Worker shortage or rational labor choices

Last night, I was in an obviously short-staffed chain restaurant and overheard another customer bitching about it and the "lazy people who won't work" because [horror] he had to wait a few extra minutes for his check. 

 

We're living in the middle of a (again worsening) deadly pandemic where people act like wearing a mask for a few minutes is worse than Nazi tyranny. Or "child abuse." 

 

Restaurant worker is a job many of whom are directly facing these jerk customers (restaurant diners always seem to find ANY reason to be obnoxious). It is a job for which the "sub-minimum wage" was invented. And it is a job that almost never offers health insurance.

In the middle of a deadly, worsening pandemic, choosing not to accept such working conditions strikes me not as lazy but as entirely rational.

This situation also reminds us how much the service economy is based on paying people crap wages with no benefits and them taking it precisely because they don't have a choice.