The lesson for anyone who wants to start a community-oriented small business appears to be to avoid any mention of equity or social justice so as not to attract the lunatics. Just pretend to be an abusive boss looking for wageslave employees and then quietly pay them 2x the going rate.
I don't think telling people you pay people fair wages is enough to attract too many of this. Chic fil A prides itself on paying better than other fast food places and I've never had a bad interaction with their employees or messed up order because they get higher quality teenagers on average. Toyota factories in Kentucky aren't even unionized because they pay their employees very well; I think my friend said it's like 80k/year for an entry level floor worker. I think couching it in terms of social justice is how you attract the unhinged crazies that will demand you live up to your rhetoric to an unrealistic degree.
Making your employees material lives better without pandering seems to be the winning formula, imo.
The same is true of the Nissan factory in TN. They pay very well and have great benefits like matching 401k’s etc - way better than union negotiated pensions.
Chick-fil-A fascinates me. The employees are so organized, efficient, and polite. I’m through the drive-in at least twice per week for my mom and it is always a pleasant experience. Yes ma’am and no ma’am and please come again. Even if the line stretches around the block I still stop because they have people outside directing traffic and taking your order 10 cars back. It’s always a very short wait. On the very rare occasion they are out of something they offer up a substitute at no cost. It’s like a different world. Last month several of the employees had little rainbow pins on their uniforms - one would assume they had permission to do it for pride so… I don’t eat chicken but I had a fresh peach shake a couple of weeks ago that blew my mind. Whatever they’re doing it seems to work.
In general, it's best for business owners to keep their business and their activism (or their employees' activism) as separate as possible. Make personal donations or volunteer as much as you'd like, but keep your coffee shop, bar, or widget factory focused on business and compensating employees at fair market levels.
Or, remembering that Portand is a leader in the USA for its number of strip clubs per capita (Oregon has full nude), bill yourself as a lesbian strip club. Many of the people you’d want to avoid will self-select out of your candidate pool, and you’d probably have lines around the block.
Seems like putting out the virtue signal is tantamount to screaming "Hey—HEY! Look over here, absolutely nothing at all to potentially criticize, right?"
I'm going to be THAT person on the thread, but yes, it is indeed inappropriate (if not illegal) to say something like, "we're hiring Black queers at our coffee shop" UNLESS you can make the case that it is relevant to their job. There are decades of case law that get very specific about what would qualify. https://bit.ly/3PaZQCU
And all the privilege/oppression jargon aside, you cannot discriminate on a protected class regardless who it benefits. This was literally the ENTIRE PLOT OF ON THE BASIS OF SEX.
This is definitely the case, but who has the time to bring a lawsuit to coffee shops? Most likely only trolls who are actively trying to shove it to "the left". I can't imagine that some white person (Should I be using yt here?) who is applying to be a barista has the funds and the level of fury to bring a lawsuit to a local shop. I feel like that behavior is probably reserved for trolls or activist lawyers who have an axe to grind. I might be thinking about this wrong, but there are tons of things that are actually illegal but that will go by unchallenged because of the logistics of bringing a lawsuit.
When I was a grad student (Microbiology) students had a monthly virtual meeting with the department head. I was shocked when he was complaining that the Uni wouldn't literally let him only consider women for a newly opened junior faculty position. I was listening while doing lab work wondering if anyone was going to mention that it would literally be illegal, but nobody did. Even in a department with a fairly balanced gender ratio for science. It wasn't even a "woke" culture most of the time, but one guy gets the top job and that's all it takes. Opened my eyes about how far some of this has gone in academia.
"I will never hire a man. They ruin everything." - professor of 19th century lit to a couple grad students and me over coffee in 2008. I was already half out the door mentally, and I'd seen enough spousal hires and unqualified people getting jobs not to be too surprised at the time. I don't miss academia.
I still cringe when I see it. I don’t see how it’s that much different. I mean, we’re they discouraged before?
I worked for a nonprofit for five years and we would talk about this all the time. At the end of the day, if you want a more diverse staff, you just need to do recruiting and job posting in places you wouldn’t have considered before.
Honesyly, this is ehy I cant fuckung stand when companies hire a DEI person. How about you recruit through black frats and sororities or go to LGBTQ clubs. How about recruiting from loval.community colleges? Use the money to recruit and make sure everyone feels welcome. (Though I have to say the creation of an inclusive atnosphere, can be problematic as well)
Agreed. I brought up that instead of advertising jobs through the non-profit job boards or recruiting through similar companies, we should invest in recruiting in locations or places that are traditionally more diverse—or at the very least not require EVERY job to have a college degree. I didn’t feel like it landed *super* well.
Also, this DEI recruitment push tends to create a resentful atmosphere. I’ve worked at several organizations where if a perfectly-qualified white guy gets hired, suddenly all their coworkers are like, “aNoThEr CiS-hEt-Wt GuY?!?!1! 🤬” It makes for a super toxic environment.
Pretty sure that’d be fine. It doesn’t say they won’t hire others if they’re qualified. It’s just a virtue signal....but wouldn’t seem to cross the line of illegality since it’s a declaration of non-discrimination against a certain group.
There are "diversity positions" -- postdocs, faculty etc -- for which they explicitly only consider applicants who are one or another minority. I guess they can claim it's relevant to the job because part of the job is to promote diversity? I have no idea where the dividing line is supposed to be.
Most of the examples in case law are things like the board of a synagogue hiring a new Rabbi. If a evangelical preacher, Muslim imam, and Jewish Rabbi all apply, the board of the synagogue can legally discriminate based on religion. Other than sounding like the setup for a bad joke, it’s an example of how the religious beliefs of the new church leader are important to how they do their job.
You’d probably have to ask an employment attorney, but the diversity positions for post docs that you mention above might be on a gray area for a variety of reasons. I think in some places, educational institutions get some leeway with this. But I’m still not super sure... will advise when I find out.
Thanks! One thing I considered is that it seems like some of these positions are funded by an outside group, like a foundation set up to support women in stem, rather than the actual university. Maybe that's the loophole. At least in my field postdocs are very often funded by the sponsoring person's grants, so that's a pretty big loophole if so.
Like with publishers putting together anthologies?
I'm a huge SF fan, not so much fantasy, but current SF seems to have gotten away from blue sky speculation and been more contemporary social commentary. I mean great SF has often been commentary, but it's just more preachy now vice a "think about what if X?" vibe.
I thought it was more the market demand though, not formal pushing.
