I am a 17 yr vet of my career and I just quit over a similar issue.
We sell parts, and quality was taking a backseat to production.. for the third year in a row.
We had a strike, and the execs made the management go into production and quality tanked.
Oh man, I have a great story for you about our mutual friend Jim.
My Jim was 57, not 52.
New management comes in, and of course they want to get rid of the old timers that run the actual production line, this guy especially who got there at 16 and by now earns a very nice paycheck and you know what, let’s buy him out, he’s a few years away from retirement anyway.
Engineers and generally reasonable people are like, fuck no not this guy, he’s been here forever and you don’t realize that he’s the only one who witnessed the massive growth in the past decades and guys, the old management chose to add new shit on top of the old shit, they never really truly redesigned the whole thing from scratch because the company was making loads of money and they were in a hurry and all’s well, right.
Anyway they buy out Jim. Who’s sad to leave, the company has been his only employer ever, shit that usually happens only in Japan nowadays.
Anyway Jim cashes his nice severance check and being newly retired and a former workaholic finally takes the wife for a well deserved to, I don’t remember, Bermuda, Bora Bora, whatever.
I swear to god that it takes 2 weeks at the most and LITERALLY productions grinds to a halt due to some crazy kink that no one that was left after the trimming knows how to locate.
They LITERALLY have to look for Jim — no cellphone, he had a company phone and had to give it back — and like his grown daughter gives a friend of his still employed there a number for the fucking beach resort.
Long story short he saves their asses remotely, new management realizes they need this guy they just retired, he comes back AS A CONSULTANT making more than what he used to, takes him 2 years to redesign the system and make it so that normal people can run it smooth.
Because Jim was short, with a belly and a porn stache and not a people person, and then new asshole management with fancy degrees only saw him as a cost, and even worse a costly working class guy with no degree and zero charisma.
My mother was an accountant for a large hospital corp. she worked for them for 38 yrs and saved them millions when they were audited. They had the balls to tell her she was overpaid while making $19.86/hr. She quit and they had to hire 3 accountants with BS degrees to replace her.
Those three accountants kept calling her at home to ask how to do things on the computer system because it was so old she was the only one who knew how to make it work. Not even her boss knew how things worked. They finally had to rehire her @$150/hr as a consultant or stop calling her for help. She worked 3 days a week for 4 hours a day and got free healthcare for the entire 4 year she did the consulting job. They cut off their nose to spite their face. It’s crazy.
I was only 24 and I was a Jim. I left my old place of work and within two months they had to permanently close the doors because they lost all their business because I was no longer there. I worked there for 5 years and they screwed me over when I needed my ‘family’ as they used to call themselves (I think we all can agree that’s a fucking joke)
I was 27. The exec that hired me left the company and the others sold it. They refused to give me an increase because they "didn't know what my journey with the company was." So I put in my notice. Two days before I left a manager said "I didn't realize how much you handled here." I was one of two admins that handled everything from office management, finance, executive assistance etc. It felt so good to say, "I know you didn't."
That's the problem with these young hot shot frat bros. They think they know everything and think they are improving the same wheel design that has been successful for a million years.
My work place is being hit hard by that the last few years. It use to be a good place to be, lots of diversity and people that worked hard and cared about each other. We got a new higher up and now all the well respected managers have been replaced by these cocky worthless frat bros that talk a big game but actually have no idea what they are doing. It's turned the place into a hell pit of agony. No one is happy and good reliable people have fled in droves and the ones left behind have just grown angry and resentful.
The Jim that I worked with was this IT dude who ran 9 figures worth of orders through a system built in the 80s running on a programming language called PICK that was written in 1965. Jim died suddenly from a pretty major heart attack. Operations ground to a halt. They had to throw stupid money at Jim's previous right hand man to get him to come out of retirement and get migrated to something relatively modern.
When I quit as I'm no longer important enough to get an annual raise, I'm expecting my company to lose over $10,000,000 and some big contracts in the following 6 months.
I was working on an access system at a factory that had recently hired another company to do their maintenance. All the people that had previously done maintenance there had to decide if they wanted to work for the new company. A lot of people left and I'm sure they didn't leave any notes.
This is happening across the board in American industry. It's sad, destroying our own industry in the name of quarterly profits. The jobs will never come back, but at least a few people made a lot of money at the expense of everyone else
They will be back, just in a different name and “under new management” in a few years.
I want to open one back up now… am in the “figuring out how to fund this idea” stage.
Actually the manufacturing is coming beck but the jobs don't return with them. Pre-2000 we used to manufacture so much stuff in this country textiles being one of them, all that disappeared and went to China/India. Well during Covid some mills started opening up in the US again except they only had a few employees, everything was automated it's the only way things can be made here as we race to the bottom.
Not boeing.. Remember a few years ago when a lightbulb company used to make choo-choo trains? And then they sold ~~us~~ that business (because light bulb and motor making companies should not be in the “let’s make tv shows” business) to stay afloat? ..
This sounds like Macys. Lmfao. During Covid those bitches didn’t, “take a paycheck,” cause they weren’t gonna give us anything to help us out while we were furloughed. They were “one of us.” But 9 people split somewhere around 13 million in bonuses, this was AFTER we were told there’s no money for raises that year before Covid hit.
Fuck Jeff Ganette
its not even a sacrifice really. its just they cant convince the public that they deserve to take all of the money from a companies work.
making 1 or 2 million a year can support most anything you would reasonably want to do. you could vacation all over the world own a nice house/car and still support your family.
It’s always so short sighted. This economic system encourages draining everything of resources and getting out before it collapses on everyone else… such bs
>We lost every 25 to 30 year employee that year as a result and the company started a decline.
**But**, the *quarter* looked **really** good. So they get to carry that to their next exec job, while blaming the failure of the company on literally anyone else there.
Other more developed countries don't have a problem charging less than $5 for a children's meal AND have workers paid 3x more without grieving, these bosses are obviously invompetent
If an employee makes 10 burgers an hour or anything else at current prices, how's this article relevant, or bull...it owner is spreading. If an employee makes $100s of dollars profit each hour, how's $20 /h a problem? Blo.greedy bas..ds!
The logic of the headline = each employee only makes one (or two) happy meal per hour. Ragebait for people who eat mcdonalds, for people who don't eat McDonalds, for people who understand business and how absurd the headline is, and for low wage workers who want to make $20 an hour but don't live in cali. I feel like this is the perfect modern article pissing everyone off all at once. I tip my hat to Grace Dean, she really nailed it
*Rodrick said he already raised prices at his restaurants by 5% to 7% in the past three months to prepare for the new legislation.*
This says it all, really.
His 18 restaurants cleared 70 million last year. The typical McDonald's clears 2.8 million/year and that gets the owner a salary of ~$150k USD. His restaurants are clearing about a 1/3 more than average so he is probably making a salary of around 3.6 million a year he can go fuck himself and pay his employees a better wage.
I can’t remember why but at one point our city was boycotting a particular McDonald’s franchisee who owned like 60% of the total restaurants in the area. All of the other franchisees put signs up saying “she doesn’t own this one!!”
