5 mon-fri shifts—it was fine, except that we couldn't always get exactly what we wanted exactly when we wanted it; and, apparently, companies weren't extracting as much money from us as they could (else, why change policy to have longer hours? Maybe that slight delay in purchasing led to us wasting less money on bullshit, go figure), plus they could still be open 12-16 hours per day and cover that use case without being open practically non-stop.
Exactly.
Even working retail in HS in late 90s/early 00s this was obvious.
You are treated like a replaceable cog with your hours increased/decreased at managements whim.
Schedules were set week by week and released on Saturday or Sunday for the coming week starting Monday.
If you weren't on the schedule over the weekend you'd be responsible to call in and find out your schedule.
This has apparently gotten worse with computerized optimized scheduled which can be changed intraweek / people on-call / people sent home early / etc.
So your paycheck & hours week to week is unstable, and even within the week if adjusted.
Small business owners have even told me they erratically schedule the line level low paid employees so that the employees are less likely to be able to secure a second or better job.
I can understand the profit motive for doing it, but I cannot understand why they would tell another human being of their intentions.
Yes, I guess I just cannot relate to the mindset of a person that would be impressed by that.
Another common strategy by established immigrants or children of immigrants I know is to use a new immigrant, usually from their own country found via their own social networks, or maybe even their own distant cousin, and designate them as a manager at the minimum salary for exempt employees ($35.5k) and task them with working 60 hours a week and being on call for the more unreliable lower level employees.
When you dig into it, it is obvious so much of our luxuries are based on others being dealt a shitty hand.
See almost any franchised business. Dunkin Donuts, 7 Elevens, mid to lower end motels/hotels, gas stations, etc.
It also happens in other businesses (everyone wants to pay for the least amount of redundancy), but it is especially pernicious in service businesses that are on demand 24/7 operations and the staff simply being physically available is the value they provide (as opposed to businesses that can close or the work can be delayed by a day or two).
For example, in a 24/7 operation, if one of the cashiers/front desk clerks/etc quits, then the manager has to fill in. Owner says manager cannot pay more than $x, and it could take weeks to find someone willing to take the job for $x. Or the people that are willing to take the job for $x are going to bounce in a short time or be unreliable, but the owner can afford to keep this wage at the low $x because they have a manager getting the $35k to $50k who is willing to work 80 hours a week.
Edit: You should have seen the stink that most of the small business owners I know threw when Obama's administration increased the minimum wage for overtime exempt workers:
On that sole basis, most of them voted Republican in the 2016 election. And because they trust Republicans not to take away their 1031 exchange for real estate transactions.
Those are the small businesses. Dunkin Donuts, convenience stores, 7 elevens, motel 6s, holiday inn expresses, subway, jimmy johns.
They are all franchised to individual owners or a small group of partners and usually have 5 to 25 employees or so at most. In these businesses, being a "manager" simply means being the fall guy for the owners and the on call person. Many times it is the owner themselves, but over the years, they can move themselves up. I saw that happen much more years ago though, new entrants do not seem to be able to move up.
Not all of them, but I believe it to be a significant fraction, if not most of them. It is basically part of the franchise business model, and quite frankly, if they did not do business the way they did, then they would lose business to their competitors due to pricing too high.
When you work in a job with no required skills, yes you are (at least until recently) an easily replacable cog. The employees who realize this work to gain skills, become more valuable, and become less easily replacable.
I have worked in fast food management (decades ago, started as a minimum-wage burger-flipper while in high school), and the last thing the employee schedules are based on is "management whim." Labor is the biggest controllable cost in a restaurant and you always base schedules on projected sales volume. We had schedules posted at least a week in advance and followed employee's stated availability. I'm sure, though, that not all retail/restaurant businesses are this professional.
And now that $15/hr restaurant jobs are going unfilled, I guess people aren't so easily replacable. I would not want to be running a restaurant in this economy.
Yes, management whim is not what I should used maybe "algorithmic optimization" which to those on the other side experiencing it, feels like whim?
The problem with this model is that few of these companies give people more than 20-30 hour schedules.. therefore people usually need to take on 2 jobs, however each of these jobs has a non-fixed schedule, updating weekly..
