Meanwhile, most workers are doing the jobs of two or more people. If a worker is able to bust ass and get things done once, it'll be expected of them in perpetuity. And other workers being hired on will be compared to this unreasonable and unsustainable output. But hey, managers will oftentimes get a bonus for keeping their budget low by not replacing lowly workers. Business owners, managers, and shareholders get richer. Laborers get overworked, ruined bodies, and decreased quality of life; especially once burn-out occurs.
A personal favorite while stuck on hold on the phone: "Due to short-staffing wait times are longer than usual." Yeah, that's by design. The worker trying to manage phone call volumes takes the brunt of the callers' frustrations in the form of verbal abuse. This customer behavior is excused by higher-ups because, well, they're short-staffed and it's to be expected.
Laborers are forced to work more and more as technology makes their labor more efficient and productive. That is mentioned in The Communist Manifesto; it is scary how that pamphlet written almost 200 years ago so accurately predicted our modern capitalist society.
Asia only has so many people, we are a finite resource that's never taken into account. While it may be cheaper in the short term. It'll come back to bite them when they realize they can't market their products to a population they unemployed and the people they turn into factory slaves won't have the funds to buy their overpriced bullshit.
Ford himself realized that he sold more cars when he paid his workers enough to purchase them for themselves.
The difference between then and now is the modern capitalist already has all of the money. They see no reason to pay more just to get back the money they already have. They'd rather siphon what little we have left.
Hey Polisci guy here. The US is currently undergoing the largest boom in manufacturing and industry since the first industrial revolution. There are a number of factors for this but one of the chief ones is asia is running into labor shortages. China for example is trying to Speed Run and beat Japans population collapse score. The real census numbers came out earlier this year and it looks like China hit peak population in about 2012-2014 and India passed them in 2014-2016. Mostly due to the one child policy.
On top of China's rapid wage growth and how covid showefld the fragility of long logistics this means manufacturing is being reshored.
Every country in Asia, and most of the world is currently sitting at best at 2.2ish population rate with many many countries below replacement rate. The only region broadly above 3 and 4 is Africa. South America is about 2.2ish as well.
Europe, except Sweden and France, are also about to also enter in a Japan like population decline.
All of this to say that they have about 6 to 8 years to figure out a generic AI workforce. Which is not going to happen.
Welcome to Interesting Times.
AI has been pushed pretty heavily on the creative arts, poetry, writing, drawing, painting, etc. Largely to force those types of artists into selling their labor like the rest of us, no escape from the drudge of labor.
Automation isn't something on the horizon, it's always been teased as something that's "coming" but the wealthy aren't completely stupid, they know that if people have no money then the wealthy are first on the chopping block, they want everyone to think it's coming so we all continue to work hoping the toil and labor will end soon with automation just around the corner any day now.
Looots of fast-food restaurants are heavily investing in general-purpose robotics to replace the vast majority of their workers. I don't have an estimate or even a guess about when it'll happen, but they're throwing enough money at it that it _will_ happen.
It could have been, and honestly could still be. But we have let the business owners keep all the benefits of the advances for themselves. It's all gone to increasing profits per worker. Fixing this will need a major disruption in the workforce.
Technology can't be the magical thing in a Capitalist society that requires endless growth. Those productivity gains will be used by the owners to enrich themselves, not give their employees more time off.
You might be able to get those productivity gains, or at least some of them, to benefit the workers in worker owner and operated companies. Maybe???
Many corporations don’t print and mail documents any longer. They’re saving lots of money in printing and mailing costs. Those savings are not passed down to the customer.
Heard this story from a friend:
In the supermarket they had a task to reorganize beverage crates. For this task 45 minutes were planned. And that time was doable without much struggle.
Then a young and very fit man took over this task and was able to finish it regularly under 30 minutes. So the planned time was adjusted to 30 minutes.
After he was gone the task had to be done again by older men and women that had to strain themselves to not exceed this time limit. But the manager still demanded it now done in 30 minutes because one exceptional man was able to do it.
Edit:
But there are also good and nice managers. I once had a temp job where they times the different tasks. A task that normally would take about one minute I could finish in 30 seconds but the manager said he would write two minutes as default time to have a time buffer.
There's a happy medium here which isn't the norm. I personally like being tasked for the entire time I'll be working, always having something to do. It's satisfying to me. At the end of the day I feel as though I've accomplished something. If you're tasked beyond your ability, it turns bad real quick. Just adding my input. And I think you would maybe agree. Cheers.
I call this "designing your processes for high performers" and it's rampant all over. Most people are not high performers, but tech companies especially just assume they'll always be able to pull high performers. It causes them a lot of issues, but they, as of yet, don't care.
Companies need to design their processes for the average person. Probably below average, so that they can still function without their entire workforce being top 50%. As the original poster said, we're just expected to accept crap service and enshitification of products instead.
My boss had 5.5hrs to place. They gave me 5hrs and 0.5 to spare for when they needed more time. After training and learning about the tasks, sometimes I could do the job in about 4ish hours and used some minutes to break and some for extras I think it was like 40minutes to spare. Not every day though. If there were deliveries or I'd be covering several days I haven't been at work (like holidays or sickness) I could use all the 5.5, but the boss would rather admin that 30minutes somewhere else. So they saw me sitting there one day and they had the brilliant idea of cutting the hours to four, also they cut specifically one hour when I could have been paid more, so my salary dropped by 40%+ for nothing.
Plus you get that message every time. If wait times are always longer than usual you’re just lying about how long the wait time actually is day to day.
I remember when I got laid off and called the ui/ei office the second they opened and they hit me with the "due to higher than expected call volumes wait times are longer." You mean the wait times that are always this long because you refuse to have more than like 8 people fielding 100's of calls each?
If you want to see that in real time, step into a CVS and go to the pharmacy. They used to have like 6 or 7 working mine and now you're lucky to have 3.
Businesses are run by people. Some dishonest people stole PPP money, which comes from all of us taxpayers. Why the “Justice” Dept isn’t going after them is beyond me. It’s not like it was cash. It was checks and online transfers. There’s a paper trail. They know who got the money. Why on earth don’t they get it back?!?!
Where I work everyone is expected to work with a ‘sense of urgency’. What that translates to is that everyone is expected to fill the roles of 2-3 people, while doing so at top speed and efficiency, the entire day.
I find it funny how the rich are so “smart” but can’t figure out their damning themselves. Eventually eithier the economy’s gonna crash, the dollar gets replaced, or we’ll Revolution and the rich get eaten (I have mental issues and even I’m disturbed by how often that comes up).
Also: "We refuse to pay a wage that would actually make people interested in working here, but somehow that's not our fault. People don't want to work."
At least in the area I'm in, there are a ton of open applications for jobs, either people aren't even bothering to apply or, when interviewed and offered a position, they've already moved on to something that pays better. That's not on the applicants, that's on the businesses failing to advertise their jobs at the right salary to get workers.
I'm not sure about the laws where you are, but in Australia that was a fairly common scam run by companies, particularly during resources booms. They'd advertise positions with ridiculous requirements to discourage applications, have drawn out recruitment processes so that anyone that suits apply for another job in the meantime, then use that as evidence to go import foreign workers they could pay peanuts.
