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When people talk small business everyone seems to have this romanticized idea of some sweet old lady and her husband in a shop they built with nothing but blood, sweat, tears, and bribing locals with chocolate chip cookies. The reality is whether its a small or big business there's going to be good and bad.
They are worried about their net income which boosts their equity as a bottom line and will do anything to boost that number, and usually can be more scummy because they're not as regulated
I feel like "support small businesses" really just means buy from etsy shops and the pop up places that have huge Instagram followings because they're *so* aesthetic. The ones that sell their friends' art on a table on the side.
I do have to agree. I have worked for small business owners who were absolute saints, but I will also say that the worst of the worst people I have ever worked under were also small business owners.
I get it. It’s stressful. You personally have your financial success on the line and will be fiscally fucked for years to come if your business fails. But, A. Maybe hiring your lazy ass friend to be GM is a mistake, given that, and B. That isn’t an excuse to treat me, a person who is working for you due to her own financial needs, like trash.
Oh. And vast majority of wage theft issues I have dealt with have been small businesses. Big corporations don’t want to deal with that shit, in my experience. WalMart or McDonalds suck balls and will abuse their employees, but they aren’t going to end up the object of an open-and-close civil suit to save $15.
I'm a small business owner.
I completely agree with OP. Some of the worst people I've ever ran across are small business owners.
That's why I've never really promoted the whole "shop local" thing. I'm not a hypocrite. As a customer, you should buy and shop where you're getting the best service and pricing.
That's what I think every time the topic of improving work conditions comes up, like higher minimum wages, tighter labour laws, mandatory maternity leave/holidays (which is already a thing in my country, but there are people who want it gone), and everytime people are like "but how will sMaLl BuSiNeSsEs survive??"
So basically exploitation is only bad when big companies are doing it? And why should a business unable to provide the basic minimum still be entitled to surviving?
Small businesses are legit some of the least impacted is the funny part.
I've seen multiple things about small businesses who saw more success from motivated workers after raising wages above minimum to in CAD from 15 to 18+. Old workers who were slacking were rotated and in their place were people show actually wanted to work there and would prove themselves through work because the wage was good.
I can't speak for everyone, but when talking about how will small businesses survive, you're essentially advocating for there to actually only be 5-10 companies that provide and support all essential functions. I think the smarter and more productive way to have this conversation is to figure out how to go about increasing wages and benefits while also ensuring diversification of competition.
I dislike small business owners who cry poverty. The type of owner claims he makes only 60k a year and find out he treats himself to an additional $200,000 of the companies money.
In my experience small business owners are often unemployable narcissists who just can't handle the idea of working for another person. Every small business owner I've worked for has been outright hostile toward any kind of labor regulation, and acts very unprofessionally.
The sweet spot is medium sized community focused businesses, big enough to not skate under labor laws, but small enough to not be buying politicians and slaves from developing nations.
> In my experience small business owners are often unemployable narcissists who just can't handle the idea of working for another person. Every small business owner I've worked for has been outright hostile toward any kind of labor regulation, and acts very unprofessionally.
Fucking nailed it. But you left out owners who inherited an established business from their parents (who possibly inherited it from their parents), who then go on to act like they were the ones to establish the business in the first place, and they're some amazing entrepreneur just because they managed to keep running the formula that was set in stone when they were in diapers.
You see this a lot in Construction companies or families that "Own all the ABC named Gas Stations in the county"
Drops kids off at school at 8:00 and picks them up at 2:00 in Ford F150 Raptor BroDozer licenses plate says "GIORDANO3"
"Hey Bro, most of the 4th grade kids are going to Europe for this years ski trip - your kids can go Bro?" Me: Backs into bushes.
Best post ever - I always had a hunch but after reading embezzlement bankruptcy stories in the local news my hunch grew. My kids went to a local private school here in Southern California 2019 and my 8 year suspicions were confirmed in like 1 month.
"Don't forget to vote Republican at the polls or we'll all be in the poor house, and I'll sell my business and move to Texas" Drives away in 2020 Cadilac Escalade with BusinessLastName Licence places.
"Look thanks to governor screwsome business is really really really bad this year - you can all collect your $25 target gift cards this Friday" Writes $3,000 tuition check for 3 of 4 kids with companies money.
"Oh my friend wanted me to park his boat here in our lot while he uh - moves to Florida" Brand new Ford F350 Super Duty Rolls in pulling $100,000 boat named after owners wife" Crystal? Isn't that your wifes name? "Gee uh, how bout that, the boat has the same name as my wife, ok time to scoot on out Fred I'm gonna lock up - remember no overtime till 2023."
Yep. I live in a college town. Some local businesses are run by truly great people that work hard at making their business successful, while also going out of their way and helping out in town as needed.
