My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
theatlantic.com
My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
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Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#2A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#3A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.
True, but I'm betting more than a few HN folk qualify as a "person who's had white-collar job for years [who] doesn't get how difficult service jobs are."
I'm actually impressed that we don't (yet) have a chorus of people saying he's overpaid or that he deserves it.
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#4A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.
Wage theft is sketchy and illegal, but also extremely common.
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#5A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.
True, but I'm betting more than a few HN folk qualify as a "person who's had white-collar job for years [who] doesn't get how difficult service jobs are." I'm actually impressed that we don't (yet) have a chorus of people saying he's overpaid or that he deserves it.
The guy was a reporter who made racist jokes and comments about people he was supposed to be covering, and subsequently got fired for it. And then, surprise, no one else wanted to hire him to do reporting. [1] "deserves" is a strong word, but actions have consequences.
[1] Until now, I guess?
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but I'm betting more than a few HN folk qualify as a "person who's had white-collar job for years [who] doesn't get how difficult service jobs are." I'm actually impressed that we don't (yet) have a chorus of people saying he's overpaid or that he deserves it.
The guy was a reporter who made racist jokes and comments about people he was supposed to be covering, and subsequently got fired for it. And then, surprise, no one else wanted to hire him to do reporting. [1] "deserves" is a strong word, but actions have consequences. [1] Until now, I guess?
Source? I'd never heard of this guy before.
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#7A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.
>> "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are"
Or, sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day is really, really easy compared to having to actually DO something at a service job.
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#8I accept that the market drives down the wages of service workers, but their working conditions are just outrageous to me. Automation and optimization has turned retail into a hellish job. On demand scheduling, zero tolerance policies, wage theft, etc. Its MBAs and programmers making a buck by burdening the people who are least equipped to find a job doing something else.
See also: http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-crush ("A woman from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to write 8:30. 'I know you were told to be here at 8:15,' she says, anticipating a protest that never comes, 'but that was just to make sure you got here early.'").
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy was a reporter who made racist jokes and comments about people he was supposed to be covering, and subsequently got fired for it. And then, surprise, no one else wanted to hire him to do reporting. [1] "deserves" is a strong word, but actions have consequences. [1] Until now, I guess?
Source? I'd never heard of this guy before.
http://www.politico.com/reporters/JosephWilliams.html
Apparently, Politico doesn't remove biographies of people they fire (he was fired two years ago).
Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but I'm betting more than a few HN folk qualify as a "person who's had white-collar job for years [who] doesn't get how difficult service jobs are." I'm actually impressed that we don't (yet) have a chorus of people saying he's overpaid or that he deserves it.
The guy was a reporter who made racist jokes and comments about people he was supposed to be covering, and subsequently got fired for it. And then, surprise, no one else wanted to hire him to do reporting. [1] "deserves" is a strong word, but actions have consequences. [1] Until now, I guess?
I mean, do you think that the job conditions described are meant to be a punishment for his misdeeds as a journalist? Because I think you'll find that many people who did not do such things also labor under them.