I've been reading a lot of older SF and when they did social commentary it was more skillful than the stuff published now. Like a lot of the SF is just really clunky and the whole story and world-building seems secondary to making some social statement that's popular with people who think that NPR isn't Liberal enough. If I wanted to be beaten over the head with that kind of message, I'd listen to a podcast or go to some political meeting.
Whenever you think to yourself “well that’s stupid and absurd, surely there are no groups of people who believe that” odds are that it’s a core belief of sfwa twitter. Dumbest people on the planet, and while I think most reverse racism allegations are overblown it’s definitely true of that group. They literally tried to destroy a seventy year old woman at her own award ceremony because while complimenting a guy she accidentally said colored person instead of people of color. That guy? An outspoken advocate of legalizing pedophilia, which no one in that group cares about because he’s black.
I won’t even submit to those magazines because they’re all run by lunatics and they all have crazy overblown diversity statements. It’s their religion.
I’d love to see Jesse’s take on some of the goings on in SFF. It’s getting surprising anyone will volunteer to run a con with the number of blow ups and purges.
And I hear the poster above about how blatant the political signalling in SFF writing has become. It’s got to the point where even where I agree with the sentiment I’m often bounced out of the story I’m reading because I hate to be patronised.
It’s like a game of Russian Roulette orchestrated by jigsaw where everyone has to say how fun it is and risk the chances of killing themselves before they for sure get taken out by a sniper.
I felt a big shift when Scalzi blew up with "Old Man's War," which I thought was incredible and fairly hailed as the spiritual successor to "Starship Troopers." But "The Forever War" was the real successor, "Starship Troopers" shouldn't have had sequels, and if the first sequel to OMW was any indicator, it shouldn't have had any either.
But he seemed to become an incredibly dominant voice in the genre, and I don't much care for his tone or approach.
I also liked "Old Man's War." (I liked "Redshirts" less.) Scalzi is the type to encourage parasocial connections with his fanbase and then pushes some of his half-baked social justice talking points among his fans and in the space making them pretty exclusionary.
Yeah I liked Old Mans War but his work since has been dog shit. I dislike him a lot as a person, but part of me also pities him because I feel like he’s a captive monkey playing smug trying not get beat by his own handlers. Once I read his remake of Little Fuzzy I was out. Dumbest ending ever.
Reminds me of a lawsuit against the Biden Administration about Farm loans for Black farmers being prioritized in order to make up for discrimination from the federal government in the past. If Federal courts side-eyed the govt. for in my view much more justifiable policy to correct past direct discrimination, I can't say that this kind of stated policy would hold up much better.
Yeah. That is justifiable and at the sane time completely unfair to present-day white farmers. And also. Unless this black farmer is a descendent of a farmed who had been discriminated against, it doesnt redress anything. Except symbolically. Which is a valid pount.
But also. Given the state of everything. Wouldn't the Biden administration work to help out all farms, first come first serve? We need them abd they are disappearing so fast
If you give grants based on economic class, isn't that both non-discriminatory and also an avenue to helping minorities (if they are still suffering from sequelae of historic discrimination)?
Oh you could easily make an argument that it's illegal, and I'm surprised there isn't some adventurous right winger looking to file a suit to make a point and get internet clout. Bad motives aside, they should.
For federal hiring, you must solicit a diverse hiring pool and then after that it is meant to be on merit.
As someone who values free association, I have 0 problem with private companies soliticing people on identity characteristics, religion etc. Ultimately it's too your own detriment if you hire on identity versus merit.
Update from the workers' Instagram, the community gathering has been called off due to "covid concerns". Quite possible, since one of their complaints was that the promised accommodations for people still at risk of covid was an outdoor patio, which was apparently was not near good enough.
That being said, as a local I think even Portlanders are getting kind of sick of this shit. Covid and then the protests brought out an unprecedented amount of grifting even for this area, along with a drastic increase in a bunch of real problems. I know so many people trying to move because they're just sick of the bullshit and feel genuinely unsafe. And these are all people who absolutely fit a lot of the Portland stereotypes, not even remotely conservative. And I *know* that at least my own tiny Portland lesbian circle is just fully disengaged at this point. If anything, I'm shocked this place managed to open at all, even if just for a day. We have to sneak in sideways through soccer and other sports, directly acknowledging that your clientele are lesbians is a no-no.
Not to this degree of SJW crazy. I hear things privately, but the gay male spaces are fairly trans inclusive. I will say, that once at a BIPOC hip-hop night (which was also mostly lesbian) that was I did have a woman approach me and flat out tell me "you don't look like you belong here" and that I should leave. For the record, I'm a brown gay man, so I'm not sure what she was calling attention to. I have also had a white friend tell me something similar happen to him.
I'm not sure if a lot of gay men believe trans women are women or just look at them as drag queens plus. As a gay man, I am not denying gay men can be racist or sexist, and can be especially classist and lookist. But gay men, or at least the gay men who go to bars, are basically judging people by "are you fun to hang out with" and "would I want to have sex with you" and it doesn't get much deeper than that.
Gay drama has a bad reputation but most gay men I know don't carry grudges. I can't think of how many events I've been at where everyone had either dated or hooked up with everyone else at some point. And it's more or less a non issue.
All of which is to say OP, it's hard to know if they were racist or sexist, and I could easily see it going either way. I'm sorry that happened.
This sort of pressure campaign only works if you can actually convince the clientele to go along. I suspect for various reasons that’s a much harder lift with gay men.
I honestly don't think that's it. There are definitely high-end gay bars and clubs, but there's also a rich tradition of gay dive bars, landing somewhere between comfortable and friendly to kitschy and vaguely tragic.
No. And I don't know if we can generalize this as a lesbian bar vs gay bar thing because there are SOO few lesbian bars , and not all gay bars charge cover fees. Also, I have acknowledge that my experience is limited to Portland.
I also just wanted to add that I think Portland's queer nightlife scene is remarkably gender-variant. Even sex spaces like our bathhouse and gay male strip club are trans inclusive and have trans nights. The dance parties tend to be more pan-queer. So I wouldn't want someone to get the wrong impression from this story, that any attempt at BIPOC or lesbian or trans events is going to end up in meltdown. That said, people need to grow a pair and learn to spot grifters.
