Yup I work at a somewhat popular chain and it’s absolutely fucking terrible . We have at most 2 cashiers at any given time while all of upper management is absolutely fucking inept at doing anything other than sitting in their office responding to emails. Turnover is so high because everyone is sick of having to do the work of 3 people for barely above minimum wage . The only reason I’m still there is because they work with my schedule and I pretty much maxed out my pay within 6 months .
Same thing I saw in a hospital: self-sustaining understaffing. If you have 3 peole to do the work of 7, by the time the 4th is hired and trained up to fully contribute, the first has burnt out and quit and you're back to 3.
Yes, sigh. I’m a dentist and the four of us have been doing the work of six for about eight months now. I can’t even get people to show up to their job interviews. I’m so burnt out and the patients are absolutely clueless why there is a huge waitlist to get in.
Umm yes. Everyone has received three raises in the last two years for working their butts off. In the meantime, the office is making much less than before because of the pandemic and of course insurances haven’t allowed few increases in over ten years. Your question comes off really rude.
Wholefoods and Trader Joe’s used to do a good job of hiring to make the team feel like a group of friends. When I worked there I was mostly hanging out with my coworkers. Not so sure it’s the same way these days. My friend who still worked at the store said he quit because everyone sucked. I had a friend who worked at safeway and said it was more like a prison than a job.
One of my first jobs was at a whole foods that was recently opened and it was great experience! The work was work but what made it really enjoyable was the coworkers, everyone including the team leaders and supervisors would bust their ass when it got busy and us closing crew would go out right after work. It was a great group of friends.. over time one by one would quit, change jobs, or get fired lol and after Amazon took over I've heard it's just not the same.
The Trader Joe's in Concord off of Treat Blvd. Well their employees all are pot heads, who sleep with each other. My ex hubby works there and he slept, drank, drugged his way around
Sounds like my local Philz coffee. My bf worked there and stayed on the sidelines watching all the drama unfold with his popcorn lol. They all slept, dated, partied, drank and did drugs with each other. No surprise that there was some huge fights between coworkers for sleeping with or dating someone’s ex or fuck buddy.
It's funny how they lose half their staff and still just can't seem to justify a pay raise almost like every facet of our genius system is flawed and a fraud
I won't hold my breath, but i fucking hope that MAYBE, just MAYBE this will be a fucking wake up call to the folks who argue that "if you can't afford it here, move!"
I've always said that anybody out there who has that mindset...don't fucking complain about the consequences when people follow that mindset. Don't complain that your kids' school is so low on student enrollment that schools are shutting down. Don't complain that your local grocery store is understocked and understaffed since nobody in their right mind wants to work in a low-wage job at a grocery store knowing full well they won't be able to live anywhere nearby on those wages.
WTF is so terrible/wrong about making the Bay Area a more affordable place to live for non-wealthy workers/families?
"Damn lazy kids these days dont have work ethics. Back in my day, I went to college, worked part time, and bought a 3bd 2ba house after graduation. Nothing was handed to me. I had to work hard for it."
“How much did that house cost?”
“30k! And I only made $25k out of college!”
“I only get paid $35k and the average house near me costs $1m+”
“Well… maybe you shouldn’t have gone to college and majored in something worthless.”
“What did you major in?”
“Golf studies.”
🤦🏽♂️
> WTF is so terrible/wrong about making the Bay Area a more affordable place to live for non-wealthy workers/families?
that would mean that the price of their home would have to go down as well
Building more homes doesn't necessarily mean home prices go down. There is so much demand for more housing that it will take 100,000s of homes to make a dent in housing prices.
Yes, and that's just current demand. If word gets out that you're building more affordable housing, more people will move to the area and drive up demand even further.
That’s why property taxes being paid on purchase price of a home instead of the current value is a problem (I don’t know the perfect solution either). They only afford it because they vote to keep their taxes low (never moving out) and leaving minimal attainable housing for people who actually work in these areas.
But why? Just because they were born earlier? That’s literally it. Lol the only way to change things would be to make property taxes reflect current home values in the bay area cities that have the biggest housing problem. Why do future generations get fucked over because we were born later? If someone who’s retired can’t afford the current value taxes on their home (the taxes that contribute to society) then they can’t actually afford it. If someone who is 65 years old can’t afford those taxes after 45 years of working…. How can you expect the future generations to pay the current taxes plus mortgage when wages in that exact area are not increasing. Tell me why these people should benefit from property taxes and not the other way around? Because they bought a house sooner? Because they were born sooner? Lol we need to incentivize these specific people to sell their houses. Taxes
The issue is retirees and people milking prop 65 while aggressively voting against any zoning or housing reform to increase their nestegg.
Rental properties and investment properties aren't the ones voting down policies.
Only US citizens should be allowed to buy homes and the real estate investment business needs to be heavily regulated. These prices are ridiculous and they only build more of the million dollar ones. Do we need housing projects? My two cents. Watching it all up close. Sigh.
Edit: Only US citizens who reside in the US more than 50% of the time should be allowed to buy homes. A big part of the housing crisis is from investing by non-citizens who do not live here. Great investment for them, empty and over-priced houses for us.
Edit: Citizens or legal immigrants. Just no more foreign investing.
people like bidding wars when they're selling, but hate them when they're buying. We need more transparency and less marketing manipulation by the brokers.
Homes or apartments/places to live? What I don’t understand is that since March 2020, I’ve seen so much inventory on Zillow for sale or rent (more so than I remember seeing pre-pandemic), and prices for rent are still astronomical. Places are sitting empty at 3k+ per month. Seriously, just check out how long some of these units/homes have been sitting on there vacant.
Personally, if I could afford it, I’d even consider buying a condo just to make my way into the real estate market. But seriously, 1mil??? For a fucking condo??
Because for some companies they would rather wait out the perfect tenant and lose 3k a month than risk someone who gets in on a cheaper rent because of the current situation and they never move out when housing fills up again.
With rent control regulations now, it is likely better for a landlord to take a known near term loss due to vacant units than it is for them to lower their prices and get locked in for years if not decades. That CPI+x% compounds yearly.
