The entire point was that as a small franchise owner he has to work 24/7 on the clock every day of the week due to the company off-loading all of the risk and issues onto the owner. You don't see a problem with a company mandating that their employees work every single hour of every single day?
That's not the entire point of being a small franchise owner at all. He is allowed to have and has employees. He is supposed to run a schedule of them to keep the business staffed around the clock. That doesn't mean he has to personally be there for every single hour that it's open! How absurd.
>off-loading all of the risk and issues onto the owner.
There is no offloading of all risk and issues to the business owner. All risk and issues are already inherently the owners. That's what it means to be a business owner. It's how they earn their share of the venture. If things work out you can earn a lot more money than as an employee. If things don't then you crash and burn. That's what you signed up for when you created or bought a business.
>You don't see a problem with a company mandating that their employees work every single hour of every single day?
Sure I do. That's in no way what happened here though. He isn't the employee of 7 Eleven. He is a business owner who has leased their brand in exchange for agreeing to certain terms. He gets more customers because people trust that his business, as a 7 Eleven, will be open all of the time and in exchange he has to be open all of the time. And again, they don't want him personally there 24/7. Just his business open.
An article that was posted to HN last year [1] profiled several convenience store franchise holders who, it sounded like, weren't making enough money to afford employees.
After all, if your country has 1.5 jobs per job seeker, raising wages; and you're only making $20 an hour of sales on the overnight shift, you're going to be losing money on that shift.
Of course, you might argue that a business that marginal should just close down - but if you spent $$$$ setting up, stocking and advertising the store, which might have seemed a good investment before another store opened nearby cutting into your sales, the decision to close down might not be an easy one.
It also says that 7-11 has an "area-dominant strategy" where, essentially, having a high density of franchise stores is their business strategy. That's in contrast to many franchises that include an area of exclusive territory, so there's one successful franchise rather than two struggling ones.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/27/national/behind...
So what, we should adjust the laws, break the contracts and make everyone else jump hoops around him and give him special treatment because he has to make a difficult decision? This is not kindergarten, this is business.
That's their whole shtick. If the owner didn't like it he could have opened a normal grocery store. No one forced him to go to 7-11.
The issue isn't necessarily that they're open 24/7. It's that they offload all of the risk and management of that onto their franchises. If a local 7-Eleven has trouble hiring people to work late night shifts, then the expectation is that the owner is supposed to work it 24/7. You MUST be open 24/7 every single day of the year and as the article demonstrates, shutting down for even a day means losing everything.
I'm not surprised to see people on HN defend such incredibly hostile and toxic work environments, but I am disappointed. Why don't you try working such hours and see how things work out for you and your family?
Yes, that's how franchises work, if they have a requirement in the franchise agreement, you have to keep it. If you don't like it, don't buy the franchise.