It Could Happen Here - Abolish Restaurants Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Andrew joins us to talk about our experience in the service industry, making food in a non-capitalist system, and the original zine Abolish RestaurantsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take it away, Robert Evans. Gosh, it could happen here. Wow.

I did it. Brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, I love that, really. Thank you. You're Robert Evans. We also have Christopher Wong, Garrison Davis, and we have Andrew here with us who will be leading this episode. Hi, Andrew.

Hello. Hello, everyone. How is the weather? It's so hot. In Portland, it is cold. Everywhere else in the continental United States, it is a boiling hellstorm. Actually, today it's only 84. But yeah, we have three days where it's barely in the 80s,

and then it goes back to being like 97 again. It's very exciting. Same with Los Angeles. I don't understand your temperature measurements. Same with Los Angeles. It's lovely today. It will be lovely for the next couple next couple days and then we'll be burning 30 30 36 36 is 97 it's going to be perfect here forever climate change is over in northern oregon

i have declared it well if you declared it it must be true exactly so today uh want to have a bit of a discussion, an open discussion about my favorite kind of discourse, and that is dead discourse. I want to talk about a discussion, quote unquote, that people have been having a couple weeks ago about restaurants oh restaurant discourse this whole idea that people heard about five minutes ago and got super riled up over and sparked a whole bunch of like drama because that's what social media incentivizes but i figured you know we could have a nice round table discussion here about quote-unquote restaurant abolition and share our thoughts on the ideas presented in the zine that inspired it figured you know we could have a nice round table discussion here about quote-unquote restaurant abolition and share our thoughts on the ideas presented in the zine that inspired it for those who read it abolish restaurants by pro-life info but first of all i wanted to share a bit about my

experience in the food industry it was quite brief and by brief i mean like four days uh i started working at this this winery slash cafe that was um owned and run by this trust fund baby and it was very clear that she had failed up for most of her life um it was very disorganized and very stressful experience i quit like a few days after i got it because instead of you know making coffees and preparing wines and stuff i got a job pushing paper in an office which is only marginally better and i mean i don't want to speak over like food service people or anything because like my experience is very limited but in my own limited experience it sucked i mean my blood turned to water trying to keep up with everything it was one of those kind of under the table jobs where you don't have a contract or a specific job description it's just

like you're doing everything so you're sorting and taking out recycling you're organizing stock you're making coffee bussing tables you're cashing products you're handling accounting for some reason like lady i just got here but i'm already doing accounting um and so on and so forth i didn't have an official break either and i wasn't allowed to sit at all um i mean my boss said that i could stop for lunch when i needed to but because of this these constant like responsibilities she was piling on to me i basically never got a chance to take a breather the one time i did take a lunch break she rushed me out to the lunch break because i was taking too long and um she was busy taking care of her other real estate and her only consistent customers were her friends.

And yet somehow, you know, she kept the doors open and the lights on because, you know, trust fund baby. But yeah, to reiterate, it was a very sucky experience. What about you all? You all had any? Yeah, I worked at a restaurant for starting when I was in high school. I was 15 and a half for three or four years, part of college. It made me learn a lot about how awful people are. But it was like you did learn how to work in a team and things like that, helpful skills there, but management was terrible.

Not exactly easy work, not exactly fun work. Yeah. Yeah, it was like, I honestly feel like a lot of people should have to do some type of job like that so that they learn, you know, how to treat people who work in that kind of position. Because mostly my memories of it is terrible, horrible customers who just treated people like scum. Yeah. But I needed the job so yeah yeah my only experience in food service was working at a sonic not for a crazy long time but it was terrible um and it left me with an abiding like respect for people who have to do that and uh i i you know we can talk we'll talk more about the restaurant thing but i certainly

don't think fast food restaurants are a thing that exists in my ideal future because i don't know how you could possibly operate those without a tremendous amount of human suffering and wasted potential because they're just they're bad things now that said any utopian society will have a way to acquire popeyes but perhaps not at like midnight in every city of the country, whenever you want it. My utopian society is a world in which KFC has been abolished and everything else still exists. Yes.

Yes. Well, I mean, again, this is, it could happen here. Sponsored by Carl's Jr. I'm perfectly okay with imperialism,

but like, I need some, you know what I'm saying? need some keep the kfc andrew what what kind of like can i ask like what kind of restaurant i know robert said his was fast food mine was very like casual food what what kind of restaurant did you work at right it wasn't it was like a winery slash cafe and it also served food it was like attached to a hotel got it oh yeah and the hotel part of it probably made it yeah her parents owned the hotel and so she oh yeah all right yeah i i'm sorry yeah uh chris garrett either of you either work in the food food service industry at all yeah i i worked at a bakery for like a year and a half, mostly back of the house. But I mean, I would, you know, would end up washing dishes and taking out recycling and all that kind of stuff.