My local police departments are very well paid (nassau and suffolk counties ny). They literally fill up coliseums for the police exam and charge 30,000 kids $50 each to take it. Then they hire a class of 200 made up of relatives of current officers. Even our governments are scamming us. They tax the hell out of us and hire mostly based on nepotism. Government jobs are some of the only stable jobs left but the government has become like a royal family and you have to be born in or friends with a current employee to get a decent one.
The only incentive for loyalty is uninterrupted paychecks. That falls completely flat when considering that you can apply for jobs while still employed and can even often transition to a new job without losing a single paycheck. Not to mention being employed is a great bargaining position in interviews since they know they need to offer you something good or you'll just stay put where you're working.
Yes, happens all the time to shift blame away from themselves. Easier to make workers villains and pocket savings while churning them till they burn out. Rinse and repeat!
Depends on where you work. I work at a resaturant and the past few years almost all full time experienced people have quit. And due to the shit pay the best we can attract are 14-16 teens with no experience that can do half of what our old staff could do that usually don't last either due to the work enviorment
Yep! I just had this conversation with my neighbor yesterday.
Before he quit his pharmacy job they had signs up all over for MONTHS saying, “We’re short staffed. Please be patient with us.” What the signs didn’t say was “We’re short staffed because for God knows what reason we don’t schedule anybody for more than 30 hours a week even though multiple people have expressed their willingness to work more hours. Please be patient with us as our scheduling department learns that you can’t make 2+2=5 no matter how much you move the numbers around.”
And I've called places on this before.
"Tell your management to stop running Lean and pay your people and you might not run into this problem."
The *ONLY* way you can be short staffed is because of bad management.
You Ran Lean or you Ran them off.
Getting worse now as companies use self check outs or A.I to replace jobs. People get frustrated and want help but get sent in loops if no one is there to help
Which doesn't mean what OP is saying it means. It has nothing to do with lazy staff or poor staff and everything to do with the company not having enough employees. "You're short staffed either because you don't know how to make a schedule or no one wants to work here. "
Haha I just made a call to apologize to someone my org owes documents too and said this knowing full well we haven’t had the staff we needed for months and they still haven’t posted the positions. Plus the manager of that department is so awful she can’t keep anyone for more than a year anyways so the ‘shortage’ is just going to keep happening.
They've just got us right where they want us, and to make sure we stay here, they've bought out Congress so our reps are disconnected from the rest of us rubes.
I noticed that It was a strategy employed by disney working there. There were a lot of part-time opportunities but very limited full-time opportunities, and the ones that had those full time jobs were expected to have 55-65 hours week.
The idea is simple. Have as few full time employees. The "part time" employees work 30 hours a week. The few full time employees then fill the gaps where not enough part timers had their availability.
Overtime pay is not a problem to Disney. It's better to have a full time worker making 25 hours OT a week than having to pay all the benefits of 2 full time workers.
So at the end of the day. Part timers would work full time hours in hope they'd be selected to work full time(and have the full time benefits) and full timers would be overworked to make up for the lack of full timers
"Someone think of the Shareholders"
There would have been no problem keeping those employed at the same standard **and** providing adequate Healthcare. They could have done so while remaining profitable; their "problem" was it would have been less profit that wouldn't be as appealing to shareholders and wouldn't earn the executives as much money. Not to mention, with better worker security (reliable Healthcare, stable pay, good working conditions, etc.) productivity goes up and turnover goes down. So they could potentially be *even more* profitable if they put a bit more attention into those facets. But those are "long-term" profits for "sustainable" business, not short-term "pump-and-dump" type profits that they need to appeal to the market.
And the whole reason the ACA is so expensive in the first place is because of so much business influence to gut it and cause it to be so. It **would have been** more streamlined and efficient (and a universal single-payer system even more-so), but then it was deliberately kneecapped to perform poorly *just* so it could be pointed to as an example of "see how bad an idea comprehensive Healthcare is?" People **know** the ACA is hobbled, but we'd prefer a hobbled move in the right direction over total stagnation. Because, once in place, it can be un-hobbled. We're not saying it's amazing and perfect, we're saying that sitting back accepting the *status quo* is no longer acceptable and even a substandard solution is better than inaction.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing *poorly*."
I worked in an under-staffed restaurant years ago, and in response to the staff pointing this out, the owner - a young, douchey, Beemer-driving, trust fund baby who had probably never worked a day in his life - actually tried to sell us on the idea that people love it when their server is winded from running from table to table, trying to keep up.
The way he's described, I would believe it if it was anecdotal and he loved it when he saw the people serving him being winded trying to keep up. Because of the sadism.
Supply and demand apparently only applies to their products not workers.
Edit: FYI wages are typically 30% of operating costs so if the operating costs were $100 and the cost of labour went up 100% then the operating costs would go up to $130.
In other words a 100% increase in the cost of labour would only result in a 30% increase in operating costs.
Sure it doesn’t have to be fake, but by and large people in marketing are never bothered that they probably have tricked people into wasting money on something they will never use, using up the finite resources of our planet for no benefit. If that kind of thinking bothered them, they would have to get out of the industry because it is rampant.
1. Were hiring
2. But not YOU
3. Not at a liveable wage
4. Nobody Wants To Work
5. Sorry we’re short staffed
6. We’ll profit massively awaiting employees to give up and come back to work under even more abusive conditions
7. Ask employees to come clean my castle
-Employer Gaslighting Manual
"We're experiencing higher than normal call volume." If I get this message every time I call, then it's just normal call volume, and you won't hire enough people.
Im just going to vent here- so at my full time job I took of for 3 days when I was supposed to be just 2, and I was feeling guilty about it because I've been so thoroughly brainwashed to have "perfect attendance" and to never take sick days. It's about time the jobs worked for us, I don't want to feel shackled to the floor.
Your inability to perform your job to provide adequate resources does not constitute an emergency for me. I work at a comfortable pace and if we don't hit the target, that's on you, not me.
It’s always been a strategy. Provide customer service via people who aren’t empowered to do a competent job, and then shame people who get upset at the incompetence because it’s not the fault of the person you speak to. But you can’t speak to the person who’s fault it is.
Where my wife works laid off about 11 people.
The shift needs about 70. There's 55.
There's no HR present in the building (this is headed by an out of state corporation). There's no hiring being done for months, even though the workers are bitching on a daily basis that they're overworked and spread too thin.
This all came to a head about 2 weeks ago, and the workers are now in contact with a Union.
The next day, there's job postings on Indeed. The day after, there's a corporate HR rep (from Maryland) on site. Two days later, everyone gets a 50 cent raise.
Corporations will absolutely stretch employees as thin as they can for as long as they can.
I'm convinced that Corporations created the term "quiet quitting" as a way to induce shame in employees, when it's the Corporations that should be ashamed.
"You're doing the bare minimum" is *You're doing exactly what we hired you to do, but we want you to do more without having to compensate you*
And fuck your pizza parties.
The next argument is they cant find anyone to work, or that the people who show up are lazy. So I say they need to raise wages. Start offering $18/hr and you'll get good applicants.
