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Dear you,

Elon Musk is inventing a plan for our future on Mars.  But the earthly Shrimp Basket (a chain on the Gulf Coast) can’t find employees for the high season.  They, as reported in The Walton Sun, have launched a new vehicle giveaway as a hiring incentive.  They are also offering a cash hiring incentive and referral bonus. The base pay wasn’t mentioned in the article and neither were details about the chain’s problematic “sales goals”. It did feature quotes from a marketing coordinator who said the word “team” nine times.  He is marketing an old idea, an obsolete model of work. Being part of a really “fun” team isn’t an incentive anymore.  And neither is the company slogan, “we want shrimply the best for you.”  The best thing they might do for their current and wished for future employees is to give them a good salary, benefits, and create a culture where workers don’t have to act like the “Flair” guy in Office Space. Now, considering the current Shrimp Basket model, the new hire who wins the car is probably going have to sell it anyway. To pay for her crappy apartment fifty miles away in DeFuniak Springs. 

It is time to move away from jobs like that.  If these businesses can’t find capable employees, something is off.  Shrimp Basket needs to move it along as an employer and consider where they are, the rapidly expanding Gulf Coast whose residents and vacay guests are not here to work, at least not in restaurants that wish them “shrimply the best”.  Nice wish.  Bad reality.

Another restaurant related drama went down in Pensacola. Twin Peaks in Pensacola is closing.  This chain is “known for its man-cave like, sports-bar atmosphere and provocatively dressed servers”.   They pinned a note to their door announcing an April 5^th closing with thanks to former patrons.  Time to close this man-cave breastaurant.  And not just this one franchise.  It is 2021 for the love of god.  Wasn’t Hooters enough?

The Covid crisis pushed us into a necessary consideration of what work is and what matters.  Some low-paying, soul-killing jobs just need to go.  We do miss the good stuff, the fantastic restaurants that closed all over the country, the artful-worker-friendly diners, cafes, food trucks and even four-star venues. But the bad stuff just needs to go.

Buckminster Fuller:  “You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Are you listening, Shrimp Basket and Twin Peaks? 

Build a new model.

Thank you.

Joyce