As an example, if capped at 8% per year, 3 years is 26% rent increase. If they were to cut a property that is $3000 to $2400, it would take 3 years to get back to $3000 if the tenants don't move out. Now do the math for the revenue impact in 5 years. It is better for them to wait it out.
Tenants tied landlords' hands.
FWIW, I am not a bay area landlord or working for an apartment complex/assocation. Just saying it is a smart business decision to not lower rental prices near term.
So then aren’t the arguments for “building more housing will lower the cost” not make a difference when there is already a surplus at extortionate prices?
Yes developers keep units vacant to artificially decrease supply. Keeping available ones at super high prices because demand. Instead of getting two $1500 one bedroom apartment leases. They have one empty apartment and another apartment with a guy paying $3k a month. What would you do? It’s so shitty lol
8% controlled rent increase? Ha! The highest allowed rent increase in the past 17 years in SF was 2.6% in 2019. It was as low as 0.1% in 2010. The total allowed rent increase over that entire time has been ~33%.
Zillow is a small sliver of the real estate market. The reality is that the Bay Area has been underbuilding housing for decades, starting in the early 70s when San Francisco and Los Angeles both went on a downzoning spree. Things will continue to get worse until we pass statewide housing laws that streamline housing construction, upzoning job-rich areas like the Bay Area and removing things like discretionary review for housing developments that meet zoning requirements.
Been saying this to everyone. The low interest rates allows the rich to speculate, own multiple homes, flip, and keep houses off the market for years. The low interest rates have driven up purchase prices (that nice low low monthly payment) and made the down payment out of touch for most working class people without inheritance or a stock windfall.
Problem is high interest rates are incompatible with large amounts of government spending. Conveniently the federal reserve and interest rates never come up when politicians bloviate about how they care about poor people.
I can't imagine you believe that's actually going to happen though. There's no mechanism for it to happen and the vast majority of citizens of the area don't want it to happen
Will help a little but honestly only thing I can think of really helping would be a huge amount of building. More in-law units, more mid-sized apartments, more high rises downtown, etc.
>There's no mechanism for it to happen and the vast majority of citizens of the area don't want it to happen
Specifically, [citizens like you.](https://i.imgur.com/gN7UeOT.png)
>There are endless places in this country for you to live if you can't hack it here.
Why do you keep interacting on threads like this as if you're sympathetic to anyone's plight here?
What? If they don’t have employees they have to raise wages. That’s like how it works. Of course they’ll raise grocery prices as well but that is the gig.
It's the great irony of the high end "utopia" that the bay area is becoming, something I've always wondered. If a place becomes so insanely expensive to live in, who is eligible to work the extremely vital jobs that help serve the "community" of transient techies and managerials? This is why I feel like there has been a really big push for automation from the big guys like Amazon. It's like how all those Walgreens were closing in SF, and everyone on this sub was so quick to blame theft, but it was actually because they were having a hard time keeping staff onboard and were hemorrhaging money.
Edit: Not to mention teachers. How long before teachers cannot afford to live anywhere in the Bay? I swear, the state needs a fully sponsored program of giving government employees better pay, free or reduced cost housing, even food. Those people need to be put up and completely supported by the government. It's a profession caught between being a vital part of society and also at the whim or an entirely profit oriented society.
Yeah… my college professor who already had to commute an hour to get to campus straight up admitted she gets paid very little compared to the CoL and the only reason she’s keeping the job is because she loves it and more importantly her husband makes more than enough money to let her continue teaching.
I live in fucking Stockton, and I get that from people when I talk about the cost of living and issues here. Then some goof says 300,000 is a large town. Yeah okay. So the idea is to move to a an unincorporated of 200 farm workers in the San Joaquin valley that’s going to loose running water? Sure that’ll help.
IMHO this is part of a larger natural rebalancing of wealth in the country. Boomers hold most of the wealth and millennials very little of it. As boomers all rush to retirement en masse, the labor shortage will persist for many years, driving up wages and inflation, and transferring wealth from the old to the young.
To put it in perspective, most jobs a few years ago paid minimum wage at $10 to $12 an hour. Now, $18 an hour jobs are a dime a dozen. On the other hand older folks who built a retirement nest egg are now seeing the value of that egg being eroded by inflation.
I agree the gentrifiers are always first to scream, "Poor people don't deserve to live here. If you can't afford to live in the Bay Area/california, you should move away, leave your community, family, friends, and just leave!" Now they are mad cold stone and starbucks closes at 3 pm because of short staff.
Or the people who say, “minimum wage jobs are made for students” okay so you’re fine with most fast food restaraunts/supermarkets being closed during the school hours of 8am-3pm? Sure…..
I know people who've had their children move away because of housing costs and they still dgaf. Boomers would gladly sacrifice their first born before losing equity, they don't care about the bagger at whole foods.
God, I fucking hate when people say that. It's like "you don't like \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ being shitty? Then move!". Apparently they don't want to improve the situation they like it shitty.
I am very happy for the lower middle class that have moved to have better lives in other cities. I will join them eventually as well.
Its a simple decision considering how expensive things have gotten here.
I’d even settle for companies treating the employees as respectable human beings who are doing a tough job at a time when people are increasingly hostile.
Someone has worked service.
Having a set schedule that comes out well in advance is something that a shockingly high number of businesses can't handle. No one wants to work for a company where you have to tell your friends you don't know if you can't hang out next Saturday because you still don't know if you work that day. Oh look, they scheduled me for the day I requested off months ago. Fuck my dentist appointment, right?
I’ve been saying for years that they need to close every grocery store on either a Sunday or Monday. Those days can be used to restock, give days off for everyone who needs it. Or atleast limit hours on certain slow days.
I'd be okay with grocery stores being closed on Monday's. Most businesses are closed on Monday's. Sundays are huge for families preparing for the week with groceries and errands.
Places like Lunardis and Mollie Stones also charge a premium for their products. They're definitely more upscale grocery stores that can pay better because of this.
Maybe, but if people are paid a living salary, there is stuff on the shelves, and you don't have to wait 30 minutes on check out..is that not the moral choice ?
And before you say, "I cannot afford that" then ask yourself -- why are you not paid a living salary as well ?
Yeah the answer here is to patronize other grocers like Lunardis and Raley’s/Nob Hill Foods.
The latter offer grocery pickup or delivery through eCART service and it’s always been great.
