If it weren’t for Covid they wouldn’t have even thought of work from home. These are lazy fu**s who think they’re entitled to rare pandemic situations year-round. Guess what?! Pandemic is ending and it’s back to work lazy fu**ers!!
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
The building was full before the pandemic. So… what’s your excuse?
I work at a shi**y job that sometimes doesn’t pay me and I’m reading about corporate APPLE EMPLOYEES complaining that they can’t work from bed!!!
I would give up my job in a second to work inside Apple Park!! Imagine how much more a miner, a landscaper or slave in Africa would want to work in that “terrible” air-conditioned place called Apple Park!!
If one thing The pandemic has taught us. Companies can run and operate the admin side remotely.
It has broken down barriers that “butts have to be in seats in the office to be productive” ok boomer…. and now that the cat is out of the bag. Workers have come to realize commutes and being crammed in an office…just isn’t worth it. Good on the 10 people who have stood up and started the hard conversation and good on those giving them publicity.
What they are doing embodies the American fighting spirit. Just because you didn’t/don’t have the balls to have a hard conversation and fight for better working conditions doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. Just makes you sound like the typical boomer who is a 9-5 clock milker who doesn’t even know how to write an email without calling the help desk.
The typical boomer -
“My life has sucked for the last 20 years and I did nothing about it. Nor did I evolve with technology.” Then proceeds to call everyone entitled and snowflakes for trying to enact change and evolve the workplace and environment to something modern that has been starring them in the face. They just refuse to listen. Because it wasn’t their idea.
Good response, except these people aren’t limited to boomers. The toxic rhetoric you’re talking about is instilled in people from younger generations. Does it come from boomers? Maybe. But it’s more an issue of “that’s just the way things are” thinking. Appeal to tradition. It’s a logical fallacy all on its own without needing to resort to generational warfare.
Generational blame doesn’t help any of us. There are plenty of young people participating in the systems they were acculturated to by their predecessors. We need to dismantle those systems, not make enemies of the people who inherited them.
Not everyone has the emotional & intellectual constitution to be an activist. Not everyone has the space in their lives & spare energy for it. Most people are held down by toxic systems and the effort to just subsist is already too much.
Sounds like some whining babies. Why is AppleInsider even reporting on this? It is an insignificant story. Poor journalism.
I disagree, it’s actually a very interesting and timely story. The morale at a company affects quality and employee turnover. I side with Apple that they should go back to the office, if Apple is indeed offering some hybrid option it is more than generous. Regarding the comments about the employee with ADA requirements, that is troubling if they are not treated correctly. Possible lawsuit waiting to happen.
When 10 people out of a workforce of over 150,000 threaten to quit because they can’t work from home it’s not evidence of any “morale” or “quality” issues.
And there is no “ADA requirement” that states someone can automatically work from home. What the ADA requires is for employers to make reasonable accommodations. I find it hard to believe that someone has a disability that Apple, a $2.5 trillion company, can’t accommodate at its $5 billion building.
This so-called article provides no information about what disability Apple allegedly can’t or won’t accommodate, nor does it identify what department these people work in. All 10 could be janitorial staff as far as we know.
This is a story about nothing.
You, not being in these workers’ places, don’t have all the information necessary to make these declarations.
I’ve worked in toxic places and been that one person who stands up and says “no, wait a minute”. Being a singular example does not mean there was only one example of discontent. I was one of many, but I was the only one in that case who was daring enough to speak up. Of course I was driven out, but that speaks only to the extreme power disparity between employer and employee and NOTHING about what the overall working environment is like.
That there are even TEN people willing to stand firm suggests to me that they’re either in a good position to gamble with losing, or that there is a LOT MORE discontent than those willing to stand up and be noticed.
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
Nobody here is anti worker. We are actual workers who go to our actual jobs and do actual work beyond answering phones and making presentations. Most of us worked straight through the pandemic, not having the option to hide at home and work. So forgive us if we have little patience for someone who wants to work from home when most of us just don’t have that option.
This is *exactly* what I’m talking about. It’s not about YOU. Read my last paragraph again. Take the chip off your shoulder. I hated how my employers treated me, too, but that doesn’t make me expect or demand *everyone else* also be treated just as poorly as I was. Raise the bar for everyone.
Your comments remind me of people who hate on the idea of college loan forgiveness because they paid off their loans already and hate that someone else might get some benefit they themselves didn’t get.
Your statements say it all!
