Some highlights from a conversation I had with a small business owner. He had roughly 400 employees.
Me: Do you expect your employees to always seek the best pricing for goods your company sales and buys?
Him: Yes of course.
Me: Okay, do you expect those same employees to seek the best prices for their labor?
Him: No. I don't want my employee shoping around for work elsewhere. And if they came to me with a job offer from another employer I would not counter the job offer. I do not haggle wages with my employees.
Me: You see the dilemma though right? You want people to actively haggle wages for your company but want them to accept whatever wages you off for their company/labor.
Him: No I do not see a dilemma.
Some back and forth and him defending his position. I could tell he was was getting frustrated with our conversation.
Me: Okay to be blunt for a minute, business owners want to extract as much labor from their employees while paying as low as they can in wages……
He cut me off.
Him: Well that's not me, I don't do that. I might have an employee work a few years at the same wage…….
He continued on not seeing the hypocrisy in his responses. At the end dude was a cool dude. We both were into German football and Bayren Munich. If he wasn't such a shitty human being and business owner I could see myself enjoying a beer with the guy and possibly learning something from him.