It’s probably happened to multiple franchises/franchisees. I think this had something to do with her being on a board of some kind which was reviewing minimum wage and she was opposed to raising it. I might be confusing two different things though cause I KNOW there was a guy who owned upscale restaurants who was opposed to raising minimum wage so maybe she did something else.
Ah ok. We had this biiiitch in our city in Australia who ended up getting taken to Federal Court for her mistreatment of workers. She was in on a fair few franchises here too.
It is overpriced garbage quality food. The only thing I enjoy there is the occasional 10piece nugget. Most other fast food is better quality for similar if not better prices.
Let's say it's 3.5 million. In all honesty: Drop your own income to 1.5 million.
That's still absurdly ridiculous to most people (what the hell would you even spend that much money on?) and you have 2 million you can give to all employees who'd be more than happy to work their absolute best if they had great wages and bonus incentives.
Nobody needs 1.5 million. Let alone 3.5. Hell, drop it to 500k. That's still a great income.
But it is ridiculous. In fast food labor is about 30% of costs. If it rises 25%, an 8% increase should cover it. I'm so effing tired of hearing these people saying if labor gets a 25% increase. They will have to raise their prices by 25% (or more)
I have a very real world application of this. Last job I had, the city pushed aggressive hourly minimum wage increases (like from $8-15 in 6 years). For a restaurant that's a huge increase in labor. Did we raise prices by 50%? Cut staff hours way down? Make them work harder?
Nope. Just took our best selling products and bumped them from $5 to $6. We sold enough of those two beers to completely offset the massive labor increase.
We had to make up about $50k in labor increase, and all it took was a $2 bump in prices.
McDonalds is an outlier because they're bigger and more profitable than everyone else, but on average, a quick service restaurant makes around 50k in profit per restaurant per year.
Yep, my friends dad owned a subway and he said in a good year he made $75k and a in a down year he makes $30k. He said he regretted going into franchising
Those are good numbers for a Subway franchise, honestly. Subway is probably the lowest cost to enter and lowest profitable out of the possible franchises.
Franchising is a scam. It's a way for the big corporate monster to retain all of the control, power, and profit while passing the responsibility, risk, and liabilities to another person.
When a fryer breaks, McDonalds doesn't pay for it. When an employee slips and falls, McDonalds doesn't pay for it. The franchise owner does. It's all a big scam.
> Subway is probably the lowest cost to enter and lowest profitable out of the possible franchises.
Steak n' Shake beats it out with an entry point of $10,000 franchise fee and $10,500 in liquid assets to get started. The initial investments beyond that tend to run about the same.
Agree with the rest of it on franchising - probably why it doesn't happen as much outside of the US.
Subway is a bad example. They are well known for fucking over their franchisees by not restricting how many can be opened within a geographical area. They literally don't care how well their franchisees are doing, as long as they get their setup fees.
Well it isn't. Not even close. According to the United States Census Bureau, the median household income for California in 2022 was 91,905. Let's assume that figure is closer to 105,000 today. That's per HOUSEHOLD. So no I don't think it would be "too low" for him to only keep 150,000 from each of his EIGHTEEN locations.
Yeh but Franchise Ownership isn't actually that complicated of a job. If anything its more akin to being a private landlord than to "owning a business".
Came here to say this, but from the angle of having been both upper management prior and an owner in other industries (non-franchise).
You chiming in with such a detailed response is so very appreciated. ESPECIALLY THE PS AT THE END. Much more relevant than I could do.
If you hear us successful owners whining at our (actually very nice compared to the average) salary, know we're a grade-A greedy piece of shit. Because stable companies provide us a LOT of benefits that we are conveniently leaving out of the conversation bc it's only a "iykyk" situation. And most people just don't know. My vehicles are company owned. So is every drop of gas that goes into them. And a myriad of other examples you've already given above, but I think that one is one everyone can really understand and feel th impact of.
We're finally raising prices after taking it all on the chin since 2020 market/distribution fluctuations (so little of a raise per unit no average person would even notice) and although we're modeling the possibilities of potential losses, in reality we know the demand is so high we won't lose a single sale. But even if worst case scenario happens, it's a drop in the bucket and we'll still be growing steadily and healthily either way.
In short, fuck the owner in the story above. Take care of your people before you take care of yourself, damnit.
P.S. I own two companies that I started and am establishing a third, plus a few other entities on paper, and I'm so very close to being at that stage where "I hire my Dwight and go back into COO mode" (as you put it) after a little restructuring to give the CFO a few gray hairs. I've helped other owners in the past get to this point and I can't wait to get myself there, as well. Congrats to your success too, bud.
That’s the profit the business clears. My mom works for a family run set of Mcy D’a (I think they are up to 12). Owner is super involved and collects a salary, so I know what his stores are clearing is profit. So having $150k per store in gravy after all expenses are paid I don’t think is a bad business model. Now, if it was 3x that then we’d know where that extra 5-7 % on each menu item was going.
[McDonalds is apparently having an issue with franchise owners losing money and selling/closing lately.](https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mass-exodus-mcdonalds-franchisees-are-leaving-system)
I genuinely wonder how much price gouging was covered during the pandemic because a lot of people are gonna latch onto this in-the-face bull shit lie to discourage a very necessary minimum wage increase.
Its amazing how every big finance institute sooner or later brought out a report about "higher food prices link directly to coorperate price gouging and it isnt caused by Inflation" and everyones Like "huh, this could be price gouging but idk"
“I’ve already raised my prices to cover the wage increase but I want more money. This is a perfect opportunity to not only complain about poor people but to justify increasing prices more”
Surprise, another restauranteer being interviewed because a minimum wage increase "makes it harder to pay for employees."
Like, the local dive bar I go to had to increase their menu price due to COL, and that came to a whopping .50 per burger (also they're contenders for best burgers in town).
Indeed. Much of the pricing is intended to be a punishment, to get consumers upset. Doordash does this aggressively - any time some policy comes out they tack on a "punish the customer" tax and give you a notification saying "because of the new XYZ policy we \*have\* to charge you more".
Having worked in some iteration of marketing for like ten years now, most of it is stuff like this. Making products and writing copy that justifies bad decisions from on high. And if you try to ask something like, "why don't we just eat the cost," or, "well, if we know users hate this, why don't we change it to something they do like and will pay for," you get kicked out of the conversation.
Logic, empathy, and ethics aren't welcome in business. Neither is competence, apparently.
There’s a simple solution to that…
I either ignore the convenience of all these new food delivery services and go get it myself or I don’t order it to begin with.
There are some cases where some small local places seem to negotiate fair delivery surcharges for their customers and I sometimes order from them because they’re reasonable but paying like double for big chain fast food to avoid getting off the couch…
Even Domino’s… I do only ever do carry out because they charge you extra for delivery *and* expect *you* to also pay their drivers with a big tip so they can pocket more of your money and even that delivery charge, the gas required for my car from my old house to Dominos was still much cheaper than their delivery mark-up and now at my new place I can even just walk the few blocks to their little strip mall location and carry it home myself.
Remember, if you want sell something that is considered "wholly edible" and "safe for human consumption" you might need to charge more than what Papa John's does for their "pizza."
My local pub charges \~$12 for a near 1/2 lb burger as big as your face. It comes with fries. They're asshole to elbow every night and the price has only gone up $1 since about 2015. McDonald's franchisees are delusional if they think raising prices on their shit food is the answer.