But most of my work was designing recipes because I was more on like the food science angle. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's i have a complicated uh feelings on like cafes specifically i mean i i love anarchist cafes and like the idea of anarchist cafe i would love to love to like have one at some point yes like operated by the workers wouldn't quote owned by the workers um with a shooting range out back but obviously obviously there's... Guns and buns. We call it guns and buns. You can get a croissant and you can shoot a 9mm. Robert, if you want to fund my cafe, by all means. Guns and buns sounds like the name of a gym or something.

You can name it whatever you want. Andrew's absolutely right. That sounds like a gym. You're right. Guns and buns is a breakfast cafe gun range strip club. And apparently a gym. As long as you fund it, you can name it whatever you want. Guns and Buns is a breakfast cafe gun range strip club and apparently as long as you fund it you can name it whatever you want

the people will fund it Garrison obviously the food service industry yes we'll just make it a cooperative that makes everything okay sorry please continue yeah but like the food service industry has a lot of problems. But if I were able to go into a bakery, like maybe like two or three times a week to just bake food for people and that helps me live the rest of the week, I would totally do that.

Right. So like it depends on a lot of factors, but. I think it's like there's ideas around like an anarchist cafe, worker owned cafe that would be like totally chill to work at be totally chill to be there a few days of the week making food because I enjoy making food. I enjoy baking. I like food science. But when you start tying that into labor and exploitive labor practices and the notion of having to serve other people, then it gets a little bit more tricky and less good. Less cash money i understand yeah exactly you know what's what's kind of funny about it um i would say is like quite a lot of thought uh go ahead robert let me just think for a sec

well so i mean one of the things that I have noticed over the years, because I've had a lot of friends work as bartenders, as waiters and waitresses, there's a chunk of people who really like the work. They usually don't like their employer. They often have issues with their manager or whatever. But they like their coworkers and they enjoy the act of doing restaurant stuff. the act of like doing restaurant stuff. I, and I know that like, so one of the things that I did recreationally for years is I was good.

I would go to these regional Burning Man events. And one of the rules there is like, everyone pays the same thing to get in. There's no like get, there's no like talent. So there's nobody who's like paid to be there as an act. And there's no like exchange of currency allowed, but there are restaurants. There are people who like bake food and,

and, and give out and like make and give out coffee. There's multiple bars. And a number of the people I knew who would spend the most of their time, which is again, totally their own at these events, volunteering as bartenders, were people who worked as bartenders. And we're like, look, I like serving drinks. I hate a lot of what goes along with being in a bar, but I enjoy making and serving drinks. There was this one really cool dude out in the middle. He was out, because it's spread out over acres of woodlands.

There was just this guy I found one night alone in the woods at like a podium-sized little booth, lit up bar he'd made. And he was like, look, I am a very good bartender. What I do not like is making the same things every night for drunk people who don't know anything about a good mixed drink so you and i are going to have like a five minute conversation and then i'm going to tell you what i'm going to make you based on like yeah and it was fucking dope yeah it was really cool like that yeah more stuff like that more like restaurant pop-ups that are like those types of things are are just are divorced from like this notion of like you know being served by a lower class member of society

instead it's people like sharing actual interests that they have and they're not obligated to be there or else they get you know or else they're not able to pay their rent right there's lots of things like a utopian society or be like yeah i would totally be down with doing some kind of you know some kind of thing related to giving food to other people or preparing food or, you know, drink like mixed drinks. I like making coffee a lot, like espresso and shit. It's like, I can totally see that. But right now, you know, it's just a totally different field, by and large, for most people in, you know, the food service industry. And it sucks. By and large, it really sucks to work in the food service industry and it sucks yeah by and large it really sucks to work in the food service industry yeah the food service industry is one of the most exploitative

industries in the country that said the idea of gathering in public to consume food and beverages is fundamental to human beings and we're never not going to have that as societies so there has to be ways in which to have versions of that. And again, probably not the every 10 minutes you get the same three fast food restaurants that are open all night. That probably that definitely does not exist in an ideal society. But in any any better society, human beings will gather to eat and drink around each other because it's something we've done in every civilization that has ever existed. So, Andrew, do you want to talk a bit more about the actual zine because i feel like a lot of people's discourse around the zine is not about the zine itself it's about what the title of the

zine is yeah because people should read the actual zine if you read it it makes very reasonable arguments um the title is just intentionally provocative. So yeah. And what I've realized about intentionally provocative slogans is that the people who want to get it, you know, they tend to be drawn into those kinds of things, and then there's some people who see something provocative

and it kind of shuts them down. Yes, yes. Some people see something so provocative and see it as like, hmm, I want to learn more. And other people see it and they have a gut reaction to it. It's like the backfire effect type thing. Yeah. So, I mean, to get into kind of the history of it and just the idea of restaurants as the zine explores. According to the discourse, a restaurant is just a place to eat.

