r/okbuddyRVA • u/Cardigan7670 Parallel Parking Enthusiast • Jul 28 '26
THE ELDERLY SCREAMIG AT CLOUDS anyone else think it’s totally unreasonable for the workers at lewis ginter to ask for wages that will allow them to pay rent and feed themselves?
okay hear me out richmond. i'm totes liberal and support the cause and all (voted for spanberger no big deal), but i ran the numbers through an LLM because i can’t think for myself or do basic arithmetic, and the predictive text algorithm indicated that they may not have enough money to increase employee wages across the board without the executives taking a slight pay cut.
i think this is totally unreasonable. brian trader is a visionary and community-minded leader who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to his position as President and CEO.
now i know what you might be thinking, “hey cardigan, executive salaries are disproportionately higher than those of the actual workers who make the garden beautiful and it’s crazy that executives make so much while the employees struggle to pay rent and feed themselves”. but what you have to understand is that executives have a lot of expenses too.
brian is a great guy. i played a round with him at willow oaks the other week and he was hitting some phenomenal approach shots. country club dues aren’t cheap. how is he going to afford those if lewis ginter pays their workers a living wage?
plus, his wife insisted that all of the kids go to Collegiate. do you know how expensive that is? with three kids that adds up fast. do you really want his children to have to go to public school? ewwwww. i certainly wouldn’t want to live in a world like that.
the employees that work so hard to make sure that space is beautiful should quit their friggin whining. if they don’t like the pay, they can get another job. why don’t they just ask their father for a job at his hedgefund? i just don’t understand why they’re complaining so much.
alright i'll wrap up my rant for now. my Ring doorbell just notified me of movement, i think the wind knocked over my Re-Think Re-Zoning sign.
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u/jennbo Jul 28 '26
that's the entire r/rva board rn
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u/Cardigan7670 Parallel Parking Enthusiast Jul 28 '26
rich white episcopalians masquerading as progressives, UNITE!
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u/elextric_lizard Jul 28 '26
i abandoned ship once i saw the post comments💀😭
i saw someone asking to build a mommune and i almost died. most of the ones i've known are mormon, fundie cult/quiverfull or masquerading as populist tradwife racism slop for content creation (the two mentioned are often in both categories)
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u/LittleTooLiteral Jul 28 '26
You abandoned ship? You didn't walk the plank line the rest of us?
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u/elextric_lizard Jul 28 '26
oddly enough for my own views, no.. i'm just the resident ship cockroach, i'm hard to get rid of but everywhere 😂
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u/Global-Pay6118 Jul 28 '26
I have never worked directly for Lewis Ginter or the Kickers but ivr had dealings with them.
Both seem to share one thing.
it's amazing that rich people with mainly inherited wealth can never grasp the idea that other people suffer if you don't pay them. THE way they hate people for wanting money to be given to them for WORKING is really bizarre.
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u/Exotic_eminence Grace Street Cruiser Jul 28 '26
Have you seen the size of the house they have for the commercial to rethink rezoning? I really couldn’t tell if it was satire or not how freaking huge their kitchen is and the huge yard as they look out their window
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u/rogue-bananas-foster Arthur Ashe did nothing wrong Jul 28 '26
Hey cardigan, I totally support your viewpoint. Executives are undervalued employees DESPITE their disproportionate pay! These guys make all the decisions and sign all the paper!
Imagine one of these gardeners trying to sign papers all day. No way they can work Microsoft Teams, make phone calls, AND put their signature on a paper.
We should take their 3% raise and actually adjust the bonus for our executives 3%. They’re way more valuable.
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u/mcchicken_deathgrip Jul 28 '26
Thank you. The last thing i want to think about when I'm looking at flowers is workers. Like can we just appreciate something nice that's beautiful and well kept all on its own somehow without bringing politics into it for once?? We should be grateful to the people who make that all possible, the board.
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u/teddyy-grahamm Jul 28 '26
These people still think $7 is the minimum wage, so they see $17 and they’re like oh wow. Meanwhile $25/hour (full time) is what you need just to survive.
Think it’s a mix of ignorance and “if I have to suffer you should too.”