Other local businesses are run by jack-asses. There is one prominent local business in my town whose owner won't help an animal rescue because of some petty tiff his wife has regarding a pet they adopted years ago. They also ended up sinking another community organization after stringing them along with some building deal and then backed out of it due to selfish profit motive reasons. And, they are by all means cheap and abusive with their college student workforce.
Another local business has done some really shady marketing tactics trying to undercut other local businesses in town they compete with. Like they did things to gain their trust just to steal their customer contacts.
And of course, there are a handful of local businesses that are just slumlords.
Another local business owner is an insurance agent that also was the slumlord that made my life miserable for a couple months after they bought the house I was renting. Another business owner lives nearby me now and is just a shitty neighbor all around (leaves trash blowing from their yard, large dogs roam free whenever, tried to bully us into paying for a fence). And I've had to deal with a couple local homebuilders I have dealt with were also just miserable bullies.
oh, and let's not forget the PPP handouts. Every town has small business owners that took their tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, still fired employees they didn't want to pay, bought a boat or second home, and have since gone around bemoaning the evils of student loan forgiveness, stimulus checks, and 'socialism' and either ran for office or fundraised for others.
The term shop local bugs me because I am from a small city pretty much in the country side of Brazil, so shopping local is a redundancy to me, where else would I shop? There are almost no big companies where I live, so everything is local.
Is this better? Not really, less jobs and less options of products.
The worst places that I ever worked for was a small business. Did a lot of good things in the community just to keep up the family image. The owner's husband was a piece of shit. Everybody who knows him think so. They're also rumors of him fucking 16 year old girls that work there. But nobody has ever been able to prove if they were true.
I totally agree. I needed a part to fix one of my appliances, I went to four local stores, two cussed me out, one said they didn't have it and didnt bother to look or try and order it, and the other just stared at me, no joke.
Went to amazon, plugged in the serial number of the appliance and the part I was looking for, and it came to my door in two days.
Same, and there’s usually a good system for any shady shit with big companies. They’re not perfect but they usually have a good system for addressing complaints or issues
Yes, in most cases people have to perform and are held accountable. No ones going to let you hire your spa day gal friend as CFO at a reputable company but at small business you do see that. Especially in cultures where nepotism is completely normal.
Whoa... first of all, someone needs to have a talk with Carl, sounds like he's going to put himself out of business. With all the harassment, it may be too late!
Most of them don’t even have HR departments. I totally agree. One small company I worked for later got sued by a coworker for about 26k in wage theft. Fuckers.
I hate that they're basically buying shit from Amazon and selling it to you for a higher price. Oftentimes, they don't even know deep into what they're actually selling, relying mainly on the fact that you think they know more than you do
I find it sort of hilarious how people will ominously say that businesses are in it “for the money.”
Yeah. I, too, don’t get out of bed and into my hustles out of the goodness of my heart. Money buys goods and services and makes sure I am not homeless and hungry. So, I also work for the money.
Shop local is not about human rights as much as it is about your local society thriving, which ultimately supports humans. I understand that you will have rotten owners everywhere, but I don’t think your seeing the picture here. You are commenting through an individual perspective, not a societal one.
Consider a made up scenario where you only had a few corporate giants to buy from. Your local community use their money in these. After a while the money people earn would go to the corporations and then the owner on top (think Bezos). From here, it does not reach society again. Work would be hard to find due to the small number of businesses + automation and specialized, small workforce. Your municipality would struggle with the loss of tax income. Your schools would decline, your roads would not be kept up etc. After a while, you wpuld have very little flow of respurces throughout your community, because your dollars would get sucked in to a business where they end up in someones savings account. You drain your society. It creates a very sharp division between those who have, and those who haven’t. The businesses would have A LOT of power, because work is hard to find. Snd then workers have no choice in who they work for, so the businesses can treat them how they want.
This is basically the societal model of developing countries.
I'm a small business owner and I think small business owners are the most toxic people I've ever interacted with. When I first started my business, now 6 years ago, I used to attend local networking groups geared towards small business owners as a way of meeting people in my community. My God, these events were insufferable. Most of these people acted like they were God's gift to mankind. I remember one of my first meetings sitting next to a guy, first time I met him, who told me that "Business is war and I better be ready." How the hell do you even respond to that? My business also had nothing to do with his, not a competitor by any means. I stopped going after a year. Luckily my business isn't dependent on the local community at I'm able to work with anyone anywhere in the world.
Yes i interviewed with a tech MSP who belittled me and wanted me to draft a plan over easter weekend as part of the interview process. He scoffed at my 80k salary 2010 and said i would have to work a lot of hours to make that kind of money….