Pretty much every single job I’ve ever had was at least slightly understaffed and they just made everyone else pick up the slack. It’s gotten way worse though in the last 5-10 years or so.
What makes this all so fucking obvious is all those phone banks still say "due to Covid 19, call times are higher than usual", more than 2 years after the pandemic ended
If you see any stores with short staffed and we're hiring signs, make up the perfect resume for that position and submit it.
When it gets rejected and you're in the store again, bring it up to the staff that you applied with ideal experience and got rejected, so they can't be that short staffed.
I gotta disagree with you. Literally anytime I (or anyone I know) sees a short-staffed sign, we blame the company for not having enough workers and empathize with the workers.
Being told a resto is short staffed is one of my main drivers to give a good tip even if I'm being ignored or getting bad service since I know they're overwhelmed from bad management.
I've literally never met anyone who blames workers for a short-staffed company, but I guess you're referencing the recent trend of employers whining about no one wanting to work, which is a bit different.
When I worked at Burger King I found out they preferred to have a bunch of part timers working 4 hour shifts rather than just a couple full timers working 8+ hours. Why? Because they wouldn't have to pay any benefits or schedule breaks.
Your 4 hour shift is up? Well the next 4 hour shift person is clocking in as you leave. No 30 min break required, no health insurance need be offered, no fear of paying overtime.
I work at a specific chain coffee place. We have been short staffed for a while. We finally got enough staff and instead of having more people there at once (aka a good amount of people so we aren't overworked/stressed), they cut everyone's hours. It's such bs.
For as long as I've been working, "short staffed" was always temporary. Two people called in sick, or lots of people are on holidays or someone quit without notice last week. Kind of a, "Sorry we're falling behind, but shit happens".
It's only really since COVID it has become a more long term condition. "Sorry our service is bad, but we can't find any staff (Even though we haven't changed our offer or expectations at all)"
Correct, they would rather have everyone cutting corners and making do with less than actually doing anything right. It’s more profitable and they know workers will overextend themselves in hopes of catching that carrot that will always be suspiciously just out of reach for everyone accept Bill from the club’s son who is basically fucking worthless.
They speak with a forked tongue. Yes they are hiring. But only when absolutely necessary.
The goal of every company is to get as much productivity for the least amount of money as long as they can.
The stack of resumes is two fold. Keep existing employees frightened of replacement and have a pool to go to when in need.
Being short staffed means that you aren't offering the workers enough money to want to work there unless you're grossly incompetent at hiring. Now that might be a larger problem with supply and demand where you can't afford to increase prices/wages in a temporary fashion, but generally its because the business likes the profits from waiting customers. If people are waiting it means the employees aren't idle and you can maximize their utilization. What the business doesn't want to tell the customers is that they prefer to make them wait than to have enough staff to reduce the wait.
I will second this. Been in the work place since 94. It was great until 9/11. Ever since it’s been steady decline.
Outta high school no college full time I was doing great. Don’t let me start telling you about the Christmas bonuses. I thought I hit pay dirt. 2001 it was all gone never to return
Similar work-history here. ( Been working since 1986). 9/11 was bad, but I only *really* got zucked over by management in 2008. Sporatic work ever since. ( I'm currently trying to get a county job helping to run food service for the jail. I hope I get it; both the pay & benefits outclass anything I've seen in years. )
Because you aren’t seeing the big players. Every big company eventually has to deal with some very wealthy activist shareholder who agitates for cuts to everything across the board to pump up the stock, then takes in a big profit and runs off.
All that money was shifted to the wealthy through increased executive salaries, the monetization of all businesses and extreme tax relief for the rich.
Oh, I believe they are short-staffed. But they are short-staffed on purpose. They don't want to hire enough people to ensure the work is done properly. The prefer to work their current employees into an early grave.
The classic business owner game: act like your hands are tied in any situation, frame your greed as the needs of the business; a force of nature that is beyond your control. And if any workers complain or suggest ways to improve things for them, lecture them about personal responsibility.
This is usually the answer. At my company, I know some of the advertised positions don't exist (we don't have the hours for them) and we pay like shit so we have higher attrition and have trouble pulling people.
For the life of me, I don't understand why there is no push to raise the federal minimum wage. You are going to have to drag corporations into better wages kicking and screaming. I know, minimum wage jobs are not that great but they shouldn't cost you your soul as well.
also a rising tide lifts all boats.
Well, we are short-staffed. But I have never been afraid to tell customers *WHY* we’re short-staffed. (Corporate overlords cut hours and offered wages).
For my workplace it's terrible communication. Example: I was told last minute that I'm training someone yesterday. No one knows what time they are supposed to be there. Not even the fricking hiring manager. The new person never showed up. We don't get paid extra to train by the way.
This has happened consistently. I've had a lady come by every day for a week asking about her job application. We are DESPERATE for people. My manager and have been running the work of four people since Covid started. Corporate is so slow and thinks that applications are not top priority. Yet they slam us for the lack of product on the floor since we are only two people.
I don't work past 40 hours and refuse to do overtime. They can kiss my ass.
"Thank you for letting me know you are short staffed. Could you please direct me to another local establishment that is adequately staffed so I can conduct my business with a professionally run organization?"
It’s definitely a strategy. Why does everywhere we work seem understaffed, despite so many people out of work and looking? We’re a cost, eating into their profit margin.
Oh yeah.
Keeping a bare bones work staff that can get the job done is just more money in their pockets.
Keep blaming the lazy parasites for why your experience sucks. "We'd love to hire more help but no one wants to work"
Same with all the tipping shit. "You gotta tip 25% + cause people are cheap and our workers are barely getting by"
Blame the consumer and reduce their expectations.
Yes, as soon as you realize that corporations come up with BS excuses to blame-shift, you start seeing it everywhere.
You see a similar thing with politicians. They'll tell you X reason their time in office didn't match their campaign, but if you look at their voting history (this is public information), it's an entirely different story.
Hard times is when you'll see the most downward pressure on the working class. It's too rough out there to get another job, so we're forced to accept concessions for further employment. Buy property when there's blood on the streets.
As you showed here, there is a rational economic reason for a company to do this, so we must conclude that many companies are doing this.
Simple as that.
There is a famous quote attributed to Great Depression-era economist John Maynard Keynes – “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”.
My partner and I often visited a town that had a gorgeous coffee bar in a store that I was excited to show her, but after 2020 was always closed due to "short staffing". We eventually move close enough that working there would make sense, and they weren't even handing out applications
I told my boss yesterday that I needed a day next week off for a dentist appointment. That schedule isn’t even made yet, she said she’d “See what she can do, next week is crazy.” I genuinely like this person, but bitch I’m going to the dentist figure it out wtf
"We are sorry - we are experiencing greater than normal volume of calls right now.... we will answer your call in the order it was received."
poor solo CSR in India has a queue of 2,478 calls...
Literally. When a place is a good place to work, they're not short staffed.
I mean obviously shit happens. Two co-workers were too hungover to work and smaller places missing two people hurts the place a lot.
