Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The lights are all blinking red.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans in disarray!

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Monday Evening Open Thread: (Grasping) Hands Across the Water

Monday Evening Open Thread: (Grasping) Hands Across the Water

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I’ve never worked in a restaurant, I’ve never run a business, but I am given to understand there are all kinds of informational material available where an interested individual could learn where the labor force for restaurants comes from…

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60Comments

  1. 1.

    Lapassionara

    Maybe the UK can start something like, I don’t know, a “guest-worker” program?

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    BREXIT was the Tory answer to the Orange Clown’s vanity wall: something to keep out the dirty foreigners.

  8. 8.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Lapassionara: Fucking Tories can start waiting tables, starting with BoJo and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

    Oh, and Nigel too! (after he’s run over with that big, red, lying bus.)

  11. 11.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @namekarB:

    I like the idea of a nuclear armed United Celtic Republic. Wales, NI and Scotland are all entitled to parts of the Fleet, the Royal Navy and the Royal Army….

    Merge ‘em up with the Republic of Ireland, and you’d have a nifty regional power unified with the EU while eternally Tory but starving Midlands voters decide to have a barbecue of Tory pols and any Murdoch they can find in hiding….

  13. 13.

    Calouste

    @namekarB: Jersey (and the other Channel Islands and the Island of Man) is not in the UK. It’s a Crown Dependency, they have their own Parliament.

  14. 14.

    Bard the Grim

    @Baud: Your brain is really different from other people’s, and I give thanks to the FSM every day for it.

  15. 15.

    J R in WV

    @different-church-lady:

    I was told we’d be paid $50 an hour to pick lettuce.

    NO, wait… I’ll do it for $47.50.

    No, wait, $45.00 even. Call me!!!

    Actually I can’t stoop over for more than a few minutes, so never mind. Getting old sux ~!!~

  16. 16.

    RoonieRoo

    I am in Texas waiting for the triple whammy of people who have left Austin because affordability is getting worse, the people that spent the time on UI improving their work skills such that they can get much better jobs (why is no one talking about this group?), and the drop in how many immigrants we have to finally be acknowledged as a significant source of the labor shortage.  Seriously.  If anyone would interview the actual labor force as opposed to the CEOs and owners they just might suss out what’s happening. /rant

  17. 17.

    Major Major Major Major

    NYC mayoral race is heating up with one month to go until the primary. Top place is Adams, an ex-cop who’s sort of a moderate/technocrat/Bloomberg-lite fellow. Then Yang, who we all know. Stringer, the leading progressive, fresh off a sexual harassment allegation. And then Garcia, who got the NYT and NYDN endorsements. She’s very sharp.

    Still winning: undecided!

  20. 20.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major: I know nothing of NYC politics.  But after watching the difference between male and female leaders around the world and at home during this pandemic, I tend to think that NYC could probably be well served by electing a female mayor.  All things being equal.

  21. 21.

    Rand Careaga

    Cheryl Rofer would probably recognize the wording on that restaurant sign. It’s adapted from a Department of Energy project of four decades ago, attempting to devise a graphic language to convey the message (“Not a place of honor,” et cetera) to a distant posterity—possibly post-technological; possibly not literate—that nuclear waste sites should be shunned. I knew a woman who was a consultant in the undertaking.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Major Major Major Major: isn’t Adams also an ex-Republican (or does “Bloomberg-lite” cover that kind of opportunistic partisan shapeshifting?). I haven’t really followed it closely, not being a NYer, but I had the impression Yang was out in front. If he wins, will I have to learn enough about him to figure out if my intense dislike is rational ?

  23. 23.

    gene108

    I started my Master’s of Arts in Teaching program last week. So far so good. And I don’t even feel old compared to my classmates.

    Now I need to line up work, because unemployment doesn’t last forever.

  24. 24.

    PJ

    @Major Major Major Major: While Adams and Stringer have both been elected city officials (Borough President and Comptroller & City Council), Garcia is the only one who has actual hands on experience running anything in the city government (the Dept. of Sanitation), and she did a good job of it.  Unless there’s more pertinent information out there, she’s got my vote (still undecided about number 2 and number 3).

  25. 25.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Adams has been a democrat around as long as Elizabeth Warren has, depending on who you believe. He’s surging right now because he’s tough on gun crime, which is on people’s minds after that Times Square shooting (plus the other gazillion shootings). Yang… his heart’s in the right place, but he has a nasty case of last-thing-I-read-itis and the depth of thought of David Brooks and most of his experience running things is of the “into the ground” variety.

  28. 28.

    gene108

    @PJ:

    NYC Comptroller doesn’t run anything? Thought that position would be put a person in charge of the city revenue bureau.

  32. 32.

    Major Major Major Major

    @PJ: I like her a lot. On top of her impressive background she’s got the right take on some important issues. eg she and Adams are the only ones who don’t want to get rid of the entrance exam for the public magnet high schools. Meanwhile Yang is pandering to the Haredim and saying that yeshivas don’t need to teach science and English. Been less impressed with him every week, and I started with a pretty low baseline.

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    @J R in WV:

    As I understand it, it’s not getting old that really sucks. And being unable to stoop over for more than maybe a minute without falling of course.

  35. 35.

    Soprano2

    I think it’s interesting that few people want to talk about the severe crackdown on all kinds of immigration as a factor in the labor shortage. I keep thinking about those tens of thousands of people who want to come here and live and work, and I wonder how many of the business owners and managers who are complaining about not being able to find any employees were all in on Trump’s crackdown on immigration of all kinds.

  36. 36.

    JaneE

    You know why so many great small restaurants are family businesses?  Your family can’t quit. The have a vested interest in making good.  And you can get out of paying them if that is what it takes.  If you are lucky you will get enough repeat customers and word of mouth advertising to make a go of it. And you can buy food at wholesale.

