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| Darden CEO Clarence Otis (seated) and Michelle Obama (obaminating) |
There's usually thought-provoking stuff over at the site Gucci Little Piggy, even if it's generally way outside of my huge government-loving, Nanny State teat-suckling, radical, Cambridge leftist agenda. Chuck Rudd wrote recently on his experience inside the unholy alliance of big government and the corporate restaurant industry, which I'm sharing here below.
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This could get me fired. Oh well, I need some strife in my life – a little bit of getting off the pot after years and years of doing Sudoku puzzles will do me some good.
Luke O’Neil’s piece at his blog PTSOTL criticizing an Iowa newspaper’s wide-eyed pecorino cheeseball profile of a new restaurant provided a bit of synchronocity that compels me to out myself and the company I work for. The second-tier Italian chain restaurant that I write about so often: Olive Garden of “here, pour all of this lettuce and sauce and soup and bread down your gullet” fame.
Here are the dots that I want to connect. I don’t think any of them are a smoking gun, but I do think there is some inconsistency in the company’s values and a bit too much coziness between a private company and the Executive branch of our government. The dots aren’t something that should provoke a major stand against the company, but they are something to keep an eye on.
The CEO of Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden’s parent company, is Clarence Otis. Otis has donated money to the Obama campaign. In and of itself, this isn’t a big deal.
Michelle Obama pushed her infamous diet-change initiative through Darden Restaurants and Olive Garden specifically. The company has altered its children’s menu – replacing french fries with grapes or broccoli and making 2% milk the default drink choice for kids – and plans to cut sodium and calories across its menu. Of course, actually cutting caloric-intake of OG customers will require someone (me!) to pry those stainless-steel salad pincers from the customers’ oversized mitts.
I’m not one to jump on the bandwagon against Mrs. Obama for her pet project; every first lady has grabbed an issue near and dear to their hearts, but the propaganda laid out by both Obama and Otis isn’t something that I can read with a straight face:
“This is a great opportunity for Darden to strengthen our relationships with our guests,” Otis said. “Our commitment recognizes that they deserve greater choice and variety, and by putting our guests’ desires first, we’re putting our best foot forward as a company.”
At the news conference, Obama said Darden’s efforts would let parents teach their children about healthful eating by example.
“If we’re going to solve the problem of childhood obesity, we have to show our kids what to do with our actions and habits that we want them to learn,” Obama said. “Darden is giving us all that opportunity. They’re not doing this just as CEOs concerned about the bottom line; they’re doing it as parents and grandparents who care about our kids and our country.”
She added that restaurant companies without Darden’s massive scale, and even independent operators, could join Darden in the move to cut calories and sodium. Small steps like offering water and skim milk as kids’ meal beverages and letting customers order baked versions of fried menu items “can really add up,” she said.
Obama also called on parents to keep demanding more healthful options for their kids from restaurants, and she stressed that parents ought to take advantage of those menu items.
There is a lot going on in there. Obama adopts a high-handed position that Darden’s action plan would “let” parents teach their children about health – which is a problem when these behemoths come into the restaurant chomping at the bit for “them breadsticks”. This is also the company that offers the “Never Ending Pasta Bowl” each fall season (or as we call it ‘hell month’). According to Obama, a company like Darden is somehow in a position to teach parents how to teach their children.
The thing is, one of the players here – Obama or Otis – have to admit something unsightly. Either Obama (who serves as an ambassador for Nanny State liberalism) admits that grown adults are too inept to raise their children, or Otis admits that his industry (convenient pre-prepared food slopped out in profit-maximizing trough-sized portions) and his company are culpable in helping to create the problem Obama and Co. is trying to fix.
The company has also begun a push an environmental initiative through water-saving and energy-saving measures. I took a snapshot of the poster hanging above the cash stand at work. It looks like a 1970s propaganda poster right down to the multi-colored, kumbaya-ist, social justice fists (used by Marxists, Black Panthers) which jut up from the ground like a crop of dildos, making me think that outspoken communist green guru and former Obama insider Van Jones is lurking somewhere behind all of this. He probably isn’t, but the Obama-Jones/Otis-Darden connection piques the interest of crackpots like me.
None of this is horrendous, but I’d prefer that companies implement their value-changing campaigns in the proper spirit of the cause; as in, if you want to do something good for the community or your customers “just do it”; don’t wait for a pat on the back or recognition. Nobody likes a glad-handing, ass-kissing, accolade-seeking opportunist.
But the inconsistency lies in another initiative which the company implemented last year. The company slashed the wages of bartenders and bussers in a very underhanded way. Big deal, you might say. I’m usually sympathetic to business decisions like this, but the change was such a shock to my co-workers that I couldn’t help but see red in their stead. Some workers’ wages were slashed by $4 or $5 an hour which is about a 30% (or $600-800 a month) pay cut for those working 40 hours a week. Worse, the company took these employees aside and tried to sell them on the idea that they wouldn’t be losing all that much money. And while they were being sold on this, there was really no explanation given for it. Our local management team acted like the thing was out of their hands and that they didn’t know the reason for the change (surely they did, but they weren’t going to tell everyone for fear of mutiny). As is always the case, mgmt was forced to highlight the upside and lowlight the downside in order to lull the impacted employees into a stupor even while the collective labor cost cuts are expected to save Darden $30-$40 million per year even though net profit (before cuts were fully implemented) from 2010 to 2011.
After a week or so under the new payscale several bussers walked out on their shifts – a move that made me happy. A few bartenders sort of just moved away from bartending because the money wasn’t there which meant that management had to wrangle other employees into the positions. I was approached for a bartending position but declined partly on principle (yeah, hire me at the old wage you tight-fisted fucks; should have asked me when you weren’t paying dog turd wages. Also, give me a company car) but also because I enjoy the flexibility of a waiter’s schedule.
This all rubs me the wrong way. We have a company in cahoots with a regime that thinks it can compel society to live a certain way, and we have a company that plays up their social justice, public interest activism while slashing the wages of its employees to bolster their already alfredo sauce-inflated bottom (line).
--CHUCK RUDD
--CHUCK RUDD
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5 comments:
you just gave me alot of info to chew on. very interesting
-no one, ever, at Olive Garden
This dude’s spiel about OG specials must take forever.
Anonymous,
not really. i just hold the magnum of house red out from my crotch and let them do all the work. salad and bread soon arrives; as they're swooning from the crack-laced dressing i bring them whichever entrees i prefer.
We gonna burn this motherfucker down, Chucky!!!
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