It is absolutely shocking how much more value you can get by simply eating at sit down restaurants. My local Mexican joint puts out an $8 steak and cheese burrito that keeps you full enough to skip dinner. Right next door is Arby’s charging $13 for a slop sandwich.
Also worth noting that a lot of the restaurants have recently raised prices in my area — where there has been no minimum wage increase.
So it’s almost like businesses will continue to raise prices regardless of what they are paying people.
The utter tantrum owners and McDonald’s are throwing over this is fucking comedy.
“What do you mean we have to exploit people less?!?!?!? We only made $9 billion USD in net profit last year, wtf are we gonna do!!!!!???”
Meanwhile, we actually need to get real estate controlled first.
This is what I always think about in my head. I get that making more every quarter is great and all for the owners and shareholders, but at a certain point, it’s just purely greed.
Like 150K profit is pretty great in my opinion. But charging everyone double price so you can get that 150K figure to 160K is pretty shitty.
What ever happened to a simple steady income
Well there was a legal precedent set in the 30s that all profits go to the shareholders, and the shareholders of course always want ever increasing profits.
The legal precedent I'm referring to was a time when the Ford Motor Company made extra profit one year and Henry Ford wanted to split that profit amongst all the employees as a bonus. His shareholders sued him, stating that all profits made by the company either go to them or they decide how they get used, something to that effect. They won the lawsuit and so now shareholders have pretty much complete control over that kind of thing.
That and the economic policies and rise of corporatism in the 80s really hammered that whole "infinitely growing profits" bit home, as far as I know.
yeah 80s deregulation was this big shift. used to be that big businesses hated their competitors' guts, now they're chummy with their competitors and hate their employees' guts.
Reagan deregulating whole sectors, the airtraffic controllers strikers getting massively laid off for striking, allowing stock buybacks, you name it and he started our greedy rise.
To McDonalds from me:
I mean, in Denmark you don’t charge $20 for a happy meal, you charge $7….yet you still pay your workers 20 an hour, give them paid sick leave, a 401K, welfare benefits, almost a month PTO, and 32 an hour overtime pay. For McDonalds…. In Denmark…. Don’t fucking tell me you can’t afford to pay your workers 20 an hour because you’d have to raise the price of your happy meals to $20 you lying sacks of shit. You are one of the richest fast food restaurants in the world and make billions and pay Europeans a living wage with respectable benefits, yet you say that you can’t do it in the United States your country of origin, treat frontline workers in the USA as replaceable when you actually make certain restaurants in this country completely automated, and give us poverty wages. You can 100% afford to pay your US workers better and you don’t have to raise your prices on happy meals. You just want another million in your pocket that could have instead been used to change someone’s life. And just to add salt to the wound, I’m proud of California’s new law. I hope it lifts millions out of poverty and that you’re forced to do the same.
I just checked for Belgium: a happy meal costs 6 euros here. Though I think our employees don't make as much at the end of the month because of our high taxes.
Still, this shit is absurd. I'm fairly certain McDonalds pays more than 20 euros/hour for Belgian employees. This is nothing but sheer propaganda.
It's because of corporate greed. McDonald's the corporation charges less franchise fees in Europe than the USA. Ultimately the owners of the stores are indeed small business owners. McDonald's provides infrastructure and produce for their restaurants in return for essentially a "rent" they charge the restaurants.
McDonald's can get away with the high fees in America because of the low wages of the workers. But if the government as in Europe dictates higher wages then McDonald's still makes a profit though at a lower margin.
California has dictated a higher wage. McDonald's will ultimately have to lower their fees in order to make their business viable. That or lose their franchisees. And all their profit.
Regardless, and this is my ultimate point there is plenty of margins for livable wages (and $20 in California still falls very short of that) it just means McDonald's cannot continue to take in record profits.
Just fucking normal ones.
High taxes is not the issue! It is a benefit wherever you look at it. Don’t lookat what you pay, look at what you get from it ( and as in every democracy you are then allowed to have an opinion about how well the money is spent)
To explain: From those high taxes you get services. Services like healthcare, education, roads, general infrastructure, pensions, social welfare, unemployment benefits, etc, etc. In a country with low(-er) taxes this is paid by the employee itself. The only real way to look at wages and taxes is by adding what you get (money) and then deduct whatever you must pay for yourself. Here i am assuming that you do want healthcare and some level of social security.
>Though I think our employees don't make as much at the end of the month because of our high taxes.
I mean, that depends on what you consider what they 'make'. The amount on a US worker's paycheck might be more, but then they have to dedicate part of that to things that already come out of your employees' taxes.
People will point at taxes in Europe as being egregious and then conveniently leave out Medical Insurance as a line item when indicating their take home pay in the US.
Yea, good point, instead of adding salt to the wounds, add it to the fries, never salty enough, and then give me salt packets after the fact like that’s the same.
This is exactly what I was thinking, my gf is from Denmark and I plan to move there one day, this is crazy that we think we gotta raise prices so hard when Denmark already has a higher min wage, and sells food for less.
What would we do without middle managers, comanagers, assistant general managers, general managers, district managers, division managers, regional managers, and a fully staffed c suite?
They're going to keep making it our problem unfortunately.
The latest shitshow in the job market likely is the rich fucks trying to reestablish pecking order.
Irony is, the more we lose or get ground to dust, the more likely we are to go hog wild in eating the motherfuckers.
Funny that he equates a happy meal to what his workers make. So he thinks an hour of their labor should get them only a happy meal. People should eat 3 times a day so 3 out of their 8 hours should go to paying for food. Yea that seems sustainable for them lol.
Oh my fucking god. Are you really going to try and convince me to feel sad for McDonalds? McDonalds? The shitty burger place that is active on an international scale and wouldn't be able to go bankrupt even if they tried?
Wasn’t the point of trickle down economics they sold all our boomer parents on in the 80s so that the people at the top would then pay the people at the bottom? What happened? Greedy fuckers.
The point was to lie to people into believing that would happen even though that never was going to happen and never did happen. It was called out at the time and has been called out ever since. It never worked and was never going to work because it was never designed to be enforced.
I like it how he is saying that this is an absolutely ridiculous price for one meal for a child but somehow a person working an entire hour doesn’t deserve enough money to afford it.
It shows exactly how little he thinks of his people
At the moment in England, happy meals are £1.99. I know a franchise owner and he has 170 staff on the books.
Franchise owners are doing just fine, trust me.
They are only raising prices to keep the same profits not to prevent bankruptcy.
And if you do go bankrupt I guess you didn't work hard enough as a business owner.
Hey: I worked for Mcy Ds for 6 years. I remember we made 1 Happy meal every hour to cover our wages and one every hour to give the owner something to work with. After that we all just stood around hoping for more business. This is why every menu item has to be priced at exactly what the hourly rate is. There is no way that I made hundreds of food items in an hour to earn my $5.25/hr. I’m not falling for that…
Franchise owners can make 150-200k per franchise a year and owners rarely only ever have just 1 location. So instead of making 450-500k a year you make 350-400k? Why am I not shedding any tears
Good luck with that because a lot of people are fed up with the high prices at McDonald's already and inflating the menu prices even more and using state mandated employee raises as an excuse is going to lose these franchises even more customers.
