For some reason, there are people who feel the same way about the labor market…
It is remarkable how many people preferred a labor market with higher unemployment because it meant that people were forced to cater to their every whim to survive. The issue isn’t that nobody is working—it’s that *everybody is working*, and the guy at the desk has a better job! https://t.co/bYCIHC4Dst
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) September 7, 2023
Again, one reason "the vibes are off" is that lots of people prefer a world where people are desperate for jobs and willing to take anything they can get. https://t.co/3qGLAJ8WVH
— Matt Darling ????? (@besttrousers) September 7, 2023
Even people with normal middle class incomes have been frustrated with the increased wealth, income, and options for people at the bottom.
They don't expect servants per se, but all the understaffed stores and restaurants are making people furious. https://t.co/fsBekaiQuR
— Mom for Gliberty (@fakegreekgrill) September 7, 2023
The eternal ‘conservative’ plaint: What good is my ‘freedom’, if I can’t use it to oppress other people?
Baud
The Bradys had Alice. What do we got? Nothin. Thank, Biden.
trollhattan
I don’t understand the get-a-room-at-two-in-the-morning thing. Usta now you can’ta? Wonder if he’s also discovered Motel 6 no longer has six-dollar rooms?
Baud
@trollhattan:
Or hourly rates!
PDXBob
I dunno… maybe if those hotels and restaurants paid living wages people might want to work there?
smith
@trollhattan: Is it because the motels no longer have night clerks, and close down the office in the evening?
wjca
My, my, “the servant problem” has spread.
“You just can’t get decent help these days!” Guess we’ll have to contact our local coyote and get us some wetbacks.
Omnes Omnibus
Judge denies Meadows’s motion to remove to fed court.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@PDXBob: As often said at The Home of the Orange Apron, “Think of the poor shareholders!”. The company recently did a $15 billion stock buy back and a $1 billion “investment our workers”.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
👍
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
You should have chosen to be a shareholder instead of a worker.
C Stars
I LOVE the genre of viral social media story in which a boss insists that their employee work awful shifts or overtime, and then that employee happily takes the initiative and quits. In part because I did this myself one time and it felt really, really good. Obviously, some workers are still really vulnerable to this kind of bullshit (not knowing their schedules, etc.) but it seems like the power differential is shifting a little.
Anne Laurie
Yup. At least the ‘reasonably priced’ little family-owned motels nearest the interstate exits. A late-night traveler might find themselves having to upgrade to a more expensive chain motel, where reservations might even be required, because those hotels can afford to pay their workers a shift premium.
Even pre-pandemic, this was sometimes an inconvenience for us, since we usually travelled with our little dogs and my husband much prefers late-night driving. But we didn’t get outraged over the fact that other peoples’ lives no longer revolved around *our* convenience!
catothedog
@wjca:
If only blacks, browns and yellows stayed in their place, instead of getting uppity and asking for a seat at the table. Like the good old days, when “Americans” had decent help. This would be great country if we could go back to that time.
Make Amerika Great Again !!!!
/S
JoyceH
Meadows lose attempt to move to Federal court.
Wyatt Salamanca
@JoyceH:
Great news, Fuck Meadows!!
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: I can’t understand why I feel shocked by this ruling, I think it’s the correct ruling but I’m still surprised.
Geminid
@trollhattan: That guy is bullshitting. The motel chains have people on duty all night. And at the smaller, family-owned motels, an owner will get out of bed to sign someone in. That marginal income is their profit.
I guess motels in high crime areas might not give service after dark. But this guy’s like, “Now I don’t dare travel on the Interstate at night.” Just a whiner.
bbleh
My status, my status!! What happened to my status?!?!
Anne Laurie
Specifically, those ‘little family-run motels’ I mentioned have largely been owned by Indian-immigrant families for at least the last 15-20 years. But now the mamas and teenagers who used to work the late-night desk shifts can get actual *paid* employment, and bring actual income into the family!
bbleh
@Omnes Omnibus: GOOD!!! Good good good good GOOD!!!11!!
By all the gods Old, New, and Red, to see the vaporous blustering BS-mobile of Trumpism driving headlong into judicial stone walls and being smashed to smithereens is a WONDERFUL thing!!
(And what is a smithereen anyway?)
trollhattan
Am being pestered, via text, to post a review. Of my doctor appointment yesterday. The hell?
moonbat
@Omnes Omnibus: SO glad to see this! Not only did his stupid Hail Mary fail, but now the prosecution has HOURS of testimony from him basically pointing the finger at Trump as the devil that made him do it.
