Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Republicans in disarray!

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Oh, the Restaurant (In)Humanity!

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Oh, the Restaurant (In)Humanity!

by | 226 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

If it weren’t for hypocrisy, the GOP would have no ethics at all. Not that McCarthy dressing up in stolen valor will stop the whining…

Reader Interactions

226Comments

  4. 4.

    MattF

    So… no link from me, but someone is back online. That rustling sussuration you hear is the sound of lickspittles falling to their knees.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to turn over a memo cited by then-Attorney General Bill Barr as his reasoning not to charge President Trump with obstruction of justice as part of a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

  6. 6.

    Jeffro

    @MattF: hallelujah!  The corrupt orange moron hath returned!!

    I’m sure he has lots to say about all the progress we’ve been making these past four months.  What’s his excuse for skipping the Inauguration of President Biden, again?

  7. 7.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Bottom line, if you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage, you can’t afford your business.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    Chef Gruel (really???  I guess the lazy writing is going to follow us into 2021) is already getting busted and roasted on Twitter for lying about his starting wages.  Go figure.

  12. 12.

    Cacti

    There’s no such thing as “Employers can’t find workers”.

    What they mean is “Employers can’t find workers for the shit wages they’re offering.”

  13. 13.

    raven

    Montana will cut off federal unemployment benefits nearly three months early and offer “Return to Work Bonuses” as a favor to employers, Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) announced Tuesday.

    Gianforte said he hears “from too many employers throughout our state who can’t find workers” and added that the state’s suffering from a “labor shortage” made worse by the benefits.

    Starting June 27, Montana workers will lose the extra $300 per week the federal government has been paying since December. The state will also cancel federal benefits for gig workers and the long-term jobless.

    Montana is the only state saying it will forgo federal benefits, which are scheduled to expire in September, though it’s possible Congress could extend them again. It’s also possible other states could follow Montana’s lead.

    With Montana’s unemployment rate at 3.8%, compared with 6% nationally, the “vast expansion of federal unemployment benefits is now doing more harm than good,” Gianforte said.

     

  15. 15.

    Kay

    My youngest is working as a dishwasher at a restaurant that is part of a run down motel. He was at Wal Mart but he was really unhappy there so he actually took a pay cut to go to…the horrible motel.

    Last night they finally got a 2nd dishwasher. She came in at 7:15 for a 6 oclock shift, went to the “ladies room” at 9 and they never saw her again :)

  17. 17.

    Cacti

    @Kay: Can’t say I blame her.  Washing dishes is one of the worst jobs ever.

    Hot, tiring, and gross.

  20. 20.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Saw a guy in the replies of the Rouzer tweet claiming that the real problem is the devalution of the dollar and “where is the money to pay for higher wages supposed to come from? They’re not selling computers!”

    Also, people found job postings for that Chef Gruel’s resturant. He’s completely lying about the wages he’s paying. Counter servers are 12/hr and a Sous chef/resturant manager is $20-25/hr in Huntington Beach

  22. 22.

    Another Scott

    @raven: Running a small restaurant is hard work.  Trying to live on $350 a week take-home is hard, too.  Having the GOP blow up the economy twice in less than 15 years is hard on everyone except the top 1%.

    Ultimately, people have to come first and businesses  – especially restaurants – are going to have to adapt.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  27. 27.

    Doc Sardonic

    @raven: Back in the early Iron Age when I was training to be an economist, full employment was considered around 5%, actually could be considered in a range depending on locale between 4 and 6.4 or 6.5%. So looking at Montana’s numbers they are close to “full employment” so the pool of people looking to fill low wage jobs is relatively shallow.

  31. 31.

    Doc Sardonic

    @WaterGirl: Yes, I believe states are free to refuse Federally provided funds at their choosing. Case in point red states not expanding Medicare And Florida’s own Senator Dildonicus Ambulatorous returning a few billion in high speed rail funds when he was Governor

  32. 32.

    Ken

    @Cacti: I renew my call for someone to step up and complain that they’re going to have to shut down their restaurant because they can’t find any vendors willing to sell them sirloin steak for twelve cents a pound.

    Ideally this would be coupled with a call to reduce government farm subsidies, since obviously they’re discouraging farmers from working enough to produce surpluses that will drive down the price of food.

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    @Doc Sardonic: Not to pick on you, but the NAIRU being around 5% is dogma and there’s been almost no evidence to support it.

    repost – Evidence points to the NAIRU being closer to 2.5%.

    There were times in the not too distant past when the Fairfax County unemployment rate was at or below 2%. We didn’t have hyperinflation and fast-food (and other) restaurants were seemingly doing very well. Yes, companies had to compete for workers even at the low-end, but they found ways to do it.

    The GQP and their enablers bellyaching about workers is what they do – it’s never the business’s fault. It’s the government if they have plenty of workers, it’s the government if they don’t have enough workers, it’s the government if they can’t export enough, it’s the government if there are too many imports, etc.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  36. 36.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Meanwhile, Ed Lee gave over (a mistake, to my thinking) a super valuable downtown restaurant space over to training a catering cadre and prep for meals for the poverty stricken in addition to donating and raising hundreds of thousands for laid off restaurant workers. Jose Andres fed hundreds of thousands.

  38. 38.

    Mo MacArbie

    I can believe it about the line cook mortality rate. The kitchen at the restaurant where I worked was set to be pressure-negative so that the cooking fumes wouldn’t escape out into the dining room; all the patrons’ breath goes there.

  39. 39.

    raven

    @Another Scott: My buddy and his wife are really bustin ass but I do have to note that they bought another eatery in the area. The fact that they had a window and a picnic table area really helped this past year. We hardly missed a Friday eve with our SD group.

  41. 41.

    RSA

    The Charlotte Observer piece is pretty heartwarming. Thanks for the link.

    One of the people called to task was Travis Hearne, chef and owner of The Dunavant. “I was having a problem with turnover of my dishwashers, so rather than invest I was putting up lowball offers. I was one of the people in that Facebook group that Sam ridiculed…

    Hearne’s sous chef had just left to pursue an executive chef position, so he decided instead of hiring a replacement he would increase wages across the board to a liveable wage. “It has made such a huge difference. People have taken on roles that are not theirs, they are asking for more responsibilities, they are showing up, working harder and holding one another to standards that are even beyond mine. Morale is through the roof — it is really a dream. I’m so grateful to Sam for pushing us to be better,” Hearne said.