According to the discourse, a restaurant is just a place to eat. If you sit down in the middle of a desert with a table and a chair and you eat something, that's apparently a restaurant. That's not a restaurant. That is not a restaurant, but okay. The definition of a restaurant is a place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises. Okay. to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises okay commerce is a part of the definition of a restaurant why do we universalize and naturalize things that are neither that is my question it's like what people do with the state or capitalism with police or gender i mean just like those things the restaurant is an invention

but it's been crystallized and and induced into our minds as something that is eternal that is natural it is universal you know when when cronk brought his buddy brock a piece of chicken that was a restaurant you know it's like we take we take these things that come from very specific modern capitalist context and we stretch them out over the entire human experience if you look into the history of restaurants the first restaurants began to appear in paris in the 1760s even as late as the 1850s majority of the restaurants the world were located in paris and i mean for those who know a little bit about history, Paris is kind of an interesting place where a lot of things happen. Especially during that rough time.

That period. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on there. Exactly. I mean, elsewhere in the world, communal meals were quite common. People cooked communally and they ate communally and there were no restaurants specifically before invention of restaurants in in paris around europe at least rich people had servants who cooked for them travelers had inns where their meal was included with the price of the room and they ate for the innkeeper and his family and peasants they ate their meals at home and of course they were also caterers

for events and special occasions and there were taverns and wineries and cafes and bakeries for certain foods and drinks of course later on all of those things the taverns the wineries the cake the cafes and the bakeries after restaurants came about those other institutions started to shape and bend into the sort of the mold of the restaurant that was established. Restaurant, based on the name of it, comes from this idea that they were meant to restore health to sick people. Restaurant. Restaurant. Right? And they used to serve these small meat stews.

So by that metric, Taco Bell cannot be a restaurant. Restaurant. And they used to serve these small meat stews. So by that metric, Taco Bell cannot be a restaurant. I would argue that it is the only restaurant. Well, it's going to restore bowel movement. If you have any kind of blockage, it will restore that. But besides that, I do not think it's going to restore anything. Yeah, Taco Bell is probably something like a laxatant. But yeah, so why France?

Why Paris? Why restaurants? It kind of occurred after the food craft guilds were abolished by the revolution, it was like this attempt to kind of democratize the food industry, you know, liberty, galate, fraternity, hon hon hon, all that jazz. So restaurants began springing up because all these former cooks of the now beheaded king and aristocrats, they wanted to work somewhere. Sure, yeah. So, you know, in a restaurant, you could get a meal at any time.

The business was open. Anyone restaurant, you get a meal at any time the business was open. Anyone with money could get a meal. The customers would come and they would eat at individual tables, eat individual plates and bowls of food. They get to choose from a number of options. And they grew in size and complexity as they went along. They got a fixed menu. And eventually, one beautiful day, we invented the Baconator.

Yes. Yeah, we invented the Baconator. Yes. Fun fact, the Baconator was the first burger I had when I went to the US. Wow. I would apologize, but this country has done so much worse than that. 107 fun

facts about Andrew. Yeah, you know, it's a little thing to tune in and you get a little new fact that 107 fun facts about Andrew yeah you know it's a little thing to tune in and you get a little new fact that you could add to my wikia page or something but yeah yeah it was mid

honestly my brother makes better burgers but that's besides the point nearly every burger that you can get at a fast food restaurant is mid. Yeah. TGI Friday's had some good boogers, though. But TGI is kind of a weird place to have a booger. That is the place, when you're in a town you've never been before,

that's where you want to just show up and get absolutely shithouse drunk until 2 a.m. with like a bunch of strangers at the TGI Friday's bar, which is the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Like it's only people who can't hack it in a regular bar and weirdos traveling through town. I love a TGI Friday's bar. Okay. I was not aware of that stereotype i mean there's a tgi here in trinidad and um i mean last time i knew they had like some kind of karaoke thing going on but yeah it's probably the the vibe i haven't been 20 times

anyway i think this is enough product placement for one episode. I think we're really shouting out a lot of different places here. Speaking of product placement, here's ads. Sure, why not? Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters. inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. The horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season You get your podcast. of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get

on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. So the growth of the restaurant came the growth of the market. With the growth of the restaurant came the growth of the market. Needs that were, you know, fulfilled either through

a direct relationship of domination, like between a lord or a king and his servant, or a private relationship, like within the family, they were now being fulfilled on the open market. What was once a direct oppressive relationship now became the relationship between buyer and seller. Now became an indirect oppressive relationship. Exactly. A diffused oppressive relationship, almost.

