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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

#101

Post by pjc50 »

glesica wrote: post #84
krstck wrote: post #35

It seems to me that working retail has gotten a lot worse since the recession. I worked retail after high school before deciding to go to college, and then worked the same job on summers home from school. What was interesting was that between when I started that job in 2005 and when I left for the final time in 2010, my coworkers went from being mostly high school and college kids to all sorts of folks of varying age…

I've never understood the management attitude that seeks to create such an environment, because workers just end up rebelling against it in hidden ways. I worked in retail in college for a truly terrible company. The work environment was awful and exploitative, but the company wasn't very good at things like inventory control. So, largely in response to this, the people in the stock room would literally throw probabl…

It's the sort of company where the people in charge enjoy subordinating their employees, and aren't themselves subject to good metrics. They can spend their time bullying the staff at the expense of shareholders.

The Protestant management ethic doesn't help here - the belief that if the rank-and-file are happy, they must be getting away with something and must therefore be screwed harder.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#102

Post by tptacek »

josephschmoe wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #8

I 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/17…

Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work? I'm soooo sorry for eliminating work no one wants to do. Unemployment isn't an engineer or an MBA's fault. It's the fault of shareholders, executives and congressmen: they're the ones hoarding the money at the top. I guarantee you, if the money went to the engineers, we'd have 98% employment right now and the jobs would be a whole lot mor…

I don't understand this comment at all. I don't even know where to start.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#103

Post by givemeabreak »

w1ntermute wrote: post #92
givemeabreak wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The high cost of living is caused solely by liberals and their zoning policies? Presumably this is why Shanghai, Melbourne, Moscow, Singapore, and Hong Kong are so expensive. Because they're run by liberals. Nothing to do with private markets. Nothing to do with issues related to installed bases. Nothing to do with market forces. Just liberal governments. You libertarians are flipping hilariously stupid sometimes. Wh…

> The high cost of living is caused solely by liberals and their zoning policies? You really need to work on your reading comprehension. I said that liberals have caused the cost of living to increase in urban areas due to regulation in markets other than housing. Housing regulation is something that both liberals and conservatives engage in.

You really need to work on having any logic at all in your arguments.

Chinese cities are the highest cost of living areas in China, but it's certainly not because of liberal regulation. But you ignore this, because it disagrees with your predispositions.

It would destroy your religious viewpoint if you were to admit that much of the high cost of living is just the market at work, and natural frictions within that market, so you blame something you hate instead.

You're a typical fundamentalist, you're mouth is open by your mind is closed tight.

And when somebody mis-reads part of your ignorant and utterly fact-free argument, you attack them on that, instead of admitting that I gave a list of examples that show that your entire premise is utterly and completely idiotic, and devoid of anything resembling logic.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#104

Post by rfrank »

w1ntermute wrote: post #93
rfrank wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That situation also means that the lowest wage workers have to commute the furthest, often (as the author of the article experiences) spending most of their daily pay just getting to and from work. "Move further from your job" is rarely an option.

This can be solved with denser housing and more efficient public transit.

Which will likely not happen for a number of reasons, see the current Bay Area fight over tech/gentrification.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#105

Post by qiohqergvuhq »

Author is a whiny git.

Oh noes, I couldn't sit down. Oh noes, I caught myself liking my job. Oh noes, some lady thought I was better than my job. Oh noes, I needed to commute.

Why the hell was he bringing in a backpack that he had to have with him if he just went for a soda?

The frisking was a little questionable but otherwise this is just whiny drivel, with too many bloody commas, from a writer, who likes asides, but you know how that goes.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#106

Post by munificent »

josephschmoe wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #8

I 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/17…

Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work? I'm soooo sorry for eliminating work no one wants to do. Unemployment isn't an engineer or an MBA's fault. It's the fault of shareholders, executives and congressmen: they're the ones hoarding the money at the top. I guarantee you, if the money went to the engineers, we'd have 98% employment right now and the jobs would be a whole lot mor…

> Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work?

Unless your software is giving those people something better to do you're lying to yourself if you think you've made things better for them. As miserable as these jobs are, they're still better than no job at all.

Of course, I'm not saying it's your responsibility to solve that problem. When you automate someone's job away, the person who benefits is the employer, not the (ex-) employee.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#107

Post by sliverstorm »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #88
sliverstorm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding. Just think of all the political squabbles that would vanish overnight if the USA was, for example, 99% WASP

I assume you are being sarcastic, given the history of protestantism. Come to think of it, that reminds me of an Emo Phillips joke: I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He sai…

I don't know if I'm being sarcastic or not. On the one hand, you & your joke are totally right. On the other hand, if we get into a bitter battle over just 1 or 2 things, maybe we really could make lots of progress everywhere else.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#108

Post by sliverstorm »

derekp7 wrote: post #80
sliverstorm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the (foolish) idea that I have in my head is that when the median house price is NOT one million dollars (I'm looking at you, San Francisco), people who make $10 / hour won't have to devote nearly as much of their income to housing, dramatically increasing their spending power.

Apartment prices in the Midwest (I'm north of Chicago, but same goes for further south) are 600 - 1000 per month. 10 bucks an hour is 1750 a month before taxes -- fed, fica, and state taxes get you down to less than 1400. There is no public transportation to speak of (outside of big cities such as Chicago and Atlanta, etc), so kill another $175 for gas, plus $150 for a car payment (cheap used car, high interest). Not…

600 - 1000 per month. 10 bucks an hour is 1750 a month before taxes

Well that certainly sounds a lot more attainable than 10 bucks an hour with the 2200 - 2600 rental rates in San Francisco. (Last I heard, at least)

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#109

Post by lotsofmangos »

dx4100 wrote: post #55
hershel wrote: post #38

Sweden offers a nice solution to this: responsible unions. In Sweden there are 2 unions, One for white collar workers and one for blue collar employees. The salary rates/hikes are industry wide.They are usually determined by the competitive part of the economy - the export sector and than applied to everybody. The unions understand their role as protectors of employees, but on the other hand, understand the need for…

I'd say this is easier in a society like Sweden, with a homogeneous culture and relatively small population.

That seems rather simplistic and is not borne out by looking at other small homogenous cultures.

I suspect it is more to do with having a very long history of democratic and social decision making in Viking culture.

The Viking Thing was electing kings by vote a millennium ago.

Re: My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

#110

Post by lotsofmangos »

sliverstorm wrote: post #107
lotsofmangos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you are being sarcastic, given the history of protestantism. Come to think of it, that reminds me of an Emo Phillips joke: I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He sai…

I don't know if I'm being sarcastic or not. On the one hand, you & your joke are totally right. On the other hand, if we get into a bitter battle over just 1 or 2 things, maybe we really could make lots of progress everywhere else.

I am not so sure, the pilgrims who settled in New-England were running away from persecution in old England, not for being protestant, as England was protestant, but rather for being the wrong sort of protestant.

Then, they proceeded to spend the first really bad winter eating each other and when numbers picked up with more colonists, they got into the swing of hanging Quakers.

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