    I worked as a dishwasher in high school and college, so this hit home for me.

    One cautionary point is worth paying attention to, I think: paying workers more almost inevitably means higher prices.  For a restaurant, “you have to increase the price of your burger by a few dollars,” per one person is quoted in the article. Our economy has shifted from manufacturing to service over the past decades.  If we want everyone to earn a living wage, we’ll have to pay more for work that’s historically (and unfairly) taken for granted, meaning underpaid. Child care. Elder care. Nursing. Elementary school teaching. I’m just picking a biased sample of occupations here.

  43. 43.

    Ken

    I’m wondering what Montana’s next move will be, if cutting off the extra unemployment doesn’t depress wages enough enable businesses to find enough people.  Cut off Social Security, to force seniors back into the workforce?

  45. 45.

    Steve in the ATL

    @RSA:

     

    we’ll have to pay more for work that’s historically (and unfairly) taken for granted, meaning underpaid.

    It’s about damn time lawyers got paid fairly!

  49. 49.

    Doc Sardonic

    @Another Scott: No argument from me on those numbers being dogmatic, a good chunk of what was being taught to budding economists in the late 70’s was. The challenge was always to prove it matched conditions on the ground versus what the mathematical movement  on the curves said it should be, especially since conditions on the ground were always “anecdotal”

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    If you can’t pay a living wage, your business is shit. And I don’t mean picking it up, I mean it’s value. I’ve paid people to work for me and I’ve been paid to work. I’ve been on both sides of that paycheck. I’ve been on hourly and I’ve been on salary. I’ve not taken home a check when there wasn’t enough in the bank to pay the employees, and me, because customers wouldn’t pay on time. I’ve worked for next to nothing in the military. But I got crappy food and a crappy bunk so it all worked out.
    My point is that a lot of people who decide pay schedules don’t remember or never knew what it is like to be paid crap for working and don’t give a fuck about it even if they did remember. They care about the fucking bottom line and their fucking investment statement. They will raise prices when those don’t perform, but they just fire people who won’t work for shit wages or shit bosses.

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    If it weren’t for hypocrisy, the GOP would have no ethics at all.

    It works with some of the base, some of whom also do this weird thing where they give the Republicans credit for something they like in Biden’s proposals, even though all the Republicans voted against it. It is really nuts.

    But the GOP realize that their only hope is to lie, cheat and steal their way back into power, and they are really up for it.

  53. 53.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    It cracks me up. Don’t they ever stop and think that anybody can fact check them lol

  55. 55.

    sab

    @Cacti: I am a wife and I do it nightly. Get to nuzzle the begging cats while I do it.

    Worst job is shoe sales. Or slaughterhouse.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @raven:

    Is that really you?

    Working in a restaurant is one of the funner low wage jobs. Hard work! But much more fun than the others. They attract eccentric people.

  60. 60.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Not at the Centre, these are state assembly elections. So a major state remains out of their grasp which is definitely a good thing

    Oh and there were local elections and BJP lost in Modi’s constituency in Varanasi. Also Mathura (mythical birthplace of Krishna) and Ayodhya (mythical birthplace of Ram)

  61. 61.

    Martin

    @Baud: We’re at $14, $13 if you have 25 or fewer employees. In my city, $5 extra for hero pay – basically anyone in a grocery store or restaurant plus a bunch of other jobs. So my local McD’s pays $19/hr right now. They’re pretty happy. Not much trouble finding workers.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott: 
    I’m inclined to agree with Matt Yglesias on this point: working in fast food is a form of underemployment. Until fast food restaurants are seriously looking at replacing their workers with robots, we aren’t close to full employment.

  64. 64.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    I can’t believe no one called this chef about his second “point”…in a pre-pandemic world, schools would be closing soon. Apparently kids of dishwashers just take care of themselves? Oh, yeah, they did. This chef just didn’t give a damn until childcare became his cudgel.

  66. 66.

    Ken

    @Roger Moore: Last night I heard a radio commercial for a mattress store that has no employees.  The commercial said that a timer unlocks and locks the doors, and customers can come in and try the mattresses on display. There’s an app or website where they order, and the mattress is shipped to their home. I thought it was interesting, since I wouldn’t have tagged “mattress store” as one of the first to be automated.

  67. 67.

    Martin

    @WaterGirl: Unemployment is only state. The feds are supplementing those funds, so Montana is effectively telling the federal government to keep their supplemental funds.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:

    Yup, $13/14 as of Jan 1, the lower figure for 25 or fewer employees. Two and one more $1 bumps, respectively until they’re both $15/hour.

    Herman Caine did some shenanigans with subminimum restaurant wages under federal law, but I don’t think those supersede state regulations.

    I blame tipping.

  73. 73.

    L85NJGT

    While sitting at the drive-thru window I noticed their posting for $11.75/hr. The radio said I could get $20/hr, plus 401K, plus healthcare, plus HSA at a local manufacturing concern.

    I doubt GOP attempts to punish the serfs will make a damn bit of difference in the labor market.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    They are desperate for workers, which is good for workers, so that’s good. Is my take.

    About time. Five years ago these same employers were threatening to replace them all with robots rather than give them an 11 cent an hour raise, so maybe they need employees after all?

  75. 75.

    Kay

    @L85NJGT:

    It’s up to 17.50 an hour for unskilled factory here. Honestly? It’s nice. These people have been shit on for decades. I hope they enjoy this period of being in demand.

  76. 76.

    Roger Moore

    @Ken:

    We really need this kind of stuff if we want the standard of living to rise.  The way standard of living goes up is when we can produce more with the same amount of labor, and that generally means some kind of automation.  That means we want very low unemployment, for two reasons.  Reason 1 is that a lot of employers won’t think about automation until there’s a labor shortage/wage inflation.  Reason 2 is that people will scream bloody murder about losing their job to automation unless there are better jobs for them to move to.

  78. 78.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    I suppose a pandemic with almost 600,000 confirmed deaths in the US will do that

  79. 79.

    Ken

    @L85NJGT: The radio said I could get $20/hr, plus 401K, plus healthcare, plus HSA at a local manufacturing concern.

    Clearly the solution is to institute a maximum wage of $10/hour so that owners who only want to pay that much don’t have to compete with businesses that are willing to pay more.  It may also be necessary to ban 401K plans and employer-provided health insurance.