Because no one person, I would say, could really carry the blame. A similar expansion of the market took place over a century later with the rise of fast food. Because as the 1950s housewife was on her way out, you know, being undermined,

and as women started to move into the open labor market, many of the tasks that were done by women traditionally were being transferred onto the market not to say that women still don't do the majority of care work in modern society but as women started moving into the office into the workplace things started to shift with regard to eating and eating patterns. Now, the important point to note is that, of course, the whole women moving to the workplace thing is kind of a white woman phenomenon because people of color, women of color, were in workplaces before then in large numbers.

Yeah, and there's a thing I think it's important to note here too which is like part of what's happening here is that like some of the care labor that white women were doing gets transferred onto non-white women and this this is this has been one of the things that like i i think we talked about this a long time ago in an interview i did with it with a nurse but like like for example you see this with health care a lot where like a lot of like union workers get these good you know they get really good health care plans from the unions but those health care plans are basically subsidized by not paying women of color like shit and there's this whole sort of like trend around this of sort of like like you can you know

if if you're rich if you're rich enough you can escape housework but you escape housework by essentially thrusting it on someone on someone's further down the social ladder than you. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like a form of that phenomenon people have been talking about, the idea of choice feminism, as in any choice that a woman makes is part of the feminist sort of movement. part of the feminist sort of movement so i saw some discourse happen recently people were talking about um how a woman should have a right if she's a housewife that she should still be able to you know pursue her interests which is of course agreed and the solution being proposed to that that was that the man the breadwinner would pay for a domestic servant to come and work for the woman so that she can pursue her other responsibilities her other interests and

desires and so it's just kind of this perfect what a close to the license exactly because then this woman is working away from her family and And then, you know, it's just like, it's a messed up system. But yes, so as fast food restaurants began to grow rapidly, people began being paid wages for what used to be housework. for what used to be housework. And of course, as we know, capitalism could not exist without the billions of dollars of unpaid labor that women perform on a yearly basis. Modern restaurants emerged in the 19th century under specific conditions.

They had to be businessmen with capital to invest in restaurants. They had to be customers who expected to satisfy their need for food on the open market by buying it. And they had to be workers with no way to live but by working for someone else. As these conditions developed, as capitalism developed, so did restaurants restaurants and so at the root of this whole abolished restaurants discourse needs to be an understanding of where restaurants came from their historical development you cannot take them in isolation and project them like i said across all of humanity because it's only through understanding through its specific circumstances that we can transform it as we transform society as a whole as i was saying you know there's a lot of things that are hell about restaurants the way that work comes in like waves and rushes a lot of

slow time in between we're either really stressed out you're really bored i remember working there at the winery and like for most of the day i just have to be like shifting around bottles on the shelves i couldn't sit down and chill or be on my phone or anything i just had to busy myself until a customer came and customers never came because it was a failed business propped up only by her parents' money. Did you ever get told the phrase, if you can lean, you can clean? Not in those exact words. Yeah. Yes, in those exact words. God, and every fucking manager who says it to you thinks that, like, it's their cool line. Fuck it.

Anyway. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So you have this constant thing of trying to look busy while having nothing to do. Well, you try not to fall behind because you have 10 things to do. Yeah. Everyone's always working harder and faster.

And of course, the boss wants to squeeze as much work out to the same number of people out as possible you know like you're pushing people to these ridiculous extremes which is why it's a kind of stereotype now of like restaurant workers all being on drugs you know there's also this whole inhumanity to like employees being paid in tips. Now, as far as I know, nowhere is that as severe as it is in the US. But of course, around the world, there are tipping cultures of varying degrees. And so when you have that sort of work where your living, your subsistence is so directly tied to like tips,

not only do you have this sort of divide being created between the workers, between like, for example, the waiters who make the tips and the cooks who don't make any tips. And they sort of had to compete against each other because the waiter is trying to get as much done as possible so they can make their tips quickly so they could have their you know quick service whereas the cooks they have no intrinsic motivation to push themselves harder and it just becomes stressful i never got tips from baking in the back of the house unless some of the people in front of the house would like share the tips at the end of the day by their own like yeah and i i know folks who worked in places where all tips were shared with the way the kitchen staff and it seemed to be a 50 50 breakdown of this is really

good and everyone gets paid fairly and this is actually some scam by management to deny people a bunch of tips by like pooling them and certain fuckery that gets done so like it's like any formulation of this inherently winds up being pretty abusive yeah and dividing you know another interesting and i mean as you guys mentioned stressful component about you know this line of work is of course the customers which customer service people in general tend to hate you know whether you're working at a bar or you're working at a you know a restaurant or even working in like sales in some sort of like retail store their whole subreddit is dedicated to how terrible customers are to workers. And so that sort of dynamic of service, it really changes people. I mean, customers can just as easily be working class as the people working in the restaurant.