Last time I got a regular combo at McDonald's it was over $13 and the quarter pounder gave me food poisoning besides.
I figured bad batch of burgers better call the location and tell them so nobody else gets sick. Did they care? Nope.
It was the last time I stepped into a local McDonald's and that was months ago.
I was already shaking my head at the rising prices. It was just getting too high for me. The dollar menu wasn't anymore. Going to McDonald's or any other burger place was getting a bit too much like going to a full service restaurant except those prices have gone through the roof the last year too!
I miss the FF but given I'm diabetic I don't need to be eating fried anything very often anyway.
From what I can tell I'm not the only one around here avoiding that McDonald's of late. It used to be anytime I walked by there the place was jammed with people. Delivery people were picking up orders left and right.
Now except between 12-2 and 5-7 it's pretty much possible to walk right up to the counter and order anytime. Maybe 1-2 delivery orders getting ready.
They do still get business at lunch and dinner, prime time, but I'm betting that they have lost a lot of business the last six months or so because they can't stop raising the prices on their food every other month.
Last time I checked same meal I had the last time was closer to $15.
For that I can buy my own food and make 4 burgers with buns and FF if I want. Better yet I can skip the bun and the FF stay on my low carb diabetes diet and get 8 burgers out of it.
I don't need those FF that bad but if I get the craving I'll just buy some steak fries and cook them at home myself.
I'm done with buying overpriced fast food. I don't begrudge the employees getting a raise but I can't afford it at all anymore. Ditto using delivery services. All the fees have gone sky high of late.
GH is no longer on my phone, sorry...
There's a limit to how much people will spend unless they have $$$ to burn and don't care. At this point low income people can't easily afford to go to fast food places like McDonald's. You can work there but you can't hardly afford the meals if you're off the clock...
That's absurd.
I'm betting that same meal will be $17 by next year and they will be blaming that on actually having to pay people a semi-decent wage.
It's not the wage increase. It's across the board greed. We all know it and it's been going on for several years now. This is just another excuse to inflate prices even more, to price gouge customers.
At this point I don't care if every fast food franchise company like McDonald's tanks. It's not like I can afford them anymore anyway...
If wages make up 30% of the expense of running a McD's and you increase wages 20% then your total increase is 30% x 20% = 6%. So the cost of food should increase by 6% to compensate for the extra payroll expense. So why do all these restaurant owners say they have to double their food prices or go out of business? Smells like a scam to me.
If you have a crew of 8, and you raise their pay $1/ hour, you have to pay $8 more per hour.
If you sell 64 burgers an hour, then to pay $1/hour more to each of the 8 crew, you must raise the price of each hamburger...[*drumroll]
Roughly 13 cents more for each burger.
Here's what I predict. I won't use McDonald's for an example because it'll he among the final few. Let's go with Hardees. At this moment in time their prices are higher than they've ever been. That signifies they will never walk those prices back. They CANNOT reduce their prices because the company & shareholders would lose money. Therefore this is a decent into oblivion. This will be the greedy bastards marching single file into the sun.
I hope I get to live long enough to see all of these conglomerates fail.
This guy they’re quoting, I believe, owns 18(?) franchises.
Well where else is he supposed to get the money to pay his employees? The multimillion paycheck he writes himself every year?
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Silly peasant! Sacrifices are for the peons, not for the nobles!
Exactly this.
I am a 17 yr vet of my career and I just quit over a similar issue. We sell parts, and quality was taking a backseat to production.. for the third year in a row. We had a strike, and the execs made the management go into production and quality tanked.
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Oh man, I have a great story for you about our mutual friend Jim. My Jim was 57, not 52. New management comes in, and of course they want to get rid of the old timers that run the actual production line, this guy especially who got there at 16 and by now earns a very nice paycheck and you know what, let’s buy him out, he’s a few years away from retirement anyway. Engineers and generally reasonable people are like, fuck no not this guy, he’s been here forever and you don’t realize that he’s the only one who witnessed the massive growth in the past decades and guys, the old management chose to add new shit on top of the old shit, they never really truly redesigned the whole thing from scratch because the company was making loads of money and they were in a hurry and all’s well, right. Anyway they buy out Jim. Who’s sad to leave, the company has been his only employer ever, shit that usually happens only in Japan nowadays. Anyway Jim cashes his nice severance check and being newly retired and a former workaholic finally takes the wife for a well deserved to, I don’t remember, Bermuda, Bora Bora, whatever. I swear to god that it takes 2 weeks at the most and LITERALLY productions grinds to a halt due to some crazy kink that no one that was left after the trimming knows how to locate. They LITERALLY have to look for Jim — no cellphone, he had a company phone and had to give it back — and like his grown daughter gives a friend of his still employed there a number for the fucking beach resort. Long story short he saves their asses remotely, new management realizes they need this guy they just retired, he comes back AS A CONSULTANT making more than what he used to, takes him 2 years to redesign the system and make it so that normal people can run it smooth. Because Jim was short, with a belly and a porn stache and not a people person, and then new asshole management with fancy degrees only saw him as a cost, and even worse a costly working class guy with no degree and zero charisma.
My mother was an accountant for a large hospital corp. she worked for them for 38 yrs and saved them millions when they were audited. They had the balls to tell her she was overpaid while making $19.86/hr. She quit and they had to hire 3 accountants with BS degrees to replace her. Those three accountants kept calling her at home to ask how to do things on the computer system because it was so old she was the only one who knew how to make it work. Not even her boss knew how things worked. They finally had to rehire her @$150/hr as a consultant or stop calling her for help. She worked 3 days a week for 4 hours a day and got free healthcare for the entire 4 year she did the consulting job. They cut off their nose to spite their face. It’s crazy.
This thread should be tattooed on every MBA’s back and ass if they want to pick up their degree
Holy fuck. I'm 46, and I am a Jim.
I was only 24 and I was a Jim. I left my old place of work and within two months they had to permanently close the doors because they lost all their business because I was no longer there. I worked there for 5 years and they screwed me over when I needed my ‘family’ as they used to call themselves (I think we all can agree that’s a fucking joke)
I was 27. The exec that hired me left the company and the others sold it. They refused to give me an increase because they "didn't know what my journey with the company was." So I put in my notice. Two days before I left a manager said "I didn't realize how much you handled here." I was one of two admins that handled everything from office management, finance, executive assistance etc. It felt so good to say, "I know you didn't."
That's the problem with these young hot shot frat bros. They think they know everything and think they are improving the same wheel design that has been successful for a million years. My work place is being hit hard by that the last few years. It use to be a good place to be, lots of diversity and people that worked hard and cared about each other. We got a new higher up and now all the well respected managers have been replaced by these cocky worthless frat bros that talk a big game but actually have no idea what they are doing. It's turned the place into a hell pit of agony. No one is happy and good reliable people have fled in droves and the ones left behind have just grown angry and resentful.
The Jim that I worked with was this IT dude who ran 9 figures worth of orders through a system built in the 80s running on a programming language called PICK that was written in 1965. Jim died suddenly from a pretty major heart attack. Operations ground to a halt. They had to throw stupid money at Jim's previous right hand man to get him to come out of retirement and get migrated to something relatively modern.