  80. 80.

    Jay

    Bruce Bartman, white guy in PA who illegally voted for Trump on behalf of his dead mother, gets 5 years probation

    Crystal Mason, black woman in TX who voted on supervised release when she didn't know she was ineligible, gets 5 years in prison

    Two justice systems in America pic.twitter.com/5vNHdCefTo— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) May 3, 2021

  81. 81.

    Nicole

    This makes me think of a trivia fact I learned last night- I was reading about the Black Death, and found an article that said that, after the pandemic was over, because so many of them had died, for the first time peasants found themselves with a bit of power- higher wages, lower taxes, due to the labor shortage.  It was one of the factors that led to the end of feudalism.

    And here we are, coming out of a pandemic again, with angry business owners screaming that their serfs are demanding better than what they had before.

  82. 82.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    They like supply and demand until the tables turn on them. I am so fucking sick of these cheapskates. It’s the workers who sustain their business. They are NOTHING without their workers.

  83. 83.

    VOR

    There are almost certainly a bunch of people who decided to retire rather than return to a low wage grind. That would take people out of the labor force. Throw in trouble finding childcare, which probably removes more people. And suddenly exposing yourself to COVID for minimum wage is not attractive.

  84. 84.

    D4N3

    Bait and switch I overheard at a client earlier this week

    “I know the manager position is filled, but re-post the same job because we got so many applicants last time and then see if any are willing to take an entry position to get a foot in the door.”

    With employers like that how can you blame people for preferring to stay on benefits.

  85. 85.

    sdhays

    @Ken: I just hope this move brings back homemade meth labs to Montana since the state’s Republican leaders are so concerned about losing those jobs to Mexico.

  86. 86.

    Benw

    We planted a peach tree on our back hill today, and started digging the hole for the cherry tree!

  88. 88.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    I’d like to see a comparison of line cook fatality with police fatality since the pandemic started.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @Nicole: Yup.

    The on-the-down-low GQP mantra is: “Feudalism Now, Feudalism Tomorrow, Feudalism Forever!!”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    RSA

    @debbie: They like supply and demand until the tables turn on them. I am so fucking sick of these cheapskates. It’s the workers who sustain their business. They are NOTHING without their workers.

    Funny how the rules used to justify stratospheric CEO salaries also apply to minimum wage workers’ income.

  93. 93.

    geg6

    @Kay:

    It’s not fun.  It’s hard, hard work with owners/GMs and customers who think they own you.  Sexual harassment might as well be part of the job description.  Lots of drug abuse and alcoholism to cope and lots of suicides for those who can’t.  Just like any other job, you can make it fun, but it’s not a fun job.  I worked in restaurants and bars, both full and part-time, for 12 years and my sister made a career of it for over 40 years.  It’s not a fun job.

  94. 94.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    For so, so many years they bitched about not enough jerbs. Now suddenly they’re bitching about too many jerbs! What does it take to make them happy?

  95. 95.

    Mary G

    My teen housemate has totally turned his life around by working in a restaurant washing dishes. He got in a lot of trouble partly because he was bored and comes from a long line of Hispanic immigrants who consider 70 hours a week light duty, so he is a worker any employer would love.

    He started at $14/hour and after being approached by other places’ headhunters has negotiated his way up to $20, plus he can have one meal a day without paying for it when the place isn’t busy. (It’s always busy, but after closing the chefs experiment and they eat/party).

    He spends every penny he makes on food. He and his girlfriend order door dash from fancy restaurants and then try to make things they like, such as jambalaya and pork belly. He buys stacks of Lunchables, Marie Callendar’s pot pies, frozen Snickers ice cream treats, and frozen pizza for in between and we had to have a talk about boundaries when there was no room for my groceries.

    I just hope he will get the extremely minimal online schoolwork he’s been assigned so he can graduate. His mother’s ordered the cap and gown package and his teachers call her so much she had to stop taking the calls when her patients complained. I have threatened to evict him or charge market rent for his room if he doesn’t get it done. He is blithely assuring us that there is no problem.

  96. 96.

    Jeffro

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I suppose a pandemic with almost 600,000 confirmed deaths in the US will do that

    Great point.  That, and the huge number of folks who had to stay home to take care of kids over such a ridiculously prolonged time since we collectively failed our ‘marshmallow test’ really put a damper on the number of available workers.

  97. 97.

    Dan B

    @schrodingers_cat: There was a loud and, deservedly, angry woman on Amanpour who said that Modi stated that he “persuaded Biden to send the aid.”  She says the BJP controls the media in India like most successful autocratic regimes do.

  98. 98.

    Almost Retired

    This unemployment-benefits-are-too-high lament is such bullshit.  Especially in the restaurant industry, where the turnover is always intense.  Most of these people aren’t coming back because (1) they found a better job; (2) it’s not worth returning if your income is offset by childcare costs; and/or (3) they’re not comfortable from a COVID safety standpoint going back to work yet, especially if they have to encounter the anti-mask evangelists that infect many places.

    Otherwise, in the absence of those factors, if someone would rather collect a couple extra months of unemployment than come back to work, is that an employee you really want anyway?

  100. 100.

    MisterForkbeard

    @MattF: I haven’t seen any news about this at all. Are you sure?

    ETA: I see that they’re going to announce a decision tomorrow. It’s really sad, because JFC he’s broken their policies so many times now – including trying to get around the ban by posting repeatedly through his worker’s accounts. If they bring him back I hope he gets banned again within a day or so.

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    @Benw: that’s funny – Mrs. Fro is telling me that we can indeed grow lemons and limes here in central VA.  I’m thinking about planting one of each and see how it goes.

    And normally I don’t give a hoot about gardening or trees or anything like that, but this has kind of piqued my interest!

  103. 103.

    prostratedragon

    @Obvious Russian Troll:  Yeah.  Health workers are literally a couple orders of magnitude ahead of cops in number.  Not surprising if cooks, or cooks and packers together,  are as bad or worse.

  104. 104.

    Ken

    @sdhays: I just hope this move brings back homemade meth labs to Montana since the state’s Republican leaders are so concerned about losing those jobs to Mexico.

    Someone said something about this last week, and I still have no idea what it means.  Explanation? Link?

  106. 106.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Baud: All I’ve been able to find is articles saying the announcement of their decision will be tomorrow. I guess there’s other news floating around saying that the announcement will be that he’s allowed back on?