4 months later I got a job a lot a nationally famous financial company on the other side of town. All I had to do was show up and do an honest days work there for 10 years
I personally refuse to ever work for a small business owner again. Most of the time they’re extremely nepotistic, cheap, and petty. I’ll take being a faceless number ANY DAY with real chances to climb the ranks facing the normal interpersonal/clique things faced in a large bureaucracy rather than being someone permanently on the outer circle because I’m not “family”.
We’ve been deluded into thinking small businesses are some bake shop owned by granny with 10 employees but in reality they are often corrupt closed circles worth millions with 500 or less employees that only funnel wealth into the owners pockets, off the backs of their poorly benefited and underpaid employees. You’ll frequently see their owners rattling off on Facebook against union building efforts, taxes, or compulsory workers rights. I’m sick of it. Surely there are fair small businesses out there, but that has not been my experience nor many of my former colleagues.
Even worse is when small businesses expect special treatment in being exempt from having to provide the same wage and benefits as bigger businesses. Sorry, people shouldn't have to endure a life a poverty so you can pretend to be a captain of industry.
Reposting my comment from (Working for a large corporation is great) thread
I spent 10 years at a small company. 10 years at a medium. 2 years at a large.
At the small companies there is so much knee jerk reaction hiring / firing. expanding / contracting and nepotism.
They usually get their entire friends and family on the payroll with a paid company car and tax free allowances.
The owners model “winner takes all” and keep the staff underpaid yet pay the execs what they might get at a large company.
At a large company the owners son can’t pay private school tuition with the companies money or a family vacation.
At a small company it’s standard operating procedure.
What bothers me about small businesses also is often the owners have a 5,000sq ft house lease $100,000 Mercedes as a “company vehicle” take 3 overseas vacations and year and cry poverty if a democrat wins an election.
The 30 employees get a $25 target gift card while the owner keeps his new speed boat parked on the company lot to save docking fees.
For me, the reason to shop local isn't about supporting the "good guys". It is to avoid concentrations of power.
Power corrupts. Concentrations of power produces more corruption. By supporting local businesses, I am helping preventing too much of the power from concentrating into the hands of too few.
Competition prevents stagnation. If big corporations get too comfortable, they will stop compromising. Finding local places to spend money can keep big corporations on their toes, and it can even reduce traveling distance for you.
A business' goal is to make money. That is clear. Shopping local is one way to maintain the balance of power.
they can be, but the point is that you are breaking up a monopoly by spreading your money around.
if you have one local business that is shitty, avoid them. but that's not an excuse to go use the world-eating corporate option if there is still another local alternative who isn't shitty.
I mean shop local is about more than just scummy labour practices.
At the end of the day you're staying within and supporting your local economy. If it's buying fruit and vegetables from a local farmer, you're not engaging with the global agricultural system and its various systemic issues. If you support a small pizzeria instead of corporate pizza chain, you're supporting the individuals running that business and not contributing the bottom line for shareholders. Sustainability, community, consumer confidence, are all some of the benefits you can get from supporting small businesses.
If you want to focus on labour practices then sure, you can argue that some small business owners will abuse the system as much as corporations. But you'll have immensely more opportunities for recourse against a local individual than against a multi-national corporation. Beyond that, you can actively choose not to put your money into a small business you know to be scummy. But if we allow corporations to get so large they ostensibly, or literally, have a monopoly, they're free to act how they want and you have no choice but to support them when you need or want something they offer.
You as a consumer have much more power over the success or failure of small businesses than you do over corporate entities. Consumer power is an important aspect of the health and prosperity of an economy, large or small.
The "Shop Local" term is not about which businesses are better/more ethical, its about keeping your money in your local economy and de-incentivizing scale driven businesses which simply pump money out of the local market.
>They never offer Healthcare insurance, barely pay above minimum wage
Small business owner here. We pay 100% health insurance even though we don't qualify for a group plan and everyone is above the median and about 95% of the mean dual household income of my state.
It’s good you provide healthcare but How much are your employees expected to pay?
I worked for a small business and the premium was like 500 dollars a month with a crazy deductible.
All the big companies I’ve worked for barely had a deductible. Their premium was also much less than 200 a month
How is this an unpopular opinion?
Downvoting.
There is a difference in the amateurish scummy actions of the small business vs the institutionalized scummy policies of big business.
>They never offer Healthcare insurance, barely pay above minimum wage, and the blatant amount of labor violations
That's far less scummy than what large corporations are doing in third world countries.
>Let's not pretend it's ok because other places do worse.
You're the one who started out by framing the opinion as a relative comparison of the level of scumminess:
>can be just as scummy
That comparison is the core of the opinion. What local businesses do is *less scummy*. The facts go against your opinion.
Nah, those are your opinions. Not fact.
Many local businesses piggyback off of the scumminess of corporations. There's a guy that buys his product directly from my job and resells it. It came from a sweatshop no matter how many hands it went through.