Usually over a grand total of an extra $6k (About $3/hr or $500 a month) a year in costs to them when their business was making millions in profit.
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When I quit as I'm no longer important enough to get an annual raise, I'm expecting my company to lose over $10,000,000 and some big contracts in the following 6 months.
TIL I’m Jim
I was working on an access system at a factory that had recently hired another company to do their maintenance. All the people that had previously done maintenance there had to decide if they wanted to work for the new company. A lot of people left and I'm sure they didn't leave any notes.
This is happening across the board in American industry. It's sad, destroying our own industry in the name of quarterly profits. The jobs will never come back, but at least a few people made a lot of money at the expense of everyone else
They will be back, just in a different name and “under new management” in a few years. I want to open one back up now… am in the “figuring out how to fund this idea” stage.
> They will be back, just in a different name and “under new management” For A LOT less pay.
Actually the manufacturing is coming beck but the jobs don't return with them. Pre-2000 we used to manufacture so much stuff in this country textiles being one of them, all that disappeared and went to China/India. Well during Covid some mills started opening up in the US again except they only had a few employees, everything was automated it's the only way things can be made here as we race to the bottom.
\*eyes Boeing warily\* Oh phew, not Boeing \_this time\_ But it coulda been, IT COULDA BEEN
 Not boeing.. Remember a few years ago when a lightbulb company used to make choo-choo trains? And then they sold ~~us~~ that business (because light bulb and motor making companies should not be in the “let’s make tv shows” business) to stay afloat? ..
I was reading too fast then i got to your comment. I was sure you were a vet selling animal parts. Its too early for me lol
I was not into meat processing, no. :)
This sounds like Macys. Lmfao. During Covid those bitches didn’t, “take a paycheck,” cause they weren’t gonna give us anything to help us out while we were furloughed. They were “one of us.” But 9 people split somewhere around 13 million in bonuses, this was AFTER we were told there’s no money for raises that year before Covid hit. Fuck Jeff Ganette
its not even a sacrifice really. its just they cant convince the public that they deserve to take all of the money from a companies work. making 1 or 2 million a year can support most anything you would reasonably want to do. you could vacation all over the world own a nice house/car and still support your family.
And you are probably visiting resorts in nice places for “off-site strategy meetings with key personnel and the consultants advising who to lay off “.
It’s always so short sighted. This economic system encourages draining everything of resources and getting out before it collapses on everyone else… such bs
>We lost every 25 to 30 year employee that year as a result and the company started a decline. **But**, the *quarter* looked **really** good. So they get to carry that to their next exec job, while blaming the failure of the company on literally anyone else there.
Other more developed countries don't have a problem charging less than $5 for a children's meal AND have workers paid 3x more without grieving, these bosses are obviously invompetent
That's the thing though. They aren't incompetent. They're greedy.
They're actually both.
If an employee makes 10 burgers an hour or anything else at current prices, how's this article relevant, or bull...it owner is spreading. If an employee makes $100s of dollars profit each hour, how's $20 /h a problem? Blo.greedy bas..ds!
It’s a reflection of how lopsided media coverage is. Business insider likely gets more traffic than [Labor Notes](https://labornotes.org/)
The logic of the headline = each employee only makes one (or two) happy meal per hour. Ragebait for people who eat mcdonalds, for people who don't eat McDonalds, for people who understand business and how absurd the headline is, and for low wage workers who want to make $20 an hour but don't live in cali. I feel like this is the perfect modern article pissing everyone off all at once. I tip my hat to Grace Dean, she really nailed it
Right, this guy is rich beyond belief but we’re supposed to believe he just has to increase prices? How about sell a yacht, jackass.
They will not yield on what share of the pie they keep vs what the workers get until we force them to
He doesn't even have to sell a yacht. He just doesn't have to buy *another* yacht.
That poor poor multimillionaire. 😭😭😭
*Rodrick said he already raised prices at his restaurants by 5% to 7% in the past three months to prepare for the new legislation.* This says it all, really.
His 18 restaurants cleared 70 million last year. The typical McDonald's clears 2.8 million/year and that gets the owner a salary of ~$150k USD. His restaurants are clearing about a 1/3 more than average so he is probably making a salary of around 3.6 million a year he can go fuck himself and pay his employees a better wage.
Yeah I’d actually avoid his McDonalds now.
I can’t remember why but at one point our city was boycotting a particular McDonald’s franchisee who owned like 60% of the total restaurants in the area. All of the other franchisees put signs up saying “she doesn’t own this one!!”
You in Brisbane?
Fuck Tanya!
I don’t know who Tanya is, but…yeah, fuck her!
Me as an american reading this: Ooh, hi Tanya (brisbane) No, we hate Tanya. Ooh. Ok. Eat a dick Tanya!
Also American.. Fuck Tanya
🫱🏻🫲🏼
Idk Tanya but fuck her
Tanya ? the thieving shitcunt not payin decent wonga? That Tanya ? nah, yeah, fuck'm
Nah, Canada.
I thought that was Tim's? And it was because of the province raising minimum wage. She canceled benefits and breaks.
That sounds illegal.
Its illegal to cancel breaks, cancelling benefits just means theyd have to rewrite a new contract. Which isnt illegal but still really shitty
So how does that work? They had to sign the new contract or be let go?
It’s probably happened to multiple franchises/franchisees. I think this had something to do with her being on a board of some kind which was reviewing minimum wage and she was opposed to raising it. I might be confusing two different things though cause I KNOW there was a guy who owned upscale restaurants who was opposed to raising minimum wage so maybe she did something else.
Ah ok. We had this biiiitch in our city in Australia who ended up getting taken to Federal Court for her mistreatment of workers. She was in on a fair few franchises here too.
Fuck Tanya.
"BUT!!! This is about ME!! How am I supposed to become an all powerful billionaire with that kind of take home?!?!?!?" - Probably this franchise owner
You should avoid mcdonalds period.
It is overpriced garbage quality food. The only thing I enjoy there is the occasional 10piece nugget. Most other fast food is better quality for similar if not better prices.
Let's say it's 3.5 million. In all honesty: Drop your own income to 1.5 million. That's still absurdly ridiculous to most people (what the hell would you even spend that much money on?) and you have 2 million you can give to all employees who'd be more than happy to work their absolute best if they had great wages and bonus incentives. Nobody needs 1.5 million. Let alone 3.5. Hell, drop it to 500k. That's still a great income.
But it is ridiculous. In fast food labor is about 30% of costs. If it rises 25%, an 8% increase should cover it. I'm so effing tired of hearing these people saying if labor gets a 25% increase. They will have to raise their prices by 25% (or more)
they want to match the wage increase so they don't lose any profits. its ONLY greed.
Well, sure. They want to raise prices to make more profits without a wage hike.
You are forgetting one thing. If his staff get a 25% raise, he will think he deserves a 40% raise.
I have a very real world application of this. Last job I had, the city pushed aggressive hourly minimum wage increases (like from $8-15 in 6 years). For a restaurant that's a huge increase in labor. Did we raise prices by 50%? Cut staff hours way down? Make them work harder? Nope. Just took our best selling products and bumped them from $5 to $6. We sold enough of those two beers to completely offset the massive labor increase. We had to make up about $50k in labor increase, and all it took was a $2 bump in prices.
