Used to live not far away from a Mom & Pops pizza joint. Best pizza ever had in my life. 10 years ago, they sold the place. New owner cheapened a lot of the recipes and expanded their menu to compete with a lot of other local businesses, which up till this point had been respecting each others specialities and promoting their own customers to try other places when they asked for something not on their menu.
So they pissed a lot of people off, but the food was still pretty good, for a while at least. Definitely dips in quality, and apparently didn’t do much to keep their prices competitive so most of their good cooks and servers would work about 6 months for them then get hired up somewhere else to make more money for less bullshit.
During the pandemic, every other place boosted their wages by a couple of bucks just to keep people on staff since a LOT of people were doing curbside pick ups, so their overall business went up even if their dining areas were vacant. So every other business in town is thriving despite the difficulties of the lockdown and social distances. Except for the pizza place, who despite having a loyal customer base, didn’t have enough staff to stay open through the week and by the end of 2020 was down to three days a week.
And then these assholes put up their ‘NO ONE WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE’ sign next to their pick up window asking people to be patient with their staff because they don’t have enough bodies. Curious, and knowing the owner wasn’t there at the time, I asked the server what the deal was, and she (un)happily informed me what her wage was, and how she was slated to start working across the street next week for more money. And the kicker being she said she wish the pizza place would just pay more since they’d get more workers and people actually like the joint because it had a lot of history in town.
But nope, these bastards wouldn’t increase pay. They refused to budge from their $9 dollar mark, insisting it was good pay because it wasn’t minimum wage for no prior experience. My sister worked there in the early 2000s for $9 an hour. Everywhere else in town started at 12. The gas station was hiring 16 year olds for 12 dollars an hour to empty trash and sweep floors. The grocery store was paying 13 dollars for people to bag groceries 20 hours a week. But this otherwise successful pizza place with several generations of customers couldn’t keep their doors open because they wouldn’t go above 10 dollars for people to cook food, wait tables and sometimes do deliveries. Someone who had helped them with their finances even quitel informed me they probably could have afforded to pay 8 staff $16 per hour and still make a profit thanks to the regular business they had and they were practically losing money as it stood because they couldn’t keep their doors open consistently and people were getting fed up with going to eat out and finding a closed sign on the front door.
But hey, nobody wants to work anymore. That clearly is the problem.
Let’s assume the pizza business is a web platform, because why not.
Let’s assume the previous business counts (because… reasons), and call that one for the customers.
Again, let’s assume the workers are a proxy for business customers (a reach), and pretend that them not ever benefiting was the point of the story.
I’ll give you the ineffective attempt to capture the surplus value for the business against qualified advice… but let’s assume that wasn’t their priority from the moment they bought the business.
Used to live not far away from a Mom & Pops pizza joint. Best pizza ever had in my life. 10 years ago, they sold the place. New owner cheapened a lot of the recipes and expanded their menu to compete with a lot of other local businesses, which up till this point had been respecting each others specialities and promoting their own customers to try other places when they asked for something not on their menu.
So they pissed a lot of people off, but the food was still pretty good, for a while at least. Definitely dips in quality, and apparently didn’t do much to keep their prices competitive so most of their good cooks and servers would work about 6 months for them then get hired up somewhere else to make more money for less bullshit.
During the pandemic, every other place boosted their wages by a couple of bucks just to keep people on staff since a LOT of people were doing curbside pick ups, so their overall business went up even if their dining areas were vacant. So every other business in town is thriving despite the difficulties of the lockdown and social distances. Except for the pizza place, who despite having a loyal customer base, didn’t have enough staff to stay open through the week and by the end of 2020 was down to three days a week.
And then these assholes put up their ‘NO ONE WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE’ sign next to their pick up window asking people to be patient with their staff because they don’t have enough bodies. Curious, and knowing the owner wasn’t there at the time, I asked the server what the deal was, and she (un)happily informed me what her wage was, and how she was slated to start working across the street next week for more money. And the kicker being she said she wish the pizza place would just pay more since they’d get more workers and people actually like the joint because it had a lot of history in town.
But nope, these bastards wouldn’t increase pay. They refused to budge from their $9 dollar mark, insisting it was good pay because it wasn’t minimum wage for no prior experience. My sister worked there in the early 2000s for $9 an hour. Everywhere else in town started at 12. The gas station was hiring 16 year olds for 12 dollars an hour to empty trash and sweep floors. The grocery store was paying 13 dollars for people to bag groceries 20 hours a week. But this otherwise successful pizza place with several generations of customers couldn’t keep their doors open because they wouldn’t go above 10 dollars for people to cook food, wait tables and sometimes do deliveries. Someone who had helped them with their finances even quitel informed me they probably could have afforded to pay 8 staff $16 per hour and still make a profit thanks to the regular business they had and they were practically losing money as it stood because they couldn’t keep their doors open consistently and people were getting fed up with going to eat out and finding a closed sign on the front door.
But hey, nobody wants to work anymore. That clearly is the problem.
Just textbook example of enshittification
It’s shit, but definitely not an example of enshittification.
Surplus value to users > surplus value to business partners > surplus value to shareholders.
It went from stage 1(to customers) and 2(to workers) to stage 3(to owner)
Let’s assume the pizza business is a web platform, because why not.
Let’s assume the previous business counts (because… reasons), and call that one for the customers.
Again, let’s assume the workers are a proxy for business customers (a reach), and pretend that them not ever benefiting was the point of the story.
I’ll give you the ineffective attempt to capture the surplus value for the business against qualified advice… but let’s assume that wasn’t their priority from the moment they bought the business.
With all that in mind, sure - textbook.