Hahahahahahahaha!
trollhattan
@bbleh: Smithereens.
https://www.officialsmithereens.com/
persistentillusion
@catothedog: My mother is infamous for saying “it’s easier to have children than get good help” as I staffed (at 8yo) one of her dinner parties.
ETA: I’m over it and she is long gone.
gene108
@Anne Laurie:
More like 30-40 years. The teenagers often go to college and get professional jobs.
I really don’t know if people who owned motels, in the 1980’s or 90’s, sold to new owners or someone from a younger generation takes over.
Maybe a bit of both.
Jay
@smith:
A lot of “road motels” are owner operated. All the ones on the Hope “Convenience Strip”, (gas and go, bypass) are.
It was/is cheap real estate, and the owner and his/her family, provide all the services, because other than a major issue with The Highway From Hell or the TransCanada, you might rent 6 rooms a night out of 25.
Last time we stayed, was on our move to Kamloops. Plan was, pack the car, a “pet friendly room” at the Economy Suites in Maple Ridge to over night in, hit the road early the next AM.
Turns out “pet friendly” meant cat urine soaked, smoked in, next to the “banquet room”, hosting a massively loud wedding reception. I guess the last part was so that nobody could hear you scream.
So, we booked out, drove late into the night, hit the bypass for gas, but I was crashing out. The motel across the street from the Chevron gas station had it’s lights on and a vacancy sign lit, so we pulled in. Knocked on the Office door, and after a bit, the Owner/Operator came out with her dog in her arms to unlock the office door. Apparently he get’s a little excited when they have customers.
Pets were okay, rates were cheap, no smoking in the rooms, two double beds per room, 1960’s fixtures in the bathroom, quiet, clean, tv was old, but we were bagged.
We wound up staying a second day and walking in to Hope, proper. The owner was nice, a real sweetheart, didn’t even take a pet deposit, because she would do a walk through when you were checking out.
Dan B
Brent Bozell’s son guilty of ten counts in January 6 invasion of the Capitol.
trollhattan
@Jay: About eight-thousand true detective stories begin with checking in at the cozy motel ten minutes off the highway, run by the quirky front desk clerk.
“And then, things got weird.”
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: I get that constantly now. It’s so annoying.
Baud
@Dan B:
👍
Jay
@trollhattan:
Hope is where they shot First Blood, so I felt pretty safe as Sylvester was off somewhere filming one of the Expendables movies.
And for all the chainsaw carvings in and out of town, there has never been a chainsaw murder, ever, not even an ax murder.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Who is Brent Bozell? Do I have to google?
ETA: Hmm, I thought it would be a football player or coach, by the sound of it.
cain
@Geminid: shit they had that in France – came in late and woke up the innkeeper and they let us in to get a room.
Matt McIrvin
@wjca: Yeah, these things do always come around again. The 1950s that everyone is nostalgic about as a time of broad prosperity was the era of “you can’t get good help any more!!”
smith
The judge’s decision looks really thorough (but IANAL). The only bit of Meadows’ actions he thought was related to his federal role was when he asked someone for contact info for an official in PA. I’m guessing that this was in the context of messing around with fake electors, but maybe that context wasn’t stated. Anyway, this doesn’t bode well for any of the defendants who had federal jobs:
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Some right winger. I think religious right.
Kay
I travel quite a bit by car and honestly it will go a lot better for him if he does some very simple planning and makes a couple of phone calls. You can do it from the car on the way there! The phone will find the motel that is 1, 2, 3, 4 hours out and even prompt him to call. Amateur.
Kay
He probably is calling ahead and they’re not coming to the desk because they don’t like him. They’re there when I arrive! Just saying.
wjca
Sometimes, the right thing gets done.
AND, it makes it that little bit harder for anybody else involved in the case to get their part moved. Win-win.
EDT Yes, even my minimal knowledge of the law is sufficient to understand that other defendants might have different reason why they should be moved. But even so.
Fair Economist
It’s all nonsense. You absolutely *can* hire people to take care of your house, cook, etc. It’s just when they can make $16/hr at the McDonald’s drive-thru, you have to pay $20+/hr to get somebody reliable. Which is really not *all* that much money for a 500K earner, but then the help is actually making a living and it’s no fun for most of these people if the help isn’t immiserated.