So some of what may appear us unreliability and flakiness is people needing to call out to go to their other job which is programmatically booked as well.
Add to this any further complexity like childcare or attempt to up skill with education and good luck.
There are actually a lot of people who only want 20 hour schedules. Students, young people, people who are looking for a little supplemental income. Not everyone wants a full-time job.
Companies are also not wanting to work people more than 30 hours because they then need to provide healthcare under the ACA. That's a whole other topic but it definitely hurts folks who wanted full-time or near-full-time work but didn't need health insurance.
Someone I knew who worked at The French Laundry in Yountville. (Rated as the best restaurant in the world multiple times - and arguably one of the most famous restaurants in the world)
It nuts how much of one's life it takes up to work there.
60+ hours a week, where commuting to Yountville is a must for most that work there, but the hours and the stress is insane.
Imagine commuting an hour each way to work there, have barely a 30 minute lunch, which is a family meal that is never of the actual quality of anything ever served on the menu, no breaks and being so busy that you cant hardly take a break nor drink water, almost never a weekend off - and so tired that all you do is sleep and eat.
Some people dont last a week, or a month or two - but the demands of being on point at their level is intense.
No vacation time, understaffed constantly...
But not much changes because there is a massive number of people who would want to work there - even though the toll on ones personal life is 100% (one couldnt imagine having kids while working there, no weekends off to spend time with friends/family who work regular m-f schedules, missing out on all social events etc...)
I think one factor in people quitting their jobs today is the increased savings rate over the pandemic https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT. Many people have saved up so much during the pandemic that they are no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck and are not willing to trade their time for a wage. Maybe this is a short term phenomena and people's saving will go down and they will start living paycheck-to-paycheck again and they will be more willing to to trade their time for wages.
There's two parts. A lot of people made a lot more money (from stimulus), and a lot of people have cut their expenses dramatically (because of lockdowns).
When you spend less money, it's a lot easier to forgo making more money.
And as you mentioned, it's especially easy when you have more savings.
There might be some truth to that for middle/upper class SWE types like those who frequent HN that were able to work remotely during the pandemic and just had their expenses lowered. The article is mostly about low wage workers though and the situation was largely the opposite for them. Almost everyone I know in that category had hours cut while businesses were shut down. Stimulus checks helped but didn't make up for most of the lost wages. I think a lot of them are basically reaching a point of hopelessness where they feel like there's no way for them to get ahead. If you don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, why put up with an awful job in the meantime? Those who didn't get their hours cut instead often had to do more work and have been run ragged (think delivery drivers, etc). My partner is a university lecturer and quit her job recently in large part because she's had to add online and blended courses, which involved much more prep time (basically doubling her workload) but with no increase in her pay. She didn't quit because we had a bit more savings.
Pre-covid (but not by much), I saw a fast-food worker rage-quit. She yelled something about being sick of the nonsense, and walked out with a bag (20 pounds, maybe?) of frozen french fries. Someone yelled after her that she needed to clock out, so she walked back in, clocked out, grabbed two more bags of frozen french fries, and walked out. I was kind of surprised, not so much by the rage quitting, but by the brazenness of the theft on the way out.
Your labor should appreciate in value as workers become more skilled and improve things. If owners are failing to realize this workers should indeed quit because likely they are being paid as a depreciating asset.
58 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 36.4 ms ] thread> "Nothing is more important than WA WA WA WA WA WA WA."
Regardless: Rage quitting a bad job may feel good, but it almost never accomplishes anything positive. Bad employers see a rage quit episode not as an indictment of their management practices, but as confirmation that the employee was a bad apple whose opinions can be disregarded.
If you must escape a company ASAP for whatever reason, submitting a calm resignation with little or no notice is going to send a stronger message than performing one last childish act on the way out. Nobody likes losing a good, professional employee. But if your last act is immature and difficult, they will be glad you’re gone.
Unfortunately, workers are still shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. Having emotional outbursts is always the wrong move and it's one that might haunt you well into your professional future.