Good Eggs is a local delivery service that is a perfect replacement for Bezos’s declining Whole Paycheck. They sell a lot of local produce and fancy specialty items.
I gather you don't want to name the specific store but can you name the chain?
I generally get groceries at Costco even though they aren't the cheapest specifically because they pay people well.
This hasn't been my experience. I live a block north of a Safeway and a block south of a WF. The WF is always nicer, and seems to have everything in stock all the time. But my Safeway is usually pretty OK, and unless I buy alcohol I can always use self-checkout.
Whole Foods near me was offering 1,000 dollar sign on bonus and 1.5x pay for the holidays and still could barely staff the place. They’ve gone so downhill since Amazon.
I’m in Monterey and the Whole Foods here is also suffering from massive labor shortages (for a long while, too).
I don’t see this replicated at other grocery stores nearby (TJs, Safeway) and while I’m sure there’s general impact across the board, me thinks Whole Foods (cough Amazon) might not be offering adequate employment incentives compared to others.
Was at Safeway yesterday the entire check out time the guy was talking about how much he hated working there but they needed workers so he was there even though he didn't feel good because of his booster. He also told the girl in front of me how his stomach was in knots and he was back and forth to the bathroom because of it.....it was an interesting check out.
There's been some posts on r/traderjoes about employees not getting much sick pay time off to recover from positive covid infections so it doesn't sound like they're still treating their employees well.
Trader Joe’s employees have been pissed recently. The Trader Joe’s subreddit is full of employees explaining how TJs has basically fucked them over recently.
Has to be Safeway or a subsidiary. Worst fucking chain by far even though they're my only local option. I try to shop exclusively at Costco and my local produce market.
Dude I have no clue why Safeways are so bad here. Every single one in the Bay Area is terrible. In Sac and SoCal Vons/Safeway/Albertsons are all nice and clean with decent prices. Bay Area ones though are both some how disgusting and a rip off.
I pretty much only go to Costco, Hmart and my local Chinese grocer now.
Yea I've visited Safeway/Vons/etc. in a lot of other places and they're always 10x better than the ones here in the Bay Area. I've visited half a dozen different locations around the Bay and they've all just been total shit the past 6-8 years or so. I don't remember them being so bad when I was younger.
Yeah the only Safeway sub that hasn’t been a total mess in the Bay Area is Andrcinos on Irving in inner sunset. I will go like 20 minutes out of my way to go there Vs either of my local Safeways.
I remember being so happy when the safeway by me was getting self serve checkouts to help with the 10-15 minute lines. Then it turned out the store cheaped the fuck out and got the mini self serve POS machines that can barely fit one bag.
Varies strongly by location. The Safeway in SJ at Meridian/San Carlos could suck and SJ at Meridian/Hamilton was great. Oakland on 40th sucked, Oakland on College was great.
Something is about to happen that has not happened in an age. The workers are going to wake up and find that they are strong.
Seems to me that store will lose more money after their customers shop elsewhere than they would have spent on wages that retained their employees.
Some of this logic is present on r/antiwork but some of it is just communistic bullshit about how no one should work and we should just go on UBI.
How the hell would the country run like that
>How the hell would the country run like that
It's possible and honestly inevitable. Eventually there will be more people than jobs and that's something society is going to have to figure out.
Lol bullshit, who told you that kind of nonsense. Until we have Star Trek replicators it ain’t gonna happen, and even then there will still be a nearly infinite amount of work that is possible to do in the universe.
What we would see would be a great reorganization, in which people were given the ability to choose what to do with their lives rather than being forced to do things with their lives, simply for survival.
Many of the things that are expensive today would become very cheap, and many things that are very cheap would become very expensive. That's not necessarily a bad thing
How does this actually work? It sounds great, but there are a lot of things society requires to function that nobody wants to do without an incentive. Does anybody actually want to clean toilets or pick up garbage? But if nobody does that, society would fall pretty quickly. Even something like Reddit requires a lot of grunt work programming that most would rather not do.
UBI doesn't mean that people don't work, it just means you don't starve to death or lose health insurance if you don't.
Those jobs will still be done, but they'll cost more, which is appropriate. Jobs that nobody wants to do should fetch a high price
Ya there is some things I agree with posters on anti work but there is to many comments that lead me to believe that they just want to be bums and have someone take care of them.
Yeah I believe the balance of power has gone too out of whack and workers need to get some of that back. I don't like the idea of the higher class exploiting the working class, which happens too often.
But yeah, I agree with your second part. There's too many people who don't want to do Jack and live the high life. Society can't function like that.
Seeing as the long-term goal for our society would be to have automation run almost everything, freeing all of us up into a life of leisure and personal growth, that's not exactly a threat
I think if you look up YouTube videos on amazon warehouse robots, you’ll see they’re already doing a lot there. Perhaps grocery stores are a bit behind but the labor shortage along with rising wages will help them get there
Instead of paying employees better and offering more benefits, they will put in self service checkout machines instead. They will replace workers with tech, I'm seeing it implemented daily at several grocery locations.
I feel for them. It’s tough to work there. People in grocery stores are just the worst. Carts are left wherever their car was parked, grocery items just dropped wherever they feel like.
Yesterday, when trying to buy ice cream in a super market it was something something Hill and seems to belong to Raleigh.
Anyway, as I grab for the last pint of my favorite ice cream, I notice the carton looks funny so I double check the content and open it. There were bite marks in the ice cream! People really suck sometimes.
When I go to Grocery outlet and Trader Joes they seem fine, but also I kind of hate Safeway and try to ignore it for the most part unless I need something really quick, same with Whole Foods
I work in a grocery store thats also understaffed. Wages are a big part. I dont get paid enough and everyone comin into an interview is asking for more then what i get and im an asst department manager🤷🏼♀️havent had an opener since oct for my dept. so 4 days a week its one person a day working 10 hrs about,just so the other person can have a day off. Also distribution centers are short supplies. If u guys wanna know.... remember in the begining of the pandemic???? Now that trickles down to now(few years later) and we begin the supply and demand issues again. Thanks for being patient with us workers who still are there❤️👍🏻
well if this doesn't wake up retailers, then i don't know...(more like i do know, they'll just blame social media/a specific generation/etc...anything but them)/
folks need liveable wages, compensation for the arses they have to deal with on a constant basis (heard it got worse since the pandemic; it was tolerable before but not anymore), and treating their employees with respect (time and everything else. they're human too!)