Citizen Alan
@persistentillusion: I’m convinced that’s why Amy Coathanger Barrett adopted two impoverished Haitian kids. Much cheaper than maids and au pairs.
sab
@Baud: Why did the Bradys need Alice. Mrs. Brady never did anything. She didn’t have a job and she did no housework.
gwangung
@Anne Laurie: BINGO!
bbleh
@Fair Economist: try finding home healthcare aides …
Dan B
@zhena gogolia: Bozell is a right wing media guy who founded a number of media outlets.
Matt McIrvin
The thing about restaurants, though, is that it seems to me like they’ve been understaffed and slammed even during recessions, because money is tight and the owners are chasing those tiny margins. It’s not as if a less tight labor market means that there will be more people there to serve you, just that they’ll be paid less.
Brachiator
This is infuriating on so many levels. People with this attitude want someone to be beneath them. And they want these people to be fearful and desperate to please.
They have also bought into the lie that the stimulus payments and unemployment relief that we saw during the pandemic was some huge bounty of bucks that dropped the working poor into the lap of luxury.
What has really happened is that even though unemployment is low, millions of people have been priced out of the job market and are homeless and permanently unemployed. The gap between the middle class and the poor has widened.
satby
@Citizen Alan: I’ve said it before, I think they’re restaveks:
Anonymous At Work
Another variation of LBJ:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Everyone wants to look down on a ladder and see people far below him, more than he wants to climb the ladder.
Roger Moore
@bbleh:
According to Merriam Webster, the etymology of smithereens is unclear, but it most likely comes from Irish “smidiríní”, the diminutive of “smiodar”, which means fragment. FWIW, “smithereen” is apparently a back formation from “smithereens”.
Ohio Mom
Actually, the dearth of people willing to do housework for others is a real problem for elderly people and people with disability.
There is a terrible shortage of people who will work as Homeworker/Personal Care staff. You can make more money at McDonalds.
For people with disability, Medicaid sets the rate because they are paying for it. Remember, the large majority of disabled people are poor.
I don’t know how it works for elderly people, I think you can private pay what you want but then you get into a lot of old people living on very small amounts of money.
H/PC staff allow people to live in their own homes, retaining their independence and dignity — especially compared to being moved into an institution like a nursing home.
jonas
I was at a major chain hotel recently that advertised an on-site restaurant and bar. On a Friday night, and fully booked, it was closed. I was going to ask the manager why it was closed, but I couldn’t find him/her either. The front desk was empty — several guests waiting to check in just looking around wondering wtf was going on. Probably checking on some maintenance problem but I’m sure they had led custodial staff go, too, so the manager was now doing three jobs. I was in a Best Buy in the same town and suddenly understood why those flash smash-and-grab robberies are so easy. There couldn’t have been more than three employees in the whole damn place. Two at the checkout and one running between the cell phone and computer departments trying desperately to keep up with the 15 customers (including me) looking for help.
People would love to work. If you’re not going to pay them a competitive wage, though, don’t go crying to the press with stories about how shoplifting is out of control and you’re getting bad yelp reviews for not opening your restaurant when you said it would be open.
Roger Moore
@wjca:
As I understand it, that’s not so true. The main reason for moving to federal court is because the defendant was doing what they did as part of their job. But the judge has made a correct ruling that elections are a state matter, so it is not part of any federal employee’s job to deal with them. That cuts off almost every justification for removal.
sab
@Ohio Mom: We have had private home nurses for my parents for years, at home before Mom died, and now in a nursing home for Dad. If you hire them through a service then the service gets kaeeps half the money you pay. We were really lucky because our first aide through the service recommended a neighbor that we could hire directly.
But we were lucky because my parents could afford them.
Roger Moore
@sab:
They needed Alice so Mrs. Brady didn’t have to do housework and could focus on being a mother to her 6 children and step children.
Burnspbesq
@trollhattan:
first album was the best.
Spider-Dan
Hey, if you’re unhappy with the selection of hotels at 2am, instead of cutting your drive 5 hours short to pull off the road at 9pm, just stay on the road for 5 hours longer and pull into a ready-and-waiting hotel at 7am! Done and done.
wjca
That would certainly be my take as well. But consider who we’re talking about here. It will be no surprise if some of them extend their “I’m special, so I deserve special treatment” worldview to “My job was special/different, so I deserve a different ruling.” They won’t have a prayer of getting it. But that won’t keep them from trying, and shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
Brachiator
@jonas:
You could have 100 employees on the floor and this would not stop smash and grab robberies. I don’t know why anyone sees this as a staffing problem.
Even restaurants that want to pay higher wages are also getting hit with increased costs for supplies and leases or rents and utilities. If they raise prices, customers scream even more loudly.