I, for one, NEVER hated how my employers treated me... not once! It was my choice to work for the company, I worked well and always did my utmost to ensure the company did not regret hiring me. Because of that attitude, I was always treated well and paid well. Try being appreciative for the job you have and stop feeling so "entitled".
As for college loan forgiveness - Terrible idea! If you decided to take on burdensome loans to get your education, why should anybody other than you pay the piper? Authority and responsibility are not mutually exclusive, they are inextricably intertwined.
Lots of woke Snowflakes at Apple and all these tech companies. They need to see what other people have to endure to make a living.
FFS, stop throwing around the word “woke” when it has absolutely no contextual relevance (or meaning) to the subject matter.
It goes with the territory. ‘Woke’ people live in a bubble of deluded self-entitlement believing they can see beyond their contemporaries whilst actually being obviously manipulated by their desperation for self-determination and their defiance of pre-determination. The wolves control the sheep by tricking them into believing they are the wolves.
There are none so asleep as those who believe they are ‘Woke’.
That’s a lot of colorful expression and philosophizing. What does it actually say? Without specifics, all I can get from this is that you’re just as mindlessly taken in by some kind of “wolf” wanting you to see yourself as one of the wolves.
In fact, that could even be projection: people who want to see themselves as part of the power structure tend to help those in power punch downward at those suing for equity.
Just as the people who you’re judging, perhaps you are living in a bubble... what you want to see as your place in society.
Your monolithic characterizations of other people whose existence you do not understand and with whom you cannot empathize... it’s just a form of dehumanizing the enemy; turning opponents or undesirables into an “other”.
Throwing around words like “woke”, “self-entitled”, and “snowflake”... this is usually the language of those trying to justify a culture or systems from which they themselves benefit (or believe they benefit), because of personal self interest and fear of change.
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
So paragraph 1 accuses other readers of being assumptive. Paragraphs 2,3&4 grace us with your assumptions. Paragraph 5 is your summary & advice based on those assumptions. You’re a politician aren’t you.
You’re correct that I made assumptions. The appalling callousness towards workers here put me into an emotional knee-jerk mode, of which I’m not proud. I stand by my distaste for the anti-worker sentiment.
After Covid there's going to be a lot of highly skilled people that realize that they can get as much or more work done from home without a lot of the stress or the hassle. A lot of smart companies are going to realize they can get some really talented people by going along with it, and saving costs by not having to pay for expensive offices. Is Apple one of those smart companies? Time will tell.
We came out the other side pretty quickly here in NZ but most companies employed a hybrid attendance model. Our lockdown was a lot shorter so behaviours will be different but the takeaways are;
1) Most people miss the office vibe. 2) Whilst WFH can be beneficial for focus on some tasks the lack of incidental interaction stifles innovation. 3) WFH days result in longer work hours & remote working tech basically puts everyone ‘on-call’ without compensation. 4) Excessive WFH has been culturally destructive especially around employee engagement & retention; it takes a relationship to get through challenges & WFH dilutes that relationship.
These people should be careful what they wish for.
Interesting. These sound like believable claims, but I’d like to see data. Do you have sources to cite on these conclusions?
I would hazard a guess that it very much depends on the work, the individual workers, and their situations. I know gregarious and extroverted people enjoy an office workspace. I know introverts largely despise the same workspaces.
I agree that work-from-home CAN be risky for life/work balance, as one of the closest people in my life works in a non-profit for environmental justice.
Her partner thrives on being busy and constantly doing the work. She does not. Her partner spends way too much time on work and fails at some of the basics of life management (home maintenance & order, relationships, self-care). She spends way too much time avoiding the work because of procrastination and focus issues. I’m amazed they still have their non-profit, but they DO actually get funded and have organized some community wins against corporate polluters. It works, but it’s toxic on a personal level. It’s hard to convince a workaholic that their way is bad when they feel they’re getting things done.
So, yeah, it’s entirely believable that WFH can be disastrous for some people. I just don’t think the lesson to take from it is “WFH is inevitably bad for most people”.
Lots of woke Snowflakes at Apple and all these tech companies. They need to see what other people have to endure to make a living.
The entitled of today don't seem to be able to look beyond their own little selves, and for that I pity them.
I suppose this is what you get when a generation or two have been deprived of exposure to world history, not to mention the concept of gratitude.
I hope you are not a member of the baby boom generation who left the succeeding generations the legacy of climate change, messed up international geopolitics, corporate takeover of the national agenda, the erosion of democracy, and Trumpism.