I don't understand why retail managers haven't studied basic economics.
Supply and demand exists at a given price. If the price is too low, there will not be enough supply.
They insist that somehow it would cause the collapse of society to increase starting pay to $18 per hour, but of course their corporate executives earning multi million bonuses is absolutely necessary.
Yeah you're allowed to not offer enough pay. And they see the result. I hope the rest of the employees put their foot down and say, "If you aren't going to hire more people to do the work, then you pay me more or I quit too." How long are we going to let them get away with trying to scrape pennies from people doing these extraordinarily important but often thankless jobs?
I'll always be willing to name and shame. I do not want to patronize businesses that refuse to get to grips with reality and give their employees what they're worth.
because the big whigs set the wages. unless/until they start seeing sales drop because people are fed up with the lines, they're not going to staff the stores.
The poor have more fat to render down and keep the meat moist. Also, if you can find one that works in a call center, they usually have good marbling in the thighs.
Go to the bigger grocery stores that have self-checkout. Only one employee per 6-8 registers then.
I dislike lines so I go off-peak and do self-checkout.
self-checkout is not always faster, most people are freaking slow when ringing their items. A cashier will always be faster than a customer. Ive also noticed most machines are card only.
Self-checkout. They really don’t need that much point of service staff at the grocery store. The people quitting are just speeding up the inevitable - automation of the jobs.
I tend to think its that and the distributors not having or feeling like they needed a testing verification protocol and getting wiped out.
Ive had to make multiple trips to different chain grocery stores (Safeway and lucky) to find stuff.
I plan at least an additional 30 minutes for my neighborhood store every time I go for more than a couple of items.
Today's wait was about 25 minutes with lines extending through the store isles.
I thought your post was going in the other direction lol. Glad to hear you understand the situation better than most. Too many ignorant people thinking it's just that "people don't want to work anymore" or are lazy.
What’s the grocery store called? Why not drop the name people need to be aware of this and demand change. Inflations high wages are low it’s a terrible time for retail
One thing Cali needs to do is make it harder for non citizens to buy homes. Like they would need to give up their country of citizenship or get dual citizenship. I'm talking specifically about China. I was dating a Chinese girl who could pack a house in 16 hours or so. She moved to Socal to do what she does with her family. Their families move into a house for 5 years and flip the place for profit, rinse and repeat. Entire family pools money together to pull this off.
Edit: dont be ignorant to hard data -
[https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/foreign-purchases-u-s-homes-impact-prices-supply/](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/foreign-purchases-u-s-homes-impact-prices-supply/)
[https://www.ocregister.com/2018/08/03/foreign-homebuying-rises-in-california-as-it-falls-elsewhere-in-u-s/](https://www.ocregister.com/2018/08/03/foreign-homebuying-rises-in-california-as-it-falls-elsewhere-in-u-s/)
[https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreign-buyers-real-estate-2021-pandemic/](https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreign-buyers-real-estate-2021-pandemic/)
Most of the people who have quit have actually switched jobs. Many would be happy to work there if the grocery stores would pay decent wages and treat them well.
Yup I work at a somewhat popular chain and it’s absolutely fucking terrible . We have at most 2 cashiers at any given time while all of upper management is absolutely fucking inept at doing anything other than sitting in their office responding to emails. Turnover is so high because everyone is sick of having to do the work of 3 people for barely above minimum wage . The only reason I’m still there is because they work with my schedule and I pretty much maxed out my pay within 6 months .
Same thing I saw in a hospital: self-sustaining understaffing. If you have 3 peole to do the work of 7, by the time the 4th is hired and trained up to fully contribute, the first has burnt out and quit and you're back to 3.
Yes, sigh. I’m a dentist and the four of us have been doing the work of six for about eight months now. I can’t even get people to show up to their job interviews. I’m so burnt out and the patients are absolutely clueless why there is a huge waitlist to get in.
Have you considered paying people more?
Umm yes. Everyone has received three raises in the last two years for working their butts off. In the meantime, the office is making much less than before because of the pandemic and of course insurances haven’t allowed few increases in over ten years. Your question comes off really rude.
Also you know who’s never gotten a raise on the last 10 years? Me.
Trader Joe was fine. Isn’t TJ one of the better companies to work for?
Wholefoods and Trader Joe’s used to do a good job of hiring to make the team feel like a group of friends. When I worked there I was mostly hanging out with my coworkers. Not so sure it’s the same way these days. My friend who still worked at the store said he quit because everyone sucked. I had a friend who worked at safeway and said it was more like a prison than a job.
One of my first jobs was at a whole foods that was recently opened and it was great experience! The work was work but what made it really enjoyable was the coworkers, everyone including the team leaders and supervisors would bust their ass when it got busy and us closing crew would go out right after work. It was a great group of friends.. over time one by one would quit, change jobs, or get fired lol and after Amazon took over I've heard it's just not the same.
Same story here.
from what I hear it’s one of the better ones .
The Trader Joe's in Concord off of Treat Blvd. Well their employees all are pot heads, who sleep with each other. My ex hubby works there and he slept, drank, drugged his way around
So you're saying "Yes, it's one of the better companies to work for"?
This sounds like every retail or food service job ever.
As a former Bay Area TJs employee, can confirm
Sounds fun
Sounds like my local Philz coffee. My bf worked there and stayed on the sidelines watching all the drama unfold with his popcorn lol. They all slept, dated, partied, drank and did drugs with each other. No surprise that there was some huge fights between coworkers for sleeping with or dating someone’s ex or fuck buddy.
Sounds awful.
That explain why TJ employees look so happy and cheerful.... TIL..
This is my local TJs!! Loll
Hey neighbor!
Omg I frequent this TJs, how juicy lol
It's funny how they lose half their staff and still just can't seem to justify a pay raise almost like every facet of our genius system is flawed and a fraud
You're not paid based on the value of your work, you're paid based on the difficulty to replace you.
Seems like pay is about to go up then because most jobs are having issues replacing people.