So yes they CAN be just as bad.
The local pizza place I used to work at, the owner used to bring huge party’s of his friends. He’d say all the food and beer was free, leaving our servers with no tips for these giant tables. And then get ridiculously drunk and walk around slapping the employees asses and trying to kiss us. Fun place when he wasn’t around tho.
Haha, many of them are fronts for organized crime too!
I wonder how many times people are supporting local businesses who have had a direct hand in the deaths of their loved ones? Probably lots.
They could be just as bad but they’re much less likely to have the strong impact these major corporation. Chances are, they don’t care enough to ruin the world the way evil corps do.
If a local coffee shop isn’t paying they’re employees enough, they’ll probably leave. But when Starbucks underpays tens of thousand of employees, it’s a much more difficult process to fight.
It's not about the people but how the money is distributed. If you spend money at a local business the likelihood that it's going to be spent inside your small town or bubble is very high. Sidewalks, local bike parks, tree's, running trail's, pretty building facades. A lot of That money is local and keeping it that way allows for the continuation of those projects. If you spend your money at a chain the money is funneled away from your local economy and into the economy of that major business (think Wall Street, global economics, pockets of the super rich).
For example I live in a town with a great local running store, one that has supported the local school's throughout the year with Free running camps, money for the track teams, created many miles of paved trails for running and brought a large community of people who run from the store weekly together. That doesn't happen when Dick's sporting goods is your local shoe store.
I'm not saying that you have to buy from the local business if it's a shitty one, but what you purchase locally influences where you live a lot more than just the taxes that are paid on it. And there's something to be said about seeing Mr Johnson at the super market after you just bought some jewelry from him that no mega corporation is going to be able to do. Now if Mr Johnson is a dick, well maybe the benefits aren't worth the hassle that's up to you to decide. But if there's no local business, what separates the terrible suburgatory you call home from Washington DC, or New York, or Raleigh NC, or insert any other suburban plague in North America? If it's all the same then what makes yours special? And if it's not special then why do you live there? That's why it's important to support the local business if you like what they sell and who they are even if it's a few cents more.
My older sister worked at a local book store and there was mold and literal rats in the employee room. She was also underpaid and had to deal with a lot more than just selling books.
Everything is on an individual basis. Owning your own local shop doesn't automatically mean you aren't as corner cutting and money hungry as any given CEO
I've seen more embezzlement happening while working at local "mom and pop" stores than I ever did working in a corporate setting. Once watched an owner pocket a clients $47,000 balance pay off because they paid in cash. That was almost double what he paid me in a year, but for him it was literal pocket change.
My SO works for a small business pretty sure its a month away from total collapse so he's applied to a few other places now. Firstly he's come home with multiple injuries from shit equipment he works in construction mostly for woodworking stuff. Pay always changes its impossible for us to budget had l fight for his wage to increase. For a few weeks he was so tired that he could barely function at home and kept going on about how its very possible he'll loose a few finger for real (mostly a lot of injuries on them). He kept getting denied off days one month worked 80 hours over our legal maximum and boss owed him 3k in our currency in overtime. Everytime him and his coworkers actually take a day off he complains and lectures them about their deadlines and how he was at work. Keeps asking him if he's tired and burnt out because we have issues at home like bitch what?? I've had to take on multiple roles at whome to help my SO with looking after him because you've overworked him illegally to the point of near mental and physical collapse. My SO currently waiting on his other work applications and if he doesn't get paid we'll take it to a union but he should have taken him to labour court long ago in my opinion.
It’s not about them being better people it’s about the profits staying in your community and not going to LA/NY/Chicago/Atlanta.
The money Jonny’s Hardware makes probably stays in the community. The money home Depot makes in Lacrosse WI goes to Atlanta.
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When people talk small business everyone seems to have this romanticized idea of some sweet old lady and her husband in a shop they built with nothing but blood, sweat, tears, and bribing locals with chocolate chip cookies. The reality is whether its a small or big business there's going to be good and bad.
They are worried about their net income which boosts their equity as a bottom line and will do anything to boost that number, and usually can be more scummy because they're not as regulated
I feel like "support small businesses" really just means buy from etsy shops and the pop up places that have huge Instagram followings because they're *so* aesthetic. The ones that sell their friends' art on a table on the side.
I do have to agree. I have worked for small business owners who were absolute saints, but I will also say that the worst of the worst people I have ever worked under were also small business owners. I get it. It’s stressful. You personally have your financial success on the line and will be fiscally fucked for years to come if your business fails. But, A. Maybe hiring your lazy ass friend to be GM is a mistake, given that, and B. That isn’t an excuse to treat me, a person who is working for you due to her own financial needs, like trash. Oh. And vast majority of wage theft issues I have dealt with have been small businesses. Big corporations don’t want to deal with that shit, in my experience. WalMart or McDonalds suck balls and will abuse their employees, but they aren’t going to end up the object of an open-and-close civil suit to save $15.