there's still that dynamic that's created when you are the one being seated and served and the other person yeah on their feet serving you some of the worst customers in america at least are a working class and poorer folks who it's like their chance to be above somebody like when they go out to a restaurant so they can be extra shitty that is a thing that happens surprisingly there are even restaurant workers who treat restaurant workers badly when they go to a restaurant yeah exactly

someone gets the opportunity to be to exert the power and do it in a short amount of time I will say i'm sure those are also the restaurant workers who treat people badly at the restaurant they work at including like co-workers some of the worst things that have ever been said to me were by customers at the restaurant job i had yeah yeah not surprising no and i was like not i was like i was like in high school i was a kid

and these were like grown-ups being horrendous so like i i think i think it's like i don't know like when people talk about this like when people talk about restaurants like in the discourses it's it's in a way that's like it's incredibly abstract and doesn't like it doesn't it doesn't think about the fact that like the relationship between the customer and the people who have to interact with the customers the host etc like that that is a social relation and it's a social relation that like that like like the the power dynamic inherent to it ascribes sort of different kind of it ascribes different kinds of behavior to the people who are on either side of it. It controls what you have to do as a server, the performances you have to give, the smile you have to put on. That's the original thing of what emotional labor is, right?

It's the labor you have to do to make the person who you're serving like think that you're like happy and enjoying it and like having a good time but then you know like on the customer's end too it's like you get this sort of you know it's like oh this is your one chance to to be on top of a sort of power relation and like that like that like that specific thing is so fucking evil it's like there's there's a story i think about a lot from i read it in chuang originally was it was about um like one of the last emperors of the tang dynasty like his concubine like loved liqia and like okay i get it it's liqia that it's really good but like liqia's grown liqia's only grown in the south of china you can't really grow it in the north it just doesn't like it's too cold it's too arid and so in order to get her leecher like every morning they would send like the fastest riders like in china would like be sent by horse like to southern china and

then back so that they could get the leecher there in time like for it still to be like ripe and like edible and you know that that's the kind that's the kind of power that used to only literally the emperor of china had this ability right like the like the emperor of fucking china could get this commodity and like force everyone in a chain to go do this thing for them and now like everyone has that like literally everyone has that power like every time you use amazon you have that power every time you go to a restaurant yeah you have the power to do this and it it turns people into monsters because like that's you know the chinese emperors are like yeah these are some of the worst people who've ever lived now like everyone everyone like you just like like the fundamental basis of the society is there is a place where you can go and you can become the emperor of fucking China.

Maybe there's a problem with the idea of instant gratification being reliant on the exploitation of other people. Yeah. And like, yeah. That doesn't seem right, Garrison. Oh, yeah. Never mind. Don't worry. That doesn't seem right, Garrison.

Oh, yeah. Never mind. It's horrifying. Don't worry. Now, watch me as I order next day delivery on a $1,600 drone just to fuck around in my backyard. Like, yes, everything is fine in America. I am of the opinion that the grocery store is the primary artistic achievement of capitalism as a system they are objectively marvels and they're they're built on a river of blood deeper and wider than is is it's like it's a hyper object right it's like impossible to comprehend the full scale

of cruelty that goes into being able to like well it is november 14th i'm gonna go get a fresh bag of grapes that have been genetically modified to taste like cotton candy yeah picked by people making sense an hour in yes in a country that's on the other side of the world yeah yes whose relatives are shot for attempting to scramble over the border yeah yeah that the grapes pass through easily yes and i think like like that that points to another like i think part of the dynamics typically with restaurants that happens which is that like okay like cooking takes time right and the the less and less time that you have the more like the more reliant you become on yeah like on these services and so you see this with like you know

like china has like a like a particularly horrible like delivery culture like you can like you can have someone deliver food to you like to the train like like a sub like a train will stop at a stop and you can have someone run a bag of food to you and then like leave and you just like you go to the next stop and you get off and that happens because everyone's working 996 and so it's like okay you're working 70 you're working 9 a.m to 9 p.m six six days a week and you know you don't you literally do not have time to cook because you're working you're working 12 hours a day and this is another good example of this is like restaurant people who work restaurants like line cooks and chefs hardly ever cook for themselves they always get