    If so, I hope they apply their ban to him again immediately the next time he’s a racist, sexist fuckwad who encourages insurrection and treason.  So by tomorrow evening at the latest.

  107. 107.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:Working in a restaurant is one of the funner low wage jobs. Hard work! But much more fun than the others. They attract eccentric people.

    @geg6:It’s not fun.  It’s hard, hard work with owners/GMs and customers who think they own you.  Sexual harassment might as well be part of the job description.  Lots of drug abuse and alcoholism to cope

    You’re both right, fortunately/unfortunately.

    I still miss my restaurant cook and manager days, but I’d also never go back.  Getting in at 2 a.m. or later after a closing shift was not fun.

    However, I’d take a shift expediting at a busy restaurant any day, for free, just for the rush and the give-and-take with the cooks and waitstaff.  That part is fun.  =)

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    I’m dealing with this right now at the pub. I agree that things need to change in the restaurant/bar industry, but it has to be an across-the-board change so it’s a level playing field. It’s not just finding labor – other costs are way up, too. My manager tells me that a case of gloves that cost $50/60 last year is over $200 now. Food cost is up, and there are shortages, like a chicken wing shortage. I’ve got a manager who’s working 70-80 hours a week trying to keep everything going, and one server I would normally not hire who’s less than ideal but she shows up and does the job so we’re giving her a chance.

    As far as raising wages, I’ve got competitors. Right now people on MO unemployment are getting $15.50/hr if they aren’t having anything withheld. I can’t pay my cooks that much in this area. I have competitors – if I raise all my prices 2 or 3 dollars, I can pay more but all my customers will go elsewhere because they can get that same burger and fries for $13 at my competitor.  I do think this situation will raise wages across the board in this industry, but it’s going to have to be across the board.

    I do push back on the bullshit that it’s just the unemployment benefits causing this situation.  Everyone is hiring right now – it’s the same thing that happened when everyone suddenly needed a lot more toilet paper last year. People have left the job market because they can’t find childcare, or their kids are doing school at home and you can’t exactly have the teenager down the street watch them. There’s also the crackdown on immigration – I think it’s contributing more to this situation than many people want to admit. When the industry shut down last year some people found other work, especially when the extra unemployment ran out in July, and they aren’t ready or willing to come back yet.

    I don’t know what will happen with the fast food industry. It seems to me that it’s built on the idea of employing a bunch of teenagers and college kids at minimum wage, but that’s not what they’re doing anymore, and I don’t think they can sustain it. I do see more and more automation on the horizon in that industry.

    Oh, and we’re not making any money ourselves – we actually lost money last year, because I had to pay utilities and phone and cable while we were closed out of my own pocket, and it is hard to make money at 25% capacity. Once I get my 2020 taxes I’ll be able to apply for the Restaurant Revitalization funds. That’s what they should have done for restaurants last year rather than the PPP, because PPP doesn’t help you when you’re closed and all your employees are making $600/week federal unemployment.

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack

    @Ken:

    Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), March 26:

    “Twenty years ago in Montana, meth was homemade. It was homegrown. And you had purity levels less than 30%,” Daines told a gathering of his Senate colleagues during a visit to the Mexican border. “Today the meth that is getting into Montana is Mexican cartel.”
    He claimed the meth trafficking was due to illegal immigration.​

  117. 117.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Charlottesville is a warm place, Zone 7 going on Zone 8 these days. You hopefully can pick a spot on the south side of some structure, and maybe take special measures to protect trees from late frosts. A garden thread a couple weeks ago got into various methods to do this.

    Figs do really well there. The small Greek community introduced them in the last century, and a lot of people grow them now. They aren’t as pretty as lemon trees, though, and figs don’t keep like lemons do. My friend Joan makes fig jam, and the Hunt Country Store puts fig jam on their country ham biscuits. Mmh, mmh!

  121. 121.

    Soprano2

    @Steeplejack: You’re welcome. I get frustrated sometimes, because we have to live in the real world,  not the ideal one. I’d love to pay everyone $20/hr, but my prices would be so much higher I’d have no business and they’d have no jobs.

  124. 124.

    Roger Moore

    @MisterForkbeard:

    If they bring him back I hope he gets banned again within a day or so.

    The only way he can avoid being banned again is if they keep bending the rules to protect him.  If he actually has to follow the same rules as everyone else, he’ll be gone post haste.

  125. 125.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: Thanks!  I like figs but I think I’m the only one here who would eat any.  I’ll start with a lemon tree (like them better than limes anyway) and see how it goes.  =)

  126. 126.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    The problem is the assholes who think they are entitled to cheap labor forever.  Unfortunately, decent business owners are caught up in the same economics.

  127. 127.

    Brachiator

    @Soprano2:

    Great comment.

    I do push back on the bullshit that it’s just the unemployment benefits causing this situation.  Everyone is hiring right now – it’s the same thing that happened when everyone suddenly needed a lot more toilet paper last year. People have left the job market because they can’t find childcare, or their kids are doing school at home and you can’t exactly have the teenager down the street watch them.

    You have it right. A lot of businesses are trying to hire people right now. And this is even though in some areas there are still entire industries that are still shut down. And some people who used to work at restaurants, for example, have moved on and found other jobs. They are not necessarily hot to go back to a previous job.

    And if unemployment benefits let some people wait and choose a job, rather than jump at the first job that is offered, that’s a good thing. And people know that unemployment benefits will not last forever at current levels. From some reports I’ve seen, there are still many people without jobs or who have been discouraged because they cannot find a job that matches their skills, benefits and desires.

    There’s also the crackdown on immigration – I think it’s contributing more to this situation than many people want to admit.

    In Southern California, I have seen restaurants that hire only undocumented workers for some jobs. They may pay some of the wages under the table and not pay worker’s comp insurance and payroll taxes.

  130. 130.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Steve in the ATL:

    So some dumbass in a two lawyer firm with a receptionist/assistant jumped on the clio Facebook group to ask about any utility that he could use to track the efficiency and performance of his assistant to make sure that they were attentive to tasks all day. I’m proud to say that I kicked off a well-deserved roasting which hopefully inspired significant self reflection, as he didn’t respond to any of it.

