They didn't just not save any money, they flagrantly wasted it.
Let's say a restaurant chain owner fires all his fry cooks without notice. Every restaurant has to either:
1) suddenly 86 fries from the menu. Customers are confused and mad about suddenly having no fries! And it's likely that not all physical/online menus get updated correctly, causing more confusion and anger at waitstaff. "Wait, we removed fries from DoorDash but not UberEats? Shit!" By the way, everyone is trying to cancel the orders of raw french fries that keep coming per the regular deliveries, but nobody has that authority but the chain owner, who refuses to do it. So there's a bunch of bags of raw frozen fries going to waste.
or, the restaurant has to:
2) move some of their other types of cooks to work the fryer. This will mean the cooks' work is slowing down because they have more tasks, and they're not really fry cooks to begin with, so the fries aren't as good. Many cooks are leaving because they can't manage this stress, which means some restaurants are missing their fry cooks AND a regular cook or two.
AND THEN, here is the part you may not know: a month or two after the initial firings, the restaurant chain owner puts out a wanted ad for Fried Potato Technicians.
Wait, you say, that's a wanted ad for fry cooks. Yeah, because the restaurants still need to make fries! The other cooks don't have time to do two full jobs! And the fries have always been a load-bearing part of the menu and everyone knows that!
So now there's either downtime/quality dip in the restaurant's fries, depending on which location you're at, and now they all have to spend time interviewing new fry cooks and doing the background checks and training them up to make the fries per the restaurant recipe, and during that interviewing/paperwork/training time? Not making any fucking fries. Someone is billing time while they make and post the wanted ad, while they review resumes, while they interview prospective hires, while they run background checks, while they train the technicians, who are also billing that time. That is all billed time making 0 fries.
Speaking of whom, they're not going to be the best of the bunch, these new "Fried Potato Technicians". The professional fry cooks all talk to each other and know what the restaurant pulled, and they know there's no job security there. So the fries are getting made again, but by greenhorn newbies with very little past experience and still getting used to the new kitchen.
Is this metaphor working? I'm tired.