Interesting. The reason I ask is because there's only one gay club in my little city of Gainesville, Florida, but there are a lot of "queer spaces." I interact on the periphery of some of these since I play in a punk band. The gay club, while centered on gay men does also cater to the full rainbow of queerness, probably out of necessity, is far more stable and better run than any of the more generic queer spaces, which seem to come and go due to being poorly run as businesses. I wonder if it's a capital thing or a disposition thing or something else entirely that gay men seem to be able to leverage.
No, it doesn’t really. I have a feeling I know which gay bar Jesse visited in Denver. It’s one of two based on his description, and one of those bars/its management pretty infamously hosted gay republican meetings and made some tasteless anti immigrant jokes. By “infamously,” I mean some people got mad on Facebook for a few days. No major social justice crusades to shut them down. Not quite trans related, but parallel— gay male bars, in general, just aren’t “woke.”
That said, I do think things might be changing a bit. I am hearing more and more frustration from gay male friends dealing with non passing “trans men” (anime obsessed girls) on Grindr. We’ll see if that trickles into bar culture at all.
It saddens me to hear that. There will never be enough trans men to affect my user experience. Just swipe left like you would anyone else that you're not into? A trans app, to me at least, just seems economically infeasible and prone to as much harassment and catfishing as W4W apps have experienced. So coming from a gay man, I think people need to chill on that one, and trans people (at the very least, for their own safety) should indicate that they are trans.
Sort of? There is a level of pressure even on them here, but there are also definitely still places where it's clearly just for gay men and nobody is demanding they shut down for not centering the TQ or racial politics.
People do sound off FB, especially in the Queer FB groups, but they tend to not gain much traction.
God I wish BARpod had been around when the Queer PDX Exchange had an epic meltdown when someone demanded white people stop taking up too much space at QPOC events.
It sounds like it was well attended the one night it was open, so there seems to be a demand! I’d forge ahead and hire only people who believe in the vision.
It's kind of funny how it was once a gay male "sports bar" (which almost never played sports), and then cycled through a few turn overs before it became a female sports bar.
For those who haven't been in PDX long, it was once well-established neighborhood gay bar called JOQ's, and over time JOQ's popularity just kind of faded to nothingness.
I don't know. I might move this to the weekly thread too!
My friend (who is not a listener) suggested potential anti-antifa/anti-Matt-Walsh opsec: A quiz about key podcast details (What species is Jesse's girlfriend?) Or having everyone trade phones and film cancelable comments to ensure mutually ensured destruction if anyone gets blocked or reported.
I would bet my last dollar that the people complaining about it are exactly that type. NPR is now claiming that you need a mask outdoors sometimes because of the new variants. Apparently the new variants have evolved the ability to defy the laws of physics when it comes to aerosol dispersal.
The venn diagram of people who wear masks outside because they're terrified of ever getting sick again and who listen to NPR religiously is actually just a circle.
I mean, overall I don't really care if you wear a mask in/outside, it doesn't hurt me. I do start caring when little kids have to wear them everywhere, depriving them of a lot of critical learning times in life.
It's become a cult of fear at this point; I think we have a sizeable percentage of the population that will never go back to a maskless existence.
I reject labeling mask wearers as being caught in a “cult of fear.” “Cult of fear” would be those who say they haven’t left their houses in two years. “Cult of fear” is not “I have assessed my covid risk as being high, but I am going to go participate in life and society— just with some risk mitigation.”
Yeah, I find the complaints about individual mask wearing really annoying. What happened to minding your own business?
I don’t have my kids wear masks outside, but some kids at the playground are often masked. Why should I care? The kids certainly don’t care, I often have to nag mine to take their masks OFF after wearing one (“it keeps my face warm”).
I do not buy for a second that kids have been significantly educationally affected by *masks*, the big problem was having schools closed for a whole freaking year, which has radically interrupted my daughter’s reading and writing progress. They could have been in school the whole time with masks/ventilation/filtering/pooled-testing, that’s what I’m really mad about.
On the "let's form a union at our small local business and tank it" aspect of all this: there is a LARP quality to these attempts at unionization, and I truly mean that. There's a sense of people who don't understand labor movements or their strategies trying to start one based on their collective memories. It's the Renfaire equivalent of a union.
For both Mina's World and the lesbian bar, there's a real "dog chasing the car" vibe from the workers. If they ever did gain ownership somehow, the businesses likely wouldn't survive more than a few weeks. The activists have little to no knowledge of how to run a business or the desire to handle the important but mundane details (taxes, permits, supply chain, etc...). Would be interesting to see it play out that way sometime, to see how quickly it implodes.
These are also just not businesses that are notorious for stability or super high revenue per employee, except for the high-volume places like Starbucks. There is no huge river of money to tap into at a neighborhood coffee shop or niche, community-oriented bar.
I went to Hidden Villa's 2 week "Farm & Wilderness" camp back in 1999, which involved a combination of farm work and backpacking run by a bunch of hippies. The F&W camp specifically was for young teenagers IIRC (I was 14 at the time) and for a significant chunk of us there, including myself, it was a way for their parents to get them out of the house. Despite growing up in the liberal Bay Area it was the first time I remember anyone talking about sexual orientation in a non-judgey welcoming way. One of the kids came out as gay at the camp (I wouldn't for another 2 years, but the experience certainly helped.) I don't remember anyone coming out as a they/them, but we're probably at least a decade before they would have started talking about gender identity. They didn't have any of those identity flags strewn about the camp either.
I can honestly say I never even noticed those swastika tiles, nor do I remember anyone noticing or talking about them at all. Given that summer camps rely on older HS and college students that can afford to take a mediocre paying jobs it's not too surprising that they'd end up with the exact sort of entitled emotionally stunted staffers that are incapable of understanding historical context. It's unfortunate cause the camp was a really great experience.
I never went to camp there, but I spent time there on many occasions. I remember in high school I helped out with my best friend's Eagle Scout project, which was refurbishing the forge there. I also just went there to hike on the amazing trails there. My sense was always that it was a great organization that did a lot for the community, including all of the summer programs. It's sad to see stuff like this happening to good organizations.
I didn't know about the part where they were understaffed before people quit over the swastikas, though. I imagine that has something to do with other issues, like the labor shortage in general (and I imagine it must be even worse for non-profits), and the astronomical cost of living in the Bay Area.
What a delightfully self destructive subculture. Also I'm pretty sure I almost injured myself through eye rolling when I heard the words "Sweat Equity."
Wait sweat equity is a real thing and has been for a long time. You'll even hear "the sharks" talk about it. It's literally just the value of your labor that you give to a business (that you own, ideally) increasing it's value.