  131. 131.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Good luck! My friend Joan used to have a lemon tree she grew indoors. I remember her using a camel hair paint brush to spread pollen from flower to flower for better pollination.

  132. 132.

    Steeplejack

    Can’t find a link for it now, but on Twitter a restaurant owner was bemoaning the fact that none of his previous employees were “coming back.” Somebody spatchcocked  him with the question: “You mean the ones that you summarily fired at the start of the pandemic?” Loyalty is a two-way street.

    Somebody else asked him if he took PPP funds. No answer on that.

  134. 134.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Ken: Send the National Guard threw their towns to force work force drop outs back to work at bayonet point.

  135. 135.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    Party like a rock star at the close of a shift – I’ve been a dishwasher, line cook, bartender and expediter. You want to know pressure? Try being a 17 year old expediter with 350-400 tops on Derby Day after the races, and seeing a line full of about 80 tickets that is running for hours with no breaks that you have to break into tranches of about 25 at a time.

    You learn fast.

  136. 136.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT: Music break

    Not everything out of India is ugly. This Manjusha Patil Kulkarni performing

    Bolava Vitthal (Speak Vittthal) 

    By Tukaram who was born in 17th century, grocer by profession., he is one of Maharashtra’s most beloved Varkari Saint poets of Maharastra

    *Bhakti poets preached universal brotherhood and it was protest movement against the Brahminical religion which questioned caste and gender inequalities. He died in his 40s and foul play is suspected. They killed him but they could not kill his poetry.

  137. 137.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    Can’t find a link for it now, but on Twitter a restaurant owner was bemoaning the fact that none of his previous employees were “coming back.” Somebody spatchcocked him with the question: “You mean the ones that you summarily fired at the start of the pandemic?” Loyalty is a two-way street.

    A lot of restaurant owners tried to do the right thing. But in the US the unemployment compensation system did not include self-employed people, and there was no clean program to subsidize small business owners and their employees.

    When the pandemic hit in Los Angeles county, restaurants that had to shut down or reduce operations did not have enough to pay everybody.

    Also, what hit some restaurants, and increased some of the anger at Governor Newsom is that restaurants spent money to meet the health guidelines imposed by health authorities, only to be told to shut down anyway.

    Then things opened up a little and some places were allowed to have outdoor dining. So they spent money on barriers and outdoor seating supplies. And then had to lock down again.

    It’s easy to say “pay people anyway, no matter what,” but that is not how it works in the real world.

     

    ETA: I think that 99 percent of the anger directed at Governor Newsom is misguided, and also know some restaurant owners who did not handle things well. I know some jerks who exploited workers before the pandemic and continued to be ass wipes afterwards. But it is a complex situation. And the restaurant industry was getting kicked in the teeth before the pandemic.

  139. 139.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    This isn’t good. Social media gave him a bunch of his power and now fucking Zuckerberg wants to give it back to him. If FB allows him back on every other platform will be pressured to unban him as well

  143. 143.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Baud:

     

    The problem is the assholes who think they are entitled to cheap labor forever.

    You just wait, son—the south’s gonna rise agin!

  144. 144.

    The Pale Scot

    @MattF:

    a low unemployment rate means people are more likely to have jobs they actually want.

    This is the thing. Working the front of the house, especially at better restaurants, you get sucked into a lifestyle of going home with cash in your pocket every night. You’re short some weeks? Grab an extra shift. The interruption of this has given the savvy ones the ability to step back, assess and change. Especially if you’ve lost your place or your car already, why go back? Living from paycheck to paycheck is way different from living night to night. Night to night is great when you twenty, then the shit gets old. And the money is not was it use to be. Forty years ago I’d pull $120 on a Saturday night busing tables at a burger joint. Hop over with the waitresses to the Village to drink 3 dollar pints at the Red Lion, come home to my apt (rent 350) at 8am with 50 bucks still in my pocket. Now a hundred bucks is still seen as a good night for servers, pints are 8 bucks and rent a G+.

    People today just don’t know how to be served. Having people cook your food, serve it and clean up afterward is a luxury, America has turned it into a commodity.

    Those savvy people were also the people that keep a place going, dependable, predicable, I can’t say how important predicable behavior matters on a Saturday night in a busy restaurant.

    They ain’t coming back

  145. 145.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Interesting article I came across:

    Facebook’s decision on readmitting Trump is going to enrage people. But there’s more to the story

    Four months ago, Facebook announced former President Donald Trump had been suspended indefinitely from its platform. On Wednesday morning, Facebook’s oversight board — a first-of-its-kind group of legal experts and human rights leaders — will announce its decision about whether Trump will be permanently banned.

    Facebook’s decision will be a litmus test for social media platforms’ capacity to draw the line between the protection of free speech and public safety. But no matter what the outcome, one thing is certain: it will enrage many Americans, and even more will feel helpless about the prospect of political reconciliation on social media. So before Trump takes the spotlight in ongoing discussions about social media and politics once again, is there anything that we — the citizens of social media — can do to stem the tide of polarization on our platforms?

    That question may seem wrongheaded. By popular accounts, it was social media companies that trapped us inside ideological echo chambers, ignored misinformation campaigns that divided us even further and built algorithms that radicalize us for profit. But what if I told you that the evidence for each of these claims is surprisingly thin?

    Four years ago, I founded the Polarization Lab at Duke University. We use the tools of computational social science to research the key drivers of political polarization and build new technology to help social media users implement insights from our research.

    Social media companies are by no means blameless for our current situation. But the latest research indicates that most people are not stuck inside political echo chambers, misinformation can have surprisingly little impact on our views and algorithms probably only radicalize a tiny fraction of people.

  146. 146.

    Steve in the ATL

    I have manufacturing clients who pay $15/hour starting to pay, no education or experience or skills required.  They can’t hire if there is an Amazon warehouse or auto plant within an hour’s drive.  And many that they do hire get lured away after a couple of years when my clients have taught them marketable skills.

  148. 148.

    L85NJGT

    @Baud:

    It is the foundation of the klan. The Freedman’s Bureau was putting ex-slaves to jobs, and the southern gentry didn’t want to pay the prevailing wages.

  149. 149.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator: ​
     
    I think the biggest thing is that there was no real plan for what to do if the pandemic lasted more than a short time. What we needed more than anything was to pay businesses to stay closed and employees to stay home. State governments could and did order businesses to stay closed, but they simply didn’t have the money to compensate people for the lost business and lost wages. Only the federal government had a prayer of coming up with enough money to pay for it, but TFG was never going to agree to anything like that, both because he wasn’t willing to admit how big a problem the pandemic was and because spending money that way went against his and his party’s worldview.