I can't think of a more sure fire way to get congress to look at a company for anti-trust enforcement than to treat its employees like this.
Really? Like not even something that actually has anything to do with anti-trust regulation?
Also, how do you tell your customers that your tech has awesome security but then not trust it enough to allow your own employees to work remotely? Eat your own dog foods
After Covid there's going to be a lot of highly skilled people that realize that they can get as much or more work done from home without a lot of the stress or the hassle. A lot of smart companies are going to realize they can get some really talented people by going along with it, and saving costs by not having to pay for expensive offices. Is Apple one of those smart companies? Time will tell.
Of course not. Apple spent an obscene amount of money on what is ultimately an utterly ridiculous office building. Now they're afraid that it won't be fully occupied, and they're apparently willing to fire talented engineers because of it.
The reality is that programming computers is not now and has never been something that requires someone to be physically present in an office building more than a few times a year - and those are for the release party. Apple has had the capability of handling remote staff for 30 years, I know of at least one person on the original QuickTime team who worked halfway across the country from Infinite Loop for most of the beta cycle.
And the idiotic 'spaceship' is one of the worst wastes of space in an area that needs high density real estate development that I've ever seen. "We have solar panels on the roof" - but think about how much more energy efficient a 90 story building on the same property would have been, and they could have powered it from a field of solar in a desert a few hundred miles east.
After Covid there's going to be a lot of highly skilled people that realize that they can get as much or more work done from home without a lot of the stress or the hassle. A lot of smart companies are going to realize they can get some really talented people by going along with it, and saving costs by not having to pay for expensive offices. Is Apple one of those smart companies? Time will tell.
Of course not. Apple spent an obscene amount of money on what is ultimately an utterly ridiculous office building. Now they're afraid that it won't be fully occupied, and they're apparently willing to fire talented engineers because of it.
The reality is that programming computers is not now and has never been something that requires someone to be physically present in an office building more than a few times a year - and those are for the release party. Apple has had the capability of handling remote staff for 30 years, I know of at least one person on the original QuickTime team who worked halfway across the country from Infinite Loop for most of the beta cycle.
And the idiotic 'spaceship' is one of the worst wastes of space in an area that needs high density real estate development that I've ever seen. "We have solar panels on the roof" - but think about how much more energy efficient a 90 story building on the same property would have been, and they could have powered it from a field of solar in a desert a few hundred miles east.
I was unaware that everyone who works for Apple is a software engineer.
If your team is 100% comprised of software engineers then perhaps there's a reasonable argument for WFH for that team. Everyone speaks the language, understands the technical jargon of the trade, and everything they produce is electronic in nature. But Apple is made up of people with many different skill sets and disciplines that need to communicate with each other effectively and harmoniously. Even in an on-site work environment that's not always easy. In a cross discipline team we frequently need to restate and reword what say several times in order to get someone with an entirely different skill set to understand what is being said. Physically being there, with body language and all, chalk boards at the ready, makes a big difference. Maybe one day holographic technology will be good enough that we can stand in virtual rooms together and see each other in those rooms like in Star Wars. But we're not there yet.
Regarding the spaceship, you may or may not be aware that Steve Jobs was one of the biggest proponents of commingling employees so that chance meetings between people could take place that would encourage and nurture creativity. This philosophy was embodied in the design of the Pixar building and no doubt Apple Park, which was chock full of creative types. If you're lucky you might be able to tour the building one day you may learn something about human interactions and how human beings work together effectively.
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
Nobody who is and works to become an expert only works 40 hours a week. If you're lucky and skilled enough to live well enough, the pros put in at least another 20 hours a week honing their skills and knowledge.
There is this story about pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Elderly, he was asked after a master class how much he practiced. He said he was old now and couldn't practice as much as he wanted. He was only able to practice 9 hours a day.
Nobody who is and works to become an expert only works 40 hours a week. If you're lucky and skilled enough to live well enough, the pros put in at least another 20 hours a week honing their skills and knowledge.
Truer words have never been spoken, especially if you work in a technology field that is always changing, like software product and system development. When I say that employees are “in it for themselves” I don’t mean that in a selfish way, I mean it in a self-preservation way. The best thing you can do for your career and job security is to always be investing in yourself which means staying on the learning curve and honing both your hard skills and your soft skills. There are times when employers do invest in people, which is all fine and good, but it’s never universal, never continuous, and almost never focused on areas that are outside of the employers own highly focused business needs.