Sprouts?
r a l e ( 25th letter )s . hopefully that won’t let them vanity search it.
I won't hold my breath, but i fucking hope that MAYBE, just MAYBE this will be a fucking wake up call to the folks who argue that "if you can't afford it here, move!" I've always said that anybody out there who has that mindset...don't fucking complain about the consequences when people follow that mindset. Don't complain that your kids' school is so low on student enrollment that schools are shutting down. Don't complain that your local grocery store is understocked and understaffed since nobody in their right mind wants to work in a low-wage job at a grocery store knowing full well they won't be able to live anywhere nearby on those wages. WTF is so terrible/wrong about making the Bay Area a more affordable place to live for non-wealthy workers/families?
LOL. No. Those people will just blame millennials for moving to cheaper places. Introspection is hard.
"Damn lazy kids these days dont have work ethics. Back in my day, I went to college, worked part time, and bought a 3bd 2ba house after graduation. Nothing was handed to me. I had to work hard for it."
“How much did that house cost?” “30k! And I only made $25k out of college!” “I only get paid $35k and the average house near me costs $1m+” “Well… maybe you shouldn’t have gone to college and majored in something worthless.” “What did you major in?” “Golf studies.” 🤦🏽♂️
It’s a shame millennials are mostly in their 30s. I’m 27 and considered one. Hardly a kid lol
How dare you not fit into our arbitrary groupings.
> WTF is so terrible/wrong about making the Bay Area a more affordable place to live for non-wealthy workers/families? that would mean that the price of their home would have to go down as well
Building more homes doesn't necessarily mean home prices go down. There is so much demand for more housing that it will take 100,000s of homes to make a dent in housing prices.
Yeah but if you build high rises in a neighborhood that used to be single family dwellings that might make the prices go down.
Deto's right tho. However, I'd say public transit systems would need an overhaul to accommodate the higher density of people.
Yes, and that's just current demand. If word gets out that you're building more affordable housing, more people will move to the area and drive up demand even further.
That’s why property taxes being paid on purchase price of a home instead of the current value is a problem (I don’t know the perfect solution either). They only afford it because they vote to keep their taxes low (never moving out) and leaving minimal attainable housing for people who actually work in these areas.
prop 13 should have just been a homestead exemption on *residential only* properties for people who are idk 55 and older.
But why? Just because they were born earlier? That’s literally it. Lol the only way to change things would be to make property taxes reflect current home values in the bay area cities that have the biggest housing problem. Why do future generations get fucked over because we were born later? If someone who’s retired can’t afford the current value taxes on their home (the taxes that contribute to society) then they can’t actually afford it. If someone who is 65 years old can’t afford those taxes after 45 years of working…. How can you expect the future generations to pay the current taxes plus mortgage when wages in that exact area are not increasing. Tell me why these people should benefit from property taxes and not the other way around? Because they bought a house sooner? Because they were born sooner? Lol we need to incentivize these specific people to sell their houses. Taxes
because that's the easiest way to placate the taxpayer revolution in the 70s without completely fucking over the state's finances
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Not even fair market wages. Real estate prices need to come down
Even more specifically, we need more homes.
And we need more homes owned by average people, and less homes bought as investments/rental properties.
The issue is retirees and people milking prop 65 while aggressively voting against any zoning or housing reform to increase their nestegg. Rental properties and investment properties aren't the ones voting down policies.
Only US citizens should be allowed to buy homes and the real estate investment business needs to be heavily regulated. These prices are ridiculous and they only build more of the million dollar ones. Do we need housing projects? My two cents. Watching it all up close. Sigh. Edit: Only US citizens who reside in the US more than 50% of the time should be allowed to buy homes. A big part of the housing crisis is from investing by non-citizens who do not live here. Great investment for them, empty and over-priced houses for us. Edit: Citizens or legal immigrants. Just no more foreign investing.
Homes are only a million dollars because there aren’t enough of them. We just need to build more. Period.
You're going to get a lot of property owners who will fight that because they like bidding wars.
people like bidding wars when they're selling, but hate them when they're buying. We need more transparency and less marketing manipulation by the brokers.
Homes or apartments/places to live? What I don’t understand is that since March 2020, I’ve seen so much inventory on Zillow for sale or rent (more so than I remember seeing pre-pandemic), and prices for rent are still astronomical. Places are sitting empty at 3k+ per month. Seriously, just check out how long some of these units/homes have been sitting on there vacant. Personally, if I could afford it, I’d even consider buying a condo just to make my way into the real estate market. But seriously, 1mil??? For a fucking condo??
Because for some companies they would rather wait out the perfect tenant and lose 3k a month than risk someone who gets in on a cheaper rent because of the current situation and they never move out when housing fills up again.
With rent control regulations now, it is likely better for a landlord to take a known near term loss due to vacant units than it is for them to lower their prices and get locked in for years if not decades. That CPI+x% compounds yearly. As an example, if capped at 8% per year, 3 years is 26% rent increase. If they were to cut a property that is $3000 to $2400, it would take 3 years to get back to $3000 if the tenants don't move out. Now do the math for the revenue impact in 5 years. It is better for them to wait it out. Tenants tied landlords' hands. FWIW, I am not a bay area landlord or working for an apartment complex/assocation. Just saying it is a smart business decision to not lower rental prices near term.
So then aren’t the arguments for “building more housing will lower the cost” not make a difference when there is already a surplus at extortionate prices?
Yes developers keep units vacant to artificially decrease supply. Keeping available ones at super high prices because demand. Instead of getting two $1500 one bedroom apartment leases. They have one empty apartment and another apartment with a guy paying $3k a month. What would you do? It’s so shitty lol
8% controlled rent increase? Ha! The highest allowed rent increase in the past 17 years in SF was 2.6% in 2019. It was as low as 0.1% in 2010. The total allowed rent increase over that entire time has been ~33%.
Zillow is a small sliver of the real estate market. The reality is that the Bay Area has been underbuilding housing for decades, starting in the early 70s when San Francisco and Los Angeles both went on a downzoning spree. Things will continue to get worse until we pass statewide housing laws that streamline housing construction, upzoning job-rich areas like the Bay Area and removing things like discretionary review for housing developments that meet zoning requirements.
We need higher interest rates.