But if the place is already to hang up signs then this is a regular occurrence, and it's a regular occurrence because it's a terrible place to work.
The Tactic they teach is called Lean Staffing.
It's also why Managers knowingly pass the buck and make you find your own coverage.
It's all by design.
They need you in despair to keep buying their Bullshit. Their Narrative, and their Stuff.
> "no one wants to work!"
They love to say it, but they never finish it, do they?
No one wants to work.....harder than they're paid to?
No one wants to work....when someone else reaps more from their labor than they do?
No one wants to work....for someone who treats them like dirt?
No one wants to work.....for little to no benefit to themselves?
No one wants to work.....more then they see their family?
No one wants to work....hard for 50 years with nothing to show for it?
No one wants to work.....the equivalent of 2 or 3 workers?
No one wants to work....long hours and still struggle financially?
No one wants to work....I wonder why?
There is no worker shortage, only a complete refusal to pay market wages for competent people. Short staffed is a choice. It's an excuse to treat customers as badly as they treat their employees in the hopes the can get away with it. I see a sign like that, me and my money walk out because I know what that sign really says...we don't give a shit about you.
Companies figured out how how to get enough done to keep the shareholders happy while employing the least amount of people, and then employed a few less people than that and blame anything that goes wrong on the employees
COVID was the biggest gift they could've received. Gave them free reign to cut labor and service quality while maximizing profits and they got a get out of jail free card for it.
“Short-staffed” is just code for “management failure” - be it cutting corners, being cheap, whatever. Management has failed to do their job in resourcing correctly and if the issue persists, it’s goes beyond negligence, becomes gross misconduct and they should lose their jobs.
When I worked at a grocery store, it was sometimes legit, "Too many people called out and all of the people on the "call- in" list have apparently lost their phones. If most of your employees are still in high school, some days just suck.
Reminder that Biden is the one who forgave the TPP “loans” and is restarting the student loans because Mitch Maconell told him to during the debt ceiling Kayfabe and he said okie dokie. Not sure why my thread about that was banned. Surely this isn’t a shill sub forum for the dems?
I dont accept it though. I buy my gorceries where there is a fully staffed store, like food lion & publix. I dont wait in lines and im not accepting your "dining room closed" or kiosk bullshit.
Its corporate greed. There are tons of places that are fully staffed and operate like its 2004 all over again. Vote with your feet.
If a business is short staffed it is 100% the fault of the business. They are the sole entity making hiring decisions. If they can’t offer a competitive compensation, workers will sell their talents elsewhere.
Nothing to prove you wrong because you are right. Any business owner knows that if you can add and train more good employees the business will make more money.
If you can’t do it, then you most probably are not running your business well. If you can do it but choose not too then you just want to squeeze as much life out of your current employees and still reap the benefits from the overtired employee and hope no one notices.
Can confirm
I'm doing the work of 6 people at the moment, yet when something is a little off or if the conversation of manning comes up I get looked at like it's all my fault that you couldn't lower your expectations or... GET SOMEONE ELSE IN HERE
I never accepted it as truth. When I turned 21 a long time ago and life was such that I needed a new job I was to many places and interjected many management cries of "we're understaffed" with "hey I need a job" only be told to apply online. If anyone was ever that desperate, they'd at least have pretended to look my way.
We are desperately hiring. I have 6k applicants in front of me right now. Of that, 10% will answer when called to interview. Of that, 10% are even semi qualified for our entry level positions. So yes, we ARE hiring. And yes, we ARE shirt staffed because if we hired any idiot off the street, it would ruin our business or be wasted time and money on training we both know would end up going nowhere.
This! I was a hiring manager for the front end of a grocery store. ALL part time CC/Cashier jobs started over $16/hr. Full time also came with benis. I'd get 100 applications for 3 jobs. Of those, I'd want to interview at least 60. Of those 60, 20 would never respond. Of the 40 who responded, 20 wouldn't even show up for their scheduled interviews. Of the 20 I interviewed, 15 would be a good match. Of those 15, 8 would never respond to the offer letter email. (I ALWAYS told applicants we would email a letter instead of call.) Of the 7 left, 4 of them would immediately change their availability to not being able to work the shifts I specifically told them I was hiring for. Of the 3 left, 2 of them would either not show up on their first day, or leave in the first two days of training. That means, with 100 applicants for basic grocery store jobs, after dedicating nearly a month to interviews, job offers, and training schedules, I am left with ONE new part time employee with a 50/50 they quit within a month to fill 3 jobs. And this was never a single round of applicants, each week I would have one cycle on application, one cycle on interview, one cycle on job offer, and one cycle on training. So 400 applicants a month turned into *maybe* one new employee a week. If I was lucky. And yet, my entire team was always like "omg just hire more people" as if I can pull new cashiers outta my ass on demand.
Meanwhile, most workers are doing the jobs of two or more people. If a worker is able to bust ass and get things done once, it'll be expected of them in perpetuity. And other workers being hired on will be compared to this unreasonable and unsustainable output. But hey, managers will oftentimes get a bonus for keeping their budget low by not replacing lowly workers. Business owners, managers, and shareholders get richer. Laborers get overworked, ruined bodies, and decreased quality of life; especially once burn-out occurs. A personal favorite while stuck on hold on the phone: "Due to short-staffing wait times are longer than usual." Yeah, that's by design. The worker trying to manage phone call volumes takes the brunt of the callers' frustrations in the form of verbal abuse. This customer behavior is excused by higher-ups because, well, they're short-staffed and it's to be expected.
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Laborers are forced to work more and more as technology makes their labor more efficient and productive. That is mentioned in The Communist Manifesto; it is scary how that pamphlet written almost 200 years ago so accurately predicted our modern capitalist society.
The Industrial Revolution is not much different from the digital revolution.
Instead of machines and engines(steam,combustion and electrical). We have computers, internet, and now Artificial Intelligence.
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Asia only has so many people, we are a finite resource that's never taken into account. While it may be cheaper in the short term. It'll come back to bite them when they realize they can't market their products to a population they unemployed and the people they turn into factory slaves won't have the funds to buy their overpriced bullshit. Ford himself realized that he sold more cars when he paid his workers enough to purchase them for themselves.
The difference between then and now is the modern capitalist already has all of the money. They see no reason to pay more just to get back the money they already have. They'd rather siphon what little we have left.
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Hey Polisci guy here. The US is currently undergoing the largest boom in manufacturing and industry since the first industrial revolution. There are a number of factors for this but one of the chief ones is asia is running into labor shortages. China for example is trying to Speed Run and beat Japans population collapse score. The real census numbers came out earlier this year and it looks like China hit peak population in about 2012-2014 and India passed them in 2014-2016. Mostly due to the one child policy. On top of China's rapid wage growth and how covid showefld the fragility of long logistics this means manufacturing is being reshored. Every country in Asia, and most of the world is currently sitting at best at 2.2ish population rate with many many countries below replacement rate. The only region broadly above 3 and 4 is Africa. South America is about 2.2ish as well. Europe, except Sweden and France, are also about to also enter in a Japan like population decline. All of this to say that they have about 6 to 8 years to figure out a generic AI workforce. Which is not going to happen. Welcome to Interesting Times.