You should always act as if your only real “job security” is your ability to get another job by remaining marketable at all times by investing in yourself. Things like loyalty and tenure and years of employment with the same company, or thoughts that your boss “really likes you” aren’t worth a dime when they hand you a pink slip. Your BFF boss isn’t being mean, disloyal, or screwing you over when he or she hands you a pink slip, they are simply doing their job, which is placing the needs of the business ahead of the needs of individuals. Business is business. Cold hard reality sucks if you are not prepared to deal with it. Be prepared.
One point that I’d add to this situation with Apple and its employees, something that most of us here have no stake in, is to avoid taking a hard line stand on what is happening today versus what will happen in the longer term. A lot of the things that are being discussed are based on breaking norms that have been established over long periods of time. Just as smart employees evolve and grow over time, smart businesses evolve and change over time.
When I first started working as an engineer we had to wear a jacket and tie to work every day. I also had to contend with coworkers who smoked in the office. Over time we started having things like “business casual dress Fridays” and had dedicated smoking rooms (cancer wards) instead of open smoking in the office. Within a couple or few years we were full casual, shorts and T-shirts allowed, smokers were banished to the great outdoors, and we even had things like lactation rooms and quiet rooms. These are just a few examples, but change does happen, perhaps too slowly for some, but it does happen.
The fact that Apple is still allowing for hybrid working conditions where it makes business sense tells me that change can and will happen over time and with more understanding of how such changes impact employees and the business. But never forget that the needs of the business always come first and individual employees always need to invest in themselves in case they need to find a new business to ply their trade.
Be thankful that Apple does not outsource as much work to India like all the other tech companies. WFH is going to backfire when the MBAs figure out that you can cut costs by laying off Americans and letting people from home in India, Vietnam, El Salvador..
Comments
Your language usage (and offhand callousness) suggests an anti-rural bias. What’s wrong with wanting to live free from urban sprawl?
It’s fairly well-reported in health studies that dense/urban environments are unhealthy for many (if not all) living beings.
If it weren’t for Covid they wouldn’t have even thought of work from home. These are lazy fu**s who think they’re entitled to rare pandemic situations year-round. Guess what?! Pandemic is ending and it’s back to work lazy fu**ers!!
I work at a shi**y job that sometimes doesn’t pay me and I’m reading about corporate APPLE EMPLOYEES complaining that they can’t work from bed!!!
I would give up my job in a second to work inside Apple Park!! Imagine how much more a miner, a landscaper or slave in Africa would want to work in that “terrible” air-conditioned place called Apple Park!!
Good response, except these people aren’t limited to boomers. The toxic rhetoric you’re talking about is instilled in people from younger generations. Does it come from boomers? Maybe. But it’s more an issue of “that’s just the way things are” thinking. Appeal to tradition. It’s a logical fallacy all on its own without needing to resort to generational warfare.
Generational blame doesn’t help any of us. There are plenty of young people participating in the systems they were acculturated to by their predecessors. We need to dismantle those systems, not make enemies of the people who inherited them.
Not everyone has the emotional & intellectual constitution to be an activist. Not everyone has the space in their lives & spare energy for it. Most people are held down by toxic systems and the effort to just subsist is already too much.
https://youtu.be/MNH0bmYT7os
You, not being in these workers’ places, don’t have all the information necessary to make these declarations.
I’ve worked in toxic places and been that one person who stands up and says “no, wait a minute”. Being a singular example does not mean there was only one example of discontent. I was one of many, but I was the only one in that case who was daring enough to speak
up. Of course I was driven out, but that speaks only to the extreme power disparity between employer and employee and NOTHING about what the overall working environment is like.
That there are even TEN people willing to stand firm suggests to me that they’re either in a good position to gamble with losing, or that there is a LOT MORE discontent than those willing to stand up and be noticed.
That sounds quite authoritarian. That’s not what the USA was founded for.
I, for one, NEVER hated how my employers treated me... not once! It was my choice to work for the company, I worked well and always did my utmost to ensure the company did not regret hiring me. Because of that attitude, I was always treated well and paid well. Try being appreciative for the job you have and stop feeling so "entitled".
As for college loan forgiveness - Terrible idea! If you decided to take on burdensome loans to get your education, why should anybody other than you pay the piper? Authority and responsibility are not mutually exclusive, they are inextricably intertwined.
That’s a lot of colorful expression and philosophizing. What does it actually say? Without specifics, all I can get from this is that you’re just as mindlessly taken in by some kind of “wolf” wanting you to see yourself as one of the wolves.