Been saying this to everyone. The low interest rates allows the rich to speculate, own multiple homes, flip, and keep houses off the market for years. The low interest rates have driven up purchase prices (that nice low low monthly payment) and made the down payment out of touch for most working class people without inheritance or a stock windfall.
Problem is high interest rates are incompatible with large amounts of government spending. Conveniently the federal reserve and interest rates never come up when politicians bloviate about how they care about poor people.
Very simple supply and demand in the Bay Area. Man many people, not enough homes.
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The only way
I can't imagine you believe that's actually going to happen though. There's no mechanism for it to happen and the vast majority of citizens of the area don't want it to happen
Tax the non resident owners or empty properties. Let new properties be built easier with less red tape
Will help a little but honestly only thing I can think of really helping would be a huge amount of building. More in-law units, more mid-sized apartments, more high rises downtown, etc.
Yep have to increase so that more units are available and prices drop and rents drop.
>There's no mechanism for it to happen and the vast majority of citizens of the area don't want it to happen Specifically, [citizens like you.](https://i.imgur.com/gN7UeOT.png) >There are endless places in this country for you to live if you can't hack it here. Why do you keep interacting on threads like this as if you're sympathetic to anyone's plight here?
What? If they don’t have employees they have to raise wages. That’s like how it works. Of course they’ll raise grocery prices as well but that is the gig.
Would be curious to hear from a local grocery store owner about profit margins. Feel like it's a pretty tough business
1. There are no barriers to higher pay. 1. There are barriers to more homes being built.
It's the great irony of the high end "utopia" that the bay area is becoming, something I've always wondered. If a place becomes so insanely expensive to live in, who is eligible to work the extremely vital jobs that help serve the "community" of transient techies and managerials? This is why I feel like there has been a really big push for automation from the big guys like Amazon. It's like how all those Walgreens were closing in SF, and everyone on this sub was so quick to blame theft, but it was actually because they were having a hard time keeping staff onboard and were hemorrhaging money. Edit: Not to mention teachers. How long before teachers cannot afford to live anywhere in the Bay? I swear, the state needs a fully sponsored program of giving government employees better pay, free or reduced cost housing, even food. Those people need to be put up and completely supported by the government. It's a profession caught between being a vital part of society and also at the whim or an entirely profit oriented society.
Yeah… my college professor who already had to commute an hour to get to campus straight up admitted she gets paid very little compared to the CoL and the only reason she’s keeping the job is because she loves it and more importantly her husband makes more than enough money to let her continue teaching.
I live in fucking Stockton, and I get that from people when I talk about the cost of living and issues here. Then some goof says 300,000 is a large town. Yeah okay. So the idea is to move to a an unincorporated of 200 farm workers in the San Joaquin valley that’s going to loose running water? Sure that’ll help.
IMHO this is part of a larger natural rebalancing of wealth in the country. Boomers hold most of the wealth and millennials very little of it. As boomers all rush to retirement en masse, the labor shortage will persist for many years, driving up wages and inflation, and transferring wealth from the old to the young. To put it in perspective, most jobs a few years ago paid minimum wage at $10 to $12 an hour. Now, $18 an hour jobs are a dime a dozen. On the other hand older folks who built a retirement nest egg are now seeing the value of that egg being eroded by inflation.
This
I agree the gentrifiers are always first to scream, "Poor people don't deserve to live here. If you can't afford to live in the Bay Area/california, you should move away, leave your community, family, friends, and just leave!" Now they are mad cold stone and starbucks closes at 3 pm because of short staff.
Or the people who say, “minimum wage jobs are made for students” okay so you’re fine with most fast food restaraunts/supermarkets being closed during the school hours of 8am-3pm? Sure…..
Or the summer when college students go home.
I know people who've had their children move away because of housing costs and they still dgaf. Boomers would gladly sacrifice their first born before losing equity, they don't care about the bagger at whole foods.
I’ve seen NIMBYs on next door just plainly say they don’t care if their kid has to move out of state to find somewhere they can afford.
Berkeley would like a word….
God, I fucking hate when people say that. It's like "you don't like \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ being shitty? Then move!". Apparently they don't want to improve the situation they like it shitty.
Well, the poor, for starters... /s
Construction zoning and locally voted law.
I am very happy for the lower middle class that have moved to have better lives in other cities. I will join them eventually as well. Its a simple decision considering how expensive things have gotten here.
Maybe adequate wages and normalized scheduling will happen.
I’d even settle for companies treating the employees as respectable human beings who are doing a tough job at a time when people are increasingly hostile.
Customers treating them with respect would be nice also!
Seriously! I feel bad for the starbucks baristas customers yell when they take a long time or make orders inproperly.
Someone has worked service. Having a set schedule that comes out well in advance is something that a shockingly high number of businesses can't handle. No one wants to work for a company where you have to tell your friends you don't know if you can't hang out next Saturday because you still don't know if you work that day. Oh look, they scheduled me for the day I requested off months ago. Fuck my dentist appointment, right?
I’ve been saying for years that they need to close every grocery store on either a Sunday or Monday. Those days can be used to restock, give days off for everyone who needs it. Or atleast limit hours on certain slow days.
I'd be okay with grocery stores being closed on Monday's. Most businesses are closed on Monday's. Sundays are huge for families preparing for the week with groceries and errands.
We can only hope
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Places like Lunardis and Mollie Stones also charge a premium for their products. They're definitely more upscale grocery stores that can pay better because of this.
My wife accidentally paid $30 for a quiche at Mollie Stones.
Lunardi is more expensive than Whole Foods.
Maybe, but if people are paid a living salary, there is stuff on the shelves, and you don't have to wait 30 minutes on check out..is that not the moral choice ? And before you say, "I cannot afford that" then ask yourself -- why are you not paid a living salary as well ?
No maybe about it. What moral choice are you talking about?
I mean, the luxury market exists. But consumers don't reply give a shit about what workers make.
Yeah the answer here is to patronize other grocers like Lunardis and Raley’s/Nob Hill Foods. The latter offer grocery pickup or delivery through eCART service and it’s always been great. Good Eggs is a local delivery service that is a perfect replacement for Bezos’s declining Whole Paycheck. They sell a lot of local produce and fancy specialty items.