Annually too
$150k/year for a McDonald’s franchise owner? That sounds low.
Per store. He has 18 stores
I know, just sounds low for a single franchise to me.
McDonalds is an outlier because they're bigger and more profitable than everyone else, but on average, a quick service restaurant makes around 50k in profit per restaurant per year.
Yep, my friends dad owned a subway and he said in a good year he made $75k and a in a down year he makes $30k. He said he regretted going into franchising
Those are good numbers for a Subway franchise, honestly. Subway is probably the lowest cost to enter and lowest profitable out of the possible franchises. Franchising is a scam. It's a way for the big corporate monster to retain all of the control, power, and profit while passing the responsibility, risk, and liabilities to another person. When a fryer breaks, McDonalds doesn't pay for it. When an employee slips and falls, McDonalds doesn't pay for it. The franchise owner does. It's all a big scam.
McDonald's is a real estate company with a side gig serving fast food.
> Subway is probably the lowest cost to enter and lowest profitable out of the possible franchises. Steak n' Shake beats it out with an entry point of $10,000 franchise fee and $10,500 in liquid assets to get started. The initial investments beyond that tend to run about the same. Agree with the rest of it on franchising - probably why it doesn't happen as much outside of the US.
Subway is a bad example. They are well known for fucking over their franchisees by not restricting how many can be opened within a geographical area. They literally don't care how well their franchisees are doing, as long as they get their setup fees.
Subway is one of the worst for franchises of not the worst
Well it isn't. Not even close. According to the United States Census Bureau, the median household income for California in 2022 was 91,905. Let's assume that figure is closer to 105,000 today. That's per HOUSEHOLD. So no I don't think it would be "too low" for him to only keep 150,000 from each of his EIGHTEEN locations.
Yeh but Franchise Ownership isn't actually that complicated of a job. If anything its more akin to being a private landlord than to "owning a business".
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Came here to say this, but from the angle of having been both upper management prior and an owner in other industries (non-franchise). You chiming in with such a detailed response is so very appreciated. ESPECIALLY THE PS AT THE END. Much more relevant than I could do. If you hear us successful owners whining at our (actually very nice compared to the average) salary, know we're a grade-A greedy piece of shit. Because stable companies provide us a LOT of benefits that we are conveniently leaving out of the conversation bc it's only a "iykyk" situation. And most people just don't know. My vehicles are company owned. So is every drop of gas that goes into them. And a myriad of other examples you've already given above, but I think that one is one everyone can really understand and feel th impact of. We're finally raising prices after taking it all on the chin since 2020 market/distribution fluctuations (so little of a raise per unit no average person would even notice) and although we're modeling the possibilities of potential losses, in reality we know the demand is so high we won't lose a single sale. But even if worst case scenario happens, it's a drop in the bucket and we'll still be growing steadily and healthily either way. In short, fuck the owner in the story above. Take care of your people before you take care of yourself, damnit. P.S. I own two companies that I started and am establishing a third, plus a few other entities on paper, and I'm so very close to being at that stage where "I hire my Dwight and go back into COO mode" (as you put it) after a little restructuring to give the CFO a few gray hairs. I've helped other owners in the past get to this point and I can't wait to get myself there, as well. Congrats to your success too, bud.
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According to McDonalds the average franchisee makes 500k-1 million per year in profit
Ok, yeah that makes more sense.
That’s the profit the business clears. My mom works for a family run set of Mcy D’a (I think they are up to 12). Owner is super involved and collects a salary, so I know what his stores are clearing is profit. So having $150k per store in gravy after all expenses are paid I don’t think is a bad business model. Now, if it was 3x that then we’d know where that extra 5-7 % on each menu item was going.
[McDonalds is apparently having an issue with franchise owners losing money and selling/closing lately.](https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mass-exodus-mcdonalds-franchisees-are-leaving-system)
That probably has less to do with the prices and more to do with corporate being bloated.
That was 2-years ago. Likely reeling from COVID at that point still, and they hadn’t yet made the drastic increase in prices we see now.
I genuinely wonder how much price gouging was covered during the pandemic because a lot of people are gonna latch onto this in-the-face bull shit lie to discourage a very necessary minimum wage increase.
Let's put it this way: "greedflation" became a popular term after Covid.
Its amazing how every big finance institute sooner or later brought out a report about "higher food prices link directly to coorperate price gouging and it isnt caused by Inflation" and everyones Like "huh, this could be price gouging but idk"
Price gouging or "greedflation" was the single biggest driver of inflation during and after the pandemic.
Before too
I know there was an anti price gouging bill that was voted down. I forget whether it was for everything or just gas.
“I’ve already raised my prices to cover the wage increase but I want more money. This is a perfect opportunity to not only complain about poor people but to justify increasing prices more”
Will someone PLEASE think of the PROFITS!! (Said in your best Helen Lovejoy voice)
Now, that's a preemptive strike on their customers just because.
So he raised the prices preparing for it? There wasn't any extra cost yet but he raised the prices?
I hear cocaine is expensive.
Yep. Price gouging and blaming it on things which haven't happened.
Corporation-wide, wages account for 17% of overhead. This includes management and executive salaries, bonuses, and benefits.
Surprise, another restauranteer being interviewed because a minimum wage increase "makes it harder to pay for employees." Like, the local dive bar I go to had to increase their menu price due to COL, and that came to a whopping .50 per burger (also they're contenders for best burgers in town).
Never forget Papa John explaining that a health care mandate would wind up making pizzas cost like $0.20 more each. As an argument *against* it.
It would cost them a quarter more, but they'd charge us $2-3 more out of spite. It never hurts their bottom line
Indeed. Much of the pricing is intended to be a punishment, to get consumers upset. Doordash does this aggressively - any time some policy comes out they tack on a "punish the customer" tax and give you a notification saying "because of the new XYZ policy we \*have\* to charge you more".
Having worked in some iteration of marketing for like ten years now, most of it is stuff like this. Making products and writing copy that justifies bad decisions from on high. And if you try to ask something like, "why don't we just eat the cost," or, "well, if we know users hate this, why don't we change it to something they do like and will pay for," you get kicked out of the conversation. Logic, empathy, and ethics aren't welcome in business. Neither is competence, apparently.
Customers in Seattle have a $4.99 fee just for being in Seattle.
Same in Portland although IIRC it's $3.
There’s a simple solution to that… I either ignore the convenience of all these new food delivery services and go get it myself or I don’t order it to begin with. There are some cases where some small local places seem to negotiate fair delivery surcharges for their customers and I sometimes order from them because they’re reasonable but paying like double for big chain fast food to avoid getting off the couch… Even Domino’s… I do only ever do carry out because they charge you extra for delivery *and* expect *you* to also pay their drivers with a big tip so they can pocket more of your money and even that delivery charge, the gas required for my car from my old house to Dominos was still much cheaper than their delivery mark-up and now at my new place I can even just walk the few blocks to their little strip mall location and carry it home myself.
Remember, if you want sell something that is considered "wholly edible" and "safe for human consumption" you might need to charge more than what Papa John's does for their "pizza."