In fact, that could even be projection: people who want to see themselves as part of the power structure tend to help those in power punch downward at those suing for equity.
Just as the people who you’re judging, perhaps you are living in a bubble... what you want to see as your place in society.
Your monolithic characterizations of other people whose existence you do not understand and with whom you cannot empathize... it’s just a form of dehumanizing the enemy; turning opponents or undesirables into an “other”.
Throwing around words like “woke”, “self-entitled”, and “snowflake”... this is usually the language of those trying to justify a culture or systems from which they themselves benefit (or believe they benefit), because of personal self interest and fear of change.
You’re correct that I made assumptions. The appalling callousness towards workers here put me into an emotional knee-jerk mode, of which I’m not proud. I stand by my distaste for the anti-worker sentiment.
I would hazard a guess that it very much depends on the work, the individual workers, and their situations. I know gregarious and extroverted people enjoy an office workspace. I know introverts largely despise the same workspaces.
I agree that work-from-home CAN be risky for life/work balance, as one of the closest people in my life works in a non-profit for environmental justice.
Her partner thrives on being busy and constantly doing the work. She does not. Her partner spends way too much time on work and fails at some of the basics of life management (home maintenance & order, relationships, self-care). She spends way too much time avoiding the work because of procrastination and focus issues. I’m amazed they still have their non-profit, but they DO actually get funded and have organized some community wins against corporate polluters. It works, but it’s toxic on a personal level. It’s hard to convince a workaholic that their way is bad when they feel they’re getting things done.
So, yeah, it’s entirely believable that WFH can be disastrous for some people. I just don’t think the lesson to take from it is “WFH is inevitably bad for most people”.
Those are also two completely unrelated things.
If your team is 100% comprised of software engineers then perhaps there's a reasonable argument for WFH for that team. Everyone speaks the language, understands the technical jargon of the trade, and everything they produce is electronic in nature. But Apple is made up of people with many different skill sets and disciplines that need to communicate with each other effectively and harmoniously. Even in an on-site work environment that's not always easy. In a cross discipline team we frequently need to restate and reword what say several times in order to get someone with an entirely different skill set to understand what is being said. Physically being there, with body language and all, chalk boards at the ready, makes a big difference. Maybe one day holographic technology will be good enough that we can stand in virtual rooms together and see each other in those rooms like in Star Wars. But we're not there yet.
Regarding the spaceship, you may or may not be aware that Steve Jobs was one of the biggest proponents of commingling employees so that chance meetings between people could take place that would encourage and nurture creativity. This philosophy was embodied in the design of the Pixar building and no doubt Apple Park, which was chock full of creative types. If you're lucky you might be able to tour the building one day you may learn something about human interactions and how human beings work together effectively.
There is this story about pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Elderly, he was asked after a master class how much he practiced. He said he was old now and couldn't practice as much as he wanted. He was only able to practice 9 hours a day.
You should always act as if your only real “job security” is your ability to get another job by remaining marketable at all times by investing in yourself. Things like loyalty and tenure and years of employment with the same company, or thoughts that your boss “really likes you” aren’t worth a dime when they hand you a pink slip. Your BFF boss isn’t being mean, disloyal, or screwing you over when he or she hands you a pink slip, they are simply doing their job, which is placing the needs of the business ahead of the needs of individuals. Business is business. Cold hard reality sucks if you are not prepared to deal with it. Be prepared.
One point that I’d add to this situation with Apple and its employees, something that most of us here have no stake in, is to avoid taking a hard line stand on what is happening today versus what will happen in the longer term. A lot of the things that are being discussed are based on breaking norms that have been established over long periods of time. Just as smart employees evolve and grow over time, smart businesses evolve and change over time.
When I first started working as an engineer we had to wear a jacket and tie to work every day. I also had to contend with coworkers who smoked in the office. Over time we started having things like “business casual dress Fridays” and had dedicated smoking rooms (cancer wards) instead of open smoking in the office. Within a couple or few years we were full casual, shorts and T-shirts allowed, smokers were banished to the great outdoors, and we even had things like lactation rooms and quiet rooms. These are just a few examples, but change does happen, perhaps too slowly for some, but it does happen.
The fact that Apple is still allowing for hybrid working conditions where it makes business sense tells me that change can and will happen over time and with more understanding of how such changes impact employees and the business. But never forget that the needs of the business always come first and individual employees always need to invest in themselves in case they need to find a new business to ply their trade.