food from other restaurants because they're cooking eight to ten hours a day they're not going to go home then cook for themselves they they it's like yeah it's it is this system almost it makes it makes the things that prop it up yeah become necessary to keep the whole thing going it's all like balancing super like precariously on its own weight it's it's equivalent to like if you're in a criminal syndicate making somebody you're working with tangentially shoot a man in the back of the head so that you both have blood on your hands like everyone is everyone like just by by virtue of existing under it, if you're working 60 hours a week as a fucking nurse during COVID or as a fucking line cook dealing with this surge of delivery shit, and then on your way home, you just want to pick up some sushi from a fucking grocery store that requires ingredients from all around the world and is made by people who are not getting enough money to, to make it and is horrible for the environment and the fisheries and all that kind of shit.

Um, and, but like, what are you supposed to do? Like you, you just, you just finished like a 10 hour shift. Like,

do you not deserve like one, one nice thing at the end of the day? Like, like, so it's, if you, people can't like either you become an, like a complete aesthetic, right, and reject and go kind of Ted K. and live in a shack in Montana and reject all of these kind of modern conveniences. Or you accept that like you're going to spend some time wading into the river of blood because otherwise the things you have to do to stay alive in this

society are completely emotionally unsustainable yeah this was this was the original like before it kind of became this cop-out for like just doing whatever you want like this was the original there's no ethical consumption or capitalism it's about this was about like this specific problem that everything in the society like even even if you're fucking living in the woods in montana it's like yeah like where where did where like where did your cabin come from like where did your nails come from who made the hammer it's like everyone's like completely dependent for everything on the exploitation of other people and it is it is a yeah the one thing that gives me a little bit of hope is when andrew was explaining how like restaurants came arise because of people people who used used to work for kings and shit

who then started working at restaurants because they still wanted to make food. It was like that evolution taking it to the next step is people who work at restaurants now no longer having to work under capitalist exploitation and realizing, hey, I know how to cook well. I'll just set up ways to feed the community outside of this system of commerce right that is the next evolution if you start with people people cooking

for the king people then cooking in places where you pay to eat in this exploitative system and then people cooking for people so that there's food around in like a community setting right if you follow that trajectory that's actually kind of hopeful it's almost like we've come full circle i mean in some ways yeah it's like right it's if we just go back to like being community yeah like accumulating if there's places around different communities different towns different like urban centers that have that have the capacity to feed people who are not able to cook cook for themselves that night or that day that's something that if if it's there is ways of setting that up which i can see being so much better than how restaurants work you know yeah maybe people wash their own dishes afterwards

maybe people do something to help with like prep or something right like there's there's there's ways to make this that gives you the parts of restaurants that are actually really convenient, um, without the exploitation. And so that, that type of like community cooking is something, I mean, you know, that's even similar to like how like a good dinner party operates. Um, just that kind of extended out across, you know, more of like a pop-up setting and say, Hey, yeah, this, this month we're using all of these ingredients that are grown in our general local area, right? We're not getting shipped. We're not getting like strawberries in December shipped from halfway around the world.

We'll make stuff that is available as it's grown or we can pickle, we can store food, right? Yeah. And maybe we've turned the old defunct Walmart into a grow shelter. So once or twice during the winter, there are some strawberries and everybody comes together and shares this marvel that the community came, like worked as a team to ensure would be available. But you can't just go and buy four pounds of strawberries that are produced with their, like twice the weight of the strawberries and pesticide in order to keep them alive in fields

that were never meant to grow strawberry. Like maybe that's not available all year round. Like, yep. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez,

will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take

real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the point being raised about about like ethical consumption and capitalism because that's a really important point the whole purpose of that saying has been bastardized but it really is crucial to have a nuanced understanding of it what frustrates me is that

it's been taken and it's been turned into this justification. Like, oh, it's okay that I buy from Sheehan. It's okay that I buy a $3,000 haul from Sheehan because no ethical consumption under capitalism. Or it's like where somebody goes and they engage in something that is not a necessity. Andrew, you're talking around my two and a half pound a day veal habit, and I don't appreciate it. Yeah, that sounds like a problem.

That's like some Joe Roken nonsense. You're like, I eat two and a half pounds of veal every day, and that keeps my brain running smoothly. Cavemen only ate veal, Garrison. It worked for Jordan Peterson, so I mean... Exactly.