And if your (mental) health is in jeopardy at your job, quit. Literally. Clock out and walk out. You're not a slave, although with the screaming fits I've been subjected to and seen, they certainly think so.
That generally is the end of the conversation, not by employee choice.
> So Kendra walked out, and never went back.
> The phenomenon of rage-quitting is as old as work itself. Some people prefer to end things with a bang, not a whimper. So things like bridge-burning, walking off sans a two weeks' notice, or even making a scene are nothing new when leaving a workplace.
So it seems to include just leaving immediately as well as making a scene.
It is thankless, poorly managed, tenuously stable, randomly scheduled work.
No one writes resignation or gives much advanced notice.
It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective.
Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth.
https://www.businessinsider.com/five-huge-myths-about-workin...
> According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, about half of the families of front-line fast-food workers depend on public programs, compared with 25 percent of the American workforce.
That being said... the "bit of perspective" likely holds some weight. Many adults having no experience in this kind of hourly work simply do not know what it is like, and make judgements that demonstrate the lack of perspective.
The hyperlink's text claims it is a myth, but the linked article does not refute the idea that working this kind of job is considered by our culture to be a significant growth step for teenagers.
People are now busy forcing their kids through various pre-college resume polishing activities/clubs/sports/courses/etc rather than making some minimum wage over the summer..
Anyway one could do a little google instead of just replying in the negative without backing.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/07/during-the-...
"In 2019, 35.8% of teens worked over the summer. As recently as 2000, more than half (51.7%) of U.S. teens could expect to spend at least part of their summer vacation lifeguarding, selling T-shirts, dishing up soft-serve ice cream or otherwise working for pay."
But yes - it is common for teenagers to take on hourly jobs.
Happy Labor Day.
It is important to point out that the current system is designed to maximize employment.
It's easy to have a bunch of services that are subsidized by the top 10% paying >50% of >25% of low-paid service workers' wages (through income tax that pays for SNAP, HUD, etc).
Since people are dependent on income for a living - if demand for services drops because the average person is unwilling to pay an extra 25% for services - then these service workers need to be employed elsewhere.
Would there be jobs for them?
Your other option is to just give them money to do nothing - and the average person gets less services.
This doesn't seem ideal for anyone beside the people getting paid to do nothing - who would maybe be 2-3% of the population. And it seems especially unfair for the people who would keep their job - and instead of getting paid to not provide services - they have to actually provide the services!
Piketty was wrong you know, in his book, he argues that the capital income increase (compared to labor income) mean that all productivity gains since the 70s were captured by the capital. But he argue that taking the GDP numbers (inflation-adjusted). Because production is hard to mesure with other tools than GDP/GNI. But other economists argues that GDP - especially since QE, but truthfully since the 90s - do not mesure productivity increase, but a mix of productivity and asset inflation (and GDP is only corrected with "regular" inflation).
So Piketty was wrong. Capital income not only captured all productivity increases since the 70s, it even ate through labor income in proportion.
The only marker that can equalize thing in our capitalist, market-oriented economies is a higher rate of inflation. We should aim for that. We need regular inflation superior than asset inflation.
But… yes. I would like for non-service income (like mine) to be able to buy less services. I grew up poor and made it to the top quintile, and yes, I would like for the gap between where I came from and where I got to slim down more. It would be great if more pressure could hit the top 1%, but if to get there I’m paying, I’m ok with that.
I am curious whether job satisfaction is actually down or whether people just now have a path to leaving.
The 1AM $5 burrito or 11PM Walmart run was always predicated on those workers not having an option to be home with their families.
I am curious if we will see more price differentials for services during evening/overnight/weekend/holiday where we previously did not.
"But what about shift workers?" we got by before by doing our shopping on off days, including and perhaps especially people who worked normal 8-5 mon-fri shifts—it was fine, except that we couldn't always get exactly what we wanted exactly when we wanted it; and, apparently, companies weren't extracting as much money from us as they could (else, why change policy to have longer hours? Maybe that slight delay in purchasing led to us wasting less money on bullshit, go figure), plus they could still be open 12-16 hours per day and cover that use case without being open practically non-stop.
You are treated like a replaceable cog with your hours increased/decreased at managements whim.
