Read on Twitter
At Starbucks, we were instructed to throw away all the sandwiches/salads/protein plates at the end of the day. No, you can't take them home. No, you can't donate them. Throw them away. We considered it "theft" and you would be fired if you didn't toss them. Multiply by 31,256.
If we made a mistake and ordered more milk than could fit in the coolers - the delivery drivers would be instructed to pour it out. You can't deliver it somewhere else, you can't bring it back to the warehouse. Down the drain it goes. The waste was/is *immense*.
Consider that rules like this are designed to test moral conditioning. You abide by them to keep your job and you engage in appalling waste. You disregard them and distribute the food and you're "stealing" from the company. Where is your allegiance? What does it cost to comply?
I'm thinking about this because of this whole thing where people making shit money are complaining about the minimum wage being raised to a still-shit amount. Or the "I paid school loans so..." people. We are wired by capitalism to see *social* behaviors as wrong, criminal, evil.
The "Golden Rule" is now whomever has the gold makes the rules - more than that, crafts the moral universe in which a corporation's bottom line and shrink reduction strategies supercedes basic human decency. Our moral rot starts at the bottom in this culture. It's who we are.
I would also say that raising the minimum wage by itself isn't enough. There needs to be universal healthcare. The value of a person's life can't be tied to their job. That's so deeply perverse, I can't believe I have to say it. Employers will find every way to withhold benefits.
The dumbest owners in the world become learned legal scholars when it comes to scrutinizing labor guidelines. You need FT to get benefits? You will be scheduled for one hour less than FT. You double the minimum wage for service people, we will understaff to maintain labor %.
In most service industries - the only real controllable costs are labor and cost of goods. That's where you squeeze profits. You increase labor and cost of goods stays static? I will staff half as many people to do the same amount of work and no one works enough to earn benefits.
FT isn't just a qualifying bar for health insurance, by the way. Leave benefits are often contingent on FT status - and the maintenance of those hours for a set period of time. You need to average it, in other words, for three months? Longer? So don't get sick. Don't miss work.
If this is what's happening at Starbucks - a so-called "progressive" company - what's happening at notoriously shitty companies? Every year we would volunteer at food banks and the whole time I'm there sorting food, I'm thinking: "I threw away/dumped 200lbs of food last week."
At most restaurants as well - if you make an order incorrectly, it goes in the trash. Why? Because what if you made a mistake on purpose so you could take it home? Put it in the trash, thief. Most managers bonus on margin: labor and COGs. It's me vs. you, underling, sneak, peon.
The system is built to set up an antagonistic relationship between "management" and labor. Understand that most managers in the service industry are making only pennies more than the people they manage - but they're given the titles & the means to exploit the workforce. What this
feeds is the perception that the labor force is "lazy" and "opportunistic" and out to get more by doing less. So now we talk about raising minimum wage and people making $32,000 a year are like: "for *those* bums? I had to sell my *soul* by torturing those idiots to make $15/hr.
Anyway, it's fucked up. Eat the rich. Don't go after each other. The vast majority of us are struggling mightily just to make it to the next paycheck. Our enemies are not each other. Our enemies are the people controlling this sick, diseased narrative that our lives are theirs.