It did work for Jordan Peterson. He's doing great. Cries at the mere notion of Antifa. I would do an impression, but it'll hurt my throat. So, moving on. Thus, I would do an impression, but it'll hurt my throat. So, moving on. Thus, I would say, I would say that, as we were saying, you know, there really is potential.

We see even under these conditions that people find ways to survive. You know, they create like these informal work groups that are not only able to come together and push back against management but able to work together to create trust within each other you know you have like for example waiters who would try a hand in the kitchen on a slow day or a cleaner or who might pick up a thing or two a dishwasher who's trying to move up to become like a a line cook all these different workers they they do things certainly to try to undermine the unnatural divisions and hierarchies and between the skilled and unskilled in the restaurant setting. Of course, it doesn't always work because there are, you know,

settings wherein the manager successfully created divisions, you know, whether it be the manager creating a division between 10 different nationalities of immigrants or you know playing upon someone's queer phobia against like queer staff or someone's biases against i don't know i can't think of a third example. But there are ways that managers try to sow these divisions between workers. And there are ways that workers try to push back. There are also ways that managers try to do the opposite, to create a community within the restaurant that includes themselves.

So instead of fostering isolation and prejudice, they create a community, especially in small restaurants, that involves them, that talks about, that, you know, the boss might share with them how difficult it is working and organizing for the business of the restaurant. and or they might create like a special kind of restaurant focused on their identity so they might create a restaurant for for queer youth where all the staff are queer or you know you have a restaurant for you know a black owned restaurant where all the workers are black and try to create a community based on this identity but it kind of erases the unavoidable class interests between workers and management it smooths over that dimension so it becomes more difficult to organize and speak up for your rights because you're aware that the managers are human and they too are struggling. Which kind of brings me to the idea of restaurants with no managers and the idea of cooperatives.

The issue with cooperative restaurants is that they basically have to collectively take on the role of managers. Managing themselves, creating those pressures and pushing those pressures upon themselves they enforce the work on each other and they they have to work longer in some cases and work harder in some cases because the structure of a restaurant is designed to make money and if it is not making money then everybody loses their job so due to this pressure uh boss is in a position where they have to push workers to get as much out of the workers as possible you raise the boss on the occasion from the equation but you keep the rest of the concept of a restaurant and the line between worker and boss becomes blurred to the extent where it's almost like that image of a person with a boot on their hand holding a boot

on their head where this oppression that was once external becomes internalized because that is how a restaurant survives through oppression through exploitation it's kind of like with how self-employed people are under capitalism yes you're working for yourself and you have some freedom in that regard but you're still restricted by the broader system you haven haven't escaped it. You've just had to navigate it. And I have to make quarterly payments to the IRS. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, most of us here, I think, work for ourselves in some capacity or have a certain level of freedom. And it, you still have those pressures. And it's just, you have to inflict them on yourself.

You know, you don't have like a break that has been mandated. And so at least in my case, I don't take breaks because that's just how I am. You know, you work longer hours. You push yourself harder and harder you work on days when you should be resting and it's just it illustrates the fact that liberation is not to be found under this system it's something totally new with a totally different metric of success a totally different metric of sustenance, a totally different bare minimum and a totally different

motivation needs to be the foundation upon which society is built because it's profiting now we can yeah and I think there's a like I think the reason this debate happens like this whole discourse happened in the first place was just that, like, like, just the, like, a lot of it really was just a complete inability to imagine, like, literally any other way of, like, even just, like, any other way of getting food that does not involve you going to a place and telling someone to make it for you. of getting food that does not involve you going to a place and telling someone to make it for you and like that i don't know like

yeah it's like the the fact that there have already been sort of seismic shifts in the way that like food production happens right i think is evidence like no we don't have to do it like that like we just we just do not it wasn't like this for most of human history we could do something better than whatever they were doing before it yeah a lot of people might you know wish for like in this so let's just shift over into the abolition section of it the restaurant abolition a lot of people look to for example a union as a path by which in the short term you know we make certain gains and belong to we can take over and radically transform it the difficulty comes in how unions have traditionally operated in the restaurant sphere.

