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An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

henrytapper.com

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Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#91

Post by jstanley »

wccrawford wrote: post #85
jstanley wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

I think there's a difference between not-tipping and telling the employee you're not going to tip them, especially by some stupid "10 pennies make a dime!" saying, as if the employee wasn't smart enough to know that or save money.

My reading was that that only came up after the employee explicitly asked for a tip.

Otherwise how has he refused to tip "even a single penny"? He's merely failed to do so.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#92

Post by jcadam »

tyingq wrote: post #32
hermitdev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work for, until this month, primarily employed contractors for all development work. When asked why a commonly used utility nearly always segfaulted at exit, response was: it's normal, just ignore it. Part of the reason they are no longer employed by us.

Good for you. And hopefully leaders are held accountable for similar basic skill and quality assumptions. Chewing out your direct reports in public is just amatuer league.

Even better, chewing out a subordinate leader in front of their direct reports. Quickest way to make an enemy for life.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#93

Post by Consultant32452 »

bruceb wrote: post #67
Consultant32452 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you suppose we're selecting East Asian immigrants in a special way compared to other regions?

One need not suppose anything. Look who has a majority of the H1-B visas or who comes here for higher education. Those who are not educated from East Asia can't easily come to the US illegally as those who can cross overland (Mexico and central America) can. Poor Chinese villagers are not boating to America.

How is that significantly different from Western Europe? Or the Middle East? Or Sub-Saharan Africa? Are the poorest of the poor there making it here? Why are East Asians over-represented in higher education or H1-Bs compared to other places?

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#94

Post by teddyh »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #72
chris11 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like something out of Hustle a TV show the BBC produced about a group of contract artists.

It is essentially the plot of 1973's Best Picture The Sting, if you sub a horseracing OTB for the bank.

It’s a well-known confidence trick called “The Big Store”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks#Big_...

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#96

Post by jdmichal »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #68
godelski wrote: post #41

Ticketmaster the employee There's actually a good Freakanomics episode on this[1]. How tickets are undervalued and part of Ticketmaster's value is that they take blame for the high prices. [1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...

There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship. It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people. The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher tha…

> For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.

These same arguments are / were used in favor of unpaid internships. Except, of course, that it takes a certain level of financial freedom or support to do things like wait in lines for concert tickets. Just because your paying time instead of money in these queues, does not mean that it doesn't carry a cost.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#97

Post by pc86 »

jstanley wrote: post #79
SteveGerencser wrote: post #31

Many years ago I delivered pizza while in college. When it was time to move on my manager and I decided to have some fun. For the last three days I was there I delivered to every terrible customer we had, then had a little fun at their expense. Like the guy that routinely refused to tip a single penny and said 10 pennies make a dime. I handed him a dime and told him now he didn't have to wait for 9 more pizzas. It wa…

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

Please explain how raising the price of a large pizza increases money in the driver's pocket.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#98

Post by KozmoNau7 »

jdmichal wrote: post #96
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship. It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people. The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher tha…

> For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is…

I don't it's the same as unpaid internships. You can never completely eliminate the cost, as there is a limited supply and you can't give away the tickets for free. But you can certainly minimize the costs.

The tickets have to be put up for sale at some specific time that is usually advertised well in advance, which allows (most) people to plan for it. For some artists, a number of tickets are sold earlier to members of the official fan clubs and so on.

What is the alternative? Putting the tickets up for sale as a slow drop? I'm pretty sure that would significantly harm sales.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#100

Post by VLM »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #77

what happens the next time lady ponsonby waffles has a complaint?

That's why in the real world you fake fire the next guy going to lunch, so his reward for being yelled at a bit and fired was an extra long lunch hour.

Also when I worked retail back when high school kids held the minimum wage jobs, annual retail turnover often exceeded 100%, so if lady waffles is having multiple problems in a couple months, your store has a problem far beyond angry waffles.

The American version at the store I worked at both as a labor drone and eventually as a night shift manager while in school, was to send coworkers to the office to be yelled at. The store was urban and near the bar district so at night, customers were generally drunk and guilty until proven innocent. Drunk people usually don't want to draw attention to themselves, mostly, so we had few complaints.

Its a mid to high skilled workplace thing to assume employees are yelled at. For manual labor work, the cost of replacement, either of the job or the employee, is very low, and most firing offenses had legal involvement (stealing cash or product from the store, for example) so discipline never went much beyond asking someone "WTF?".

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