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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
P.S. And for any of you here, it should go without saying, but don't be a dick to employees. They're not your slaves. And call out anybody you see doing it when you're out shopping.

My buddy was in a big gorram rush the other day when he came to help me pick up my new door and was giving shit to every employee in sight and I finally lost it on him and started yelling at him in front of three employees.

They make shit. They take shit from customers and their bosses all day long. They don't know shit, and for the pennies they're bringing home putting up with all that crap there should be no expectation that they would. The problems we were having were management problems, and the 2 guys and 1 girl who were having to listen to his bullshit don't get paid enough to put up with that crap.

Don't be Karen. Don't abide a Karen.

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Originally posted by second:
Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle tweets again about Walmart v Costco

Costco and Walmart have the same low prices. So you when you hear "raising the minimum wage will just result in higher prices or layoffs," remember that's not basic business. It's corporations making a choice: pay more or give shareholders billions more

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Everything isn't so black and white, and every business isn't Costco and Walmart. . . .

It's one thing to expect Amazon, Costco and Walmart to pay high minimum wage, and quite another to expect John Doe's corner grocery store in HoDunkVille (Population 452) the same minimum wage.

None of that still addresses benefits either. . . .

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Originally posted by second:
Walmart and Costco have a few stockholders that might have a small influence on how badly employees will be treated.

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Nobody, except the employees, who probably are spineless and would quit before directly confronting John Doe. Quitting after speaking your complaint on the store's speakers does NOT count as confronting John Doe, who will be pleased to see you gone and will smear your reputation with every store hiring new employees in HoDunkVille.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

But the only places I've ever worked where I enjoyed working there were for small businesses where I got to talk to the boss everyday. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I find the intimacy of a small business to be much more preferable to working for any company that employs more than 50 people.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

But the only places I've ever worked where I enjoyed working there were for small businesses where I got to talk to the boss everyday. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I find the intimacy of a small business to be much more preferable to working for any company that employs more than 50 people.

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You liked the boss so very much that you quit. How about the other employees? Was the workforce made up of long term employees? Or did they quit, too, because the boss was, despite a wonderful personality, stingy with pay and benefits?

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Nah. Boss treated his employees wonderful. Everybody in the back doing the menial jobs always had smiles on their faces too.

In fact, that job kind of ruined all other jobs for me it was such a good place to work at.

But he shut down the business when he retired. One of his vendors bought up all the machinery and opened up a shop in the same industrial neighborhood and hired anybody on that wanted to come from the old place. He was a jag-off. I know, because years later I worked there (doing one of the menial jobs in the back this time), and saw it first hand. By the time I'd gotten there only two people that worked for the first boss were still working for the new guy.

When I left that place, I told the new guy to go fuck himself and take my final paycheck and shove it up his ass. Made a big show of it in front of everyone. Too bad cell phones only had photo capable cameras on them back in those days.


It was kind of funny, really. Because when he was a vendor the first guy used, I actually thought he was a decent guy. But that was only because he kissed my ass because he knew that I was the guy that would get the boss to pay when the job was complete.



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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:


Nah. Boss treated his employees wonderful. Everybody in the back doing the menial jobs always had smiles on their faces too.

In fact, that job kind of ruined all other jobs for me it was such a good place to work at.

But he shut down the business when he retired. One of his vendors bought up all the machinery and opened up a shop in the same industrial neighborhood and hired anybody on that wanted to come from the old place. He was a jag-off. I know, because years later I worked there (doing one of the menial jobs in the back this time), and saw it first hand. By the time I'd gotten there only two people that worked for the first boss were still working for the new guy.

When I left that place, I told the new guy to go fuck himself and take my final paycheck and shove it up his ass. Made a big show of it in front of everyone. Too bad cell phones only had photo capable cameras on them back in those days.

It was kind of funny, really. Because when he was a vendor the first guy used, I actually thought he was a decent guy. But that was only because he kissed my ass because he knew that I was the guy that would get the boss to pay when the job was complete.

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Is America experiencing an unofficial general strike?

Across the country, people are refusing to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage jobs

Last Friday’s jobs report from the US Department of Labor elicited a barrage of gloomy headlines. The New York Times emphasized “weak” jobs growth and fretted that “hiring challenges that have bedeviled employers all year won’t be quickly resolved,” and “rising wages could add to concerns about inflation.” For CNN, it was “another disappointment”. For Bloomberg the “September jobs report misses big for a second straight month”.

The media failed to report the big story, which is actually a very good one: American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades.

You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions.

No one calls it a general strike. But in its own disorganized way it’s related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land – Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo.

Disorganized or organized, American workers now have bargaining leverage to do better. After a year and a half of the pandemic, consumers have pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services.

But employers are finding it hard to fill positions.

Last Friday’s jobs report showed the number of job openings at a record high. The share of people working or actively looking for work (the labor force participation rate) has dropped to 61.6%. Participation for people in their prime working years, defined as 25 to 54 years old, is also down.

Over the past year, job openings have increased 62%. Yet overall hiring has actually declined.

What gives?

Another clue: Americans are also quitting their jobs at the highest rate on record. The Department of Labor reported on Tuesday that some 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August. That comes to about 2.9% of the workforce – up from the previous record set in April, of about 4 million people quitting.

All told, about 4 million American workers have been leaving their jobs every month since the spring.

These numbers have nothing to do with the Republican bogeyman of extra unemployment benefits supposedly discouraging people from working. Reminder: the extra benefits ran out on Labor Day.

Renewed fears of the Delta variant of Covid may play some role. But it can’t be the largest factor. With most adults now vaccinated, rates of hospitalizations and deaths are way down.

My take: workers are reluctant to return to or remain in their old jobs mostly because they’re burned out.

Some have retired early. Others have found ways to make ends meet other than remain in jobs they abhor. Many just don’t want to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage shit jobs.

The media and most economists measure the economy’s success by the number of jobs it creates, while ignoring the quality of those jobs. That’s a huge oversight.

Years ago, when I was secretary of labor, I kept meeting working people all over the country who had full-time work but complained that their jobs paid too little and had few benefits, or were unsafe, or required lengthy or unpredictable hours. Many said their employers treated them badly, harassed them, and did not respect them.

Since then, these complaints have only grown louder, according to polls. For many, the pandemic was the last straw. Workers are fed up, wiped out, done-in, and run down. In the wake of so much hardship, illness and death during the past year, they’re not going to take it anymore.

In order to lure workers back, employers are raising wages and offering other inducements. Average earnings rose 19 cents an hour in September and are up more than $1 an hour – or 4.6% – over the last year.

Clearly, that’s not enough.

Corporate America wants to frame this as a “labor shortage.” Wrong. What’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a healthcare shortage.

Unless these shortages are rectified, many Americans won’t return to work anytime soon. I say it’s about time.

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