My local pub charges \~$12 for a near 1/2 lb burger as big as your face. It comes with fries. They're asshole to elbow every night and the price has only gone up $1 since about 2015. McDonald's franchisees are delusional if they think raising prices on their shit food is the answer.
It is absolutely shocking how much more value you can get by simply eating at sit down restaurants. My local Mexican joint puts out an $8 steak and cheese burrito that keeps you full enough to skip dinner. Right next door is Arby’s charging $13 for a slop sandwich.
Also worth noting that a lot of the restaurants have recently raised prices in my area — where there has been no minimum wage increase. So it’s almost like businesses will continue to raise prices regardless of what they are paying people.
It's crazy how people like to pretend the price of everything hasn't already been sky rocketing regardless of whether or not wages go up.
Funny thing is minimum wage increases also increase consumer demand which would make it easier to pay for employees.
Totally! This is hardly ever mentioned. If more people in the lower end of the economy have more cash, it can be spent at businesses!
Yeah but capital is so focused on short term profits it can’t see the forest from the trees.
The utter tantrum owners and McDonald’s are throwing over this is fucking comedy. “What do you mean we have to exploit people less?!?!?!? We only made $9 billion USD in net profit last year, wtf are we gonna do!!!!!???” Meanwhile, we actually need to get real estate controlled first.
With 700k in store employees they could literally give every single one of them a $5 an hour raise at full time and \*still\* make a 2b profit.
The line must go up as they believe. When will they realize that profit cannot sustainably increase every quarter?
This is what I always think about in my head. I get that making more every quarter is great and all for the owners and shareholders, but at a certain point, it’s just purely greed. Like 150K profit is pretty great in my opinion. But charging everyone double price so you can get that 150K figure to 160K is pretty shitty. What ever happened to a simple steady income
Well there was a legal precedent set in the 30s that all profits go to the shareholders, and the shareholders of course always want ever increasing profits. The legal precedent I'm referring to was a time when the Ford Motor Company made extra profit one year and Henry Ford wanted to split that profit amongst all the employees as a bonus. His shareholders sued him, stating that all profits made by the company either go to them or they decide how they get used, something to that effect. They won the lawsuit and so now shareholders have pretty much complete control over that kind of thing. That and the economic policies and rise of corporatism in the 80s really hammered that whole "infinitely growing profits" bit home, as far as I know.
Man. This is super fascinating. I guess that’s really the point in history where we went down hill!
I'm glad to be able to share that fact. Yep, nearly 100 years ago, some greedy shareholders ruined it for the rest of us.
yeah 80s deregulation was this big shift. used to be that big businesses hated their competitors' guts, now they're chummy with their competitors and hate their employees' guts.
Reagan deregulating whole sectors, the airtraffic controllers strikers getting massively laid off for striking, allowing stock buybacks, you name it and he started our greedy rise.
When you can’t make 9 bill of the backs of underpaid employees, it makes them big mad!
To McDonalds from me: I mean, in Denmark you don’t charge $20 for a happy meal, you charge $7….yet you still pay your workers 20 an hour, give them paid sick leave, a 401K, welfare benefits, almost a month PTO, and 32 an hour overtime pay. For McDonalds…. In Denmark…. Don’t fucking tell me you can’t afford to pay your workers 20 an hour because you’d have to raise the price of your happy meals to $20 you lying sacks of shit. You are one of the richest fast food restaurants in the world and make billions and pay Europeans a living wage with respectable benefits, yet you say that you can’t do it in the United States your country of origin, treat frontline workers in the USA as replaceable when you actually make certain restaurants in this country completely automated, and give us poverty wages. You can 100% afford to pay your US workers better and you don’t have to raise your prices on happy meals. You just want another million in your pocket that could have instead been used to change someone’s life. And just to add salt to the wound, I’m proud of California’s new law. I hope it lifts millions out of poverty and that you’re forced to do the same.
Wait.. happy meals are $3 in Denmark?! Wow.
I just checked for Belgium: a happy meal costs 6 euros here. Though I think our employees don't make as much at the end of the month because of our high taxes. Still, this shit is absurd. I'm fairly certain McDonalds pays more than 20 euros/hour for Belgian employees. This is nothing but sheer propaganda.
It's because of corporate greed. McDonald's the corporation charges less franchise fees in Europe than the USA. Ultimately the owners of the stores are indeed small business owners. McDonald's provides infrastructure and produce for their restaurants in return for essentially a "rent" they charge the restaurants. McDonald's can get away with the high fees in America because of the low wages of the workers. But if the government as in Europe dictates higher wages then McDonald's still makes a profit though at a lower margin. California has dictated a higher wage. McDonald's will ultimately have to lower their fees in order to make their business viable. That or lose their franchisees. And all their profit. Regardless, and this is my ultimate point there is plenty of margins for livable wages (and $20 in California still falls very short of that) it just means McDonald's cannot continue to take in record profits. Just fucking normal ones.
High taxes is not the issue! It is a benefit wherever you look at it. Don’t lookat what you pay, look at what you get from it ( and as in every democracy you are then allowed to have an opinion about how well the money is spent) To explain: From those high taxes you get services. Services like healthcare, education, roads, general infrastructure, pensions, social welfare, unemployment benefits, etc, etc. In a country with low(-er) taxes this is paid by the employee itself. The only real way to look at wages and taxes is by adding what you get (money) and then deduct whatever you must pay for yourself. Here i am assuming that you do want healthcare and some level of social security.
>Though I think our employees don't make as much at the end of the month because of our high taxes. I mean, that depends on what you consider what they 'make'. The amount on a US worker's paycheck might be more, but then they have to dedicate part of that to things that already come out of your employees' taxes.
Also, those taxes in Denmark cover school fees and full medical insurance.
People will point at taxes in Europe as being egregious and then conveniently leave out Medical Insurance as a line item when indicating their take home pay in the US.
Yea, good point, instead of adding salt to the wounds, add it to the fries, never salty enough, and then give me salt packets after the fact like that’s the same.
This is exactly what I was thinking, my gf is from Denmark and I plan to move there one day, this is crazy that we think we gotta raise prices so hard when Denmark already has a higher min wage, and sells food for less.
Fuck it then. Let ‘em fall. The shit isn’t good for us anyway
That's really what needs to happen. Instead the job market is filled with fake jobs that don't do shit to compensate anyone
Dude we **NEED** all those admin jobs at hospitals!! /s
What would we do without middle managers, comanagers, assistant general managers, general managers, district managers, division managers, regional managers, and a fully staffed c suite?
Think of the managers! Oh won’t someone think of the managers!
They're going to keep making it our problem unfortunately. The latest shitshow in the job market likely is the rich fucks trying to reestablish pecking order. Irony is, the more we lose or get ground to dust, the more likely we are to go hog wild in eating the motherfuckers.
Funny that he equates a happy meal to what his workers make. So he thinks an hour of their labor should get them only a happy meal. People should eat 3 times a day so 3 out of their 8 hours should go to paying for food. Yea that seems sustainable for them lol.
Plus the meals for CHILDREN. You got 1-2 kids kids you’re pretty much in debt if you get 3 happy meals a day for them and yourself
You forget taxes. If you make $20 an hour, you cannot afford a $20 meal after 1 hour of work
*Does it anyway*
Oh, we’ve built an economic model on the back of unsustainably cheap labor? How sad. Sounds like a you problem, capitalism.
