Putting a Price on Moral Exhibitionism

Moral exhibitionists are people who make a point out of taking a very public ‘moral’ stands on an issue. This posturing costs them nothing and imposes the burden of paying for their sanctimony on others.

R. McKee

Examples include union organizers who don’t even own a lemonade stand demanding a $15/hr. ‘living wage’. Wealthy leftists demanding action to fight global warming. And Members of Congress who want ‘Medicare for All’ while knowing they will receive gold–plated, no–waiting healthcare.

Those hypocrites are why a recent WoePost story was so refreshing. Aaron Seydeian is refreshing because although he believes in the ‘living wage’ he isn’t expecting Uncle Sam to force someone else to foot the bill.

Seyedian is the founder of Well–Paid Maids.

(The name proves this is his first marketing effort. It’s an inward–directed name and a bit off–putting for customers. It’s like naming your investment firm ‘Fat Commissions Brokerage’ or your personal injury practice ‘Filthy Rich Lawyers.’)

Well–Paid Maids different is because the 31–year–old Seyedian’s firm is “explicitly dedicated to paying a living wage.” And the other benefits aren’t bad either.

“[Aaron] pays the cleaning staff $17 to $19 an hour, which is well above the national median of $11.43 for house cleaners and the D.C.–area median of $13.12. Staffers also get 22 days a year of paid vacation.

“In addition, Seyedian offers a zero-deductible health plan, which costs about $8,000 per worker, and an employer-paid disability plan.”

Seyedian doesn’t Uberize his staff either. Every employee is fulltime. There are no contractors paid by the weight of the dirt in the vacuum cleaner bag. Plus, it’s harder to join his staff than it is to become a cop. Only one out of every 15 applicants is hired.

Seyedian is new to business, and new to tooting his own horn. He said his staff makes about $35,000 a year, but that number is way low.

When you add the monthly cost of a bronze Obamacare plan and its punishing $5,700 deductible, neither of which employees pay, total compensation is closer to $46,232.00.

Why that’s high enough to make an American want the job!

Well–Paid Maids’ total compensation is almost double the $23,770.00 US News calculates is the average salary at Poorly–Paid Maids. According to Career Builder that salary puts one in the same neighborhood as biological technician, licensed practical nurse, mental health counselor or surgical technologist. All occupations that require an advanced degree or training.

Seyedian is one businessman Bernie’s Angel–of–Death–for–Capitalism should pass over.

Naturally the question becomes how much does it cost to have your apartment cleaned by someone that makes more money than you do?

This is where we can finally calculate the exact monetary cost of moral exhibitionism for those few actually willing to let their money back their mouth.

Homeguide calculates the average cost for a maid service to clean a one–bedroom, one–bathroom apartment is “$75 for standard cleaning.” The kind of money won’t get Well–Paid Maids to answer the phone.

The price to have guilt–free cleaning — without what Seyedian calls the “nanny tax” — is $159. Which puts the Moral Exhibitionism Markup at approximately 112 percent. It’s the difference between paying $1.00 at the Dollar Store and $2.12 at the Living Wage Dollar Store.

It would be cheaper to hire a Grievance Studies PhD., assuming they could operate a Hoover.

With those unsustainable rates starring me in the face, I assumed the target market for Well–Paid Maids is billionaires, cabinet secretaries and Meghan Markle, but that’s not true.

Seyedian is looking for “mission–minded customers.”

“Some customers feel uncomfortable that they employ people who don’t make enough money to live on,” Seyedian said. “Since it is not in your power to change the living wage overnight, by us doing this is a way for people to do something voluntarily that is at least in line with their views.”

And it frees cheaper outfits to work people like me into their busy schedule.

Aaron runs the business out of his apartment. He billed $300,000 his first year, $600,000 last year and is hoping to break a million in 2020. His customer base is about 1,500 with 40 percent being repeat clients. After paying all his expenses, Seyedian paid himself $90,000 in 2019.

Aaron’s business might be viable in recession–proof DC, home of the never laid off government ‘worker’, but I have my doubts about potential success in other markets. Still, there is much to admire about building a business model that supports his beliefs without resorting to government coercion.