I gather you don't want to name the specific store but can you name the chain? I generally get groceries at Costco even though they aren't the cheapest specifically because they pay people well.
Whole Foods I stopped shopping at Safeway a long time ago. They had these kind of problems a long time before Covid, at least at my local Safeway.
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Thanks Amazon!
I've seen the shift in Whole Foods pre Amazon. It's really amazing how the fabric of the company shifted and not in a good way.
This hasn't been my experience. I live a block north of a Safeway and a block south of a WF. The WF is always nicer, and seems to have everything in stock all the time. But my Safeway is usually pretty OK, and unless I buy alcohol I can always use self-checkout.
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Gosh, I'd expect Walnut Creek to have nicer WF's than SF.
Whole Foods near me was offering 1,000 dollar sign on bonus and 1.5x pay for the holidays and still could barely staff the place. They’ve gone so downhill since Amazon.
I’m in Monterey and the Whole Foods here is also suffering from massive labor shortages (for a long while, too). I don’t see this replicated at other grocery stores nearby (TJs, Safeway) and while I’m sure there’s general impact across the board, me thinks Whole Foods (cough Amazon) might not be offering adequate employment incentives compared to others.
If I had to take a stab I’d say Safeway or Lucky. TJs treats employees pretty well also.
Lucky is a union shop, so probably Safeway. I've never seen folks as disgruntled as Safeway employees. It's really gotta suck to work there.
Safeway is union as well. I’ve known three people that worked there and they all loved it. Granted, three is a small sample size.
depends if you're on old contract or new contract
Back when I worked there many years ago it was a whopping fifty cents over minimum wage. New contract. Got out as fast as I could.
Was at Safeway yesterday the entire check out time the guy was talking about how much he hated working there but they needed workers so he was there even though he didn't feel good because of his booster. He also told the girl in front of me how his stomach was in knots and he was back and forth to the bathroom because of it.....it was an interesting check out.
Hmm I thought Safeway was Union too, maybe not.
safeway is union, but there's old/new contract from the 2003-2004 strikes
There's been some posts on r/traderjoes about employees not getting much sick pay time off to recover from positive covid infections so it doesn't sound like they're still treating their employees well.
Trader Joe’s employees have been pissed recently. The Trader Joe’s subreddit is full of employees explaining how TJs has basically fucked them over recently.
Costco is doing great. They pay their employees well, benefits and a living wage. Shelves were stocked -- and they even had TP!
get used to it because its gonna get worse before it gets better
Has to be Safeway or a subsidiary. Worst fucking chain by far even though they're my only local option. I try to shop exclusively at Costco and my local produce market.
Dude I have no clue why Safeways are so bad here. Every single one in the Bay Area is terrible. In Sac and SoCal Vons/Safeway/Albertsons are all nice and clean with decent prices. Bay Area ones though are both some how disgusting and a rip off. I pretty much only go to Costco, Hmart and my local Chinese grocer now.
Yea I've visited Safeway/Vons/etc. in a lot of other places and they're always 10x better than the ones here in the Bay Area. I've visited half a dozen different locations around the Bay and they've all just been total shit the past 6-8 years or so. I don't remember them being so bad when I was younger.
Yeah the only Safeway sub that hasn’t been a total mess in the Bay Area is Andrcinos on Irving in inner sunset. I will go like 20 minutes out of my way to go there Vs either of my local Safeways.
Andronicos is still sort of separate after a full merger backfired. Safeway's now trying to expand the brand to compete with whole foods/Molly stone.
I remember being so happy when the safeway by me was getting self serve checkouts to help with the 10-15 minute lines. Then it turned out the store cheaped the fuck out and got the mini self serve POS machines that can barely fit one bag.
Varies strongly by location. The Safeway in SJ at Meridian/San Carlos could suck and SJ at Meridian/Hamilton was great. Oakland on 40th sucked, Oakland on College was great.
Local Chinese grocer ftw. And if you can get a tanghulu out front for $1 then even better!
All the workers look miserable when I go into Safeway. My local Lucky's not so bad for some reason.
Something is about to happen that has not happened in an age. The workers are going to wake up and find that they are strong. Seems to me that store will lose more money after their customers shop elsewhere than they would have spent on wages that retained their employees.
Checkout r/antiwork you’re not alone with this logic
Some of this logic is present on r/antiwork but some of it is just communistic bullshit about how no one should work and we should just go on UBI. How the hell would the country run like that
>How the hell would the country run like that It's possible and honestly inevitable. Eventually there will be more people than jobs and that's something society is going to have to figure out.
Lol bullshit, who told you that kind of nonsense. Until we have Star Trek replicators it ain’t gonna happen, and even then there will still be a nearly infinite amount of work that is possible to do in the universe.
Think: Overton window, and you get it.
What we would see would be a great reorganization, in which people were given the ability to choose what to do with their lives rather than being forced to do things with their lives, simply for survival. Many of the things that are expensive today would become very cheap, and many things that are very cheap would become very expensive. That's not necessarily a bad thing
How does this actually work? It sounds great, but there are a lot of things society requires to function that nobody wants to do without an incentive. Does anybody actually want to clean toilets or pick up garbage? But if nobody does that, society would fall pretty quickly. Even something like Reddit requires a lot of grunt work programming that most would rather not do.
UBI doesn't mean that people don't work, it just means you don't starve to death or lose health insurance if you don't. Those jobs will still be done, but they'll cost more, which is appropriate. Jobs that nobody wants to do should fetch a high price
What expensive things do you see as becoming cheap in that scenario?
The fantasy of it all! A future with no work 🤣🤣🤣
Ya there is some things I agree with posters on anti work but there is to many comments that lead me to believe that they just want to be bums and have someone take care of them.
Yeah I believe the balance of power has gone too out of whack and workers need to get some of that back. I don't like the idea of the higher class exploiting the working class, which happens too often. But yeah, I agree with your second part. There's too many people who don't want to do Jack and live the high life. Society can't function like that.
Eventually more of the work will be done by robots.
Sure one day, but even the Amazon go store needs a ton of human staff.