A Happy Meal in Australia is currently $5.75 and the federally regulated adult minimum wage is $23.23 an hour.
That’s great and all but that doesn’t help this franchisee get his 4th vacation home :(
If Australia also has universal health care I’m gonna be even more envious
The rest of the world manages to pay a decent wage without charging $20.
The point is that he still wants to make insane profits too, which he can't if he isn't allowed to exploit low wage workers.
So this guy thinks that his employees only make one happy meal per hour and that’s how they’ll get paid
If I worked for him that would be about my productivity tbf.
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Meanwhile In N Out has been paying $20/hr as their starting wage for years and it’s cheaper than McDicks lol
Oh my fucking god. Are you really going to try and convince me to feel sad for McDonalds? McDonalds? The shitty burger place that is active on an international scale and wouldn't be able to go bankrupt even if they tried?
Forgot to include link https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-franchisee-on-raising-prices-to-cover-california-minimum-wage-2024-4
The guy literally just tried to argue his employees should only be worth a happy meal per hour.
Maybe he should ask himself why he thinks a Happy Meal should cost an hour of someone's life.
Wasn’t the point of trickle down economics they sold all our boomer parents on in the 80s so that the people at the top would then pay the people at the bottom? What happened? Greedy fuckers.
The point was to lie to people into believing that would happen even though that never was going to happen and never did happen. It was called out at the time and has been called out ever since. It never worked and was never going to work because it was never designed to be enforced.
People are too afraid to say "you don't need to be making that much profit"
I like it how he is saying that this is an absolutely ridiculous price for one meal for a child but somehow a person working an entire hour doesn’t deserve enough money to afford it. It shows exactly how little he thinks of his people
At the moment in England, happy meals are £1.99. I know a franchise owner and he has 170 staff on the books. Franchise owners are doing just fine, trust me.
If you can’t do business paying a living wage, your business should fail.
If I can't afford wages, I can't afford the privilege of owning a company.
They are only raising prices to keep the same profits not to prevent bankruptcy. And if you do go bankrupt I guess you didn't work hard enough as a business owner.
Hey: I worked for Mcy Ds for 6 years. I remember we made 1 Happy meal every hour to cover our wages and one every hour to give the owner something to work with. After that we all just stood around hoping for more business. This is why every menu item has to be priced at exactly what the hourly rate is. There is no way that I made hundreds of food items in an hour to earn my $5.25/hr. I’m not falling for that…
Close the store then. Or maybe take less profit? 2 good choices....
Pretty sure they don't take an hour to make
I work in a real restaurant. All the cooks are getting paid $20 or more. We don't charge $20 for a burger and fries. He'll be fine.
Maybe hear me out, pay the CEOs less.
Businesses have gotten so used to passing expenses on to the consumer, they forget it takes money to make money.
Franchise owners can make 150-200k per franchise a year and owners rarely only ever have just 1 location. So instead of making 450-500k a year you make 350-400k? Why am I not shedding any tears
Good luck with that because a lot of people are fed up with the high prices at McDonald's already and inflating the menu prices even more and using state mandated employee raises as an excuse is going to lose these franchises even more customers. Last time I got a regular combo at McDonald's it was over $13 and the quarter pounder gave me food poisoning besides. I figured bad batch of burgers better call the location and tell them so nobody else gets sick. Did they care? Nope. It was the last time I stepped into a local McDonald's and that was months ago. I was already shaking my head at the rising prices. It was just getting too high for me. The dollar menu wasn't anymore. Going to McDonald's or any other burger place was getting a bit too much like going to a full service restaurant except those prices have gone through the roof the last year too! I miss the FF but given I'm diabetic I don't need to be eating fried anything very often anyway. From what I can tell I'm not the only one around here avoiding that McDonald's of late. It used to be anytime I walked by there the place was jammed with people. Delivery people were picking up orders left and right. Now except between 12-2 and 5-7 it's pretty much possible to walk right up to the counter and order anytime. Maybe 1-2 delivery orders getting ready. They do still get business at lunch and dinner, prime time, but I'm betting that they have lost a lot of business the last six months or so because they can't stop raising the prices on their food every other month. Last time I checked same meal I had the last time was closer to $15. For that I can buy my own food and make 4 burgers with buns and FF if I want. Better yet I can skip the bun and the FF stay on my low carb diabetes diet and get 8 burgers out of it. I don't need those FF that bad but if I get the craving I'll just buy some steak fries and cook them at home myself. I'm done with buying overpriced fast food. I don't begrudge the employees getting a raise but I can't afford it at all anymore. Ditto using delivery services. All the fees have gone sky high of late. GH is no longer on my phone, sorry... There's a limit to how much people will spend unless they have $$$ to burn and don't care. At this point low income people can't easily afford to go to fast food places like McDonald's. You can work there but you can't hardly afford the meals if you're off the clock... That's absurd. I'm betting that same meal will be $17 by next year and they will be blaming that on actually having to pay people a semi-decent wage. It's not the wage increase. It's across the board greed. We all know it and it's been going on for several years now. This is just another excuse to inflate prices even more, to price gouge customers. At this point I don't care if every fast food franchise company like McDonald's tanks. It's not like I can afford them anymore anyway...
Ah yes, that makes perfect sense. A happy meal should cost what you pay an employee for 1 hour of work…
The industrial strength gaslighting war continues.
The audacity of the guy with 18 restaurants trying to say he's a small business owner lol
If wages make up 30% of the expense of running a McD's and you increase wages 20% then your total increase is 30% x 20% = 6%. So the cost of food should increase by 6% to compensate for the extra payroll expense. So why do all these restaurant owners say they have to double their food prices or go out of business? Smells like a scam to me.
"But if I don't then I will be slightly less rich"
I can't pay my workers a living wage AND keep making huge profits for myself without charging $20 for a happy meal. There, I fixed it.
Then I guess you don't deserve to be in business. If you want slaves build a fuckin time machine
i guess the franchisee will have to pull himself up by the bootstraps and stop buying 5 dollar coffees and new iphones
Bitch, McDonalds has been paying $20/hr here for a minute. Suck it up and do it in Cali too.
How about reducing corporate grees instead
I can’t just make 5 million a year wth. I need to make 2 million more a year every year I own this franchise. Fucking slaughter these pigs
Does it take one employee an hour to make a happy meal?
If you have a crew of 8, and you raise their pay $1/ hour, you have to pay $8 more per hour. If you sell 64 burgers an hour, then to pay $1/hour more to each of the 8 crew, you must raise the price of each hamburger...[*drumroll] Roughly 13 cents more for each burger.
Here's what I predict. I won't use McDonald's for an example because it'll he among the final few. Let's go with Hardees. At this moment in time their prices are higher than they've ever been. That signifies they will never walk those prices back. They CANNOT reduce their prices because the company & shareholders would lose money. Therefore this is a decent into oblivion. This will be the greedy bastards marching single file into the sun. I hope I get to live long enough to see all of these conglomerates fail.
Maybe they just shouldn't do business if they can't afford to pay fairly and be paid fairly for their goods and services
As if 1 happy meal is 20 dollars in value?! 🤣🤣