No. I really don’t think so. And yes, “the entire system need to be demolished and recreated from scratch.”

Something remarkable is happening in fast food establishments, retail stores, and restaurants across America. You may have seen photos of it go viral. You may have even experienced it in real life if you’ve dined at a Chili’s or Applebee’s and the hostess apologizes for extra-long wait times.

“WE ALL QUIT, SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE,” disgruntled employees posted in giant letters on a sign outside a Burger King in Lincoln, Nebraska earlier this month. 

“Almost the entire crew and managers have walked out until further notice,” Chipotle workers wrote in Philadelphia on a sign posted on the glass doors of their restaurant. 

“Closed indefinitely because Dollar General doesn’t pay a living wage or treat their employees with respect,” retail workers scribbled in Sharpie outside a Dollar General in Eliot, Maine, after the entire store quit en masse.

In recent months, these mass resignations have been part of a national reckoning over a so-called “labor shortage.” On one hand there are the businesses that want to continue to pay workers what they’ve always made (which is very little). On the other, workers and those who support them say there needs to be a fundamental reassessment of what work looks like in the United States.