NEW YORK CITY – As more frontline workers opt to quit minimum wage jobs that could expose them to COVID, Company CEOs say they are furious that people would simply stay home and “cash benefit cheques” now, instead of in 2-3 years when they figure out how to replace everyone with robots.
“We made a deal, COVID or no COVID” said Matthew Hutton, owner of numerous McDonald’s franchises. “You sign the employment contract, you show up for work every day until I arbitrarily decide to fire you because corporate has developed a new machine that can do your job for free.”
“What are we supposed to do now? Pay more? Don’t be ridiculous,” he added.
Along with calling head office to ask if the robots can be ready sooner, business owners have taken a number of mature approaches to staffing issues, including hanging signs publicly shaming employees who didn’t show up, complaining on Fox News, and asking the government to make employees work for them without considering whether that technically qualifies as indentured servitude.
“I checked and the self-driving pizza delivery cars are at least 4 years away. 5 if we want them to not get into constant accidents,” said the CEO of Dominos. “So in the meantime I need you to show up, do your job, and not ask why we aren’t providing you any PPE.”
Businesses are even willing to make concessions to their suddenly health-conscious employees, including putting real soap in the employee bathroom and giving them as much as 5 minutes off to get a vaccine.
“Look this is a partnership. You need us and we need you. Well mostly we need those robots I keep hearing are coming. But for the time being we need your weak, frail human bodies,” added Hutton.
Congressional Republicans have already leapt into action by calling for the end of COVID benefits that are allegedly keeping people from working as well as deregulating the Three Laws of Robotics down to two in order to speed up production.