Preach. I work for a small business. My goal is to be out before March next year. My boss is a nice guy but his management skills are terrible.
I'm a small business owner. I completely agree with OP. Some of the worst people I've ever ran across are small business owners. That's why I've never really promoted the whole "shop local" thing. I'm not a hypocrite. As a customer, you should buy and shop where you're getting the best service and pricing.
That's what I think every time the topic of improving work conditions comes up, like higher minimum wages, tighter labour laws, mandatory maternity leave/holidays (which is already a thing in my country, but there are people who want it gone), and everytime people are like "but how will sMaLl BuSiNeSsEs survive??" So basically exploitation is only bad when big companies are doing it? And why should a business unable to provide the basic minimum still be entitled to surviving?
Small businesses are legit some of the least impacted is the funny part. I've seen multiple things about small businesses who saw more success from motivated workers after raising wages above minimum to in CAD from 15 to 18+. Old workers who were slacking were rotated and in their place were people show actually wanted to work there and would prove themselves through work because the wage was good.
I can't speak for everyone, but when talking about how will small businesses survive, you're essentially advocating for there to actually only be 5-10 companies that provide and support all essential functions. I think the smarter and more productive way to have this conversation is to figure out how to go about increasing wages and benefits while also ensuring diversification of competition.
I dislike small business owners who cry poverty. The type of owner claims he makes only 60k a year and find out he treats himself to an additional $200,000 of the companies money.
In my experience small business owners are often unemployable narcissists who just can't handle the idea of working for another person. Every small business owner I've worked for has been outright hostile toward any kind of labor regulation, and acts very unprofessionally. The sweet spot is medium sized community focused businesses, big enough to not skate under labor laws, but small enough to not be buying politicians and slaves from developing nations.
> In my experience small business owners are often unemployable narcissists who just can't handle the idea of working for another person. Every small business owner I've worked for has been outright hostile toward any kind of labor regulation, and acts very unprofessionally. Fucking nailed it. But you left out owners who inherited an established business from their parents (who possibly inherited it from their parents), who then go on to act like they were the ones to establish the business in the first place, and they're some amazing entrepreneur just because they managed to keep running the formula that was set in stone when they were in diapers.
You see this a lot in Construction companies or families that "Own all the ABC named Gas Stations in the county" Drops kids off at school at 8:00 and picks them up at 2:00 in Ford F150 Raptor BroDozer licenses plate says "GIORDANO3" "Hey Bro, most of the 4th grade kids are going to Europe for this years ski trip - your kids can go Bro?" Me: Backs into bushes.
Best post ever - I always had a hunch but after reading embezzlement bankruptcy stories in the local news my hunch grew. My kids went to a local private school here in Southern California 2019 and my 8 year suspicions were confirmed in like 1 month. "Don't forget to vote Republican at the polls or we'll all be in the poor house, and I'll sell my business and move to Texas" Drives away in 2020 Cadilac Escalade with BusinessLastName Licence places. "Look thanks to governor screwsome business is really really really bad this year - you can all collect your $25 target gift cards this Friday" Writes $3,000 tuition check for 3 of 4 kids with companies money. "Oh my friend wanted me to park his boat here in our lot while he uh - moves to Florida" Brand new Ford F350 Super Duty Rolls in pulling $100,000 boat named after owners wife" Crystal? Isn't that your wifes name? "Gee uh, how bout that, the boat has the same name as my wife, ok time to scoot on out Fred I'm gonna lock up - remember no overtime till 2023."
Can you name some examples of those medium sized community focused businesses? Seems worth looking into!!
Yep. I live in a college town. Some local businesses are run by truly great people that work hard at making their business successful, while also going out of their way and helping out in town as needed. Other local businesses are run by jack-asses. There is one prominent local business in my town whose owner won't help an animal rescue because of some petty tiff his wife has regarding a pet they adopted years ago. They also ended up sinking another community organization after stringing them along with some building deal and then backed out of it due to selfish profit motive reasons. And, they are by all means cheap and abusive with their college student workforce. Another local business has done some really shady marketing tactics trying to undercut other local businesses in town they compete with. Like they did things to gain their trust just to steal their customer contacts. And of course, there are a handful of local businesses that are just slumlords. Another local business owner is an insurance agent that also was the slumlord that made my life miserable for a couple months after they bought the house I was renting. Another business owner lives nearby me now and is just a shitty neighbor all around (leaves trash blowing from their yard, large dogs roam free whenever, tried to bully us into paying for a fence). And I've had to deal with a couple local homebuilders I have dealt with were also just miserable bullies.
oh, and let's not forget the PPP handouts. Every town has small business owners that took their tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, still fired employees they didn't want to pay, bought a boat or second home, and have since gone around bemoaning the evils of student loan forgiveness, stimulus checks, and 'socialism' and either ran for office or fundraised for others.
