Finding good help these days

[gwendally]

I recently saw a Stone Soup cartoon that caught my eye from both directions, as an employer and as an employee. I'd love to make their choice, to just sit back and ignore that pile of paper some nameless/faceless person thinks I'm doing for them.  Work is hard and annoying, and I far prefer drinking coffee with a friend.

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Comments

[gwendally]

Last night B. and I went to my favorite restaurant as a date night. The food is excellent - very foody food. I had a seaweed salad with sesame seeds and lemon dressing, an appetizer of seared scallops in a bourbon glaze, my entree was a hangar stack with horseradish sauce, mashed potatoes made of potatoes with some chives on top, a delicious sourdough crusty dinner roll, and the vegetables were a stir-fry of snow peas, julienned carrots and peppers. B. had a philo-wrapped haddock, rice pilaf and the same vegetable-of-the-day. His appetizer was a crepe of goat cheese and mushrooms in some sort of delicious sauce I didn't see identified (it was the verbal special

[gwendally]

Also, I asked the waiter what he'd tell someone if they wanted vegan food. He knew what it was and had several suggestions, including stir-fried vegetables, the mushroom crepes without the goat cheese, the seaweed salad (or any of their salads), or the hummus and pita plate. "Do you have baked potatoes?" I asked? No, he said, they make them mashed and use cream when they're mashing them.

There you go. A waiter who can answer this question is a waiter who is an owner, not an employee.

[anonymous]

FWIW home health aides in philly cost about $15/hour fully loaded, $22-25/hour in eastern MA. Very limited training, not much intelligence needed. In addition to competing with government benefits, you're also competing with low skill, low stress jobs that pay well (which also compete with those same programs).

[gwendally]

What does "fully-loaded" mean? We offer paid-time-off and flexible schedules (to some extent) and a 3% match on the SIMPLE plan and throw in a gym membership, but so far there has been no call for health insurance through the workplace since RomneyCare is a better deal for everyone (and I'm small enough not to have to offer it.)

I also stock the building with chocolate, fruit, flowers, canned soup, as well as coffee and tea. When we have to work late I have my husband bring in food - subs or mexican or pizza or thai. I think we're a pretty wonderful place to work... except for having to produce output. That's where we're a bummer of a place to work.

But we're temperature-controlled and clean and no one yells at you and the biggest bodily injury you're likely to receive is a paper cut.

[anonymous]

"fully loaded" means all management costs, insurance, benefits (close to nil), payroll, etc. If you pay directly, buy your own insurance, and do your own payroll and hiring you can get it a little cheaper but the cost of processing is substantial and the hassle factor goes way up.

Generally speaking the aide gets about 75-80% of the billable, at least for the agencies I've used.

[novapsyche]

Okay. But they make an average of $9/hr nationwide.

I know. I once managed home health aides.

[anonymous]

Having grown up with essentially the contemporary version of a slave labor class in the background of my California upbringing, it boggles my mind that there are even countries where you don't have an underpaid, uninsured, migrant and destitute class of people and yet they are still able to organize their own food supply chain. Like, how does that even work? Do people in Sweden pay $9 for an avocado

[gwendally]

My guess is that they import their food from places with a hungry underclass. And then get to eat horsemeat.

[jsl32]

Basically yeah, Swedes pay 9 bux for an avocado. They can't afford to eat out for lunch, bringing one's lunch to work is standard because nobody has any money left over for the kind of takeout Americans have access to and consider indispensable.

America's food used to be more expensive too, with white middle class housewives making do and stretching staples in ways that now aren't even associated with the poorest of the poor.

That said, a lot of America's food is imported these days from people even cheaper than the seasonal laborers in CA and the (black, actually) near-slaves in parts of FL.

Having the immigration policies of, well, nearly other Western country anywhere would "lift laborers out of poverty".

[kayjayuu]

Part of the problem is, and will be, that "college or bust" for EVERYONE is touted as the only way to make Big Money and the Big Education academic class even richer Be A Success. Entry-level jobs for teens and young adults are seen as scummy, as well as totes underpaid so let's raise minimum wage to mid-level blue collar rates. (Orly? says the fifty-one year old driving a forklift.)

So why in Sam Hill would anyone think they have to hustle to get by in ANY job (that isn't $60K plus bennies to start)? After all, we are the 99 percent even if we're in the upper twenty-five, and BY GOD WE DESERVE TO DRINK COFFEE AND DO NOTHING FOR OUR HEALTH CARE.

At least, that's what politicians, community organizers, and TV tells them. Got to be true, so they make it so.

[novapsyche]

Not looking to get in a flame war with you, but surely you do not think that $10.10 is mid-level blue collar.

[kayjayuu]

No war at all. Blue collar pay is not equal everywhere, and not everyone is a Teamster.

My place of employment has factory workers of fifteen years making $15. It's considered a good wage for our area, and it provides a good living for many people. (I want more, and think that wage is not enough.)

To start a fifteen year old at McD's at nearly the starting wage for these blue collar workers? Let's just say that a) it's not about the minimum, really, and b) there won't be any magic increases anytime soon in my neighborhood.

[abz6598]

New pay scale: minimum wage and $10 for every return that doesn't require you to correct it.