Andy Puzder Is The Shittiest Boss You Ever Had
And now he’s been tapped to be America’s boss
In college I worked nights as a server at a popular 24-hour diner. The hours—most often I held down the 10pm to 6am shift—weren’t ideal, but they did have one very substantial perk: I rarely ever had to see the manager, a man I’ll call Mark because I literally don’t remember his name.
What I do remember was his thick hand running up the back of my shirt, grabbing my ass, or tugging my arm to draw me toward him. A short, stocky man with a horrendous mustache, Mark’s “personality” was a known issue.
“I just love beautiful women,” he’d say, “I can’t help it.”
He could, of course, help it. The issue was he didn’t need to because we were all living paycheck to paycheck and in my small college town, there weren’t very many places to pick up late night shifts and make enough money to pay rent and buy books.
So we put up with it. We smiled because it’s what women are conditioned to do. And it wouldn’t, maybe, have been that bad—because we’re also been conditioned to suppress how truly disgusting and awful it feels to be sexually harassed and assaulted—if Mark hadn’t also been a terrible boss in other ways, too.
He was forever telling the staff that the restaurant was on the verge of closing and would urge us to clock out if we were about to go into overtime—though he’d routinely schedule staffers for 45 or more hours per week and stubbornly refused to hire more. If our register was short, we were expected to round it out with our own money. If someone walked out on a tab, that was on us, too. And you’d better believe that the time our checks all bounced because there weren’t sufficient funds in the restaurant’s account that we were expected to eat the $50 (read: about six hours of work) fee from the bank. He even tried to convince us at one point that Washington State allowed for a sub-minimum tipped wage, which it decidedly does not.
Meanwhile, Mark drove a Range Rover and owned multiple homes, due to the substantial salary he drew from the restaurant, which was owned by a man who himself was a multi-millionaire.
So I suppose you could say I’m a little sensitive to sexist employers who take advantage of workers and try to nickel and dime them at every possible turn in the name of turning a profit.
You know, guys like Carl’s Jr. CEO Andy Puzder, a man who embodies trickle-down economics in its purest form, and who has been tapped by the Trump administration to take on the very crucial position of Labor Secretary.
Puzder is, first and foremost, deeply engrossed in toxic masculinity and rape culture. While some people are latently sexist, Puzder appears to relish his disrepesct for and commodification of women.
For example, though I am sure the Founding Fathers certainly approved of a nice meat sandwich from time to time, I do not believe that this was what they had in mind as they laid out the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.”
Though, perhaps, you can make the argument that objectifying women is a beloved American pastime, it hasn’t treated Puzder well. Still, he refuses to give it up. He allegedly loves sexism in ads so much—despite polling which found that the audiences actually doesn’t care and it doesn’t drive sales—it may have driven away the firm who was making their commercials. It also prompted a former franchisee to call for Puzder’s removal, saying in an email that “this type of marketing feeds the very mindset of objectifying women.”
But it’s not just women that Puzder doesn’t respect—it’s all workers!
Despite increasing profits (according to Puzder), worker pay has all but stagnated at Carl’s Jr, which is exactly how Puzder likes it. Puzder, who earns more in one day than the average minimum wage worker earns in a year, rejected President Obama’s proposal to increase the overtime threshold for managers, stating that “overtime pay has to come from somewhere, most likely reduced hours, reduced salaries or reduced bonuses.”
Heaven forbid you reduce your bonus, Andy, so that someone can get paid for, you know, time they actually worked.
Puzder is also famous for his threats about how raising wages will certainly lead to job losses—a claim that is both very old and also untrue, as evidenced by the fact that plenty of Carl’s Jr. restaurants are still open and in operation in states which have raised their minimum wage. And his views on automation—that higher wages, and not the natural evolution of labor and business and innovation, are to blame—are also pretty inaccurate. To retain his immensely large bonuses, Pudzer has invested deeply in ideologies which benefit himself and people like him at the expense of the majority of workers.
Basically, he’s the worst kind of boss—and one who is demonstrably not the kind of person the voters showed that they wanted in November.
As I’ve written, it should be abundantly clear at this juncture that none of Donald Trump’s selections signal a commitment to populism. Puzder’s views on wages, automation, and the importance of the workforce are not only the opposite of populist—in that they serve to benefit the smallest number of people—they’re also in opposition to the stated desires and beliefs of the voting populous.
Numerous studies have shown strong support for a higher minimum wage from both workers and employers alike, and it’s not just hypothetical; in the four states which put minimum wage increases on the ballot in November, the initiatives passed.
Puzdler is not who Trump voters—those in agricultural and manufacturing and resource industries, those who actively railed against the wealthy elites who have profited off their labor without letting it trickle down—thought they were getting when they chanted to “drain the swamp, drain the swamp.” Puzder is closely aligned with Mitt Romney and advised him on his economic plan—the exact sort of plan which has led to increasing income inequality.
Which means that it’s unlikely that Puzder — whose own beliefs about labor and the economy — will pass policies and support programs as the Labor Secretary which represent either the good or the will of the people. But unfortunately, unlike your shittiest boss, it’s going to be a lot harder to clock out and get away from him.