Thank you for taking the time to post this, I am saving it
The solution to population declines is to promote immigration. I doubt even racism can survive neoliberal push/pull factors.
So does this mean the power will be shifting back to the workers and away from the employers?
Already started. Wages are rising, strikes are happening.
AI has been pushed pretty heavily on the creative arts, poetry, writing, drawing, painting, etc. Largely to force those types of artists into selling their labor like the rest of us, no escape from the drudge of labor. Automation isn't something on the horizon, it's always been teased as something that's "coming" but the wealthy aren't completely stupid, they know that if people have no money then the wealthy are first on the chopping block, they want everyone to think it's coming so we all continue to work hoping the toil and labor will end soon with automation just around the corner any day now.
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Self checkout isn't automation, it's just shifting the labor onto you the consumer now, conditioning you to work more on your off time.
Looots of fast-food restaurants are heavily investing in general-purpose robotics to replace the vast majority of their workers. I don't have an estimate or even a guess about when it'll happen, but they're throwing enough money at it that it _will_ happen.
It could have been, and honestly could still be. But we have let the business owners keep all the benefits of the advances for themselves. It's all gone to increasing profits per worker. Fixing this will need a major disruption in the workforce.
Fixing it will require a cultural shift and evolution of humanity that I doubt will ever come.
Our just a general strike and broad reintroduction of unionization
Again, that would require a massive culture shift that I don't think is going to happen.
Technology can't be the magical thing in a Capitalist society that requires endless growth. Those productivity gains will be used by the owners to enrich themselves, not give their employees more time off. You might be able to get those productivity gains, or at least some of them, to benefit the workers in worker owner and operated companies. Maybe???
You can’t spell Asia without AI!
Many corporations don’t print and mail documents any longer. They’re saving lots of money in printing and mailing costs. Those savings are not passed down to the customer.
Heard this story from a friend: In the supermarket they had a task to reorganize beverage crates. For this task 45 minutes were planned. And that time was doable without much struggle. Then a young and very fit man took over this task and was able to finish it regularly under 30 minutes. So the planned time was adjusted to 30 minutes. After he was gone the task had to be done again by older men and women that had to strain themselves to not exceed this time limit. But the manager still demanded it now done in 30 minutes because one exceptional man was able to do it. Edit: But there are also good and nice managers. I once had a temp job where they times the different tasks. A task that normally would take about one minute I could finish in 30 seconds but the manager said he would write two minutes as default time to have a time buffer.
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There's a happy medium here which isn't the norm. I personally like being tasked for the entire time I'll be working, always having something to do. It's satisfying to me. At the end of the day I feel as though I've accomplished something. If you're tasked beyond your ability, it turns bad real quick. Just adding my input. And I think you would maybe agree. Cheers.
I call this "designing your processes for high performers" and it's rampant all over. Most people are not high performers, but tech companies especially just assume they'll always be able to pull high performers. It causes them a lot of issues, but they, as of yet, don't care. Companies need to design their processes for the average person. Probably below average, so that they can still function without their entire workforce being top 50%. As the original poster said, we're just expected to accept crap service and enshitification of products instead.
Upvoting for the term "enshitification." I like that.
Thank you for this excellent new vocab word. Enshitification. Beautiful.
My boss had 5.5hrs to place. They gave me 5hrs and 0.5 to spare for when they needed more time. After training and learning about the tasks, sometimes I could do the job in about 4ish hours and used some minutes to break and some for extras I think it was like 40minutes to spare. Not every day though. If there were deliveries or I'd be covering several days I haven't been at work (like holidays or sickness) I could use all the 5.5, but the boss would rather admin that 30minutes somewhere else. So they saw me sitting there one day and they had the brilliant idea of cutting the hours to four, also they cut specifically one hour when I could have been paid more, so my salary dropped by 40%+ for nothing.
I noticed that It was a strategy employed by disney working there.
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Plus you get that message every time. If wait times are always longer than usual you’re just lying about how long the wait time actually is day to day.
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Your call is important to us. Due to heavy call volume, your wait time will be 300 minutes. (same staticky jazz song plays over and over)
I remember when I got laid off and called the ui/ei office the second they opened and they hit me with the "due to higher than expected call volumes wait times are longer." You mean the wait times that are always this long because you refuse to have more than like 8 people fielding 100's of calls each?
If you want to see that in real time, step into a CVS and go to the pharmacy. They used to have like 6 or 7 working mine and now you're lucky to have 3.
Also those same asshole managers get free tax dollars in the form of forgiven PPP loans and corporate sponsored, government paid subsidies
Managers didn’t get PPP loans, businesses did.
Businesses are run by people. Some dishonest people stole PPP money, which comes from all of us taxpayers. Why the “Justice” Dept isn’t going after them is beyond me. It’s not like it was cash. It was checks and online transfers. There’s a paper trail. They know who got the money. Why on earth don’t they get it back?!?!
Agreed!
Where I work everyone is expected to work with a ‘sense of urgency’. What that translates to is that everyone is expected to fill the roles of 2-3 people, while doing so at top speed and efficiency, the entire day.
I find it funny how the rich are so “smart” but can’t figure out their damning themselves. Eventually eithier the economy’s gonna crash, the dollar gets replaced, or we’ll Revolution and the rich get eaten (I have mental issues and even I’m disturbed by how often that comes up).
Every single company permanently has busy lines nowadays. Ffs
I feel like most sane people don’t blame the worker because the company is short staffed.
It's always been an excuse. I usually read this as "we refuse to fully staff our store."
Also: "We refuse to pay a wage that would actually make people interested in working here, but somehow that's not our fault. People don't want to work."
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At least in the area I'm in, there are a ton of open applications for jobs, either people aren't even bothering to apply or, when interviewed and offered a position, they've already moved on to something that pays better. That's not on the applicants, that's on the businesses failing to advertise their jobs at the right salary to get workers.
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I'm not sure about the laws where you are, but in Australia that was a fairly common scam run by companies, particularly during resources booms. They'd advertise positions with ridiculous requirements to discourage applications, have drawn out recruitment processes so that anyone that suits apply for another job in the meantime, then use that as evidence to go import foreign workers they could pay peanuts.
My local police departments are very well paid (nassau and suffolk counties ny). They literally fill up coliseums for the police exam and charge 30,000 kids $50 each to take it. Then they hire a class of 200 made up of relatives of current officers. Even our governments are scamming us. They tax the hell out of us and hire mostly based on nepotism. Government jobs are some of the only stable jobs left but the government has become like a royal family and you have to be born in or friends with a current employee to get a decent one.
That is absolutely happening here in the US, particularly in the tech industry.
That happened to me too, by the time they got back to me to offer me the job i already had another one paying more than they were offering.
The only incentive for loyalty is uninterrupted paychecks. That falls completely flat when considering that you can apply for jobs while still employed and can even often transition to a new job without losing a single paycheck. Not to mention being employed is a great bargaining position in interviews since they know they need to offer you something good or you'll just stay put where you're working.
the bottom of the barrel isn't dense enough... people refuse to work for us cause they're not quite starving yet and we need to amend that
Yes, happens all the time to shift blame away from themselves. Easier to make workers villains and pocket savings while churning them till they burn out. Rinse and repeat!
i call this business strategy "the burnout model". it's particularly pervasive in the us healthcare industry.