Hilarious as usual but speaking as a libertarian, this episode is *especially* noteworthy because Katie uttered those five glorious words so beloved of Koch Foundation development people, er, I mean free market advocates everywhere:
"Go start your own business"
Yes. Yes. Yesssssss. It's only a matter of weeks, if not days. Just one more 1st class flight/fancy hotel stay and she is OURS
An old episode mentioned Yglesias making ~$700K, and that seemed to blow J&K's minds, but they just said they're almost at 10K subs. Even if everyone is second class (😉) $5 subscriber, that puts them at $300K each annually before expenses (which are internet and Trace?).
Wait until Katie pays her 2022 taxes, she'll forget she ever even knew how to spell "Bernie"
Also, Katie finally put her finger on why I like this podcast: it's highbrow libs of tik tok, if you define "highbrow" as "depressed lefties laughing between sobbing about the ouroboros that is the left"
I don't know why, but this episode seemed to be the most hilarious of all. Having to wipe the smile off my face now that I finished listening to it. Well done, guys!
People at my supermarket and laundromat were staring at the Joker-adjacent grin this episode put on my face--and, like the Joker, I'm not even kidding.
I was recently (early '21) looking for a new job, tired of the bizarre ideological skirmishes at my current workplace. Every single one I applied for spat some DEI quiz at me.
I always stopped applying at that point, realizing I'd just be do-si-doing into another snakepit of identity fetishists. (Though thankfully, I'm only "a gay," so I'm not high on the social capital food pyramid for these creeps--they generally drool over other ID categories these days.)
When I think about the kind of person who *wants* to be fawned over and objectified based on their immutable characteristics, the kind of person who saw those quizzes as anything other than a red flag, I get a sinking feeling.
I work for a very progressive org. I nearly quit because the shit is insane. When you mentioned who wants to be fetishized. Well. In June 2021 a white staffer sent an email suggesting that all other white and white-passing staffers donate the money they earn on Juneteenth to a black friend or colleague. Or to this organization that advocates for reparations.
By the time I saw the email there were at least 25 replies, almost all like - as a black person I fibd this offensive. There was one reply saying how the OP understands how white supremacy works and white people only listen to other white people. Then a higher up.sent an email saying this wasnt the proper venue for this convo. And then a colleague said he would ne happy to be given reparations. But he was pretty obviously joking and trying to break the tension. But then? Someone else wrote and she was clearly completely serious about getting reparations. And then the email thread was shut down
..
To make things even better I actually went to the website to check out the reparations website because I thought it might be a good organization to give to. Well. The website was for white allies, to support black labor. I was getting a sinking feeling because this was striking me as very patronizing
So then I got to project itself.
It was for a motherfucking STATUE. Because THAT is how you help black children actually end the cycle of poverty. A statue.
As a former Asian art curator, and current Asian art auction specialist, I have to say museums have played a pretty significant role in Americans ignorance on the swastika’s significance- not only as a historical symbol but also in its continued living significance. South Asian and Himalayan art in particular are abound with swastikas, but often when deciding what to put on display, there are certain works which sometimes the curator, sometimes their bosses, or sometimes other staff might object to just because of the optics and sensitives of putting something on display like an early Buddhist grey schist footprint of Buddha with swatikas on the heel and every toe. It’s not a conspiracy, just a knee jerk icky reaction that will cause something with “blatant” swastikas to stay in storage. I get into these conversations with friends sometimes when they come to our auction previews and are like omg who would buy that? Turns out, a lot of people! Swastikas are still (and should be) normalized in the majority of the world population
Thank you! As a Hindu, the Swastik is STILL important to us. In some temples they stopped displaying them because they don't want to deal with a fight or some violence if it happens. But now there's a collective effort by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain organizations in California to get this recognized.
Also, the Nazis never used swastikas. They used the hakenkreuz (hooked cross) inspired by the Chrstian cross. James Vincent Murphy in 1939 translated Mein Kampf to English and replaced all the words 'hakenkreuz' to 'swastika' to remove traces of the Christian roots of Hitler's antisemetism. That's why now we talk about white nationalism but no fundemental Christianity in terms of the violence against jews.
Another great episode, but with regards to the bar and camp - Jesus CHRIST, these fucking CHILDREN! I am looking forward to The Current Madness passing and watching life chew these people up as their whining and self-pity falls out of fashion. Their detestable appropriation of worker’s rights struggles and racial grievances aside, just the horrifically entitled nature of their complaints makes me lose all sympathy for them.
I want to start a troll/spite business to bait a bunch of MIna’s workers into trying an employee takeover. All so I can have a speech and say “I know a lot of you think I’m just some evil businessman…. And you’re right. You’re all fired. Get the fuck out of here.”
The "I've worked here for 5 minutes I should have a share of the business" chimes with a lot of the entitlement you see on Reddit (go to r/legaladvice for people living in a fantasy land of "squatters rights" for having rented a place for a few months).
The lesson for anyone who wants to start a community-oriented small business appears to be to avoid any mention of equity or social justice so as not to attract the lunatics. Just pretend to be an abusive boss looking for wageslave employees and then quietly pay them 2x the going rate.
I don't think telling people you pay people fair wages is enough to attract too many of this. Chic fil A prides itself on paying better than other fast food places and I've never had a bad interaction with their employees or messed up order because they get higher quality teenagers on average. Toyota factories in Kentucky aren't even unionized because they pay their employees very well; I think my friend said it's like 80k/year for an entry level floor worker. I think couching it in terms of social justice is how you attract the unhinged crazies that will demand you live up to your rhetoric to an unrealistic degree.
Making your employees material lives better without pandering seems to be the winning formula, imo.
The same is true of the Nissan factory in TN. They pay very well and have great benefits like matching 401k’s etc - way better than union negotiated pensions.
Chick-fil-A fascinates me. The employees are so organized, efficient, and polite. I’m through the drive-in at least twice per week for my mom and it is always a pleasant experience. Yes ma’am and no ma’am and please come again. Even if the line stretches around the block I still stop because they have people outside directing traffic and taking your order 10 cars back. It’s always a very short wait. On the very rare occasion they are out of something they offer up a substitute at no cost. It’s like a different world. Last month several of the employees had little rainbow pins on their uniforms - one would assume they had permission to do it for pride so… I don’t eat chicken but I had a fresh peach shake a couple of weeks ago that blew my mind. Whatever they’re doing it seems to work.
Same thing with In-N-Out.