They tend to be significantly less successful. I mean, restaurants usually have very high turnover, people only last a couple of months. They often employ a lot of young people who are just looking for part-time or temporary employment. A lot of people who do work they are constantly looking to move on to better things and so it makes it difficult to create a stable union with a stable membership that can buckle down and really negotiate and push for the interests of the people

working because people working are constantly changing i think one of the like one of the really grim things this led to is that like like especially when fast food took over like the the major unions that even do exist which is like now we like we're just not going to bother even trying to organize these people because they just assumed it was impossible and so like there are there are very very few fast food unions i mean like i think one of the only like even sort of functional ones is uh the iww like organized burgerville but that's that's been like it like like the big unions when they've done campaigns for fast food workers it's like it'll be something like fight for 15 but it's like they're not actually trying to like form unions of these restaurant workers like they

don't they're not even trying they're just trying trying to... They're using them for sort of like lobbying and advocacy. Yeah. And the difficulty also comes when a union is established itself. You know, because a union structurally

is not always by all the workers. You know, there's still sort of a hierarchy of bureaucracy that may establish itself and try to maintain itself, even if it starts off benignly. No, just for all of the radical history that unions do have, quite a few unions, particularly in the United States, have also been conservative bastions and bastions of different attitudes about stuff like white supremacy. There's a lot. The union movement is as much Blair Mountain as it is trying to stop black people

from being able to work on trains. All of those things are part of the history. Yeah. I mean, I'll speak briefly on the union situation in the Caribbean, particularly in Trinidad. the trade union movement was intrinsically inextricably tied with the anti-colonial movement in the movement for independence the issue became that the unions became tied up with the political parties that arose after independence and well during the

process of independence what ended up happening with the unions was that they ended up being tied so deeply with the political parties that ended up being that the established unions uh you know the higher-ups in those established unions they have these relationships of favors and obligations with the politicians a lot of politicians come out of these union movements and end up establishing their own political careers and because it's all so tied up when you know workers get into these industries that do have union, that have been unionized, there's a very clear separation between the union and the workers. Because while the union is able to, you know, push for the workers' rights and, you know, they're still separate from the workers.

The union still exists as a negotiator between the workers and the management. And so even if the workers wish to go beyond just negotiating, the union exists almost as a release valve for any sort of class antagonist, so any kind of pressure, any kind of real pressure against the status quo. I mean, it's not just unique to Trinidad or to the Caribbean. I mean, it's globally, across history, we've seen union struggles kind of go over the same sort of dynamic. You know, new generations of workers, they build up the movements,

they build up the unions, and the unions begin to change. They build up the unions and the unions begin to change. And perhaps new union leaders spring up to replace the old union leaders. One put under the same position, under the same pressures, they react in the same way as the bureaucracy ends up being rejuvenated. Unions are reformed and they end up going back to the same old ways that they had been before. And in some cases, the fight to reform the union takes the place of the fight against the boss because of all the bureaucracy and system of obligations and just deeply rooted ideas about the place of the union.

Because while unionizing is a difficult process, union leaders do tend to enjoy certain benefits from their position and as we are aware of you know certain hierarchies are self-justifying those are the top 10 to 1s perpetuated it's kind of like and so this idea that and this is kind of an unsettled thought of mine but it's kind of like and so this idea that and this is kind of an unsettled thought of mine but it's kind of like the idea of you know using the state to establish workers power and then abolishing it afterwards you know using union to get some measure of workers power but then it's expecting this union of a certain structure that exists toward negotiating ends to somehow push in these sort of more radical directions

there's a saying that that um that the zine um the writers of the zine say it's like that the zine um the writers of the zine say it's like restaurant unions need there to be restaurants and we don't i think that sort of applies more broadly because when we get into like the whole idea of like work abolition it's this concept of workers are people outside of work, but a workers' union exists within the confines of work, as we understand it. And so I think that's where the difficulty lies. The scene goes on to say later on that every time we attack the system, but don't destroy it it changes and in turn changes us and the terrain of the next fight gains are turned against us and we are stuck back in the same situation at work the bosses try to keep us looking for individual solutions or solutions within an individual workplace or an individual trade but the only way that we can free ourselves

is to broaden and deepen our fight we We involve workers from other workplaces, other industries, and other regions. We attack more and more fundamental things. The desire to destroy restaurants becomes the desire to destroy the conditions that create restaurants. We aren't just fighting for representation in or control over the production process. Our fight isn't against the act of chopping vegetables or washing dishes or pouring beer or even serving food to other people. It is with the way all of these acts are brought together in a restaurant, separated from other acts, become part of the economy and are used to expand capital. The starting and ending point to this

process is a society of capitalists and people forced to work for them. We want an end to this. We want to destroy the production process as something outside and against us. We're fighting for a world where our productive activity fulfills a need and is an expression of our lives, not forced on us in exchange for a wage. A world where we produce for each other directly and not in order to sell to each other. The struggle of restaurant workers is ultimately for a world without restaurants or workers. And I mean, so I think people are still going to call some alternatives to restaurants, restaurants anyway.

Probably. But I hope this discussion has caused people to kind of deepen their approach to this issue. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

Listen to better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.