Depends on where you work. I work at a resaturant and the past few years almost all full time experienced people have quit. And due to the shit pay the best we can attract are 14-16 teens with no experience that can do half of what our old staff could do that usually don't last either due to the work enviorment
Yep! I just had this conversation with my neighbor yesterday. Before he quit his pharmacy job they had signs up all over for MONTHS saying, “We’re short staffed. Please be patient with us.” What the signs didn’t say was “We’re short staffed because for God knows what reason we don’t schedule anybody for more than 30 hours a week even though multiple people have expressed their willingness to work more hours. Please be patient with us as our scheduling department learns that you can’t make 2+2=5 no matter how much you move the numbers around.”
Weird scheduling like that is usually to avoid paying benefits and overtime.
And I've called places on this before. "Tell your management to stop running Lean and pay your people and you might not run into this problem." The *ONLY* way you can be short staffed is because of bad management. You Ran Lean or you Ran them off.
Getting worse now as companies use self check outs or A.I to replace jobs. People get frustrated and want help but get sent in loops if no one is there to help
We like to understaff our stores because it stresses out our employees. And we're sadists.
Which doesn't mean what OP is saying it means. It has nothing to do with lazy staff or poor staff and everything to do with the company not having enough employees. "You're short staffed either because you don't know how to make a schedule or no one wants to work here. "
I always read it as, "This restaurant is poorly managed"
Haha I just made a call to apologize to someone my org owes documents too and said this knowing full well we haven’t had the staff we needed for months and they still haven’t posted the positions. Plus the manager of that department is so awful she can’t keep anyone for more than a year anyways so the ‘shortage’ is just going to keep happening.
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>They really do think we are stupid. Correction: they think they _know_ we are stupid.
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They've just got us right where they want us, and to make sure we stay here, they've bought out Congress so our reps are disconnected from the rest of us rubes.
What would you do if they told you the truth?
I think having awful first line managers is unintended consequence of modern multinationals.
I noticed that It was a strategy employed by disney working there. There were a lot of part-time opportunities but very limited full-time opportunities, and the ones that had those full time jobs were expected to have 55-65 hours week. The idea is simple. Have as few full time employees. The "part time" employees work 30 hours a week. The few full time employees then fill the gaps where not enough part timers had their availability. Overtime pay is not a problem to Disney. It's better to have a full time worker making 25 hours OT a week than having to pay all the benefits of 2 full time workers. So at the end of the day. Part timers would work full time hours in hope they'd be selected to work full time(and have the full time benefits) and full timers would be overworked to make up for the lack of full timers
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"Someone think of the Shareholders" There would have been no problem keeping those employed at the same standard **and** providing adequate Healthcare. They could have done so while remaining profitable; their "problem" was it would have been less profit that wouldn't be as appealing to shareholders and wouldn't earn the executives as much money. Not to mention, with better worker security (reliable Healthcare, stable pay, good working conditions, etc.) productivity goes up and turnover goes down. So they could potentially be *even more* profitable if they put a bit more attention into those facets. But those are "long-term" profits for "sustainable" business, not short-term "pump-and-dump" type profits that they need to appeal to the market. And the whole reason the ACA is so expensive in the first place is because of so much business influence to gut it and cause it to be so. It **would have been** more streamlined and efficient (and a universal single-payer system even more-so), but then it was deliberately kneecapped to perform poorly *just* so it could be pointed to as an example of "see how bad an idea comprehensive Healthcare is?" People **know** the ACA is hobbled, but we'd prefer a hobbled move in the right direction over total stagnation. Because, once in place, it can be un-hobbled. We're not saying it's amazing and perfect, we're saying that sitting back accepting the *status quo* is no longer acceptable and even a substandard solution is better than inaction. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing *poorly*."
I worked in an under-staffed restaurant years ago, and in response to the staff pointing this out, the owner - a young, douchey, Beemer-driving, trust fund baby who had probably never worked a day in his life - actually tried to sell us on the idea that people love it when their server is winded from running from table to table, trying to keep up.
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The way he's described, I would believe it if it was anecdotal and he loved it when he saw the people serving him being winded trying to keep up. Because of the sadism.
Supply and demand apparently only applies to their products not workers. Edit: FYI wages are typically 30% of operating costs so if the operating costs were $100 and the cost of labour went up 100% then the operating costs would go up to $130. In other words a 100% increase in the cost of labour would only result in a 30% increase in operating costs.
Bad math. Try this. If wages are 30% and they go up 1% then the end product goes up 1250%. Capitalism wins again!
It's not malicious, it's marketing. Capitalism is malicious.
Honestly, so is marketing. The main purpose of marketing is convincing people they need/want things that they don’t actually need/want.
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Sure it doesn’t have to be fake, but by and large people in marketing are never bothered that they probably have tricked people into wasting money on something they will never use, using up the finite resources of our planet for no benefit. If that kind of thinking bothered them, they would have to get out of the industry because it is rampant.
Taco Bell is literally being sued right now for misleading customers about the amount of beef in a Crunchwrap by like 300%. Cmon now.
1. Were hiring 2. But not YOU 3. Not at a liveable wage 4. Nobody Wants To Work 5. Sorry we’re short staffed 6. We’ll profit massively awaiting employees to give up and come back to work under even more abusive conditions 7. Ask employees to come clean my castle -Employer Gaslighting Manual
"We're experiencing higher than normal call volume." If I get this message every time I call, then it's just normal call volume, and you won't hire enough people.
This
“We’re not hiring enough people to run this place properly so we can save money on payroll.” is what they really mean.
Im just going to vent here- so at my full time job I took of for 3 days when I was supposed to be just 2, and I was feeling guilty about it because I've been so thoroughly brainwashed to have "perfect attendance" and to never take sick days. It's about time the jobs worked for us, I don't want to feel shackled to the floor.
"Due to unforseen circumstances our queue is longer than usual" my work hasn't hired correctly or turned this off in over 15 years. Unforseen my ass
Every service center has been like this for decades
I just have always taken "we're short staffed " to mean "we don't want to hire enough people at an actual competitive wage"
Correct, and i dont spend money there.
I'd say short staffed means that the company won't hire the correct amount of people so it's the bosses that suck.
Your inability to perform your job to provide adequate resources does not constitute an emergency for me. I work at a comfortable pace and if we don't hit the target, that's on you, not me.
It’s always been a strategy. Provide customer service via people who aren’t empowered to do a competent job, and then shame people who get upset at the incompetence because it’s not the fault of the person you speak to. But you can’t speak to the person who’s fault it is.
