re: Steak ‘n Shake, throwing serious shade at Cracker Barrel

I believe that instances such as this are symptoms of a larger socioeconomic shift in corporate culture which occurred over time since the 1960’s. C-suite pay has increased by so many more multipliers than median worker pay that they are now too often completely out of touch with their workers and customers.

They aren’t customers themselves nor were they likely ever frontline workers. They have no idea what their customer values about their product. All they know is what their shareholders, accountants, spreadsheets, and consultants tell them. Thus, they see their corporations as merely numbers on a spreadsheet which can simply be adjusted up or down by pushing levers. That may be how corporations are quantified or analyzed, but that is NOT what they are.

Corporations are living breathing entities made up of real people with goals, dreams, passions, and ideas coming together for a common purpose. They have a symbiotic relationship with their customers, venders, and partners. They create a product or service to improve people’s lives, entertain them, feed them, comfort them, or enrich them. Once an organization grows too large for its management to comprehend the human enterprise that they are steering, stupid crap like this starts happening. This rule applies not only to restaurants but also to governments, clubs, churches, the arts, entertainment, charities, healthcare, education, and virtually any business or government that has ever existed.