    Restaurant work is not easy, even if you are a good cook and enjoy it.  Food spoils, kitchens are hot and full of sharp things to cut you and hot things to burn you. 2 or 4 or a dozen people may walk in at the same time, all want to sit and order and get served, unless they want to decompress for 20 minutes.

    It doesn’t matter if one meal is three steps or 13, they need to be plated and served together.  And it doesn’t matter if it is 2 people or 10 at the table.

    Then there are the food cost considerations.  How you scoop up ice cream can mean a gallon serves more or fewer portions, which me mean making or losing money.  Ad infinitum everything you serve, include the included extras like catsup.  If you don’t have good numbers for food and labor, you can have the best food in town and lose money on every meal.

    It is hard enough when you are working for yourself, without putting up with the hassles and customers for wages that won’t support you.  No wonder so many restaurants have permanent help wanted signs.

  37. 37.

    WhatsMyNym

    @namekarB:

    UK may soon be only England and the Isles of Jersey and Wright

    Scotland is a small country, unlikely to be able to support itself (future oil/gas reserves are limited). EU has already said a big NO to new entries.

  38. 38.

    Ruckus

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I was very unimpressed with him when he ran for president, and I would imagine that running a city the size of NYC might not be quite as tough as president, in some ways the actual knowledge of how things work might be just as important. And Yang seems to not have that in overabundance.

  39. 39.

    PJ

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, Yang would be number 8 for me if ranked choice went that low.  He seems to have no idea how any kind of government works, let alone city government (where is that $1000/mo UBI coming from – Albany? Give me a break).  And, as you say, he panders to whatever group he is appearing in front of, without often knowing much of anything about the issues that concern them, or how those policies would be enacted and what their effects would be.

  41. 41.

    PJ

    @WhatsMyNym: Scotland has a population of 5.5 million (bigger than Ireland and about the same as EU member Slovakia) and a GDP of $205 billion (twice that of Slovakia, but about half that of Ireland).  Whether or not the EU lets them in is a question, but thinking that they can’t support themselves as a country seems very wrong.

  45. 45.

    Robert Sneddon

    @WhatsMyNym: Scotland wouldn’t be the smallest country in European Union by a long chalk in terms of population or land mass. Countries like Holland and Belgium do well enough, after all.

     

    The oil and gas in the North Sea aren’t that essential if Scotland gets independence as it would lose the necessity to fund a military that can deploy aircraft carrier task groups to the Far East because the Yanks want a hand threatening the Chinese or support an entire nuclear weapons manufacturing operation and the associated delivery systems (estimated £31 billion to replace the existing submarine CASD fleet over the next fifteen years or so).

     

    Scotland has a number of other revenue sources including education, tourism and of course whisky which generates over £3 billion in exports each year.  It’s likely any Scottish government wouldn’t hesitate to raise taxes where necessary  unlike the English Tories.

  47. 47.

    Calouste

    @Robert Sneddon: Holland and Belgium have thrice and twice the population of Scotland respectively. The closest comparison is probably Finland, in both size and population. But they’re doing fine as well.

  50. 50.

    Comrade Colette

    @Major Major Major Major:

    … the primary language of Scotland is completely unintelligible.

    Can confirm. Thank god for subtitles in movies; live humans should have them, too.

    Edinburgh was a notable exception, however.

  51. 51.

    Peale

    @Soprano2: I think an enterprising reporter should look at the a few of these most vocal complainers and find out what happened to their laid off employees. You’ll find that most of them are already working somewhere else, or have applied and are waiting to here, or have decided after a year that they are not missing the income, or have moved away, etc. yeah, there will be some that are going to wait for UI to run out, but I’m guessing you’ll find a labor force that’s more interesting and responding to the job market more efficiently by resourcefully finding out who was hiring and have just moved on.

  52. 52.

    arrieve

    @gene108: Congratulations! I will be finished with the second semester of my MA in TESOL program tomorrow. And I’m surprised to find I’m not the oldest in my program either. (Three — probably — more semesters to go.)

  54. 54.

    SectionH

    @namekarB: If you mean the Channel Islands (including Jersey, Guernsey, Sark and some rocks), um, they’re not part of the UK. They’re the Duchy of Normandy, and LIzzie is the Duchess of Normandy.  The Isle of Wight is part of England, and yes obsly part of the UK.

  56. 56.

    SectionH

    @Comrade Colette: Well, Glaswegian can be challenging when they start in with all the idioms, but otherwise not that hard.

    Well… I remember being the translator between some southern American guy – I mean with a really heavy accent – and some Yorkshireman in a laundromat/laundrette in Lake District once. Those guys were literally mutually incomprehensible. And I get that, no practice. m

  57. 57.

    Tim in SF

    I read the twitter thread of replies on the restaurant sign (“we are short staffed”). The sign is a lot more than it seems at first glance. It contains a very clever series of nerdy science references, literary references, and inside jokes.

  59. 59.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Major Major Major Major: Scene: The gift shop at Edinburgh Castle, aboot 10 years past. Yerstruly is sizing up a wall-mounted display of pins, brooches etc. Lovely young lass comes up to me & says,

    Bwreroijdfoifefjsoo!

    I stare at her. She repeats,

    Bwreroijdfoifefjsoo!

    Again I stare. She leans closer and says quietly,

    Yerrr no unnerstannin’ a wurrrd I’m sayin’, are ye?

    and when I said No, she proceeded to inform me in perfect BBC News Presenters’ English that there is another display of similar items on the far wall that I might care to examine.

    (NB I am given to understand that a sizeable fraction if not a majority of the Beeb’s noise precedenters are in fact from Sco’lan’: Lan’ o’ th’ glo’al stop!)

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