Why is everything in consumer / American life so fucking shitty now - and companies literally just say 'oh bc profit margins' and we're now expected to swallow that and sympathize?
like I went to taco bell and they didn't even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don't get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.
I think it's less that we're expected to sympathize, and more just that they've realized enough people will tolerate it. With OP's example, Taco Bell has clearly decided that whatever business they may lose due to people deciding to not go to Taco Bell anymore because of the lack of napkins will be less than whatever they save by not stocking napkins anymore.
And they're right.
Don't get me wrong, it's a shitty thing to do, but between people in general not realizing that this place doesn't even have napkins anymore, and people deciding they still want semi-delicious garbage tacos anyway, they're really not going to see a big dip in revenue. They've simply realized that they really can just make their presented experience a little shittier just to save some money.
Well first off have Taco Bell stopped providing napkins? One person couldn't find napkins in one store and suddenly it's greed driven corporate policy according to OP?
It seems unlikely that a food chain would completely abolish napkins. It is possible they're no longer freely available because people were taking them "for their car" whatever that even means!?
Perhaps I should have clarified that for the sake of discussion I was taking OP's comment at face value, but the essentials are the same either way. Whether it's a chain-wide declaration that napkins are done, a single store doing away with them, or just a sufficiently casual attitude to restocking them that allowed them to run out in the first place, the math in the end is all the same. They can and will let their service get a little shittier, because they know they'll save more money than they lose.