like I went to taco bell and they didn’t even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.
Taco Bell will just put out a “napkin tipping” jar and blame lack of tips for not providing napkins.
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See enshittification.
Well you know all those boomers retiring ? They not doing work anymore but that’s not the worst of it. Now they are spending that retirement money instead of stashing it.
So they’re selling their stocks and now the companies need cash or demonstrate profit growth or else their share prices will tank.
Oh it’s even more complex.
Who sells those napkins?
(Answer; Sysco. If a place is short on napkins, Sysco is turning the screws on the franchise owner).
Are you sure they didn’t just conscript the napkins for TP? It is Taco Bell after all…
Taco bell has switched their demographic from dining in, to take out and drive thru. Started with the pandemic, that’s why most stuff that used to be readily available isn’t put out anymore. All the taco bells in my area did this, same with several other fast food chains.
Why I don’t eat out as much is because of the shrinkflation. Back in the mid 90’s you used to be able to get a whopper for a dollar. Now they’re pushing $6 and they just aren’t the same anymore. More if you get a meal.
People haven’t learned to vote with their wallets
As was once said(something like): if vote with your wallet, the people with bigger wallets get more votes.
Capitalism: a short story.
Sounds like a weird saying.
It assumes that the people with bigger wallets also use a larger portion (absolute money, not percentages) on the “thing” to begin with. If the billionaire and the middle class man uses 10€ on the same thing a month, and both stop doing it, then they both got the same amount of “votes”. Much more fitting would be: “if you vote with your wallet, people who spend more money get more votes”.
Of course this only applies if you’re talking about boycots etc, and not about buying stuff.
And yes, people with bigger wallets probably have more sway and power when it comes to get getting their way if they want to, but when people talk about voting with your wallet, they’re not talking about this.
“if you vote with your wallet, people who spend more money get more votes”.
as i said “something like”, but overall it’s the same idea, semantics.
Of course this only applies if you’re talking about boycots etc, and not about buying stuff.
It applies in both cases, for example the design of a product (game Diablo 4) or the process of gentrification.
Yep that’s true, but I think in the long haul appealing to more people is better than just one
We’re in a generation of complacency. Nobody cares and our to busy consuming to care.
A sizeable chunk is too busy surviving.
I mean, you would save a lot more money if you did 2 seconds of research by comparing prices before you buy things and also avoiding unnecessary expenditures like convenience foods like Taco Bell, junk food, and carbonated beverages.
It’s amazing to me how many people let themselves get nickel and dimed to death because, “it’s only $20.”
In 2023, a full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $28.58 on average to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S. This Housing Wage for a two-bedroom home is nearly four times higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
source: https://nlihc.org/oor/about
this isn’t even taking into account groceries, transportation, medical expenses, etc. the problem is not buying too many carbonated drinks.
It says the average rent for a 2 bedroom rental is $1,486. If you’re working $15/hr then you absolutely should be avoiding unnecessary expenses if you want to afford to live. Many people lack impulse control and financial literacy. If they had savings, then they could afford to ride out emergencies and move for a better job, things you can’t do when you have $15 to your name. It honestly hurts to watch some people actively hurting themselves by their own bad decisions.
The system is working as intended.
No, this line of thinking is wrong, I wish people would stop saying this. Voting with your wallet never works when 1% has >50% of wealth. It’s easier for 5% of people (wealthy, top execs) to agree on milking the rest than 95% of people to agree on boycotting a certain brand. That’s why we have regulations, we wouldn’t need them if “voting with wallets” actually worked.
Free market capitalism got us to this point, it cannot take us out of this.
1% might have 50% of the wealth, they do not account for 50% of the spending. Especially not at Taco Bell.
Pure capitalism is broken af, but companies like this will feel it if 10% of costumers stops going there. The increase in price can recover some of it, but only to a certain extent. It’s a simple supply and demand issue.
That being said, I’m not from the US, so take my opinion on local issues with a grain of salth. And I definitely don’t mean to imply that wealth inequality is not an issue. On the contrary.
You mean well and I wish you were right, but capitalism proves you wrong time and time again. Remember when everyone cancelled their Netflix subscriptions and the company went bankrupt because they disallowed account sharing? Yeah, that was the sentiment on all social media.
No, it proves me right. People are still willing to pay for the service despite the price hike. So it must mean that people think this non-essential service, for which there are alternatives, is worth the money.
Unfortunately, this is users allowing for this kind of behaviour.
The original comment was that voting with your wallet doesn’t work. I’m saying that it’s a problem with enough people voting with their wallet. If you are the only person that cares about something and stop buying from a particular company, they will not even notice it.
On the other hand, look what happened when bud light had this thing with a trans influencer and conservatives got ridiculously upset with this, as they do. ABInbev is still feeling the effects of that.
Nobody did that in net change numbers.
If your theory was right, Netflix is succeeding because Saudi billionaires from the 1% bought up thousands of Netflix subscriptions to make up for the average Joe from the 99% that unsubscribed.
