Upper Crust and the political divide

The source of overpriced pizza for a vast swath of yuppies across Massachusetts has filed for Chapter  11 bankruptcy.   I suppose it was just a matter of time.  Now, for those of you with memory as good as mine*, that means that the company Kelly and I don’t like much anyway because of the way they treat their employees** is having yet more problems.

*That is code for my memory is actually pretty bad.  Awful, in fact.

**And their prices.  And their terrible tomato sauce.

It’s actually kind of ironic.  The basic concept was pretty good.  I think it could have been growing even more and really succeeding if it wasn’t for a certain problem.

Greed.

Greed seems to have come close to killing the company.  Greed is what made the company exploit its employees, a lesson even the franchisees seemed to have learned.   Greed is what made the company’s founder misuse company assets and funds for his own purposes.   Greed (and some serious hubris) is what made the company arrogantly defy the government and essentially blackmail its employees  after it had already been caught breaking the law by two different Federal departments and found to have committed serious abuses of its immigrant employees.

So if the company survives at all, it will almost certainly need to purge itself of this apparently toxic business culture that seems to have started at the top and made its way down.  I especially feel for those Brazilian employees who worked so hard for a company that treated them so poorly.  They deserve better.   Makes me wish someone could help them out and help them open their own pizza restaurant.  I bet it would be a good place to eat and a good place to work.

But it is interesting to see how people’s views of the Upper Crust mess seem to be fairly predictable based on their political views.  Conservatives, especially those of the Ayn Rand/Paul Ryan/borderline sociopath bent, seem to blame the whole thing on (who else) the exploited illegal immigrants who made it all possible.  Liberals and progressives tend to be more sympathetic to the workers and less sympathetic to the upper management/owners who consistently, almost arrogantly defied the public who started boycotting them and continued to defend their practices while poo-pooing anyone and everyone who said otherwise.  Seriously, read the quotes from their spokespeople and lawyers in those articles.  If you are brave enough (and have a strong stomach), read the comments, if any of those are still visible.   Wow.   Kelly and I obviously sympathize with the workers, and for the life of me I cannot understand how people can complain about illegal immigrants coming here to take jobs when so many of their fellow political travelers are the exact same people who are bringing in those people and then exploiting the hell out of them.

So once again, if anyone reading this still eats there, please don’t.  And if you do, at least think about why you are still doing it, and ask yourself if those people making your pizzas for you are the same people at every hour of every day, no matter when you go in there.  If they are, I hope you are at least giving them some hefty tips.  If not, it might be time to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself some questions.  Just saying.

-Geoff