It's unfortunate, but not all manual/hard jobs are valued equally and often because they are simply not of equal value. Item pickers are going to eventually go the way of cotton pickers in developed countries. One of my best friends works for a startup developing AI controlled robotic pickers. There is a ways to go and it'll start with human augmented AI's but eventually AI's will be picking, sorting, and packing everything.
I disagree; a counter argument would be Costco. Almost all of Costco has very little service interaction with their union employees. They have warehouses, distribution, and procurement that has little consumer interaction. It is difficult to find people to point what is what in aisle numbers and the lines in checkout can be very long. As far as I know all of the people who work in these facilities are union and they pay living wages and benefits.
The nice service workers who handle out free samples are contractors, not union employees the last time I checked.
(Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/costco-wholesale-teamsters/u...)
Sam's club couldn't just crank the pay of everyone and expect to remain profitable.
Ethically, I agree with you. They shouldn't treat their employees like shit. Some things are worth more than money.
But financially, it's 100% untrue that Amazon would be more valuable if they focused on employee happiness over cutting costs. It's not an accident that Amazon generates more revenue than any other Internet company in existence.
Isn't that because Amazon is (practically) the only one selling actual "stuff" that always has a value?
Everyone else is (big # of users) * (small profit/user by selling ads or whatever), Amazon is (big # of users) * (big profit/user and also selling data).
Or it very well could be (an accident). Survivorship bias and all...
Imagine Lebron James — Could he just be lucky every play he goes out onto the court? It's possible. But I'd say the more likely explanation is he knows what he's doing. He's got a fundamental understanding, an underlying theory, and a set of skills that map well to reality and give him an edge that contributes to his success. So does Amazon.
It would if Amazon could get away with it, though.
On the rare occasion I succumb to McDo I avoid the happy meals and their call to increased consumerism, it's like buying an advert.
Of course, this also applies to the workers under the manager as well. My wife drives me crazy in this way. There are some people who will interact in a group by modeling the future pathways, tasks, and schedule of everyone around them, then navigate those models to avoid conflict in time and space. Then there are some people who can't. As far as I can tell, my wife doesn't have a fine-grained enough internal sense of time to be able to do that. I almost stopped dating her early on, because she once kept me waiting 45 minutes in front of the locked door of her apartment, because she was having a conversation with her CEO. I also recall a recent instance cooking with her in the kitchen, and was rinsing 3 pieces of raw meat (1) -- she interrupted me between piece 2 and piece 3 and left me hanging there with contaminated hands while she washed/processed an entire leek. I also remember a band-mate of mine who couldn't "add time" in her head when travelling to gigs, so would always be late. (I know this is the specific case from conversations while planning to drive somewhere.)
It was a very good lesson on how job satisfaction doesn't need fancy cafés, ball pits and slides.
I think one of the best possible rewards is "good working." When people really mesh, there can even be a high.
(1 - Which you're not supposed to do in the US, but I do because my wife grew up in China, so she has a much greater distrust of commercial food processing.)
No single thing has been harder about the ‘normal’ world then getting used to people who seemingly don’t even CONSIDER the power structure of an engagement let alone actively alter their behavior in the moment based on who they are talking to.
When you'd made an arrangement to meet them at a certain time? Man, to me that's just cold.
your wife no doubt picked up from China’s strong nationality
One thing that I picked up from dating then marrying my wife, is that China is waaaay more diverse and varied within its borders than most people in the US imagine. The basic philosophy towards friendship between the north and south varies, and even that is an oversimplification. One province over, the dining habits are waaay different from where she grew up. She comes from a Mandarin speaking region in the south, where before I'd heard that the south speaks Cantonese, but even there it's more complex than I'd thought. Turns out the real traditional languages are two entirely different dialects I'd never even heard of.
China's not so much a nation-state, as a "civilization-state."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw
and authoritarian paradigm.
Maybe there's something to that.