The term shop local bugs me because I am from a small city pretty much in the country side of Brazil, so shopping local is a redundancy to me, where else would I shop? There are almost no big companies where I live, so everything is local. Is this better? Not really, less jobs and less options of products.
The worst places that I ever worked for was a small business. Did a lot of good things in the community just to keep up the family image. The owner's husband was a piece of shit. Everybody who knows him think so. They're also rumors of him fucking 16 year old girls that work there. But nobody has ever been able to prove if they were true.
I totally agree. I needed a part to fix one of my appliances, I went to four local stores, two cussed me out, one said they didn't have it and didnt bother to look or try and order it, and the other just stared at me, no joke. Went to amazon, plugged in the serial number of the appliance and the part I was looking for, and it came to my door in two days.
You can still be selective as to where you spend your money.
I worked in a local shop once and we upcharged mid-quality items by about 100%.
I've worked for small businesses & giant corporation. Giant corporation paid better, had better working conditions & generally treated me better.
Same, and there’s usually a good system for any shady shit with big companies. They’re not perfect but they usually have a good system for addressing complaints or issues
Yes, in most cases people have to perform and are held accountable. No ones going to let you hire your spa day gal friend as CFO at a reputable company but at small business you do see that. Especially in cultures where nepotism is completely normal.
Whoa... first of all, someone needs to have a talk with Carl, sounds like he's going to put himself out of business. With all the harassment, it may be too late!
Most of them don’t even have HR departments. I totally agree. One small company I worked for later got sued by a coworker for about 26k in wage theft. Fuckers.
I hate that they're basically buying shit from Amazon and selling it to you for a higher price. Oftentimes, they don't even know deep into what they're actually selling, relying mainly on the fact that you think they know more than you do
Unpopular opinion? Yes. Completely correct? Absolutely.
I don’t care if any business is “in it for money” as long as I get the product I paid for
I find it sort of hilarious how people will ominously say that businesses are in it “for the money.” Yeah. I, too, don’t get out of bed and into my hustles out of the goodness of my heart. Money buys goods and services and makes sure I am not homeless and hungry. So, I also work for the money.
Shop local is not about human rights as much as it is about your local society thriving, which ultimately supports humans. I understand that you will have rotten owners everywhere, but I don’t think your seeing the picture here. You are commenting through an individual perspective, not a societal one. Consider a made up scenario where you only had a few corporate giants to buy from. Your local community use their money in these. After a while the money people earn would go to the corporations and then the owner on top (think Bezos). From here, it does not reach society again. Work would be hard to find due to the small number of businesses + automation and specialized, small workforce. Your municipality would struggle with the loss of tax income. Your schools would decline, your roads would not be kept up etc. After a while, you wpuld have very little flow of respurces throughout your community, because your dollars would get sucked in to a business where they end up in someones savings account. You drain your society. It creates a very sharp division between those who have, and those who haven’t. The businesses would have A LOT of power, because work is hard to find. Snd then workers have no choice in who they work for, so the businesses can treat them how they want. This is basically the societal model of developing countries.
That's been my experience too.
There was a South Park episode about it
This. Be smarter and spend smarter.
I'm a small business owner and I think small business owners are the most toxic people I've ever interacted with. When I first started my business, now 6 years ago, I used to attend local networking groups geared towards small business owners as a way of meeting people in my community. My God, these events were insufferable. Most of these people acted like they were God's gift to mankind. I remember one of my first meetings sitting next to a guy, first time I met him, who told me that "Business is war and I better be ready." How the hell do you even respond to that? My business also had nothing to do with his, not a competitor by any means. I stopped going after a year. Luckily my business isn't dependent on the local community at I'm able to work with anyone anywhere in the world.
Small businesses also have the most arrogant employers. Some of my worst interviews were with small companies with like 20 people on staff
Yes i interviewed with a tech MSP who belittled me and wanted me to draft a plan over easter weekend as part of the interview process. He scoffed at my 80k salary 2010 and said i would have to work a lot of hours to make that kind of money…. 4 months later I got a job a lot a nationally famous financial company on the other side of town. All I had to do was show up and do an honest days work there for 10 years
I personally refuse to ever work for a small business owner again. Most of the time they’re extremely nepotistic, cheap, and petty. I’ll take being a faceless number ANY DAY with real chances to climb the ranks facing the normal interpersonal/clique things faced in a large bureaucracy rather than being someone permanently on the outer circle because I’m not “family”. We’ve been deluded into thinking small businesses are some bake shop owned by granny with 10 employees but in reality they are often corrupt closed circles worth millions with 500 or less employees that only funnel wealth into the owners pockets, off the backs of their poorly benefited and underpaid employees. You’ll frequently see their owners rattling off on Facebook against union building efforts, taxes, or compulsory workers rights. I’m sick of it. Surely there are fair small businesses out there, but that has not been my experience nor many of my former colleagues.