  152. 152.

    Ken

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Send the National Guard threw their towns to force work force drop outs back to work at bayonet point.

    I am intrigued by your program to ensure full employment.  You should present it to Baud, he may be looking for a Secretary of Labor.

  154. 154.

    Geminid

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): trump may get back on social media, but it won’t be the same. The Presidency magnified trump’s stature, above and beyond the real power it gave him. trump as President was an 800lb. gorilla. Now he may just come across as the 300lb. mange-y monkey he is.

  155. 155.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:

    Facebook is expected to allow him back on tomorrow.

    Facebook is more vulnerable than they know. If they do this, they will have fucked up very badly.

  159. 159.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Baud:

    The problem is the assholes who think they are entitled to cheap labor forever.  Unfortunately, decent business owners are caught up in the same economics.

    Also the assholes who think they’re entitled to cheap goods forever. It’s time to put our money where our mouths are. We either pay more for services when we patronize businesses or more in taxes to subsidize shit wages via governmental programs or more in the societal cost of poverty.

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @Nicole: Ken Follet’s novel World Without End has a lot of material on the Black Death, and the economic changes it brought to 14th century English society. It’s a good read, hard to put down.

  162. 162.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Good question.

    Here’s his profile on the Duke University website:

    Chris Bail is Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Data Science at Duke University, where he directs the Polarization Lab. A leader in the emerging field of computational social science, Bail’s research examines fundamental questions of social psychology, extremism, and political polarization using social media data, bots, and the latest advances in machine learning.

    Bail is the recipient of Guggenheim and Carnegie Fellowships. His research appears in top journals, such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Sociological Review. His book, Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream, received three awards and resulted in an invitation to address the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

    Bail has also written for the Sunday Op-Ed page of the New York Times and The Washington Post Blog. His research has been covered in more than fifty media outlets, including Wired, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Vox, Daily Kos, National Public Radio, NBC News, C-Span, and the BBC. Bail regularly lectures to audiences in government, business, and the non-profit sector. He also  consults with social media platforms struggling to combat polarization.

    ​Bail is passionate about building the field of computational social science. He is the Editor of the Oxford University Press Series in Computational Social Science and the co-founder of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science, which are free training events designed to introduce junior scholars to the field that are held concurrently in seven universities around the world each year. Chris also serves on the Advisory Council to the National Science Foundation’s Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, and helped create Duke’s Interdisciplinary Data Science Program.

    ​Funding for Bail’s work has been provided by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.

    He seems legitimate, but I did roll my eyes at his tech solutions. Who is he to decide what is “very liberal” or “very conservative”, for example?

  163. 163.

    Ruckus

    @raven:

    OK, I’m still laughing.

    We had a kid on KP duty on the ship. We were underway, moderate seas. He took out a full trash/garbage can to the fantail and dumped it into the garbage chute, which went almost down to the waterline and dumped the trash into the prop wash, which sort of broke it up. They don’t do this any more. On his way forward he was washed overboard and grabbed onto the top, aptly named, lifeline. Fortunately for him someone walked out onto the main deck to go aft and have a smoke. Dragged his poor ass over the lifeline and onto the ship. I’d bet he still has nightmares, 50 yrs later. Not the same as getting shot or blown up, but still the same level of dead, if that guy hadn’t been going for a smoke.

  165. 165.

    J R in WV

    @Obvious Russian Troll:

    I’d like to see a comparison of line cook fatality with police fatality since the pandemic started.

    I looked up the Federal Statistics on worker fatalities, Timber work, Heavy equipment operator, high tension line work, things like that lead the list, Police officer was 22nd. Restaurant work was not on the list of top 25 most dangerous jobs.

    ETA: However, this is not during the pandemic, which probably changes a lot. Cops… I don’t see cops waiting beside the road any more, to avoid being exposed to a contagious driver speeding a little, probably.

  168. 168.

    Ken

    @Baud: I’m actually leaning toward @Nicole’s advice to kill off a substantial number of workers to improve the bargaining power of the rest.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques can still be Secretary of Labor after you make Nicole Secretary of Health and Human Services.

  169. 169.

    raven

    @Ruckus: Whew, my I knew a  Guadalcanal Marine and he talked about the crazy swabbies walking the deck in storms like it was a walk in the park!  KP wasn’t all that bad but burnin and stirrin, that sucked.

  170. 170.

    RSA

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m one of those people who will be enraged. I’m on Facebook for the same reason as most, probably, a network effect. The connections with online friends has been a lifesaver over the past several years. But I’ll leave that behind if Facebook allows Trump onboard again.

    (I’ll add that the linked article is interesting but not all that informative. The solution of Aristotelian moderation seems a little naive?)

  171. 171.

    The Pale Scot

    @Jeffro:

    I’d take a shift expediting at a busy restaurant any day, for free, just for the rush and the give-and-take with the cooks and waitstaff.  That part is fun.

    I’ve been thinking the same thing for years

  173. 173.

    Bill Arnold

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
    I’ll do the due diligence and look at a few of their papers, but it looks like contrarian bullshit; in a country where elections can be quite close and even presidential elections are often won by less than 100K votes (in battleground states), “most people” is not a statement about the margins that matter. This looks akin to contrarian arguments that say that advertising and marketing don’t work. It’s dangerous stuff because it’s essentially saying that there is no reason to combat computation propaganda. Or perhaps these arguments are deliberately partisan political stuff intended to bake in partisan advantages in computational propaganda. :-)
    Sorry, I occasionally have to verbally listen to wingnuts spouting talking points, some of it from social media, some of it e.g. the covid-denial and antivaxxer propaganda, downright deadly.

  176. 176.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Brachiator:

    I don’t want to villainize restaurant owners, but I don’t like the ones shrugging about “having to make the hard choices” during the pandemic but now bitching that no one is sufficiently empathizing with their current woes. Other people are making choices too.

  177. 177.

    The Pale Scot

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    seeing a line full of about 80 tickets that is running for hours with no breaks

    If you have ADD the inability to pause and think of something else can be addictive, like air traffic controllers after their union was broken, I only fucked up when things were slow

  178. 178.