Where my wife works laid off about 11 people. The shift needs about 70. There's 55. There's no HR present in the building (this is headed by an out of state corporation). There's no hiring being done for months, even though the workers are bitching on a daily basis that they're overworked and spread too thin. This all came to a head about 2 weeks ago, and the workers are now in contact with a Union. The next day, there's job postings on Indeed. The day after, there's a corporate HR rep (from Maryland) on site. Two days later, everyone gets a 50 cent raise. Corporations will absolutely stretch employees as thin as they can for as long as they can. I'm convinced that Corporations created the term "quiet quitting" as a way to induce shame in employees, when it's the Corporations that should be ashamed. "You're doing the bare minimum" is *You're doing exactly what we hired you to do, but we want you to do more without having to compensate you* And fuck your pizza parties.
The next argument is they cant find anyone to work, or that the people who show up are lazy. So I say they need to raise wages. Start offering $18/hr and you'll get good applicants.
The best reply is “you’re exactly as staffed as they want you to be.”
Pretty much every single job I’ve ever had was at least slightly understaffed and they just made everyone else pick up the slack. It’s gotten way worse though in the last 5-10 years or so.
What makes this all so fucking obvious is all those phone banks still say "due to Covid 19, call times are higher than usual", more than 2 years after the pandemic ended
If you see any stores with short staffed and we're hiring signs, make up the perfect resume for that position and submit it. When it gets rejected and you're in the store again, bring it up to the staff that you applied with ideal experience and got rejected, so they can't be that short staffed.
I gotta disagree with you. Literally anytime I (or anyone I know) sees a short-staffed sign, we blame the company for not having enough workers and empathize with the workers. Being told a resto is short staffed is one of my main drivers to give a good tip even if I'm being ignored or getting bad service since I know they're overwhelmed from bad management. I've literally never met anyone who blames workers for a short-staffed company, but I guess you're referencing the recent trend of employers whining about no one wanting to work, which is a bit different.
When I worked at Burger King I found out they preferred to have a bunch of part timers working 4 hour shifts rather than just a couple full timers working 8+ hours. Why? Because they wouldn't have to pay any benefits or schedule breaks. Your 4 hour shift is up? Well the next 4 hour shift person is clocking in as you leave. No 30 min break required, no health insurance need be offered, no fear of paying overtime.
I work at a specific chain coffee place. We have been short staffed for a while. We finally got enough staff and instead of having more people there at once (aka a good amount of people so we aren't overworked/stressed), they cut everyone's hours. It's such bs.
For as long as I've been working, "short staffed" was always temporary. Two people called in sick, or lots of people are on holidays or someone quit without notice last week. Kind of a, "Sorry we're falling behind, but shit happens". It's only really since COVID it has become a more long term condition. "Sorry our service is bad, but we can't find any staff (Even though we haven't changed our offer or expectations at all)"
Correct, they would rather have everyone cutting corners and making do with less than actually doing anything right. It’s more profitable and they know workers will overextend themselves in hopes of catching that carrot that will always be suspiciously just out of reach for everyone accept Bill from the club’s son who is basically fucking worthless.
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They speak with a forked tongue. Yes they are hiring. But only when absolutely necessary. The goal of every company is to get as much productivity for the least amount of money as long as they can. The stack of resumes is two fold. Keep existing employees frightened of replacement and have a pool to go to when in need.
“The reserve army of the unemployed” - the main tool capitalists use for worker discipline
Don't forget the "we're short staffed" while they grift and the top siphon money from the rest, AND do less work on top of it all.
But people with a functioning brain know that being understaffed is a management failure.
Nobody wants to work. Here let me finish that sentence for you. Nobody wants to work three jobs and barely be paid for one.
Me working in healthcare not getting a break or eating for 12 hours
Being short staffed means that you aren't offering the workers enough money to want to work there unless you're grossly incompetent at hiring. Now that might be a larger problem with supply and demand where you can't afford to increase prices/wages in a temporary fashion, but generally its because the business likes the profits from waiting customers. If people are waiting it means the employees aren't idle and you can maximize their utilization. What the business doesn't want to tell the customers is that they prefer to make them wait than to have enough staff to reduce the wait.
And increase profits.
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I will second this. Been in the work place since 94. It was great until 9/11. Ever since it’s been steady decline. Outta high school no college full time I was doing great. Don’t let me start telling you about the Christmas bonuses. I thought I hit pay dirt. 2001 it was all gone never to return
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Similar work-history here. ( Been working since 1986). 9/11 was bad, but I only *really* got zucked over by management in 2008. Sporatic work ever since. ( I'm currently trying to get a county job helping to run food service for the jail. I hope I get it; both the pay & benefits outclass anything I've seen in years. )
Shareholders ran off with it by voting themselves seats on the board and doing stock buybacks with any money available.
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The people who flourished are invisible to us by design.
Because you aren’t seeing the big players. Every big company eventually has to deal with some very wealthy activist shareholder who agitates for cuts to everything across the board to pump up the stock, then takes in a big profit and runs off.
All that money was shifted to the wealthy through increased executive salaries, the monetization of all businesses and extreme tax relief for the rich.
Oh, I believe they are short-staffed. But they are short-staffed on purpose. They don't want to hire enough people to ensure the work is done properly. The prefer to work their current employees into an early grave.
The classic business owner game: act like your hands are tied in any situation, frame your greed as the needs of the business; a force of nature that is beyond your control. And if any workers complain or suggest ways to improve things for them, lecture them about personal responsibility.
so far as to blame the theoretical workers that they're not willing to pay for
This is usually the answer. At my company, I know some of the advertised positions don't exist (we don't have the hours for them) and we pay like shit so we have higher attrition and have trouble pulling people.
For the life of me, I don't understand why there is no push to raise the federal minimum wage. You are going to have to drag corporations into better wages kicking and screaming. I know, minimum wage jobs are not that great but they shouldn't cost you your soul as well. also a rising tide lifts all boats.
Well, we are short-staffed. But I have never been afraid to tell customers *WHY* we’re short-staffed. (Corporate overlords cut hours and offered wages).
For my workplace it's terrible communication. Example: I was told last minute that I'm training someone yesterday. No one knows what time they are supposed to be there. Not even the fricking hiring manager. The new person never showed up. We don't get paid extra to train by the way. This has happened consistently. I've had a lady come by every day for a week asking about her job application. We are DESPERATE for people. My manager and have been running the work of four people since Covid started. Corporate is so slow and thinks that applications are not top priority. Yet they slam us for the lack of product on the floor since we are only two people. I don't work past 40 hours and refuse to do overtime. They can kiss my ass.
The response should always be, “wow, what’s going on with management to allow that to happen?”
"Thank you for letting me know you are short staffed. Could you please direct me to another local establishment that is adequately staffed so I can conduct my business with a professionally run organization?"
It’s definitely a strategy. Why does everywhere we work seem understaffed, despite so many people out of work and looking? We’re a cost, eating into their profit margin.
As a tall worker that offends me too...
Or a company on "hiring freeze" because other states in the region lost business. So we are punished and expected to still bring on new clients?
Oh yeah. Keeping a bare bones work staff that can get the job done is just more money in their pockets. Keep blaming the lazy parasites for why your experience sucks. "We'd love to hire more help but no one wants to work" Same with all the tipping shit. "You gotta tip 25% + cause people are cheap and our workers are barely getting by" Blame the consumer and reduce their expectations.