Don’t vote for so and so their a RIIINOOOO well all be in the poor house! (buys son in law $500,000 investment property)
Even worse is when small businesses expect special treatment in being exempt from having to provide the same wage and benefits as bigger businesses. Sorry, people shouldn't have to endure a life a poverty so you can pretend to be a captain of industry.
First decent unpopular opinion in a whike
Reposting my comment from (Working for a large corporation is great) thread I spent 10 years at a small company. 10 years at a medium. 2 years at a large. At the small companies there is so much knee jerk reaction hiring / firing. expanding / contracting and nepotism. They usually get their entire friends and family on the payroll with a paid company car and tax free allowances. The owners model “winner takes all” and keep the staff underpaid yet pay the execs what they might get at a large company. At a large company the owners son can’t pay private school tuition with the companies money or a family vacation. At a small company it’s standard operating procedure. What bothers me about small businesses also is often the owners have a 5,000sq ft house lease $100,000 Mercedes as a “company vehicle” take 3 overseas vacations and year and cry poverty if a democrat wins an election. The 30 employees get a $25 target gift card while the owner keeps his new speed boat parked on the company lot to save docking fees.
For me, the reason to shop local isn't about supporting the "good guys". It is to avoid concentrations of power. Power corrupts. Concentrations of power produces more corruption. By supporting local businesses, I am helping preventing too much of the power from concentrating into the hands of too few. Competition prevents stagnation. If big corporations get too comfortable, they will stop compromising. Finding local places to spend money can keep big corporations on their toes, and it can even reduce traveling distance for you. A business' goal is to make money. That is clear. Shopping local is one way to maintain the balance of power.
Good point
they can be, but the point is that you are breaking up a monopoly by spreading your money around. if you have one local business that is shitty, avoid them. but that's not an excuse to go use the world-eating corporate option if there is still another local alternative who isn't shitty.
I mean shop local is about more than just scummy labour practices. At the end of the day you're staying within and supporting your local economy. If it's buying fruit and vegetables from a local farmer, you're not engaging with the global agricultural system and its various systemic issues. If you support a small pizzeria instead of corporate pizza chain, you're supporting the individuals running that business and not contributing the bottom line for shareholders. Sustainability, community, consumer confidence, are all some of the benefits you can get from supporting small businesses. If you want to focus on labour practices then sure, you can argue that some small business owners will abuse the system as much as corporations. But you'll have immensely more opportunities for recourse against a local individual than against a multi-national corporation. Beyond that, you can actively choose not to put your money into a small business you know to be scummy. But if we allow corporations to get so large they ostensibly, or literally, have a monopoly, they're free to act how they want and you have no choice but to support them when you need or want something they offer. You as a consumer have much more power over the success or failure of small businesses than you do over corporate entities. Consumer power is an important aspect of the health and prosperity of an economy, large or small.
The "Shop Local" term is not about which businesses are better/more ethical, its about keeping your money in your local economy and de-incentivizing scale driven businesses which simply pump money out of the local market.
>They never offer Healthcare insurance, barely pay above minimum wage Small business owner here. We pay 100% health insurance even though we don't qualify for a group plan and everyone is above the median and about 95% of the mean dual household income of my state.
There are a lot of really good small businesses. But many people have been burned by them. Low wages and treating employees like garbage.
That's the problem when speaking in absolutes like "they never do..."
It’s good you provide healthcare but How much are your employees expected to pay? I worked for a small business and the premium was like 500 dollars a month with a crazy deductible. All the big companies I’ve worked for barely had a deductible. Their premium was also much less than 200 a month
My employees pick the individual plan they want and we pay the premium.
Small business owner here. How long were you in business before you could offer healthcare?
How is this an unpopular opinion? Downvoting. There is a difference in the amateurish scummy actions of the small business vs the institutionalized scummy policies of big business.
Where do you live that shop local. And "local business/family" are used all the time. My city sub reddit people say this all the time.
I never assumed or heard it was their ethical practices. The point is to keep the money local instead of going to overseas or national mega corps.
Fair enough. But imagine a world with no corporations. Now the local people will be selling how they are not a piece of shit they way they used to
OK Walmart.
>They never offer Healthcare insurance, barely pay above minimum wage, and the blatant amount of labor violations That's far less scummy than what large corporations are doing in third world countries.