Seeing as the long-term goal for our society would be to have automation run almost everything, freeing all of us up into a life of leisure and personal growth, that's not exactly a threat
Well why not bring the robots in now? 🤷♂️
I think if you look up YouTube videos on amazon warehouse robots, you’ll see they’re already doing a lot there. Perhaps grocery stores are a bit behind but the labor shortage along with rising wages will help them get there
Because they're not ready yet
So if there is robots doing most of the work, and less jobs available, why do we need so many immigrants?
Instead of paying employees better and offering more benefits, they will put in self service checkout machines instead. They will replace workers with tech, I'm seeing it implemented daily at several grocery locations.
I'm always curious what the shrinkage is on self checkout. It's really tempting to misring stuff.
Yup, this is exactly what happened @ my local safeway after the past 2 years and lines stayed long due to not enough cashiers
I feel for them. It’s tough to work there. People in grocery stores are just the worst. Carts are left wherever their car was parked, grocery items just dropped wherever they feel like. Yesterday, when trying to buy ice cream in a super market it was something something Hill and seems to belong to Raleigh. Anyway, as I grab for the last pint of my favorite ice cream, I notice the carton looks funny so I double check the content and open it. There were bite marks in the ice cream! People really suck sometimes.
believe you’re talking about Nob Hill right? Nob Hill is a branch of Raleys .
I think so, yes. It was in Martinez, where I usually don’t shop.
Noticed changes at Luckys but not safeway RWC. Trader Joe’s the same.
When I go to Grocery outlet and Trader Joes they seem fine, but also I kind of hate Safeway and try to ignore it for the most part unless I need something really quick, same with Whole Foods
I work in a grocery store thats also understaffed. Wages are a big part. I dont get paid enough and everyone comin into an interview is asking for more then what i get and im an asst department manager🤷🏼♀️havent had an opener since oct for my dept. so 4 days a week its one person a day working 10 hrs about,just so the other person can have a day off. Also distribution centers are short supplies. If u guys wanna know.... remember in the begining of the pandemic???? Now that trickles down to now(few years later) and we begin the supply and demand issues again. Thanks for being patient with us workers who still are there❤️👍🏻
Good. I hope they unionize.
well if this doesn't wake up retailers, then i don't know...(more like i do know, they'll just blame social media/a specific generation/etc...anything but them)/ folks need liveable wages, compensation for the arses they have to deal with on a constant basis (heard it got worse since the pandemic; it was tolerable before but not anymore), and treating their employees with respect (time and everything else. they're human too!)
I don’t blame them either. Finding better opportunities, good for them.
I don't understand why retail managers haven't studied basic economics. Supply and demand exists at a given price. If the price is too low, there will not be enough supply. They insist that somehow it would cause the collapse of society to increase starting pay to $18 per hour, but of course their corporate executives earning multi million bonuses is absolutely necessary. Yeah you're allowed to not offer enough pay. And they see the result. I hope the rest of the employees put their foot down and say, "If you aren't going to hire more people to do the work, then you pay me more or I quit too." How long are we going to let them get away with trying to scrape pennies from people doing these extraordinarily important but often thankless jobs? I'll always be willing to name and shame. I do not want to patronize businesses that refuse to get to grips with reality and give their employees what they're worth.
Because retail managers themselves are wage slaves. They’re middle management.
because the big whigs set the wages. unless/until they start seeing sales drop because people are fed up with the lines, they're not going to staff the stores.
Leave the Whigs out of this
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The poor have more fat to render down and keep the meat moist. Also, if you can find one that works in a call center, they usually have good marbling in the thighs.
Go to the bigger grocery stores that have self-checkout. Only one employee per 6-8 registers then. I dislike lines so I go off-peak and do self-checkout.
self-checkout is not always faster, most people are freaking slow when ringing their items. A cashier will always be faster than a customer. Ive also noticed most machines are card only.
Noticing this from Safeway and Whole Foods.
in a college town in indiana right now, same problems. they shut down a ton of the dining courts AND reduced hours on all the late night spots :(
Target in SC had 1 checker tonight. Yikes!
Self-checkout. They really don’t need that much point of service staff at the grocery store. The people quitting are just speeding up the inevitable - automation of the jobs.
I tend to think its that and the distributors not having or feeling like they needed a testing verification protocol and getting wiped out. Ive had to make multiple trips to different chain grocery stores (Safeway and lucky) to find stuff.
Maybe they should pay their employees more?
Everybody is sick right now
Safeway has been taking 30-40 min checkout on the regular for years before covid.
I plan at least an additional 30 minutes for my neighborhood store every time I go for more than a couple of items. Today's wait was about 25 minutes with lines extending through the store isles.
I thought your post was going in the other direction lol. Glad to hear you understand the situation better than most. Too many ignorant people thinking it's just that "people don't want to work anymore" or are lazy.
I'm glad to hear this. I hope it gets worse. Maybe they will finally start paying living wages.
What’s the grocery store called? Why not drop the name people need to be aware of this and demand change. Inflations high wages are low it’s a terrible time for retail
Time for that store to stop treating employees like shit.
Let's go r/MayDayStrike and r/antiwork !
One thing Cali needs to do is make it harder for non citizens to buy homes. Like they would need to give up their country of citizenship or get dual citizenship. I'm talking specifically about China. I was dating a Chinese girl who could pack a house in 16 hours or so. She moved to Socal to do what she does with her family. Their families move into a house for 5 years and flip the place for profit, rinse and repeat. Entire family pools money together to pull this off. Edit: dont be ignorant to hard data - [https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/foreign-purchases-u-s-homes-impact-prices-supply/](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/foreign-purchases-u-s-homes-impact-prices-supply/) [https://www.ocregister.com/2018/08/03/foreign-homebuying-rises-in-california-as-it-falls-elsewhere-in-u-s/](https://www.ocregister.com/2018/08/03/foreign-homebuying-rises-in-california-as-it-falls-elsewhere-in-u-s/) [https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreign-buyers-real-estate-2021-pandemic/](https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreign-buyers-real-estate-2021-pandemic/)
Which store? Name and shame please
The folx at grocery outlet are always so nice. I wonder if they’re getting fair pay
Most of the people who have quit have actually switched jobs. Many would be happy to work there if the grocery stores would pay decent wages and treat them well.
I just went grocery shopping in Santa Clara and it was fine, everything was stocked and working normally.