    RSA

    @Obvious Russian Troll:

    I’d like to see a comparison of line cook fatality with police fatality since the pandemic started.

    I’ll observe that comparisons may not always be apples to apples.

    I sometimes work with active military personnel. Their experience is different from the police, and I can’t judge how much. But from what I gather, it makes a difference when people are deliberately try to kill you, and that’s not really captured in the statistics of how often they succeed.

  180. 180.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    I think the biggest thing is that there was no real plan for what to do if the pandemic lasted more than a short time. What we needed more than anything was to pay businesses to stay closed and employees to stay home. State governments could and did order businesses to stay closed, but they simply didn’t have the money to compensate people for the lost business and lost wages.

    These are lessons that hopefully will be learned for how to deal with future pandemics. But even Canada, Denmark and other countries with policies providing subsidies for small business owners and employees did not anticipate long or recurring shutdowns. It’s tough, even for national governments.

    Only the federal government had a prayer of coming up with enough money to pay for it, but TFG was never going to agree to anything like that, both because he wasn’t willing to admit how big a problem the pandemic was and because spending money that way went against his and his party’s worldview.

    Even though progressives initially pushed the idea, Trump picked up on the idea of stimulus payments because it made him look like a bighearted man to his base. The regular GOP leadership would never go for any kind of truly effective payments to citizens. It is anathema to so-called conservative principles.

    Among Trump’s many problems was that he was incapable of shaping any coherent policy and apply it to national problems, and he is a small-minded man-child whose main instinct is either “who can I hurt” or “what’s in it for me?”

    But I give him half a point for giving Treasury the go signal for stimulus checks despite McConnell’s absolute opposition. This also smoothed the way for future stimulus payments, administered by the IRS, after we booted Trump’s ass out of office.

    But some Democrats (and some commenters here) only wanted to subsidize workers and kept harping about how the unemployment compensation system was good enough to handle everything (it wasn’t). A few so-called progressives openly said “fuck small business owners,” as though wages come down like magic from the heavens.

    Senator Warren, future Treasury Secretary Yellen, Fed Chair Powell, among others, were in tune to the need to provide fast relief to a broad segment of the public, without dividing people into the “worthy working class” and unworthy “Others.” And it is a very good thing that we have some of these people in the Biden Administration.

  181. 181.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Geminid:

    I hope you’re right

    @RSA:

    Oh I agree. His solutions come across as very naive and frankly, I don’t know, half-baked? How can his tech be able to discern what is “very liberal” or “very conservative” for example. That’s very subjective.

    What I find extreme and what a tankie finds extreme is going to differ obviously

    @Bill Arnold:

    It very well may be. I think his solutions are very silly. BTW, what did you mean when you said FB may have fucked up badly above if they decide to reinstate Trump? What consequences do you think the platform/company could face?

    What bothers me most about this is most ordinary people don’t get this treatment if they break a social media platform’s policies as blatantly as Trump did. He’s getting special privileges because of who he is with this “Oversight Board” and it’s bullshit

  182. 182.

    Soprano2

    @Roger Moore: Yes, 1,000 times this. If they wanted businesses to be closed they needed to help us pay the bills that don’t stop, like utilities and rent. We own the building, so for us rent wasn’t a problem. The PPP didn’t have anything for us,  because we were closed and our employees were fine collecting unemployment.  In order to get the loan forgiven you had to spend most of it on wages, but we didn’t need help with that.  Everything was predicated on things being able to open up after a few weeks, so that’s what happened, and we’ve paid for it ever since.

  183. 183.

    Hildebrand

    @Nicole: I gave a lecture last fall on the aftermath of the Black Plague called, ‘Was Thanos Right?’  I have the lecture on my YouTube channel (it was easier than using my University’s ghastly platform).  Yep, a fascinating bit of pandemic history.

  187. 187.

    Benw

    @Jeffro: yeah! I’m imagining just walking out and picking some fresh peaches off the tree! According to the internet, these trees are good in the NE climate, but we’re expecting to have to try a couple times to get one to take.

  188. 188.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @The Pale Scot:

    Exactly – this predated the point of sale computers and was a wire with all these dangling requests from an overcomplicated menu that included fried, baked and grilled proteins along with coated, fried vegetables and steam table items. That constantly running set of 80 tickets would build out at about 6:30 pm and wouldn’t get whittled until after 11 pm.

    It was brutal, stressful and exhilarating, all at once. Lots of shouting was the norm. Happily for us, the owner knew how tough the tasks were and stayed out of our shit, and the operation manager was a tough but kind old bird that respected the crew.

    Money wasn’t huge, but the full timers maintained households on their pay, students paid tuition and made their way, and they were really decent about scheduling around exams and big school social events. Christmas, we all got bonuses and a nice gift, and if our families came to eat, they were always treated great.
    It was a cool job, and we really felt like part of a tight team – not a lot of turnover, either.

    Place was a house nearly 200 years old, haunted as hell.

  191. 191.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    I don’t want to villainize restaurant owners, but I don’t like the ones shrugging about “having to make the hard choices” during the pandemic but now bitching that no one is sufficiently empathizing with their current woes. Other people are making choices too.

    I get your point. I try to cut through the noise. Lots of people had their woes while dealing with the pandemic.Many across the board are valid.

    The bottom line for me is that future tax plans need to do more for small business, including restaurants.  The GOP gave tons of breaks to big corporations. Some of Biden’s plans are a good start, but need to do more.

  192. 192.

    Suzanne

    @The Pale Scot: I am thrilled at the prospect of getting back to restaurants, and I tip well. If the vaccine is approved for young kids in September as I read somewhere today, that will make me feel much better about going out to eat again.

  193. 193.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Brachiator:

    This discussion has been good, especially in raising the point that a lot of things were (unfortunately) predicated on the “quarantine” lasting only a month or two.

  194. 194.

    Fair Economist

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Also, people found job postings for that Chef Gruel’s resturant. He’s completely lying about the wages he’s paying. Counter servers are 12/hr and a Sous chef/resturant manager is $20-25/hr in Huntington Beach

    That’s nuts. My son is getting $20/hour for helping with carpet cleaning jobs in Orange County. Many fast food places are paying $15.

  195. 195.

    Nicole

    @Baud:

    I’m actually leaning toward @Nicole’s advice to kill off a substantial number of workers to improve the bargaining power of the rest.

