The fact that the barber shops and hair salons are so heavily shuttered implies to me that they do not.
Barbers were the origin of doctors and surgery; they became the front line in disease prevention through proper grooming and shit, do people not remember this?
Proper grooming is essential to a healthy society.. kind of telling they want us all to look and feel like homeless bums eh?
Adam Carola has a phrase for it but I can't think of it, basically we've made it so that some of the most important jobs can done by the people with the least amount of common sense. Things like security guards; creators build up a business then let the high school drop outs play gatekeeper to all the successful people trying to access the business.
He says it way better but at the root its virtue signaling.
I've seen this for years and it's getting worse and worse.
My company was trying to tighten up on the budget before all of this. They try to cut labor hours of people actually doing the work. However, for a weekend project needing only 4 people to support the contractors? They have 50 people.
We have people who make HUGE AND COSTLY MISTAKES. Everyone knows this. They're not fired, they're not transferred, they're not demoted.
We're told that once you get to a certain level, you can be fired for saying anything negative about a peer or someone higher up than you.
What benefit does this provide the company?
We have a diversity department in my factory, 5 or 6 people who do nothing but worry about diversity. They promote based on diversity. These people, many of them are fairly competent, struggle to perform because they're pushed through for diversity reasons. These folks are fucked because they don't even get a chance to develop an understanding of the workflow before being put in charge of it.
It's entirely about virtue signalling and empty platitudes. Nobody wants to do the job the best it can be done, it's about making people think they work with are their family, friends, and community. Work is work first and foremost. Friends, family, and community is great outside of work. You do not HIRE or WORK WITH friends or family, any successful person will tell you not to hire friends or family. Those that do, generally are pretty corrupt mother fuckers