Kitchen worker becomes part-owner of top restaurant

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39127043

by stehat • 9 years ago

46 32 9 years ago

bbc.co.uk

fulafel• 9 years ago

Clickbait, it was a human dishwasher.

sgolestane• 9 years ago

I don't care. It's a happy story and with all the sad news going on re. immigrants, it made my day.

frankhorrigan• 9 years ago

I think you missed the joke, but I could be wrong.

EDIT: After all, I'm just a lowly word processor.

jbpetersen• 9 years ago

This is the most hilariously HN comment I've ever seen.

Thanks for making my day.

popobobo• 9 years ago

Just by reading the headline, I thought robots are starting to rule to world.

danbruc8• 9 years ago

Nice to hear. I would love to see more of this or at least low-skilled workers and high-skilled workers getting paid much more equally. I would ask for a pay raise if I had to switch from developing software to cleaning the office toilets, not accept a fraction of the money. Working full-time is working full-time, paying low-skilled workers small money just because they are easily replaceable is unethical. Ignoring some details for brevity like the time spend on education in which you do not earn money and for which you should of course be compensated with a higher salary.

stocktech• 9 years ago

There should be incentives to skill development and personal investment.

danbruc8• 9 years ago

Why? If that worked out, there would be nobody left doing low-skilled work or those workers would at least be totally overqualified. There need to be incentives to fill jobs with a deficit in the available workforce, not incentives to obtain better qualifications for the sake of it. And even then, do these incentives have to be 1000% more instead of 50% or so?

This is also very unfair against people that are unable to obtain higher qualifications, they are punished for being what they are even if they are doing great work in a low-skilled job and work as hard as someone bringing home six-figure salary from a high-skilled job.

vkou3• 9 years ago

Exactly what benefit to society does your taxi driver having a PHD provide?

draugadrotten• 9 years ago

paying low-skilled workers small money just because they are easily replaceable is unethical.

Sounds like you would feel right at home in socialist Scandinavia. Here the salary of a dishwasher is roughly equal to that of a RN, but the RN has student debts to pay off. And the unemployeed refugee makes almost as much on the dole. All this good for a mere 25%VAT and 35-65% income tax. Welcome.

vkou3• 9 years ago

And the unemployeed refugee makes almost as much on the dole.

For how long are they eligible to stay on the dole? Exactly how much are they receiving?

Oh, right, they are getting ~$250/month. [1] They are living like kings at your expense! Curse the 65% income tax. [2]

Except that it's an, uh, 56% income tax. But what's another 9% when it comes to complaining about taxes...

[1] http://www.thelocal.se/20160104/why-do-refugees-prefer-swede...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Income_tax

bonzini• 9 years ago

Is RN a nurse? Is there such a thing as student debt in most of Europe, even, unless you want to go abroad or attend super expensive private universities (and a nurse would do neither, I suppose)?

Certainly not the same order of magnitude as US student debt (IIRC median is 20,000 and average is higher).

nollbit• 9 years ago

The _entry_ salary for a RN in Sweden is about 25k SEK per month . The _median_ salary for a dishwasher is 17k. The rest of your statements are about as factual as that one.

bko• 9 years ago

If low skilled employees were paid above market wages, how would you determine who to hire?

For instance, you need someone to perform a menial task. You offer to pay above market such that the number of equally qualified applicants greatly exceeds the number of positions.

How do you decide? Lottery would be ideal but hardly fair IMO. If someone is willing to work harder for the same money, I don't see why she should not be allowed to work the same for less money.

danbruc8• 9 years ago

There is a large pool of low-skilled workers, for whatever reasons, maybe because we are doing a bad job qualifying people, maybe because there are many people that are unable to obtain higher qualifications, maybe just because everybody is automatically in the low-skilled worker pool but not everybody is automatically in the high-skilled worker pool, may because everyone starts in the low-skilled worker pool. Or something entirely different, it does not matter.

The market exploits this situation because a large pool of workers is competing for a smaller pool of job driving wages down. At the same time the market is empirically unable to correct this, otherwise there would be no such imbalance. Maybe it is not the market's fault but that of society or policies or whatever. In the end the market wage is not where it is supposed to be, the market is not supposed to keep people poor.

So any argument referring to market wages falls short in my opinion. I would call this a market failure in some sense, the market overemphasizes the available worker pool devaluing low-skilled but honest and possibly hard work. Whom to hire? The most qualified one for the job, this should be independent of what you are willing to pay.

lolsal• 9 years ago

paying low-skilled workers small money just because they are easily replaceable is unethical

They are not being paid 'small money' because they are easily replaceable, they are being paid small amounts because they bring very little value to the organization. Replacing the people that provide little value with other people that provide little value is a small task and inexpensive to do.

Compensation being related to value provided is not unethical.

danbruc8• 9 years ago

They are not being paid 'small money' because they are easily replaceable, they are being paid small amounts because they bring very little value to the organization.

The value is created by all the people together. Without development sales had nothing to sell, without sales development could code the most beautiful piece of software and still not earn a bug. Without someone maintaining and cleaning the office it would not take too long until human resources had a hard time recruiting new workers because of the bad working conditions. Someone cleaning the office toilets is involved in keeping the company running, just asserting that they provide little or no value is totally flawed, at least in my opinion.

pessimizer• 9 years ago

they are being paid small amounts because they bring very little value to the organization.

This is entirely incorrect. They bring nearly the entire value to the organization. They bring very little marginal value to the organization, because they can be replaced by other desperate people.

johansch• 9 years ago

Without a percentage number this just smells of a PR stunt. Sorry... I have noticed that the Noma guys are quite good at PR. They do know stuff like this gets attention.

/Signed: a current like 0.05% owner of a software company I worked at 20 years ago - lots of dilution since, but I think this illustrates my point. I'd say this small company has a comparable revenue to Noma.

deanCommie• 9 years ago

I'm just going to go ahead and say it. 12 children is too many.

Kitchen worker becomes part-owner of top restaurant

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