What would dad do?

What would Mr. Rogers do?

These two questions go through my head a lot of times when it comes to life and work. My dad was first employed as a teenager around 1940 and never stopped until the new century. He was a busboy, an army clerk, a minister, a social worker, and a security guard. Most of the time he called himself a preacher. What he made would be described today as peanuts, but I rarely ever heard him complain, and he somehow squeaked us by on a working-class wage. He was a good model of acceptance of what life gives you and to “put your treasures in heaven,” so to speak.

Mr. Rogers has gained more force for me over time. His was not the first show I would watch as a kid. I can remember finding some of it kind of boring, but the older I got, the more I realized what a compassionate, dedicated model of leadership in a loud, obnoxious world he was. If you go back and watch any of the episodes, you’ll be surprised just how in tune he was with what was important to the young mind, and how he knew they would pick up on things that adults might not see.

Between these two, my dad and Mr. Rogers, I take some guidance in how I approach things in life. Stay calm, be stoic, be just, be good.

It’s not easy.

I’ve come to realize after 35 years or so of my own working life that we have serious, serious problems with the work culture. I don’t mean just the workers. I mean the work, the pay, the expectations, and the responsibilities. It makes me wonder whether it has always been like that, or is this a more recent phenomenon?

All of my kids are working. Two are still in school while one has completed a BA. We could not be more proud of what they are doing with themselves. But I watch and listen and observe their experiences, and I think of my own working path. I consider the up and down stories of my colleagues and my father’s experiences and wonder what is going on.

First and foremost, the notion of loyalty between companies and their workforce has vanished into thin air. The concept of a lifelong partnership is rapidly fading away under bigger businesses, less local decisionmaking, and a skeptical, less protected workforce. With no long-term relationship, short-term profit by both sides becomes the ultimate goal.

To get an idea of what workers think, I checked out sites like Indeed and Glassdoor. On a 1-5 scale, businesses were rated on categories such as management and pay.

Let’s look at a few companies.

Curaleaf is a cannabis company based out of Canada but with operations down here in Florida. There’s a store less than a mile from my house.

With over 600 Curaleaf employee reviews on Indeed, they average up to 2.3 out of 5:

I would call that not so good. Some of the reviews left by workers mention the place as “Very Corporate,” “Corporate Greed” and “Terrible Work Environment.” Maybe it’s just Curaleaf but I looked at other Cannabis industry retail stores in Florida and all of them rank low for employee satisfaction. While weed is supposed to make you calm and happy, it appears the employees of cannabis businesses are not.

Let’s take a look now at Amazon, a company that took the Sears catalog idea and built it on the internet, then dealt a deathblow to many sleepy top-heavy businesses in the process:

Amazon gets a 3.5 score based off of 40,000+ reviews, plus it gets a mention as one of LinkedIn’s Top Companies (not sure what that means, but it’s there.).

How about Walmart, the largest employer in the United States? Surely, at that level, people are there because they want to be, not because they have to, right? With a whopping 259,000 reviews, Walmart comes in at 3.4, with the lowest selected category being “management” at 3.0. Sidenote: one of my earliest jobs was as a Walmart store clerk. It wasn’t for me. I remained in college.

Florida is a tourist and leisure destination, so there’s a lot of extra eating out. Darden Companies is one of the biggest employers in the state. Let’s look at one of their holdings, Olive Garden Italian Restaurant. I have been to Olive Garden many times and frankly, I cannot remember a bad meal. The alfredo sauce for dipping breadsticks and the endless salad has always been outstanding. I cannot remember any bad service either. Let’s see what the reviews of the workers are like.

SimplyHired has Olive Garden workers declaring the following:

Though their overall rating by employees is higher than the others reviewed, comments included “Favoritism”, “Horrible Management”, and “Run!”

But let’s assume that only the workers most upset leave reviews and that these jobs, though high in number, are not supposed to be “career” type jobs. What do we then consider a career-type position and what kind of reviews do they get?

Let’s look at Publix, a home-grown corporation in Florida that employs 10,000 workers and has expanded across the South.

With 22,000 reviews, Indeed has Publix as one of the highest-rated companies at 3.9, almost cracking that 4.0 level.

Comments include, “Good Place to Work Long-Term but Not for Everyone,” “Overworked and Underpaid”, and “Fun!”

It is worth noting the positive correlation between a company's identification as a career opportunity and its higher score. Conversely, it is important to acknowledge that these companies, along with numerous others that constitute the majority of employment opportunities, do not exhibit consistently favorable reviews.

I think that’s a problem.

There are lots of ways to find and assess places to work, and it is quite clear to me that people want to work where there is some sort of fulfillment, even if temporary. It’s not just the younger generation.

