The viewpoint characters for this story, are Bob & Linda, who as very clearly neurodiverse adults who while don't have an official diagnosis for ADHD, or ASD, or anything like that, very clearly have some kind of thing going on. Bob and Linda, spend a lot of time trying to be normal, and largely failing to pass themselves off as such. Their three kids Tina, Gene & Louise, are very clearly out-and-proud neurodivergents, and are likely to (eventually) get an official diagnosis as such somewhere between middle school and high school. (if they haven't already).
Compounding the matter, is the ethnicity of Bob & Linda. While they have a French/French Canadian last name, their family history is a complex combination of various marginalized immigrant groups and might possibly include Greek-Armenian-Italian-Jewish-German ancestry, although, being poor working class Americans means that they don't really have the means to properly investigate their ethnic background. This however, bit of family history/ancestry does however condense down into a very real problem. As the descendants of multiple marginalized immigrant groups that interbred, while they will always lack the intergenerational wealth needed to rise in American society, they likewise will never be Greek, Armenian, Italian, Jewish, German, or French, or French-Canadian enough to pass themselves off as members of any of those communities, further cutting them off from social resources, and further alienating them from the Anglo-dominated mainstream US society.
As Bob & Linda are never going to fit in with regular society to the point where working under the rules of a neurotypical likely Anglo-saxon boss, who will make few (if any) accommodations for their unique differences, and Bob and Linda don't really have access to the kind of legal aid that would be required to force their bosses to respect their differences and provide appropriate and reasonable accommodations for them, Bob and Linda decide to strike out on their own, and start a small family restaurant named Bob's Burgers.
That makes Bob & Linda of Bob's Burgers small business owners. Does “being their own boss” and “owning the means of production” actually make them any less exploited, and dehumanized under capitalism?
The answer quite simply is No. Not really. In fact, they are arguably more marginalized, and more dehumanized as small business owners than they would have been as grunt employees (not that that is a realistic option) Bob & Linda's operation is “technically” in the black, but that's only because they/their kids kids do essential functions for the business, essentially for free, such as marketing efforts, bussing tables, cleaning, etc….
Bob and his family also live in the loft above their small family restaurant, as that space is included in the lease for the restaurant.
So while at any given time, Bob & Linda's total take home might technically be enough to pay their rent, and keep their kids from walking the streets naked, overall they aren't really profitable, (meaning they can't sell their business for a profit to the restauranteur across the street, Jimmy Pesto Sr) as they are probably getting the take home pay of one person, but using the labor of five people to get it (okay, two adults, three kids, so maybe the labor equivalent of 3 1/2 people) to get it. This means that selling the family business won't ever allow them to retire. Their best expectation is to work in horrific conditions, in abject poverty until the day they die.
In other words, Bob & Linda's reward for “living the dream?” They are earning less than minimum wage. The second their kids get old enough to leave the home, and do any other job (and they are smart, bright kids, who have much greater access to support for their neurodivergence so they probably will) they will lose them as employees, which means they will have to replace them with workers that they actually have to pay.
What this all means in opportunity cost terms, is that not only can Bob & Linda never retire by selling their business (in opportunity cost terms, it's in the red) their business will not survive their children growing up and leaving the household.
Their only real options for keeping their business opens are either to emotionally manipulate their kids into never leaving, and putting them on the paperwork as part owners, so that they can keep on exploiting them without paying them a fair wage literally forever. (which by the way, is a form of family economic abuse, and is crazy immoral, albeit very common in the small business world)
Or they can hope, that they live in some kind of alternate reality where everyone stays the same age, forever, and that years can pass without their children so much as aging a day.
Barring one of those two circumstances, one being unethical and abusive, and the other being living in a magical fantasy land, it's not a question of IF Bob and Linda's burger shop, Bob's Burgers will fail. It's a matter of WHEN, and HOW BADLY it will fail.
The true tragedy of all of this, is if Bob & Linda had gotten a job by doing this crazy thing called “working for literally anyone else at a living wage while living in an apartment that they can afford the rent on” they (and their children) would objectively have better overall economic health.
Whether or not Bob and Linda have the social skills, and emotional capacity to work for someone else, and run a “traditional” career is of course, a subject of debate, but the fact remains, that in a very real sense, they are more exploited, and less free as small business owners, then they would be if they were employed in a traditional manner.
And again, to repeat. The biggest factor that pushed Bob and Linda into “being their own boss” in the first place, was the fact that they are closeted, undiagnosed neurodivergents of a uncertain (but most certainly minority) ethnic background who will always feel out of place, who will always feel alienated, and isolated, and bullied in traditional workplaces.
This is very important to note, because Bob and Linda make excellent stand-ins for neurodivergents/POC/the LGBTQA+/Immigrants/minority ethnic groups and other marginalized groups who quite frankly choose self employment to try and avoid the discrimination they face in “traditional” workplaces is so much that they cannot maintain traditional employment, literally forcing them into entrepreneurship/self-employment, which often enough, turns into them facing even worse economic hardship, and exploitation, as in the self-employment world, you are not guaranteed a minimum wage by law.
In other words, self-employment is not, and never will be the solution for marginalized groups. For every aspie, or ADHD adult, or LGBTQA+ community member, or POC or ethnic minority who “makes it” big in small business ownership, or the gig economy, there are 10-100 who either didn't make it and thus were forced back into being exploited at dead end jobs where there basic human dignity is ignored, or who alternatively can only survive self-employment under conditions that are objectively less well payed, and more dehumanizing than those than they would have faced in a traditional workplace.
Be ready for my follow up to this post “Why entrepreneurship & small business ownership isn't an answer for marginalized groups in the workplace, part 2. The Tale of Mal & Zoe of the Firefly class ship Serenity, and how capitalism and neoliberalism's attitudes towards veterans, PTSD, & political outsiders lead to crime”