    Coincidentally, I also learned that the original saying was, “When life gives you lemons brought on rat-infested ships via the Sicilian trading ports, make lemonade.  After the buboes subside, that is.”

  198. 198.

    The Pale Scot

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Daantes:

    I worked at a place that had been an inn or pub since the revolutionary times on and off thru multiple owners. New chef/owner made big changes to decor. His wife told a story that she was putting up new chotskies on the fireplace mantle, turned away to pick up something from a table and was hit in the back by a plate off the mantle. She got pissed and lectured the dining room about how shabby it had become and that this new stuff was staying, Hmmph! Peaceful evermore

  200. 200.

    Ruckus

    @Steve in the ATL:

    I’ve worked in the machining field the vast majority of my life, have been back at it for going on 9 yrs now, am retiring next month and can tell you that it has been difficult to find workers and expensive for over the last 50 yrs. It’s dirty work, it can be dangerous work if one doesn’t pay attention or is a fuck up, but it has always paid reasonably well in a well run business. There are a lot of hidden costs as well, workers comp is not cheap, machine tools are not cheap, electricity is not cheap, rent/property is not cheap, and even crappy employees are not cheap, actually they usually cost more in the long run than paying great workers. And the truth is that most every business has a lot of the same problems. Being a boss takes effort, being a good boss is tougher yet, same with being an employee. But it is modern life, being a boss, and/or an employee. Most of us need to work to eat and pay the rent, we shouldn’t have to pay dumbasses to live it up, fuck it up and walk away unscathed and wealthy.

  201. 201.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:

    It’s the workers who sustain their business.

    They are NOTHING without their workers.

    This requires repeating loudly and often.

  202. 202.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @The Pale Scot:

    My pot sink window repeatedly wound up open the next day after I closed and latched it at night. Saw a spoon fly across a room (oldest part of the place) that  a waitress and I were standing in when I was mocking the idea of ghosts, this being the same room one of my favorite hardbitten waitresses saw an apparition of an old woman in (she identified the apparition later from a century old photo in a newspaper clipping in a forgotten album that was stuffed in a storage room).

  204. 204.

    HRA

    This was very interesting for me to read. My Dad was a chef and restaurant owner. It is not at all an easy job. He worked 14 hours a day with no days off. It is true you have to have a good staff and pay them well. It helped a lot that my Dad also realized he was a business man. Some do not realize it. Everything does not take care of itself. It is late now so I will save the rest if this comes up another day.

  207. 207.

    Kay

    According to the complaint, McIntyre sold the Rasta Pasta Pizzeria in Beverly, Massachusetts, after receiving the loan. McIntyre then used the money to buy the farm, several alpacas, at least two vehicles and airtime for a radio show focused on cryptocurrency, authorities allege.
    McIntyre allegedly misrepresented the pizzeria in the loan application, filed in April 2020, so he could receive more money from the loan program. He claimed the pizzeria employed nearly 50 people, although records indicate it had fewer than 10 employees, and allegedly falsified an official tax form.

    I love the PPP fraud cases because they’re always horrible business ideas.
    He should have just kept the pizzeria. Now he has a failed alpaca farm, failed radio show AND may go to prison for 40 years.

  208. 208.

    Kay

    US prison sentences are just insane. He took 600k. Bad. Okay. But- the possible sentence for that is FORTY YEARS.

    You could cut all US sentences in half, across the board, and it would still be insanely harsh but we would all save hundreds of millions of dollars and at the end of the day it wouldn’t matter at all in terms of “crime control”.

  209. 209.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Kay:

    Yeah, I notice this when I watch European crime shows on Amazon Prime or MHz. Their sentences for serious crimes, even murder, are way less than ours.

  210. 210.

    The Pale Scot

    @Kay:

    Screw em. I have no sympathy for well fed white collar criminals who have a roof over their head but aren’t satisfied.

  213. 213.

    Grover Gardner

    So a Hardee’s goes out of business. OMFG. How can we possibly replace this shitty fast food???

    /s

  215. 215.

    Ruckus

    @raven:

    We didn’t have burnin and stirrin on board ship. We often didn’t have enough fresh water to shower/wash clothes either. And of course the seas weren’t always dead calm, with dolphins swimming along in the wake. I went through one Atlantic crossing with 40-50 foot seas for nearly 8 days, and we ended up dramatically farther north than home port, which required over 2 days to get there. Total crossing from the UK to Charleston was 12 days and it was normally 5 or 6.

  217. 217.

    Ruckus

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I currently work in a machine shop and just passed 8 yrs on the job. There have been some rough patches, some my fault and some the fault of others, IOW normal humanity. And I’ve spent about 25 yrs of my life working for others and 35 working for myself. I think I learned how to be a decent boss and tried really hard to succeed at that. Like all humans I’d bet good money that I wasn’t always successful. But most people seemed to at least be OK working for me, I’ve had people that stormed off come back and tell me that I was right with what and how I said things, and as a boss that is, I think, high praise. The point is that respect is a two way street, and employees are what can make and break a business. We always had one or two employees who weren’t the fastest but always produced very excellent work that very, very rarely, like never, had to be fixed. I had one guy that my dad fired 2 times and I fired 3 because once he’d paid off his bar bill he’d start drinking again. When he came in the last time to pick up his last check he had a half full highball glass in his hand and 2 lovely ladies attached at the hip. And he drove there. Sober and straight he was hands down the best worker I ever had. He never showed up drunk and stoned but then when he was he never showed up. And it was always at exactly the wrong time.

  218. 218.

    Brachiator

    @Bill Arnold:

    So the queen of England is newly single and suddenly Bill gates gets a divorce. Interesting— alicia

    May be a dead thread, but I love that comment!

  219. 219.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    I’ve tried for some time to come up with a reasonable comment to your comment at #208, because I agree with you.

    But I always end up in the weeds and getting no where.

    Maybe this. Is there something in our background, say like Puritanism, or even many other religions, that gives us the idea that there is only one entity that can forgive a sin, and it isn’t us, or that life is an eye for an eye? I see that a lot of people in this country need to grow the hell up, but I think it’s quite possible that ship has sailed and isn’t returning to port.

  222. 222.

    joel hanes

    @Kay: ​
     

    You were all kids

    That’s what Vonnegut’s wife tells him about his own WW II reminiscences in the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five

Comments are closed.