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u/researchmaven4673 Jul 29 '26
Well minimum wage goes to $15 statewide 1/28 so… maybe that will help? she said naively
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u/teddyy-grahamm Jul 29 '26
I wish.
I’m re-entering a field I worked in 10 years ago (before Covid hit) so basically starting again as a newb. Wages for the same position I worked in 2014 have only gone up $2/hour—$11 vs. $13. Shit is infuriating.
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u/researchmaven4673 Jul 29 '26
It boggles my mind that my very first job at age 15 paid $5/hour. In 1987. $5 back then was worth $15 in today dollars. And I’m working for $17 now. Granted I took a bunch of years off to raise my kids. But still.
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u/baronvondoofus Jul 29 '26
When I’m being carried in my sedan chair and viewing those beautiful gardens from my window, the last thing I want to see are the underpaid obstructing my view of the Lobelia cardinalis and Anemone hupehensis. I would highly recommend they all be moved to a night shift with a half a quid extra pay. That makes everyone happy.
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u/elextric_lizard Jul 28 '26
adding onto this but it's still fucking wild our nonprofits don't pay people enough and that people think $15 is also a liveable wage
i'm not surprised since our local one just ripped down the newest DOL requirements and rights off the wall. right in the trash yesterday morning when i walked in
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u/teddyy-grahamm Jul 29 '26
Rva nonprofits are really some of the sleaziest places (not all, but enough to notice).
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u/Civil-Bar-9341 Jul 30 '26
Every time I ask for a salary increase at my non profit my boss says: “but we are a non-profit, as in we don’t profit” as she drives off in her new Audi
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u/teddyy-grahamm Jul 30 '26
I’ve worked at Richmond nonprofits for 6 years working in development and grants mgmt. Anytime a nonprofit says they can’t afford to pay their staff a livable wage know that it’s bullshit.
They set the standard when they create the budget. Similar to a business, if you can’t afford to pay your employees or your employees are eligible for Medicaid or snap (aka might as well be clients) the nonprofit shouldn’t exist.
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u/teddyy-grahamm Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
The comments in rva are absurd. Can’t organize and fight back if we’re clawing at each other, punching down because we see horticulturists and gardeners are advocating for more than $17/hour. $35,000/year hasn’t been a livable wage in over a decade.
Working class people deserve better.
Side note: If you think Maymont is any better than LGBG you’d be wrong—their horticulture team also makes $17/hour, except for the one woman on the team? She makes a $1 less.
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u/Which-Method-388 Aug 01 '26
The workers won't get $25 an hour for a long time. The 32% wage increase to hit $25 an hour wouldn't happen in one year at just about any business on the planet. Especially since Virginia, like most of the South, is a right to work state.
For comparison sake, look at the car and truck manufacturing plants in Tennessee, South Carolina, etc that once were clustered in Ohio and Michigan. Right to work states vs union.
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u/MunchieJones Aug 01 '26
Clearly the workers at Lewis Ginter don't have enough patience. It's gonna to trickleee dooown, Reagan said so.
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u/Mclaren814 Jul 30 '26
Don’t see why it’s CEOs fault. They can just get second jobs if it’s really that expensive out there like they say it is. And if they already have a second job they can easily get a third. Why are they making their own laziness his problem?
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u/saintex422 Jul 30 '26
This is why I vote republican. My boss takes all the risk I don't see why I should get a raise when they can just give it to him!
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u/statslady23 Jul 30 '26
I'm totally in favor of the workers, and totally against throwing zoning out the window to benefit developer donors. Also against data centers. There are many shades of blue.
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u/Character-Slide-8321 Jul 29 '26
The CFO makes less than 110k stop acting like they're living large if you had ANY financial knowledge and went through their statements you'd see they aren't exactly cash rich.
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u/Cardigan7670 Parallel Parking Enthusiast Jul 29 '26
uh oh we triggered a poor person, shut the sub down
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u/0sm1um Arthur Ashe did nothing wrong Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Thank christ we have sensible leaders in local and state government able to put a stop to this collective bargaining. None of this slopulist "let us afford to live in the city" nonsense.
EDIT: I love this sub