I can totally see how these guys/gals would be loyal and sticky if taken care of. Hard work you can leave at the door is very satisfying if you don't feel like you're going nowhere...
Incidentally the 3x average sounds almost spot on; I believe our store manager was making about 70k and he was highly valued as a store "fixer" by the chain owner in the Dallas area.
A nice reminder about the difference in meanings when the owner says "value" and when the employee says "value"
As far as west coast burger chains go, The Habit has way better fries.
In N Out’s burgers though are so good, double single animal style with peppers is heaven.
In fact, I can no longer eat fries from anywhere else (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, The Habit, etc.), because I know that they use fake fries.
At In-N-Out, you know that you are eating a freshly sliced potato, that was deep-fried, and served to you.
The freezing of fries can and does make them better, keeps the inside fluffier after frying as the ice crystals blow up inside.
Even Heston Blumenthal freezes them [0]
[0] http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/recipes/heston-blumenthal-tr...
In what universe? Fresh peas are significantly better, and I'm not even sure that's an opinion as much as fact.
Edit: If HN had controversial markers, this comment would have one. I've watched the points on it go up and down, negative and positive, for the last hour.
Apparently frozen peas is quite controversial.
Added to the fact they last much longer, I can't see any reason to buy fresh (we're talking petit pois style, rather than runner bean style).
Fresh peas, on the other hand, cover a range from "I picked these myself just now" to "who knows when these came off the plant".
Heston freezes solid whole pieces of potato, In-n-Out likely uses whole pieces of potato, seasoned. McDonald's likely mashes everything up, blends it all with preservatives and flavour enhancers and forms it into fry-shaped pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfZLWEAiixo
They are also dipped in dextrose for colour and Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate to reduce the graying from freezing them.
https://www.cnet.com/news/former-mythbuster-goes-on-mcdonald...
I think we generally get a better quality product from McD's, I did enjoy my In-n-Out experience when in Cali, but I can imagine it's a world different if the baseline fast food is poorer.
[0] http://www.cityam.com/207843/fry-hard-it-turns-out-mcdonalds...
It's often good to go through the cycle more than once, which is why you see recipes for "triple fried" french fries. I tend to like to blanch in salted water, freeze, blanch in oil, freeze and then fry. This also dissolves some of the starch on the outside and provides more surface area for the oil to create crunchy bits. Yeah, it takes all day...
Never been to In-N-Out, so can't comment on what they do.
We also soaked the potatoes for several hours to de starch them before frying
A fry should be crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside which is not gonna happen with taking a fresh potato and frying it. Freezing and blanching before hand make for better fries.
The best fries I've ever had are usually frozen in between frying twice.
One reason McDonalds seems so bland and generic is most of the ingredients come out of a factory, so everything is centralized.
To get fresh ingredients you generally need a local supplier, but then scaling that up must be a logistical nightmare.
Because they only use local suppliers, and they haven't figured out how to get everything they need locally anywhere else.
I've also been told it's a case of freshness. If they have to ship all the ingredients from California to Iowa, it's not as fresh as they want it to be. Keeping the supply chain close and using local suppliers for specific ingredients allows them to have a consistent product no matter where you get it.
At the end of the day, as an owner, that's what you want. No matter where the customer goes, they always get same fresh, great tasting product.
You bite into real, crunchy onions. Not into some fuzzy crap that seems to come straight out of a food lab.
Same with tomatoes.
The lettuce, tho, the lettuce comes out of plastic bags and tastes oddly sweet.
Most of them were very happy with their jobs, not just happy with pay and benefits and so on, but happy to work there. They found it a very welcoming and friendly work environment, where people were rewarded for initiative and trying to improve things.
Most of them didn't see themselves leaving the company any time soon, unless it was for a different job type (such as moving to an office job after finishing school).
It was a very good lesson on how job satisfaction doesn't need fancy cafés, ball pits and slides.
PS: Those were just my impressions from talking to a limited number of employees. Endless numbers of caveats apply.