> if management can squeeze labor costs, they will.

Everybody squeezes costs, including you and I. Don't you shop for the lowest prices? I do. Customers of fast food are pretty price sensitive.

Of course, there's a great deal of price sensitivity especially on commodity products. But - perhaps implicit rather than explicit within my remarks - there's also mismanagement or questionable management. And, price is not always aligned with profit. That Arby's generated something like $1MM in yearly profit, in 1996 dollars. The extra $5.05 they would have paid me for the hour after closing to ensure the store was actually clean, prep was properly done, pans were cleaned etc, made exactly jack squat difference to their margin.

In the case of the tech company...let's just say they are all but forgotten, while other players came along with competent management and have formed new multi-billion dollar businesses.

I've pretty much never encountered a worker who did not think they could run the business better than their employer.

And, sure, there are a lot of incompetent employers. They usually go out of business. Businesses have a high failure rate, and it's pretty darn hard to make enough at it to put up with all the aggravation and work required to make it successful. Businessmen do not go into business to make a 3% return on capital, as anyone could buy a bond that pays 3%.

Bill Gates famously never went on vacation for something like the first two decades of Microsoft.

It would be nice to have fewer assumptions about others made on HN.

Stated assumptions are fine.