My only suggestion as a retired marketer, would be to do something about that name.

How about ‘Guilt–Free Cleaning’ or ‘Ticket–to–the–Middle–Class Maids’ or even ‘No Tip Necessary Maids’?

A Leftist and Her Money Are Soon Parted

San Francisco leftists have once again decided to inflict another socialist utopia on an unsuspecting South American nation. What’s more, just like at Jonestown, a popular liquid is playing a prominent role.

This time instead of a male heretic imposing a fanatical religion, we have two women, Helen Russell and Brooke McDonnell, doing orthodox socialist missionary work.

The ladies are owners of Equator Coffee, a trendy gourmet emporium with two San Francisco area locations. The utopia is Finca Sophia a coffee farm owned by the company and located in Panama. The duo has decided to upend traditional coffee–growing practices in favor of importing California thinking, but since the ladies are card–carrying progressives this is not cultural imperialism.

It’s more a 21^st Century White Woman’s burden.

In 2008 Equator flew in another female to manage the operation and got to work. In their view the land had been abused by being “clear cut.” (Local farmers, before the new owners parachuted in, called these treeless areas “fields.”) The new philosophy was planting with “sustainability in mind,” although that doesn’t appear to extend to economics.

The land was replanted with shade trees and a monoculture of Gesha coffee, a variety of bean that can be viewed “legendary” or forgotten, depending on your viewpoint.

Equator’s second break with tradition was coffee itself. Most coffee beans are grown at an altitude of approximately 4,000 feet. The altitude at Finca Sophia is 6,300 feet, which means the plants are as oxygen–starved as a socialist’s brain.

Since coffee and thought processes grow very slowly at that altitude, the new owners decided to occupy their time by upgrading the life of their “indigenous” employees. Equator provided free health care and education for employee families.

Then time passed. Think of it as coffee grown by the postal service. Racing against the 22^nd Amendment, Equator was finally able to bring in it’s first crop before Obama left office. The hand–picked beans, soaked in ideology, were packaged and rushed to California where coffee connoisseurs have an opportunity to savor the social justice at a mere $15 for an 8 oz. cup.

Or if you prefer to risk making your own coffee at home without the supervision of Equator’s “coffee educator,” half a pound will set you back $75.00.

To put this in perspective, the US Navy’s alternative jet fuel — made from snips and snails and puppy dog tails — only costs $150 a gallon, while Equator’s java is $240! At that price you’d think ownership would throw in a free Bernie Sanders bumper sticker, unless Bernie’s voters are the ones pouring the coffee and glaring at people slurping down a whole hour’s pay.

At that price I could have a cup of coffee or lunch, but not both.

Fortunately for Equator, I’m not part of their customer base. According to the SFist, the people who are customers eagerly soak up the Market Street location’s daily allotment. But Equator owners are discovering the best of misguided intentions can’t avoid eventually colliding with reality.

Even at $15 a cup the store is losing money on every pour. And this is while the brew is new and noteworthy.

After the novelty wears off, Equator may discover most customers would prefer to drop a quarter in the UNICEF jar to express social justice solidarity and hold the coffee price to under five bucks a cup — rather than have their wallets recruited by management to support its caffeine Shangri-La.

Equator owners do deserve credit on two fronts: First, for using their own money to subsidize this fantasy and not my tax dollars.

And second, for providing the answer to the question of what’s going to happen if government continues arbitrarily raising wages and increasing benefits without any economic justification. Even $240–a–gallon coffee won’t generate enough revenue to cover the cost.

Walmart Encourages Grinch Accusations

Walmart is a corporation that generates strong opinion. Unions — and their wholly–owned subsidiary the Democrat Party — view Walmart as a rapacious corporation run by brutal overseers whose overriding goal is exploiting the working class.

Many Republican officeholders view Walmart as a corporation run by a bunch of cheap so–and–sos who won’t make large campaign contributions and hire refugees from the Clinton administration.

Unions hold annual protests just prior to Black Friday and attempt to convince millions of shoppers that the largest private employer in the US might have low prices, but it’s only because the corporation harvests employee organs to sell on the black market.