In general, it's best for business owners to keep their business and their activism (or their employees' activism) as separate as possible. Make personal donations or volunteer as much as you'd like, but keep your coffee shop, bar, or widget factory focused on business and compensating employees at fair market levels.
Or, remembering that Portand is a leader in the USA for its number of strip clubs per capita (Oregon has full nude), bill yourself as a lesbian strip club. Many of the people you’d want to avoid will self-select out of your candidate pool, and you’d probably have lines around the block.
Seems like putting out the virtue signal is tantamount to screaming "Hey—HEY! Look over here, absolutely nothing at all to potentially criticize, right?"
I want to work for you!
I'm going to be THAT person on the thread, but yes, it is indeed inappropriate (if not illegal) to say something like, "we're hiring Black queers at our coffee shop" UNLESS you can make the case that it is relevant to their job. There are decades of case law that get very specific about what would qualify. https://bit.ly/3PaZQCU
And all the privilege/oppression jargon aside, you cannot discriminate on a protected class regardless who it benefits. This was literally the ENTIRE PLOT OF ON THE BASIS OF SEX.
**Illegal as in don't put that in your job posting. 🤦🏻♀️ That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
This is definitely the case, but who has the time to bring a lawsuit to coffee shops? Most likely only trolls who are actively trying to shove it to "the left". I can't imagine that some white person (Should I be using yt here?) who is applying to be a barista has the funds and the level of fury to bring a lawsuit to a local shop. I feel like that behavior is probably reserved for trolls or activist lawyers who have an axe to grind. I might be thinking about this wrong, but there are tons of things that are actually illegal but that will go by unchallenged because of the logistics of bringing a lawsuit.
Obviously Starbucks or Dunkin would get burned for this, but these coffee shops are like.... Small local places with one location to their names
As Katie alluded to with nonprofits, academia also has job postings that say "women and minorities are encouraged to apply."
Since that phrasing is so prevalent, I presume the EEOC has allowed it, either expressly or tacitly.
When I was a grad student (Microbiology) students had a monthly virtual meeting with the department head. I was shocked when he was complaining that the Uni wouldn't literally let him only consider women for a newly opened junior faculty position. I was listening while doing lab work wondering if anyone was going to mention that it would literally be illegal, but nobody did. Even in a department with a fairly balanced gender ratio for science. It wasn't even a "woke" culture most of the time, but one guy gets the top job and that's all it takes. Opened my eyes about how far some of this has gone in academia.
"I will never hire a man. They ruin everything." - professor of 19th century lit to a couple grad students and me over coffee in 2008. I was already half out the door mentally, and I'd seen enough spousal hires and unqualified people getting jobs not to be too surprised at the time. I don't miss academia.
Yikes. That feels like cult behavior. 😬
I still cringe when I see it. I don’t see how it’s that much different. I mean, we’re they discouraged before?
I worked for a nonprofit for five years and we would talk about this all the time. At the end of the day, if you want a more diverse staff, you just need to do recruiting and job posting in places you wouldn’t have considered before.
Honesyly, this is ehy I cant fuckung stand when companies hire a DEI person. How about you recruit through black frats and sororities or go to LGBTQ clubs. How about recruiting from loval.community colleges? Use the money to recruit and make sure everyone feels welcome. (Though I have to say the creation of an inclusive atnosphere, can be problematic as well)
Agreed. I brought up that instead of advertising jobs through the non-profit job boards or recruiting through similar companies, we should invest in recruiting in locations or places that are traditionally more diverse—or at the very least not require EVERY job to have a college degree. I didn’t feel like it landed *super* well.
Also, this DEI recruitment push tends to create a resentful atmosphere. I’ve worked at several organizations where if a perfectly-qualified white guy gets hired, suddenly all their coworkers are like, “aNoThEr CiS-hEt-Wt GuY?!?!1! 🤬” It makes for a super toxic environment.
That's materially different from "we're hiring Black queers at our coffee shop".
Pretty sure that’d be fine. It doesn’t say they won’t hire others if they’re qualified. It’s just a virtue signal....but wouldn’t seem to cross the line of illegality since it’s a declaration of non-discrimination against a certain group.
There are "diversity positions" -- postdocs, faculty etc -- for which they explicitly only consider applicants who are one or another minority. I guess they can claim it's relevant to the job because part of the job is to promote diversity? I have no idea where the dividing line is supposed to be.
Most of the examples in case law are things like the board of a synagogue hiring a new Rabbi. If a evangelical preacher, Muslim imam, and Jewish Rabbi all apply, the board of the synagogue can legally discriminate based on religion. Other than sounding like the setup for a bad joke, it’s an example of how the religious beliefs of the new church leader are important to how they do their job.
You’d probably have to ask an employment attorney, but the diversity positions for post docs that you mention above might be on a gray area for a variety of reasons. I think in some places, educational institutions get some leeway with this. But I’m still not super sure... will advise when I find out.
Thanks! One thing I considered is that it seems like some of these positions are funded by an outside group, like a foundation set up to support women in stem, rather than the actual university. Maybe that's the loophole. At least in my field postdocs are very often funded by the sponsoring person's grants, so that's a pretty big loophole if so.
Fwiw, this is how almost all science fiction and fantasy short story markets are set up.
Like with publishers putting together anthologies?
I'm a huge SF fan, not so much fantasy, but current SF seems to have gotten away from blue sky speculation and been more contemporary social commentary. I mean great SF has often been commentary, but it's just more preachy now vice a "think about what if X?" vibe.
I thought it was more the market demand though, not formal pushing.
I've been reading a lot of older SF and when they did social commentary it was more skillful than the stuff published now. Like a lot of the SF is just really clunky and the whole story and world-building seems secondary to making some social statement that's popular with people who think that NPR isn't Liberal enough. If I wanted to be beaten over the head with that kind of message, I'd listen to a podcast or go to some political meeting.
Yeah modern stuff is very after school special vibe. You can’t convince these people they just suck though.
Whenever you think to yourself “well that’s stupid and absurd, surely there are no groups of people who believe that” odds are that it’s a core belief of sfwa twitter. Dumbest people on the planet, and while I think most reverse racism allegations are overblown it’s definitely true of that group. They literally tried to destroy a seventy year old woman at her own award ceremony because while complimenting a guy she accidentally said colored person instead of people of color. That guy? An outspoken advocate of legalizing pedophilia, which no one in that group cares about because he’s black.
I won’t even submit to those magazines because they’re all run by lunatics and they all have crazy overblown diversity statements. It’s their religion.
