My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 12:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #128

dllthomas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment wasn't what was at issue. It was the structuring of particular jobs in ways that are particularly unpleasant for those who remain simply because it lets you cut one more job. This isn't the fault of all MBAs or all engineers, but it's quite arguably the fault of the particular engineers who built the tools to manage that way and certainly the particular MBAs who chose to deploy those tools in a way that…

You know, I'd never blame anyone for looking out for number one. I just think its sad that one of the easiest things to do as either an engineer or an MBA is figure out how to put people put of work. Much easier than finding a way to put someone to work. I just lament the system is structured that way.

Eh... to my mind it partly depends on the degree they benefit and the degree of harm they inflict (taking into account a bunch of things, including the chance of someone else doing the same thing instead of them). But I agree that the balance of blame should be reserved for the system when it is structured in a way that encourages poor behavior and leads to poor results,

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

#142

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #137

valar_m wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bag checks are fairly common, usually occurring at ends of shift or closing. Pat downs are less so, mostly because it's generally not a good idea to require employees to touch each other. Retail internal theft really is a serious problem, though. According to the National Retail Security Survey at UF, it costs retailers (read: consumers) $14.9 billion annually [1]. What you may find surprising is that most major reta…

I have heard that, for most retailers, most of their losses are due to internal theft. Hence lots of video cameras, and background checks to a degree that seem a little absurd, plus loss prevention investigations, record keeping, and lots of internal audits. What really sounds odd are the bag checks and pat-downs. Pat-downs especially, at least partly since they seem likely to lead to sexual harassment suits. I can't…

The problem is that whatever punishment the justice system metes is supposed to be considered sufficient repayment to society for the damage caused. Yet, these things remain on publicly-available record for the rest of your life. The solution is to close the records to the public after the person's time is served. There is no beneficial reason to continue their punishment beyond that time, which is what open records effectively does.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:06 PM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #135

I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but I'm a bit saddened to see no discussion about the fact that this man assaulted his wife. It's good that he's not hiding the conviction, but I find it hard to empathize with someone that carries out violence against women. His situation sucks, but he wouldn't have been in such dire straights if he hadn't been angry enough to hit his spouse. To me, that violence is the most u…

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by givemeabreak » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:06 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #113

givemeabreak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mar…

> Chinese cities are the highest cost of living areas in China, but it's certainly not because of liberal regulation. Try failing harder. The primary factor that makes the cost of living high in Chinese cities is their property bubble, which is a direct result of government regulation. Foreign investment is restricted for Chinese citizens and weak property rights under the authoritarian government make other types of…

Let me guess: Sao Paolo is expensive because of government. And Moscow. Etc. In fact, no matter what country you pick, the most highest cost of living nearly always in the most thriving cities.

Any intelligent, sane, informed, and/or rational person would realize this means that this means markets are a driver.

But you, like most Libertarians on this site, pretend that it's always the government, though always for a different reason. This is because you're a closed-minded moron who recognizes that government is always one edge away in the graph, and thus you can blame every single bad thing on it.

You truly are a far-gone religious zealot who has lost any connection with reality.

Enjoy your lonely, shitty, ignorant, awful life.

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

#145

Post by ufmace » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 1:20 AM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #142

ufmace wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that, for most retailers, most of their losses are due to internal theft. Hence lots of video cameras, and background checks to a degree that seem a little absurd, plus loss prevention investigations, record keeping, and lots of internal audits. What really sounds odd are the bag checks and pat-downs. Pat-downs especially, at least partly since they seem likely to lead to sexual harassment suits. I can't…

The problem is that whatever punishment the justice system metes is supposed to be considered sufficient repayment to society for the damage caused. Yet, these things remain on publicly-available record for the rest of your life. The solution is to close the records to the public after the person's time is served. There is no beneficial reason to continue their punishment beyond that time, which is what open records…

That would solve the employer discrimination problem, but it creates a whole host of other problems that sound much worse. Our whole legal system rests on the foundation of public access to everything. Anybody can find out: who has been arrested by the police, what they've been charged with, where they're being held, what the outcome of the arraignment and trial is, what evidence and arguments were presented at the trial if there was one, what they were sentenced with, where they are serving their sentence, and how much time they've served.

You can't prevent people from knowing who's an ex-con without making all of that stuff secret. But if all of that stuff is secret, then anyone who the police arrest would essentially disappear. Nobody would be able to find out if they were even arrested in the first place, much less what they've been charged with, what the evidence is to substantiate that charge, where they're being held and in what conditions, etc. So nothing prevents the police from arresting anybody they feel like on no evidence, and keeping them anywhere they want for as long as they want, because nobody would know about it in the first place. Even the much maligned Guantanamo Bay prison isn't that secret, and it's still widely considered an outrage. We've seen a lot of abuse of existing law enforcement powers lately; I'm not willing to essentially give them a massive level of new powers for the sake of giving ex-cons better opportunities.