Burnspbesq
@smith:
Concur. Based on an initial reading of the opinion, I think the ruling gets affirmed on the inevitable appeal.
Changes Meadows’ calculus on flipping.
Roger Moore
@Anonymous At Work:
Speak for yourself. There are plenty of people who just want better lives for themselves. The problem is the ultra-rich are hogging so much everyone else is left fighting for the scraps. Even people who just want a better life see that being taken away from them when they have to pay more for everything to support the people who make it. What we really need is to get a fairer deal for the masses, so more of the work of working people goes to other working people and less to the leisure class.
Ohio Mom
@sab: That’s true, even if you live in a really nice retirement home, you often get to the point where you need your own aide.
My MIL is in an independent living building and it’s shocking to me how much she pays to live there (more than our area’s household median income) and she also pays privately for someone to come in a few hours a week to help her. She really needs more help than that but she’s rebuffed our efforts to help her find some.
And yes, the agencies are a part of the problem, they skim a lot off the top for not much in return.
karen marie
I got very excited to see the headline “too hot for autumn” because I thought we were going to talk about how it’s 110F right now in Mesa, AZ.
Who was it posted the other day some absolute bullshit “average temperatures” for Arizona that claimed it’s not hot in September?
My dog and I would beg to differ. It won’t be below 100 during the day for another two to three weeks (and that’s optimistic). It will be close to 115F on Saturday and Sunday.
If anyone in a temperate clime would like to adopt me, I make very little noise, I hand-wash dishes very well, and I can cook, including baking.
sab
@Roger Moore: Alice did most of the parenting.
karen marie
@Ohio Mom: Probably close to 20 years ago I transcribed the criminal trial of a guy busted for dealing crack. He was a paraplegic, having been shot in the back on a basketball court in Connecticut some 20 years earlier. He got ~$400/month from SS disability out of which he had to pay rent – subsidized but still a huge burden – utilities, food, clothing, transportation, and a full-time home health aide because he could not get out of bed into his wheelchair on his own. Of course, he didn’t have a full-time home health aide other than when he got lucky, because he had no money, hence the crack dealing.
I screamed the entirety of that job.
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
They did a good album of Beatles covers. “There’s a Place.”
sab
@karen marie: When I lived in Las Vegas 30 years ago I had a treadmill so that my german shepherd could get some exercise when she couldn’t go outside without burning her feet.
She was so excited when she saw her first snow in Ohio.
Betty
So why aren’t all the whiners pushing for immigration reform to iincrease the labor market? Seems like an obvious solution.
BruceFromOhio
@Kay: was about to comment same, thanks! I’ve stopped trying to fathom these things, “why is <thing> so haaaarrrrrd”.
Definitely an ID10T incident.
RSA
I would happily take a job as a servant. But I can’t imagine anyone paying what it would take for me to happily take a job as a servant.
BruceFromOhio
@Betty: you are applying logic. Consider the participants.
wjca
But could we actually get enough Scandinavians and other northwestern Europeans to fill the need?
Lyrebird
@Ohio Mom: Yes. Here the state aid for people with disabilities pays $17/hr max for helpers, and people with any experience or skill are asking $25 minimum. Many of those folks deserve far more an hour, but no we don’t have adequate support for the people most in need of that state and fed. aid.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: I actually understand the dilemma a lot of small, mom-and-pop restaurants are facing. Given that they don’t have the purchasing power of a big chain restaurant, their costs are automatically higher — even moreso these days — their margins are already razor thin and there’s a limit to how much they can raise wages and prices before regular customers — particularly in less-affluent areas — decide they simply can’t afford to eat out. It’s one thing to run a bistro in some fancy neighborhood like Brentwood, CA or Greenwich Village where people will pay $25 for an eggs benedict brunch, and somewhere in rural Pennyslvania, say, where if breakfast and a cup of coffee is more than about $10, people simply won’t go out anymore.
Ellie
Those servant tweets are disgusting.
Brachiator
@RSA:
Ha! I am with you on that one.
Ken
@Spider-Dan: I am a bit curious what the guy’s job and/or hobby is, that he frequently finds himself on the interstate at 2 AM.
(Though this might be one of those cases where he couldn’t find a motel once, so it becomes the Greatest Issue Facing America Today.)
de
@Ken: Human trafficking
RaflW
I just finished booking the motels for our south island of New Zealand road trip starting a month form now (wheee!). Every motel outside a big city says their offices close at 8pm, except the one that closes at 6pm!