I’d love to see Jesse’s take on some of the goings on in SFF. It’s getting surprising anyone will volunteer to run a con with the number of blow ups and purges.
And I hear the poster above about how blatant the political signalling in SFF writing has become. It’s got to the point where even where I agree with the sentiment I’m often bounced out of the story I’m reading because I hate to be patronised.
It’s like a game of Russian Roulette orchestrated by jigsaw where everyone has to say how fun it is and risk the chances of killing themselves before they for sure get taken out by a sniper.
I felt a big shift when Scalzi blew up with "Old Man's War," which I thought was incredible and fairly hailed as the spiritual successor to "Starship Troopers." But "The Forever War" was the real successor, "Starship Troopers" shouldn't have had sequels, and if the first sequel to OMW was any indicator, it shouldn't have had any either.
But he seemed to become an incredibly dominant voice in the genre, and I don't much care for his tone or approach.
I also liked "Old Man's War." (I liked "Redshirts" less.) Scalzi is the type to encourage parasocial connections with his fanbase and then pushes some of his half-baked social justice talking points among his fans and in the space making them pretty exclusionary.
Yeah I liked Old Mans War but his work since has been dog shit. I dislike him a lot as a person, but part of me also pities him because I feel like he’s a captive monkey playing smug trying not get beat by his own handlers. Once I read his remake of Little Fuzzy I was out. Dumbest ending ever.
Reminds me of a lawsuit against the Biden Administration about Farm loans for Black farmers being prioritized in order to make up for discrimination from the federal government in the past. If Federal courts side-eyed the govt. for in my view much more justifiable policy to correct past direct discrimination, I can't say that this kind of stated policy would hold up much better.
Yeah. That is justifiable and at the sane time completely unfair to present-day white farmers. And also. Unless this black farmer is a descendent of a farmed who had been discriminated against, it doesnt redress anything. Except symbolically. Which is a valid pount.
But also. Given the state of everything. Wouldn't the Biden administration work to help out all farms, first come first serve? We need them abd they are disappearing so fast
If you give grants based on economic class, isn't that both non-discriminatory and also an avenue to helping minorities (if they are still suffering from sequelae of historic discrimination)?
Oh you could easily make an argument that it's illegal, and I'm surprised there isn't some adventurous right winger looking to file a suit to make a point and get internet clout. Bad motives aside, they should.
Honestly though—as much as I cringe at the Tucker Carlson spot that would create, I really want someone to put an end to that. 😑
For federal hiring, you must solicit a diverse hiring pool and then after that it is meant to be on merit.
As someone who values free association, I have 0 problem with private companies soliticing people on identity characteristics, religion etc. Ultimately it's too your own detriment if you hire on identity versus merit.
Update from the workers' Instagram, the community gathering has been called off due to "covid concerns". Quite possible, since one of their complaints was that the promised accommodations for people still at risk of covid was an outdoor patio, which was apparently was not near good enough.
That being said, as a local I think even Portlanders are getting kind of sick of this shit. Covid and then the protests brought out an unprecedented amount of grifting even for this area, along with a drastic increase in a bunch of real problems. I know so many people trying to move because they're just sick of the bullshit and feel genuinely unsafe. And these are all people who absolutely fit a lot of the Portland stereotypes, not even remotely conservative. And I *know* that at least my own tiny Portland lesbian circle is just fully disengaged at this point. If anything, I'm shocked this place managed to open at all, even if just for a day. We have to sneak in sideways through soccer and other sports, directly acknowledging that your clientele are lesbians is a no-no.
Does this happen to bars for gay men?
Not to this degree of SJW crazy. I hear things privately, but the gay male spaces are fairly trans inclusive. I will say, that once at a BIPOC hip-hop night (which was also mostly lesbian) that was I did have a woman approach me and flat out tell me "you don't look like you belong here" and that I should leave. For the record, I'm a brown gay man, so I'm not sure what she was calling attention to. I have also had a white friend tell me something similar happen to him.
I'm not sure if a lot of gay men believe trans women are women or just look at them as drag queens plus. As a gay man, I am not denying gay men can be racist or sexist, and can be especially classist and lookist. But gay men, or at least the gay men who go to bars, are basically judging people by "are you fun to hang out with" and "would I want to have sex with you" and it doesn't get much deeper than that.
Gay drama has a bad reputation but most gay men I know don't carry grudges. I can't think of how many events I've been at where everyone had either dated or hooked up with everyone else at some point. And it's more or less a non issue.
All of which is to say OP, it's hard to know if they were racist or sexist, and I could easily see it going either way. I'm sorry that happened.
This sort of pressure campaign only works if you can actually convince the clientele to go along. I suspect for various reasons that’s a much harder lift with gay men.
Is a possibility that gay men price gate their places a bit more? I can see pricing involved with going serving as a pretty effective gatekeeper.
I honestly don't think that's it. There are definitely high-end gay bars and clubs, but there's also a rich tradition of gay dive bars, landing somewhere between comfortable and friendly to kitschy and vaguely tragic.
No. And I don't know if we can generalize this as a lesbian bar vs gay bar thing because there are SOO few lesbian bars , and not all gay bars charge cover fees. Also, I have acknowledge that my experience is limited to Portland.
I also just wanted to add that I think Portland's queer nightlife scene is remarkably gender-variant. Even sex spaces like our bathhouse and gay male strip club are trans inclusive and have trans nights. The dance parties tend to be more pan-queer. So I wouldn't want someone to get the wrong impression from this story, that any attempt at BIPOC or lesbian or trans events is going to end up in meltdown. That said, people need to grow a pair and learn to spot grifters.
Interesting. The reason I ask is because there's only one gay club in my little city of Gainesville, Florida, but there are a lot of "queer spaces." I interact on the periphery of some of these since I play in a punk band. The gay club, while centered on gay men does also cater to the full rainbow of queerness, probably out of necessity, is far more stable and better run than any of the more generic queer spaces, which seem to come and go due to being poorly run as businesses. I wonder if it's a capital thing or a disposition thing or something else entirely that gay men seem to be able to leverage.
No, it doesn’t really. I have a feeling I know which gay bar Jesse visited in Denver. It’s one of two based on his description, and one of those bars/its management pretty infamously hosted gay republican meetings and made some tasteless anti immigrant jokes. By “infamously,” I mean some people got mad on Facebook for a few days. No major social justice crusades to shut them down. Not quite trans related, but parallel— gay male bars, in general, just aren’t “woke.”