Schedules were set week by week and released on Saturday or Sunday for the coming week starting Monday. If you weren't on the schedule over the weekend you'd be responsible to call in and find out your schedule. This has apparently gotten worse with computerized optimized scheduled which can be changed intraweek / people on-call / people sent home early / etc.
So your paycheck & hours week to week is unstable, and even within the week if adjusted.
I can understand the profit motive for doing it, but I cannot understand why they would tell another human being of their intentions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MesrrYyuoa4&t=151s
Another common strategy by established immigrants or children of immigrants I know is to use a new immigrant, usually from their own country found via their own social networks, or maybe even their own distant cousin, and designate them as a manager at the minimum salary for exempt employees ($35.5k) and task them with working 60 hours a week and being on call for the more unreliable lower level employees.
When you dig into it, it is obvious so much of our luxuries are based on others being dealt a shitty hand.
It also happens in other businesses (everyone wants to pay for the least amount of redundancy), but it is especially pernicious in service businesses that are on demand 24/7 operations and the staff simply being physically available is the value they provide (as opposed to businesses that can close or the work can be delayed by a day or two).
For example, in a 24/7 operation, if one of the cashiers/front desk clerks/etc quits, then the manager has to fill in. Owner says manager cannot pay more than $x, and it could take weeks to find someone willing to take the job for $x. Or the people that are willing to take the job for $x are going to bounce in a short time or be unreliable, but the owner can afford to keep this wage at the low $x because they have a manager getting the $35k to $50k who is willing to work 80 hours a week.
Edit: You should have seen the stink that most of the small business owners I know threw when Obama's administration increased the minimum wage for overtime exempt workers:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-overtime-rules_n_573cab...
On that sole basis, most of them voted Republican in the 2016 election. And because they trust Republicans not to take away their 1031 exchange for real estate transactions.
https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/...
They are all franchised to individual owners or a small group of partners and usually have 5 to 25 employees or so at most. In these businesses, being a "manager" simply means being the fall guy for the owners and the on call person. Many times it is the owner themselves, but over the years, they can move themselves up. I saw that happen much more years ago though, new entrants do not seem to be able to move up.
I have worked in fast food management (decades ago, started as a minimum-wage burger-flipper while in high school), and the last thing the employee schedules are based on is "management whim." Labor is the biggest controllable cost in a restaurant and you always base schedules on projected sales volume. We had schedules posted at least a week in advance and followed employee's stated availability. I'm sure, though, that not all retail/restaurant businesses are this professional.
And now that $15/hr restaurant jobs are going unfilled, I guess people aren't so easily replacable. I would not want to be running a restaurant in this economy.
The problem with this model is that few of these companies give people more than 20-30 hour schedules.. therefore people usually need to take on 2 jobs, however each of these jobs has a non-fixed schedule, updating weekly..
So some of what may appear us unreliability and flakiness is people needing to call out to go to their other job which is programmatically booked as well.
Add to this any further complexity like childcare or attempt to up skill with education and good luck.
Companies are also not wanting to work people more than 30 hours because they then need to provide healthcare under the ACA. That's a whole other topic but it definitely hurts folks who wanted full-time or near-full-time work but didn't need health insurance.
It nuts how much of one's life it takes up to work there.
60+ hours a week, where commuting to Yountville is a must for most that work there, but the hours and the stress is insane.
Imagine commuting an hour each way to work there, have barely a 30 minute lunch, which is a family meal that is never of the actual quality of anything ever served on the menu, no breaks and being so busy that you cant hardly take a break nor drink water, almost never a weekend off - and so tired that all you do is sleep and eat.
Some people dont last a week, or a month or two - but the demands of being on point at their level is intense.
No vacation time, understaffed constantly...
But not much changes because there is a massive number of people who would want to work there - even though the toll on ones personal life is 100% (one couldnt imagine having kids while working there, no weekends off to spend time with friends/family who work regular m-f schedules, missing out on all social events etc...)
When you spend less money, it's a lot easier to forgo making more money.
And as you mentioned, it's especially easy when you have more savings.
https://archive.is/57dgb
Article is from June.