Somehow we’re gonna cope just fine (I do need to be sure to note on our spreadsheet that 6pm place, tho). And since these are generally small, 5 to maybe 20 room, family run places, they darn well should be able to turn off the lights and have their own lives at 8pm!
Salty Sam .
Dear god, that has been my life for the past few weeks- an unspeakably frustrating task.
Ironically, because someone turned in an “anonymous tip” that my sister-in-law was in distresss, we got a call rom Adult Protective Services. All of a sudden, a whole host of services has been opened to us.
Anne Laurie
True story: Patrick Dennis, author of Auntie Mame (& many other comic novels) worked as a butler after his work ‘fell out of favor.’ Apparently none of his employers — one of whom was Ray Kroc — knew about his other avocation…
jonas
I completely disagree. This new wave of flash-mob robberies (and just shoplifting with impunity more generally) is due to two things — stores cutting way back on staffing, particularly replacing traditional checkouts with self check-out (duh) and just generally leaving floors and exits deserted (have you ever tried to find someone to help you at Target or Kohls or Home Depot recently? Good luck.) and the ease with which you can fence stuff on Amazon, eBay and other online shopping sites.
It’s bloody obvious. They’re trying to save money. Employees cost money and you have to make the numbers work. But you can’t run a store with one checkout clerk in the whole place (see General, Dollar, e.g.) and then be surprised that half the people in the store are walking out with all your merchandise. If there were a way to crack down on online fencing, that would be a big help, too.
jayne
@jonas: Yeah, that’s a valid point. It’s not that the rural PA folks are cheap, or at least not just that. Inflation has wildly outpaced salary/benefit increases, especially in rural areas, and when the price of breakfast out suddenly doubles (or more than) it goes from being a weekly treat to a luxury item. When you’re making $10/hour and paying over 1K a month for a 1-bedroom in the ass end of nowhere, $25 for eggs, toast and coffee is a chunk of change.
unctuous
I recall a Scrooge McDuck comic I read as a kid where a tornado comes and sucks up all the money out of his money bin and it redistributes the wealth across the countryside.
Soon a million bucks lands in every person’s lap, everyone’s now a millionaire, and they ditch their menial jobs and go off to see the world.
The shrewd McDuck is not distraught. His feathers are unruffled, as it were. He advises his grand-nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie who are working his farms to keep milking the cows and hoeing the beans, as he knows he’ll soon make it all back and then some.
Because it turns out people still need food and services and he’s now the only one who can provide them. For a price.
“And does he charge ‘em? Yow!”
And yes soon his money bin is full again and he’s swimming around in it like a porpoise like he always did.
Anyhoo I sorta forgot the point of this but it seemed to somehow be apropos.
Soprano2
So, here’s a counterpoint – I am SO TIRED of people who don’t want to do their jobs. Not calling you back for days. My attorney not emailing a reply for days. I had a man come early last week to quote me a price on getting a new furnace. I still don’t have the quote. I texted him today, still nothing. I called the Terminex guy two days ago to schedule service, but I still haven’t heard anything. And don’t get me started on the phone tag crap I did all week with hubby’s doctor’s office over the form about his driver’s license being revoked! I finally called the neuropsych doctor who turned hubby in (I knew about it). She called me back in 10 minutes and actually helped me, but it was telling me something the nurse at the doctor’s office could have told me! I thanked her profusely for the prompt reply. This is a lot worse since Covid. I know places are short-handed, but it’s frustrating when you’re waiting and have to keep bugging people for an answer to something. I hate being that annoying person, but sometimes it’s the only way to get anyone to do anything. Oh, and did you know Hyundai considers a 4 year old car burning a quart of oil every thousand miles “within normal usage”? Yeah, it’s bullshit.
It’s been a shitty week, and today is my 33rd wedding anniversary.
Uncle Cosmo
Tell them nothing. Anything but fulsome praise for the entire procedure will be used against whichever of the support staff they want to (at best) deny a raise to or (at worst) fire. A classic example of the cpnsistent and continual gross misuse of customer surveys these days. (Your opinion matters! – so long as it helps us screw over our peons...)
Uncle Cosmo
@Anonymous At Work: And that LBJ quote is the succinct and sufficient explanation for why hundreds of thousands of the Southron yeomanry fought doggedly and died ignominously for a quasifeudal society where they themselves couldn’t even dream of owning a slave. Heh-heh, least you ain’t one o’ them, boah!
It isn’t just the MAGAt faithful who’ve been sold a bogus narrative of status and victimization to keep their “betters” in power – the pseudofascist aristocracy have been hawking the same fairytales for the last 300+ years.