The backlash against large corporations seems especially prevalent among the twentysomething liberal crowd, who harken back to so-called "mom and pop" stores, a quaint euphamism for privately-owned establishments. While I am very liberal in my thinking and of the above-mentioned age group, I for one do not understand the vitriol unleashed against chain stores and corporate restaurants.

We've all heard the arguments trotted out ad infinitum, but it usually comes down to this: Large retail stores drive out smaller businesses, and the listener is supposed to take it as a given that this is a bad thing, though no explanation is ever offered as to why "smaller businesses" should be so revered, or exempt from competition.

But virtually no thought is given nor attention paid to the fallacies of privately-run businesses. (A quick caveat: I am speaking of privately run shops or restaurants, not "enterprises" or "startups" or businesses that are actually incorporated or LLCs, etc, but owned by a local businessperson, which I have actually worked for.)

The notion of a "mom and pop" store is a hopelessly antiquated one. Today's private businesses, at least in urban and suburban areas, are rarely actually run by the cheerful couple who knows your dog's name and has close personal bonds with the surrounding community, which is the image conjured by most upon hearing the phrase. Private establishments are generally run by people who are, above all else, businesspeople. They understand how to crunch numbers and worry about profit margins, but they have little understanding of how the business operates on a day-to-day level, nor do they particularly care. As long as the money flows in accordance with their expectations, most choose not to even be present at their place of business, choosing instead of offload the bulk of daily oversight to managers they hire. In short, they are almost completely detached from the business itself -- it functions for them as a milchcow, and how it does so is of little concern to them.

In a corporate-controlled restaurant, for example, almost everyone on the chain of command was a waiter or cook at some point, and while they may today be managers, they understand the intracacies of being on the front lines, and adjust their expectations accordingly. There are specific guidelines laid out for all employees, tuned from a large sample size (all the branches and franchises) so that the guidelines, while never perfect, do have tried-and-true rationales behind them.

But in a privately-owned restaurant, the owner is likely someone who has never actually waited tables, knows little to nothing about employee-customer interactions beyond what they've read in textbooks, and drafts policies and procedures that conform to their personal tastes and expectations rather than what actually works for all. While they may have the ability to work the books, they do not have the experience necessary to create a positive environment for either customer or employee, nor do they feel they should have to solicit recommendations from their underlings ("I'll run things my way!" is the unspoken thought).

This has a great potential to spell doom for employees of this establishment, who are at the whim of a person who understands almost nothing about the restaurant industry, but had the capital at their disposal to purchase one. This is not always a bad thing, but it is far from being a universally good thing either. Some are naturally predisposed to give the employees the authority to do whatever it takes to get the job done, and this is to be lauded, but by and large, owners of private restaurants do not fall into this mindset. They prefer to lord over their establishment with no understanding of how their decisions affect customers or employees, often with detrimental effects.

A personal anecdote: I was recently dismissed from my server position at a privately-run restaurant (you've probably guessed this already), which was basically just an evening-and-weekend job for me to bring in some extra money while I attend classes. I worked there for three or four days with no problems with the customers, employees, or managers. On the final day, the owner finally made an appearance, and before I could even introduce myself by name, dismissed me on the spot because my shirt collar was the standard dress-shirt style rather than the Oxford style. In other words, the owner fired me -- having never met me, having no idea of my performance -- because my shirt collar did not have buttons. (To stave off the inevitable objection: No, I was not told about this before my dismissal -- only that my shirt had to be solid white, which it was.)

This is the folly of many private establishments: Decisions are made that have no rational basis and, more importantly, no bearing on the function of the business; they are arbitrarily handed down based only on the owner's personal vision, an owner who, as noted, usually has no idea of how their business operates on a day-to-day level. In my short time at this restaurant I observed a number of problems which could be handled to increase efficiency, decrease costs at least to some extent, and generally make it a more pleasant environment to work in, which is important, as a satisfied staff leads to satisfied customers. Yet the owner was more concerned with irrelevencies that had nothing to do with customer satisfaction or the smooth function of the restaurant, unless one wishes to contend that a customer would even notice, much less care about, his waiter's collar style. The owner was happy so far as her capricious preferences were met, while the rest of the staff quite literally operated in abject fear of her arrivals.

And so we come back to the issue: Are privately owned establishments really better for the community? The customer may, for whatever reason, feel good about supporting locals, but the customer may also suffer from a lower quality of service due to a command structure inexperienced in actual customer service and wholly ignorant of how their business operates beyond the raw numbers of cost and income. Meanwhile, the employees, who are also part of the community, are subject entirley to the owner's mood and discretion rather than having a preplanned, tested set of guidelines for their performance. Is it better for the community to have a business that constantly turns employees over, resulting in unemployment?

It is all too easy to snub Wal Mart, to use another example, for being a corporate behemoth that crushes local shops underfoot, but a Wal Mart has the financial wherewithal to employee dozens more people than a local shop could reasonably hope to support. It comes down to a corporate-owned store than can provide jobs for many in the community, versus a locally-run store than can provide jobs for only a few (assuming they don't get axed because their shoes have too many eyelets or something). Which is better for the community, in the long run -- one local business owner making a living plus a few more that they can afford to pay, or a few dozen doing so by working at Wal Mart?

Like bickering about computer operating systems, it is eventually understood that all the choices suck, just in different ways. A corporate-controlled chain store may be cold and infeeling to the local community, but when it comes time to buy laundry detergent and light bulbs, no one really cares about such abstractations. And a locally-owned business might induce a sense of community bond, but when others in the community can't find a job or are fired without reason, one wonders what difference such a bond makes, especially when it really only exists as a 1950s ideal of "mom and pop" that has no relationship to how things are done today.

Each has advantages and drawbacks, but the notion that privately-owned businesses are inherently better in some unqualified way is a ludicrous one, and it's time to stop making such sweeping statements which amount to little more than slogan-chanting.