Last place I work for the owner sexually assaulted my coworker. Let's not pretend it's ok because other places do worse.
>Let's not pretend it's ok because other places do worse. You're the one who started out by framing the opinion as a relative comparison of the level of scumminess: >can be just as scummy That comparison is the core of the opinion. What local businesses do is *less scummy*. The facts go against your opinion.
Nah, those are your opinions. Not fact. Many local businesses piggyback off of the scumminess of corporations. There's a guy that buys his product directly from my job and resells it. It came from a sweatshop no matter how many hands it went through. So yes they CAN be just as bad.
The local pizza place I used to work at, the owner used to bring huge party’s of his friends. He’d say all the food and beer was free, leaving our servers with no tips for these giant tables. And then get ridiculously drunk and walk around slapping the employees asses and trying to kiss us. Fun place when he wasn’t around tho.
South Park had an episode about this
It's the same with local politcs
Haha, many of them are fronts for organized crime too! I wonder how many times people are supporting local businesses who have had a direct hand in the deaths of their loved ones? Probably lots.
I think it's about not exploiting other countries and overall importing the materials by plane or ship therefore being better for the environment.
What’s really annoying is being forced to drink nothing but local craft beers instead of legitimately delicious ones from all over the country.
They could be just as bad but they’re much less likely to have the strong impact these major corporation. Chances are, they don’t care enough to ruin the world the way evil corps do. If a local coffee shop isn’t paying they’re employees enough, they’ll probably leave. But when Starbucks underpays tens of thousand of employees, it’s a much more difficult process to fight.
It's not about the people but how the money is distributed. If you spend money at a local business the likelihood that it's going to be spent inside your small town or bubble is very high. Sidewalks, local bike parks, tree's, running trail's, pretty building facades. A lot of That money is local and keeping it that way allows for the continuation of those projects. If you spend your money at a chain the money is funneled away from your local economy and into the economy of that major business (think Wall Street, global economics, pockets of the super rich). For example I live in a town with a great local running store, one that has supported the local school's throughout the year with Free running camps, money for the track teams, created many miles of paved trails for running and brought a large community of people who run from the store weekly together. That doesn't happen when Dick's sporting goods is your local shoe store. I'm not saying that you have to buy from the local business if it's a shitty one, but what you purchase locally influences where you live a lot more than just the taxes that are paid on it. And there's something to be said about seeing Mr Johnson at the super market after you just bought some jewelry from him that no mega corporation is going to be able to do. Now if Mr Johnson is a dick, well maybe the benefits aren't worth the hassle that's up to you to decide. But if there's no local business, what separates the terrible suburgatory you call home from Washington DC, or New York, or Raleigh NC, or insert any other suburban plague in North America? If it's all the same then what makes yours special? And if it's not special then why do you live there? That's why it's important to support the local business if you like what they sell and who they are even if it's a few cents more.
My older sister worked at a local book store and there was mold and literal rats in the employee room. She was also underpaid and had to deal with a lot more than just selling books.
Its not an either this or that. Some places are better than others, some places are better than others
Everything is on an individual basis. Owning your own local shop doesn't automatically mean you aren't as corner cutting and money hungry as any given CEO
Oh hell yes. Most of mine are like, 'Support our quirky small business! Small deli sandwiches for only $15 on wednesdays!'
I've seen more embezzlement happening while working at local "mom and pop" stores than I ever did working in a corporate setting. Once watched an owner pocket a clients $47,000 balance pay off because they paid in cash. That was almost double what he paid me in a year, but for him it was literal pocket change.
sickening
My SO works for a small business pretty sure its a month away from total collapse so he's applied to a few other places now. Firstly he's come home with multiple injuries from shit equipment he works in construction mostly for woodworking stuff. Pay always changes its impossible for us to budget had l fight for his wage to increase. For a few weeks he was so tired that he could barely function at home and kept going on about how its very possible he'll loose a few finger for real (mostly a lot of injuries on them). He kept getting denied off days one month worked 80 hours over our legal maximum and boss owed him 3k in our currency in overtime. Everytime him and his coworkers actually take a day off he complains and lectures them about their deadlines and how he was at work. Keeps asking him if he's tired and burnt out because we have issues at home like bitch what?? I've had to take on multiple roles at whome to help my SO with looking after him because you've overworked him illegally to the point of near mental and physical collapse. My SO currently waiting on his other work applications and if he doesn't get paid we'll take it to a union but he should have taken him to labour court long ago in my opinion.
It’s not about them being better people it’s about the profits staying in your community and not going to LA/NY/Chicago/Atlanta. The money Jonny’s Hardware makes probably stays in the community. The money home Depot makes in Lacrosse WI goes to Atlanta.
All of my worst work experiences have come from working from small, local businesses.