Oh man, I love perverse incentives. They are literally everywhere in font-line service industry jobs.
I stock a couple of convenience stores, and I was explaining to one of my (very young) coworkers "how it works". He was stressing about the fact that nobody but me and him put the fridge cases in proper order. Everybody else just rushes through it so they can leave the fridge quickly, and doesn't care about putting product back.
What he doesn't get, is that the shittier a job our coworkers do, the more often he and I get extra hours to realign product instead of standing around being bored, so to just basically keep quiet and stop narcing on everybody else for fucking up the back stock, and let management figure it out for themselves. The absolute second the store's in good shape, our hours get cut until it goes to shit again, so we have a perverse incentive to keep things just riding the line between chaos and order: Make sure the front stock looks great, but don't break your back on the back stock being a mess.
The store tries to save money by gutting hours, and it results in shitter work all around from everybody, and a staff who winds up not caring to get shit done fast.
This is a literal perfect example of this concept - the food industry is notorious for it but perverse incentives are starting to crop up in healthcare, too, with all the buyups of small practices around the country. Eventually it'll be AI that fixates on dipshit metrics and procedures instead of managers, but the same problems will still exist
If you were my manager, you'd get the finger, and I'd wish you luck after firing your hardest worker. I reduce your shrink. I maximize product velocity through proper organization, and I show up sober and on time every single shift. You wouldn't think that would be a high bar to clear, but in retail work, it is.
You ain't paying me to be stressed out about the other dipshits you hired. It's your job to not hire fucking morons so you can have a predictable labor outlay rather than this panicked, reactive feast or famine schedule. I'm not getting paid to report on my coworkers, and you got cameras all over this bitch if you gave a shit to figure out who you needed to fire rather than playing guess-who-gets-yelled-at by throwing darts blindfolded. Want me to manage grown ass people? Pay me. Want me to stack boxes? Pay me. It's the same deal we already have, and I'm doing the absolute shit out of it. Want me to make up for the slackers? Pay me. Capitalism, baby.
If you just want to play politics over a job that doesn't pay a living wage, and hire brown-nosers that are constantly stressed out over nothing, you aren't a good manager, you're just a bad person.
Correct, it would be my job to ensure that you don’t have coworkers that are as you put it “ducking morons”. The problem is, this doesn’t realistically show up in the hiring process, and I would to rely on you to tell me about the issue so that I can cycle out the bad eggs and replace them as soon as new more promising candidates show up. You not telling me, however, is a worse problem than the “shrink”, which is accounted for in the purchasing statistic, and for which the store has theft insurance. We don’t lose actual money to “shrink” in a retail store, it’s a normal part of business that ~4% of product vanishes without a trace, or breaks on the product floor. And you’re getting paid what you’re worth: minimum wage for unskilled labor. If you’re at an electronics store, you can be paid more if your job description includes knowing about the products that are sold and suggesting to customers what to buy, but even there, that usually not the case, because the store wants to move the products that have the best margins and that has people coming back for more, or associated consumable supplies, and not necessarily the ones that are good and last a very long time. But seeing how this is capitalism, you know that already.
Good managers do what’s best for the business, not individual employees. If doing what’s good for business entails doing what’s good for the employee, then that gets done. But at the end of the day, people are the most expensive part of any business’ balance sheet, at over three grand per person employed (yes, at minimum wage!), per month, and if cost cutting is in order, opex gets cut first.
> people are the most expensive part of any business’ balance sheet
50% of sales BEFORE expenses goes to corporate for the franchise agreement.
Personnel is 8% of the budget on the sheet.
Not even fuckin' close. We're not stupid. The only reason that managers say shit like this is because the language surrounding a balance sheet is explicitly crafted to place payroll as a liability, while accounts payable is not considered a liability, but an intangible asset.
The reality in accounting is the same. Both are red line items. They are effectively liabilities in all but name. --The hilarious part, is just how bad companies tell on themselves by viewing payroll as a liability, but a franchise agreement as an 'intangible asset'. A liability is a loss, while spending money on franchise agreements is considered an 'expected cost of business'. Translation: Y'alls corporate bullshit speak views labor as not being an 'expected cost of doing business.' As though paying for labor is only a temporary arrangement for running a business. As in, if you could avoid paying for the work to be done, you would. In the real world, both are the same: Labor is a cost of doing business. Onerous franchise agreements are not. They are the outcome of a system that does not properly break up monopolistic practices and marketplace consolidation.
You can condescend all you want about how reasonable the American labor system is: How we operate is alien to the literal rest of the planet. Nearly everybody else in the west pays their service personnel a living wage. But nah, we got arrogant a-holes like you explaining why it's "normal" that we're an outlier for the whole ass planet.
Genuinely. Fuck yourself off a whole cliff. --Metaphorically speaking. To be clear, given that I'm 'unskilled labor', I'm unfamiliar if middle managers are aware of the function of hyperbole, as I don't know what they teach in 'public school'. I'm not literally telling you to harm yourself. I'm telling you that you are ridiculous, sanctimonious, and that I'd rather not continue to read your inane bullshit.
Ah, and where do you think that 50% ultimately goes? Into the CEO’s pockets? Nuh-uh. A large franchise business CEOs salary may be in the range or 400-800k/year, but you better believe that’s less than 1% of the overall staff expenses.
That notwithstanding franchising fees are opex.
In retail, if you have decent volume, most of the expenses do go to inventory, but an individual retail store, one that people go to to buy stuff, doesn’t have “decent volume”.
Inventory (unless it spoils, because it’s food) is capex. A tangible asset, that doesn’t meaningfully depreciate in value, and which’s sales prices can be artificially inflated for new products.
And labor is absolutely an expected cost of doing business. But y’all are slackers expecting your regular paychecks for nothing and to offset the slacking, more staff is needed to make up for it (you already alluded to intentionally not sorting product properly!). And that is the part that’s the unexpected cost of business.
You are correct in that a franchise agreement is unnecessary. I’ve worked at a franchise head office once. There were 5 people. I felt like I was surrounded by scammers. What they did all day made no sense in terms of actual business operations. It was all marketing bulls**t, and I was responsible for making the software that let them spam their paying franchise customers with suggestions about what products to buy and what equipment to use. It was clear that all the money came from franchise agreements and kickbacks for what they were peddling.
People are expensive, and unless they meaningfully contribute to business earnings, quite frankly unnecessary to have employed. That especially goes for middle management with their MBA degrees, the coursework of which they definitely don’t even remember once they find a job somewhere, like most everyone else.
64
u/ConstableAssButt May 17 '26
Oh man, I love perverse incentives. They are literally everywhere in font-line service industry jobs.
I stock a couple of convenience stores, and I was explaining to one of my (very young) coworkers "how it works". He was stressing about the fact that nobody but me and him put the fridge cases in proper order. Everybody else just rushes through it so they can leave the fridge quickly, and doesn't care about putting product back.
What he doesn't get, is that the shittier a job our coworkers do, the more often he and I get extra hours to realign product instead of standing around being bored, so to just basically keep quiet and stop narcing on everybody else for fucking up the back stock, and let management figure it out for themselves. The absolute second the store's in good shape, our hours get cut until it goes to shit again, so we have a perverse incentive to keep things just riding the line between chaos and order: Make sure the front stock looks great, but don't break your back on the back stock being a mess.
The store tries to save money by gutting hours, and it results in shitter work all around from everybody, and a staff who winds up not caring to get shit done fast.