That said, I do think things might be changing a bit. I am hearing more and more frustration from gay male friends dealing with non passing “trans men” (anime obsessed girls) on Grindr. We’ll see if that trickles into bar culture at all.
It saddens me to hear that. There will never be enough trans men to affect my user experience. Just swipe left like you would anyone else that you're not into? A trans app, to me at least, just seems economically infeasible and prone to as much harassment and catfishing as W4W apps have experienced. So coming from a gay man, I think people need to chill on that one, and trans people (at the very least, for their own safety) should indicate that they are trans.
In fairness, the ire is with the no T, no op, very female looking, social justice “trans man/masc” sect, not so much trans men in general.
X Bar on Colfax?
Lol! That’s the one!
If that's the case, I'm extra bummed that I missed Jesse when he was in town -- I walk past that place on an almost daily basis.
Sort of? There is a level of pressure even on them here, but there are also definitely still places where it's clearly just for gay men and nobody is demanding they shut down for not centering the TQ or racial politics.
People do sound off FB, especially in the Queer FB groups, but they tend to not gain much traction.
God I wish BARpod had been around when the Queer PDX Exchange had an epic meltdown when someone demanded white people stop taking up too much space at QPOC events.
Nope
It sounds like it was well attended the one night it was open, so there seems to be a demand! I’d forge ahead and hire only people who believe in the vision.
I had imagined the Sports Bra would be a de factor lesbian bar. Have things worked out that way?
Most definitely! I've only been a few times but I love it, honestly in some ways more than the few legit lesbian bars I've been to.
That's great news.
It's kind of funny how it was once a gay male "sports bar" (which almost never played sports), and then cycled through a few turn overs before it became a female sports bar.
For those who haven't been in PDX long, it was once well-established neighborhood gay bar called JOQ's, and over time JOQ's popularity just kind of faded to nothingness.
p.s. I would love to make a PDX BarPod meetup happen. Has anyone tried to make one happen?
Maybe...how do I know you're not an antifa O.o
Just kidding. I might be interested. Any word if other cities have had BARpod meetups and how they went?
I don't know. I might move this to the weekly thread too!
My friend (who is not a listener) suggested potential anti-antifa/anti-Matt-Walsh opsec: A quiz about key podcast details (What species is Jesse's girlfriend?) Or having everyone trade phones and film cancelable comments to ensure mutually ensured destruction if anyone gets blocked or reported.
I had imagined that too. It definitely seems popular but I'm not sure who the clientele is.
I would bet my last dollar that the people complaining about it are exactly that type. NPR is now claiming that you need a mask outdoors sometimes because of the new variants. Apparently the new variants have evolved the ability to defy the laws of physics when it comes to aerosol dispersal.
The venn diagram of people who wear masks outside because they're terrified of ever getting sick again and who listen to NPR religiously is actually just a circle.
I mean, overall I don't really care if you wear a mask in/outside, it doesn't hurt me. I do start caring when little kids have to wear them everywhere, depriving them of a lot of critical learning times in life.
It's become a cult of fear at this point; I think we have a sizeable percentage of the population that will never go back to a maskless existence.
I reject labeling mask wearers as being caught in a “cult of fear.” “Cult of fear” would be those who say they haven’t left their houses in two years. “Cult of fear” is not “I have assessed my covid risk as being high, but I am going to go participate in life and society— just with some risk mitigation.”
Yeah, I find the complaints about individual mask wearing really annoying. What happened to minding your own business?
I don’t have my kids wear masks outside, but some kids at the playground are often masked. Why should I care? The kids certainly don’t care, I often have to nag mine to take their masks OFF after wearing one (“it keeps my face warm”).
I do not buy for a second that kids have been significantly educationally affected by *masks*, the big problem was having schools closed for a whole freaking year, which has radically interrupted my daughter’s reading and writing progress. They could have been in school the whole time with masks/ventilation/filtering/pooled-testing, that’s what I’m really mad about.
Writing a letter to the ceo of the multi national corporation I work for saying I’m taking over this motherfucker
Omg, yes please! I'll morally support you 100%
Where’s the rally being held? I will come and stand sheepishly around the outside not wanting to center myself of course
Yeah, I would guess that "I'm taking over this NUCLEAR Motherfucker" goes over quite poorly. Especially in your best Nicolas Cage voice.
In the name of equity. Obviously
On the "let's form a union at our small local business and tank it" aspect of all this: there is a LARP quality to these attempts at unionization, and I truly mean that. There's a sense of people who don't understand labor movements or their strategies trying to start one based on their collective memories. It's the Renfaire equivalent of a union.
At least Renfaire requires some prep work. This is the laziest shit I’ve ever freakin seen.
For both Mina's World and the lesbian bar, there's a real "dog chasing the car" vibe from the workers. If they ever did gain ownership somehow, the businesses likely wouldn't survive more than a few weeks. The activists have little to no knowledge of how to run a business or the desire to handle the important but mundane details (taxes, permits, supply chain, etc...). Would be interesting to see it play out that way sometime, to see how quickly it implodes.
These are also just not businesses that are notorious for stability or super high revenue per employee, except for the high-volume places like Starbucks. There is no huge river of money to tap into at a neighborhood coffee shop or niche, community-oriented bar.
I went to Hidden Villa's 2 week "Farm & Wilderness" camp back in 1999, which involved a combination of farm work and backpacking run by a bunch of hippies. The F&W camp specifically was for young teenagers IIRC (I was 14 at the time) and for a significant chunk of us there, including myself, it was a way for their parents to get them out of the house. Despite growing up in the liberal Bay Area it was the first time I remember anyone talking about sexual orientation in a non-judgey welcoming way. One of the kids came out as gay at the camp (I wouldn't for another 2 years, but the experience certainly helped.) I don't remember anyone coming out as a they/them, but we're probably at least a decade before they would have started talking about gender identity. They didn't have any of those identity flags strewn about the camp either.
I can honestly say I never even noticed those swastika tiles, nor do I remember anyone noticing or talking about them at all. Given that summer camps rely on older HS and college students that can afford to take a mediocre paying jobs it's not too surprising that they'd end up with the exact sort of entitled emotionally stunted staffers that are incapable of understanding historical context. It's unfortunate cause the camp was a really great experience.