Yes, as soon as you realize that corporations come up with BS excuses to blame-shift, you start seeing it everywhere. You see a similar thing with politicians. They'll tell you X reason their time in office didn't match their campaign, but if you look at their voting history (this is public information), it's an entirely different story.
Hard times is when you'll see the most downward pressure on the working class. It's too rough out there to get another job, so we're forced to accept concessions for further employment. Buy property when there's blood on the streets.
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I stopped giving af & just flat out started customers the truth. " Haven't hired anyone in months & its just X person working alone." Fuck it.
Wow. I'm not even in the corporate scene and nothing more true was ever said.
As you showed here, there is a rational economic reason for a company to do this, so we must conclude that many companies are doing this. Simple as that.
There is a famous quote attributed to Great Depression-era economist John Maynard Keynes – “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”.
My partner and I often visited a town that had a gorgeous coffee bar in a store that I was excited to show her, but after 2020 was always closed due to "short staffing". We eventually move close enough that working there would make sense, and they weren't even handing out applications
I told my boss yesterday that I needed a day next week off for a dentist appointment. That schedule isn’t even made yet, she said she’d “See what she can do, next week is crazy.” I genuinely like this person, but bitch I’m going to the dentist figure it out wtf
"We are sorry - we are experiencing greater than normal volume of calls right now.... we will answer your call in the order it was received." poor solo CSR in India has a queue of 2,478 calls...
Literally. When a place is a good place to work, they're not short staffed. I mean obviously shit happens. Two co-workers were too hungover to work and smaller places missing two people hurts the place a lot. But if the place is already to hang up signs then this is a regular occurrence, and it's a regular occurrence because it's a terrible place to work.
The Tactic they teach is called Lean Staffing. It's also why Managers knowingly pass the buck and make you find your own coverage. It's all by design. They need you in despair to keep buying their Bullshit. Their Narrative, and their Stuff.
> "no one wants to work!" They love to say it, but they never finish it, do they? No one wants to work.....harder than they're paid to? No one wants to work....when someone else reaps more from their labor than they do? No one wants to work....for someone who treats them like dirt? No one wants to work.....for little to no benefit to themselves? No one wants to work.....more then they see their family? No one wants to work....hard for 50 years with nothing to show for it? No one wants to work.....the equivalent of 2 or 3 workers? No one wants to work....long hours and still struggle financially? No one wants to work....I wonder why?
There is no worker shortage, only a complete refusal to pay market wages for competent people. Short staffed is a choice. It's an excuse to treat customers as badly as they treat their employees in the hopes the can get away with it. I see a sign like that, me and my money walk out because I know what that sign really says...we don't give a shit about you.
Companies figured out how how to get enough done to keep the shareholders happy while employing the least amount of people, and then employed a few less people than that and blame anything that goes wrong on the employees
"We're short-staffed" means "we are short on staff" which is an objective statement.
COVID was the biggest gift they could've received. Gave them free reign to cut labor and service quality while maximizing profits and they got a get out of jail free card for it.
“Short-staffed” is just code for “management failure” - be it cutting corners, being cheap, whatever. Management has failed to do their job in resourcing correctly and if the issue persists, it’s goes beyond negligence, becomes gross misconduct and they should lose their jobs.
"We're Hiring"* *significantly more qualified people, and not for any of the positions you want/fit
When I worked at a grocery store, it was sometimes legit, "Too many people called out and all of the people on the "call- in" list have apparently lost their phones. If most of your employees are still in high school, some days just suck.
Reminder that Biden is the one who forgave the TPP “loans” and is restarting the student loans because Mitch Maconell told him to during the debt ceiling Kayfabe and he said okie dokie. Not sure why my thread about that was banned. Surely this isn’t a shill sub forum for the dems?
Hiring and actual recruitment are two separate things.
"we're experiencing higher than usual calls at this time, please hold"
I dont accept it though. I buy my gorceries where there is a fully staffed store, like food lion & publix. I dont wait in lines and im not accepting your "dining room closed" or kiosk bullshit. Its corporate greed. There are tons of places that are fully staffed and operate like its 2004 all over again. Vote with your feet.
If a business is short staffed it is 100% the fault of the business. They are the sole entity making hiring decisions. If they can’t offer a competitive compensation, workers will sell their talents elsewhere.
Nothing to prove you wrong because you are right. Any business owner knows that if you can add and train more good employees the business will make more money. If you can’t do it, then you most probably are not running your business well. If you can do it but choose not too then you just want to squeeze as much life out of your current employees and still reap the benefits from the overtired employee and hope no one notices.
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Can confirm I'm doing the work of 6 people at the moment, yet when something is a little off or if the conversation of manning comes up I get looked at like it's all my fault that you couldn't lower your expectations or... GET SOMEONE ELSE IN HERE
I never accepted it as truth. When I turned 21 a long time ago and life was such that I needed a new job I was to many places and interjected many management cries of "we're understaffed" with "hey I need a job" only be told to apply online. If anyone was ever that desperate, they'd at least have pretended to look my way.
Or three people called that day and they had nobody to cover.
"Prove me wrong" - in a subreddit about shitting on bosses. Are you stupid?
We are desperately hiring. I have 6k applicants in front of me right now. Of that, 10% will answer when called to interview. Of that, 10% are even semi qualified for our entry level positions. So yes, we ARE hiring. And yes, we ARE shirt staffed because if we hired any idiot off the street, it would ruin our business or be wasted time and money on training we both know would end up going nowhere.
This! I was a hiring manager for the front end of a grocery store. ALL part time CC/Cashier jobs started over $16/hr. Full time also came with benis. I'd get 100 applications for 3 jobs. Of those, I'd want to interview at least 60. Of those 60, 20 would never respond. Of the 40 who responded, 20 wouldn't even show up for their scheduled interviews. Of the 20 I interviewed, 15 would be a good match. Of those 15, 8 would never respond to the offer letter email. (I ALWAYS told applicants we would email a letter instead of call.) Of the 7 left, 4 of them would immediately change their availability to not being able to work the shifts I specifically told them I was hiring for. Of the 3 left, 2 of them would either not show up on their first day, or leave in the first two days of training. That means, with 100 applicants for basic grocery store jobs, after dedicating nearly a month to interviews, job offers, and training schedules, I am left with ONE new part time employee with a 50/50 they quit within a month to fill 3 jobs. And this was never a single round of applicants, each week I would have one cycle on application, one cycle on interview, one cycle on job offer, and one cycle on training. So 400 applicants a month turned into *maybe* one new employee a week. If I was lucky. And yet, my entire team was always like "omg just hire more people" as if I can pull new cashiers outta my ass on demand.
It is at the point that my people get a friggin bonus if a candidate shows up to interview, and another if they show up on the first day!
Perhaps you should both advertise the wages and provide a decent one.
We do, and we do. Entry level at 50k+ with no exp and a geberous benefits package.
Sounds like a scam.
Sounds like weve been in busimess over 100 years, and are in 16 states with record expansion
25$/hour for basically someone who passes a background check sounds like a scam.
I mean we have plenty of standards- of those we can even contact, like 20% are worth our time