What really happened was that when they added household restrictions they saw a net increase in subscriptions, not from the 1%, but from the 99%.
While the concentration of wealth has significant effects on opportunity and access to capital, it means pretty much jack shit to access to revenue, which is dictated by mass spending and very susceptible to voting with your dollar.
We literally just saw a company hit hard by people voting with their dollar, with one of the largest alcoholic beverage companies taking a significant loss because they pissed off two sides of the market with their behavior, with effects still going on today.
Hard to do that when everything is a fucking oligopoly. If you don’t like Taco Bell, have fun also avoiding KFC, Pizza Hut, and The Habit, all owned by Yum! Brands.
Go to your locally owned Mexican restaurant instead.
Stop letting advertising direct your purchasing intent towards mega-corp brands.
Theres a few problems
- Companies trying to maximize profits
- Corrupt political systems lets companies exploit their workers and customers alike
- Supply chains have been getting disrupted more and more. “Just in time” and getting “just enough” supplies no longer works well. A lot of stuff gets delayed or out of stock
- We expect unlimited resources on a finite planet. Whether its plastic junk, useless tech, or food we expect it to be available 24/7/365
A big one that you missed is
It’s socially acceptable and even encouraged for companies to fuck their customers. People assume that not being fucked over by a company means that company isn’t doing well.
oh no, OP had to ask for napkins. Consumers are treated shitty because you are shitty.
You sound fun
Im the guy on the receiving end of bullshit like you and OP.
You really need a new job if this one is making you act this way. Somewhere other than Taco Bell.
Well it is really dumb that, in a fast food restaurant (the high probability that you’re going to be eating in your car) they don’t even provide napkins or straws anymore. Yes we’re a spoiled country of brats, but who wants to see a bunch of bratty entitled people with taco bell grease all over their upturned noses?? I ask you.
I ask you to go to any fast food place, order some food, and ask for a napkin, then come back and tell me you were being a lunatic making up a crisis. For gods sake you people think there’s low napkin alarms in the dispensers?
Well I’m not sure what the anger is for or what your point is. I’m sure most fast food places would give your napkins if you ask and it’s not being a “lunatic” to ask companies to provide basic utensils in a fast food restaurant. Just the opposite in fact.
they don’t even provide napkins or straws anymore
I repeat, go to any fast food place, order some food, and ask for a napkin.
And what will that prove. You still haven’t answered that.
That you are provided with a napkin
My argument was not about whether you could get napkins by asking for one. My argument is, if you’re going to open a god-damn fast food place, you better have the fucking decency to provide basic eating utensils such as napkins and straws, or else you can forget my business. You can’t tell me these places can’t “afford” to provide napkins and dispensers, that’s bullshit.
It’s a shame so much time has passed for the public to even recall how much Teddy fought for the average Joe blow public with his first deal. He fought the corporate overloads and they couldn’t believe he couldn’t be bribed like those before him and since.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life. -Theodore Roosevelt
And he was even a right winger, iirc.
I think it’s less that we’re expected to sympathize, and more just that they’ve realized enough people will tolerate it. With OP’s example, Taco Bell has clearly decided that whatever business they may lose due to people deciding to not go to Taco Bell anymore because of the lack of napkins will be less than whatever they save by not stocking napkins anymore.
And they’re right.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty thing to do, but between people in general not realizing that this place doesn’t even have napkins anymore, and people deciding they still want semi-delicious garbage tacos anyway, they’re really not going to see a big dip in revenue. They’ve simply realized that they really can just make their presented experience a little shittier just to save some money.
Well first off have Taco Bell stopped providing napkins? One person couldn’t find napkins in one store and suddenly it’s greed driven corporate policy according to OP?
It seems unlikely that a food chain would completely abolish napkins. It is possible they’re no longer freely available because people were taking them “for their car” whatever that even means!?
Perhaps I should have clarified that for the sake of discussion I was taking OP’s comment at face value, but the essentials are the same either way. Whether it’s a chain-wide declaration that napkins are done, a single store doing away with them, or just a sufficiently casual attitude to restocking them that allowed them to run out in the first place, the math in the end is all the same. They can and will let their service get a little shittier, because they know they’ll save more money than they lose.
In fast food restaurants in the UK, you get your own napkins or they give you them on the tray when you collect your food. Or in some other non-fast food restaurants, they will bring napkins with your cutlery after you’ve ordered your food.
This is how it has always been and it’s a slightly strange thing to get upset about.
It’s the natural end for a free market. The big players take over and squeeze every drop of blood they can from the consumer class until the inevitable collapse or B&L buys the government.
No, there’s another ending. J&J buys the government.
Maybe they are out of them because some ghoul took all of them to clean their car? One self entitled customer.
Those fucking ghouls at Taco Bell, not providing us napkins! What a deprived nation we are. I had to wipe my face with a tree stump! You can’t get straws or drink lids anymore either at some restaurants. After all, the CEOS might have to forego an extra frog leg at dinner if they started providing us with napkins or straws for FREE.