I never went to camp there, but I spent time there on many occasions. I remember in high school I helped out with my best friend's Eagle Scout project, which was refurbishing the forge there. I also just went there to hike on the amazing trails there. My sense was always that it was a great organization that did a lot for the community, including all of the summer programs. It's sad to see stuff like this happening to good organizations.
I didn't know about the part where they were understaffed before people quit over the swastikas, though. I imagine that has something to do with other issues, like the labor shortage in general (and I imagine it must be even worse for non-profits), and the astronomical cost of living in the Bay Area.
What a delightfully self destructive subculture. Also I'm pretty sure I almost injured myself through eye rolling when I heard the words "Sweat Equity."
Wait sweat equity is a real thing and has been for a long time. You'll even hear "the sharks" talk about it. It's literally just the value of your labor that you give to a business (that you own, ideally) increasing it's value.
It's been open one day....so....
I agree that sweat equity can count for something but those managers had been getting paid for their labor already.
Hilarious as usual but speaking as a libertarian, this episode is *especially* noteworthy because Katie uttered those five glorious words so beloved of Koch Foundation development people, er, I mean free market advocates everywhere:
"Go start your own business"
Yes. Yes. Yesssssss. It's only a matter of weeks, if not days. Just one more 1st class flight/fancy hotel stay and she is OURS
An old episode mentioned Yglesias making ~$700K, and that seemed to blow J&K's minds, but they just said they're almost at 10K subs. Even if everyone is second class (😉) $5 subscriber, that puts them at $300K each annually before expenses (which are internet and Trace?).
Wait until Katie pays her 2022 taxes, she'll forget she ever even knew how to spell "Bernie"
Totally. And I'll be ready to adminster the oath on April 16th, 2023 :)
10k subs =/= 10k *paying* subs. (that's a regular obfuscating element when people talk about substack)
I think they probably meant 10k paying subs. Their Patreon already had about 6k subscribers.
Oh, that sucks. Transformational nature of taxes aside, I was really happy for them when I heard that.
I'm still happy for them! They've done phenomenally as it is, and I'm sure B&R will keep growing.
The Vermin Supreme/Katie Herzog fusion ticket.
"Fuck them hoe ass roads"?
Also, Katie finally put her finger on why I like this podcast: it's highbrow libs of tik tok, if you define "highbrow" as "depressed lefties laughing between sobbing about the ouroboros that is the left"
I don't know why, but this episode seemed to be the most hilarious of all. Having to wipe the smile off my face now that I finished listening to it. Well done, guys!
People at my supermarket and laundromat were staring at the Joker-adjacent grin this episode put on my face--and, like the Joker, I'm not even kidding.
Yes, though in the Joaquin manner.
I was recently (early '21) looking for a new job, tired of the bizarre ideological skirmishes at my current workplace. Every single one I applied for spat some DEI quiz at me.
I always stopped applying at that point, realizing I'd just be do-si-doing into another snakepit of identity fetishists. (Though thankfully, I'm only "a gay," so I'm not high on the social capital food pyramid for these creeps--they generally drool over other ID categories these days.)
When I think about the kind of person who *wants* to be fawned over and objectified based on their immutable characteristics, the kind of person who saw those quizzes as anything other than a red flag, I get a sinking feeling.
I work for a very progressive org. I nearly quit because the shit is insane. When you mentioned who wants to be fetishized. Well. In June 2021 a white staffer sent an email suggesting that all other white and white-passing staffers donate the money they earn on Juneteenth to a black friend or colleague. Or to this organization that advocates for reparations.
By the time I saw the email there were at least 25 replies, almost all like - as a black person I fibd this offensive. There was one reply saying how the OP understands how white supremacy works and white people only listen to other white people. Then a higher up.sent an email saying this wasnt the proper venue for this convo. And then a colleague said he would ne happy to be given reparations. But he was pretty obviously joking and trying to break the tension. But then? Someone else wrote and she was clearly completely serious about getting reparations. And then the email thread was shut down
..
To make things even better I actually went to the website to check out the reparations website because I thought it might be a good organization to give to. Well. The website was for white allies, to support black labor. I was getting a sinking feeling because this was striking me as very patronizing
So then I got to project itself.
It was for a motherfucking STATUE. Because THAT is how you help black children actually end the cycle of poverty. A statue.
It is THIS shit
This bullshit about venmoing black people the odd $20 to feel like a Good White Person is just insane.
It is SOOO weird. People online just have their venmo information up and demand payment. It is wild.
As a former Asian art curator, and current Asian art auction specialist, I have to say museums have played a pretty significant role in Americans ignorance on the swastika’s significance- not only as a historical symbol but also in its continued living significance. South Asian and Himalayan art in particular are abound with swastikas, but often when deciding what to put on display, there are certain works which sometimes the curator, sometimes their bosses, or sometimes other staff might object to just because of the optics and sensitives of putting something on display like an early Buddhist grey schist footprint of Buddha with swatikas on the heel and every toe. It’s not a conspiracy, just a knee jerk icky reaction that will cause something with “blatant” swastikas to stay in storage. I get into these conversations with friends sometimes when they come to our auction previews and are like omg who would buy that? Turns out, a lot of people! Swastikas are still (and should be) normalized in the majority of the world population
Thank you! As a Hindu, the Swastik is STILL important to us. In some temples they stopped displaying them because they don't want to deal with a fight or some violence if it happens. But now there's a collective effort by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain organizations in California to get this recognized.
Also, the Nazis never used swastikas. They used the hakenkreuz (hooked cross) inspired by the Chrstian cross. James Vincent Murphy in 1939 translated Mein Kampf to English and replaced all the words 'hakenkreuz' to 'swastika' to remove traces of the Christian roots of Hitler's antisemetism. That's why now we talk about white nationalism but no fundemental Christianity in terms of the violence against jews.
Another great episode, but with regards to the bar and camp - Jesus CHRIST, these fucking CHILDREN! I am looking forward to The Current Madness passing and watching life chew these people up as their whining and self-pity falls out of fashion. Their detestable appropriation of worker’s rights struggles and racial grievances aside, just the horrifically entitled nature of their complaints makes me lose all sympathy for them.
I want to start a troll/spite business to bait a bunch of MIna’s workers into trying an employee takeover. All so I can have a speech and say “I know a lot of you think I’m just some evil businessman…. And you’re right. You’re all fired. Get the fuck out of here.”
The "I've worked here for 5 minutes I should have a share of the business" chimes with a lot of the entitlement you see on Reddit (go to r/legaladvice for people living in a fantasy land of "squatters rights" for having rented a place for a few months).