While money is the overall enticement, I think the deciding factor is culture, and that’s where good management comes in.

I told my last long-term boss I would never ask for a raise. I felt well-paid for where I was and what I was doing and I’m a believer that making the work lives of the crew better makes my job easier. I moved to get all of my crew more pay and more flexibility, as much as possible, as a show of solidarity.

This used to be the norm.

Decades ago, the ratio between the highest and lowest-paid workers was relatively low. It is still that way in Japan, where the notion of lifetime jobs and a focus on customer service quality are still some of the best in the world. Side note: the Japanese also live longer than us.

Today, the difference between the pay of management and frontline workers in the United States has become as divergent as ever. The wage gap between CEOs and US workers is 670 to 1! Whereas taxes used to maintain some equilibrium by imposing higher taxation on the wealthy, that too has been reduced significantly over the decades to where the average worker is also paying more in their share of income than the wealthy.

I don’t think the high number of jobs treated as temporary combined with average to low review scores by the workers is a sustainable trend, if we want a viable economy. Where there is no equilibrium between the needs of a company and the needs of the worker, either public policy steps in or bad things happen.

Back to my kids. All are working, but two of them were quite picky about where they would work and for how much. That’s one major difference I remember from that age but I’m not sure their approach is wrong. The instant reaction is to consider gen z and millennials to be a bit lazy, choosy, and not based in reality.

However, when looking at the economy and gaps in wealth, pay, and services, they may just be an indicator of a real brooding problem. They see the work, they see their parents deal with work stress, they see how workers are treated (there’s a whole meme around boomers now), and they don’t want to be a part of it.

More people are not wanting to live to work, but work to live. It would behoove us to “catch up” with progress in other areas. Instead of waiting for private sector generosity or a more efficient free market, two actions would fundamentally change the country and its workforce culture for the positive:

• Move to a 32-hour work week as full-time, paid at the existing 40-hour work week rate. This frees up more time for individuals and families and will likely reduce some costs associated with the old 40-hour standard. It will be a boom to family, creativity, and the quality of life.

• Break the chain between having health insurance and having a job. We’ve reached a stage where many people stay in a position only for access to health insurance. That’s inefficient and gums things up for the next generation that comes. Workers will migrate to jobs they really love. Companies will no longer have to shoulder the cost of health insurance themselves. There will be no more medical bankruptcy. Finally, it will level more of the playing field. Managers will have to up their game to keep able staff.

And I’m betting the reviews would be a lot better.

I love stories like this, kind of.

When I was growing up, it was continuously impressed upon me the value of having a job. My father and uncle both talked about the times they worked as busboys during the Depression era, and between their meager pay, the tips, and the food passed along in the kitchen, they made it. Everything was about having a job.

It seems to me that the prevalent business model today is to focus on temporary workers and not careers, whereas a good portion of society is looking for careers. Now, do I want to be a Burger King employee or a garbage man, or in retail sales? No, I don’t, but I also recognize that these jobs are what keep the country going and I respect the people who work them and their dedication should receive adequate compensation.

If you spend your whole life working in America, you should not expect the public to take up what the corporation didn’t. We work in a country that transforms the world, whether entertainment, education, law, technology, or governance. People want to come to the United States because we get things done. And in relation to the rest of the world, we do try to do things fairly and honestly. That doesn’t mean we don’t have problems.

Burger King’s model simply didn’t expect someone to flip its burgers for 27 years, so it didn’t expect to compensate for such either.

That’s poor leadership.

This is the kind of thing that would have made my grandfather shake his head. It will become much more the norm in this decade. In many ways, we already see it in self-checkouts alongside check-out lanes with cashiers and palm readers for payment and so on. All kinds of automation is going on.

The interesting tell here is that the robot maker stumbled over whether to admit it will cost people their jobs.

It will but it doesn’t necessarily have to be costly.

While robots and AI are ramping up, the social safety network has been in a half-century decline. This is a self-inflicted wound that can be worked out through public policy if people will do a bit more future thinking and preparation.

Some jobs are ripe for being completed by artificial intelligence but unless the faith and trust in public policy stops eroding, bumpy times are ahead.

Having spent time in Japan studying the culture and business practices, I have really come to love the country. This series on max is nothing akin to what I experienced but its still entertaining. It is similar to our intrigue with the mafia and creating the Godfather and the Sopranos. Its a yakuza crime story set in Tokyo with all the style and glamour and drama of gangs in the street. There’s a good bit of journalistic endeavor and cops trying to keep the peace. My goodness am I jealous of the gaijin’s language skills. I love it.

And Now….

Keep hope, faith, and love alive wherever you are, wherever you work, and in whatever you do. Keep reading, practice your gratefulness, and remember: Be a good human.