The protests are held nationwide and union employees, rented homeless and liberal voyeurs demand the corporation pay full–time employees a minimum of $25,000 per year. Democrat officeholders show solidarity by attempting to pick the corporation’s pocket with minimum wage laws that give government the power to tell business how much employees should be paid, without government having any responsibility for the bottom line.

It’s vote buying through extortion.

In the Nanny’s Republic of Washington, DC animosity toward Walmart was so high the city council passed a bill amusingly titled the Large Retailer Accountability Act. (I wait in vain for the Bad Leftist Ideas Accountability Act.) The bill would’ve required Walmart to pay 50 percent more than the city’s current minimum wage. In fact the amount was more than the minimum wage the DC government pays its employees!

Fortunately for Walmart shoppers, the mayor vetoed the bill.

So one might ask at a time when Walmart is viewed as a penny–pinching, soulless exploiter of the down–trodden, why would a store manager in Canton, OH arrange a crèche of plastic bins in the breakroom with a sign that read: “Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner.” I suppose it beats letting them dumpster dive, but the optics are bad.

When it comes time for the 2013 Bad Public Relations Ideas nominations, this will be hard to beat. Why not invite Occupy Wall Street to provide entertainment at the next stockholder’s meeting?

This only feeds the narrative of Grinch–like exploitation that the MSM, unions and Democrats work so hard to tattoo on Walmart’s corporate hide.

Even regular Walmart shoppers have mixed emotions. Just thinking about it conjures up associations with domestic drama in the parking lot, unfortunate fashion choices and dangerously high customer BMI.

Who hasn’t experienced that all too common Walmart shopping experience? You can’t find the item you want and you can’t find an employee to direct you to it. (I just assume all the on–duty workers are either manning the cash register or in back passing the hat.)

Even cemeteries have a higher ratio of employees to customers than your average Walmart store.

Which brings us back to: When there is such a cultural divide in opinion regarding your business, why do something that reinforces the negative side?

In fairness to the manager, the charity display was in the employees–only section and not outside next to the Salvation Army kettle, but regardless of location once the media becomes aware the damage is done.

And sure enough, anti–Walmart organizer Norma Mills, quoted on Cleveland.com, observes, “That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage.”

When you compare this to Walmart’s profit in 2012, $17 billion, and the net worth of the Walton family, $144 billion, even the most dedicated shopper can’t help but wonder why the company can’t toss a turkey leg to deserving employees.

Unfortunately, the majority of that profit has been used in recent years to buy back Walmart stock, which is essentially financial onanism that creates nothing and only serves to enhance the value of stock the Walton family owns.

The WaPost had a story about a woman and her daughter who were struggling and homeless much of the time. The Post, as usual, ignores the choice the woman made that created the problem: having an out–of–wedlock child, a sure path to poverty. (This by the way is not blaming the victim. The victim is the child and none of it’s her fault.)

After that bad decision, the woman worked hard to turn her life around. She finally landed a job with the YMCA and found an apartment she could afford on her salary, but she couldn’t save enough for the security deposit.

Management at the Y heard about her problem and instead of asking the towel boys to hold a car wash for her, the Y gave the woman a salary advance and she got the apartment.

In the Cleveland.com story, spokesperson Kory Lundberg defends the company. “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships.” But that is not completely true. It is part of employee culture, not management culture.

According to Lundberg the company has a program called the Associates in Critical Need Trust. Walmart workers can receive grants of up to $1,500.00 to “address hardships they may encounter, including homelessness, serious medical illnesses and major repairs to primary vehicles. Since 2001, grants totaling $80 million have been made.”

Here’s the problem: Walmart takes credit for the charity and the concern, but it’s paid for by payroll deductions from the workers. Walmart needs to stop dunning employees for this money. The corporation should provide all the funding.

That way the company is really buying into Lundberg’s “culture.”

It is simply good business practice for management to demonstrate real concern for the staff. Putting the corporation’s money where the corporate mouthpiece is will go a long way toward blunting future attacks on the company. And that will help everyone — management, employees and stockholders.