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 ages and backgrounds. That was the most telling sign of the recession to me. I strolled in to pick up my job where I'd left off in 2010 and I remember every single day people asking for job applications. I had thoughts like, why would you want to work here? This is a job for kids! But we even had a PhD biologist for a while.
Conditions have been deteriorating for a while now. Extended hours on holidays, terrible scheduling, and peculiar "performance measurement" tools. At my particular store, they adopted a system of tracking how many transactions a cashier performed per hour and then penalizing them when those transactions exceeded a certain number. The thought was that if a cashier rang up so many customers an hour, then some of them had had to wait in line and the cashier was at fault for not calling backup. (What backup? And what if they were just a really fast cashier?) Another was the obsession with collecting customers' email addresses. Cashiers were expected to collect so many email addresses a day or week or whatever or be threatened with losing their job.
My silly, between school semesters little retail gig had become very stressful towards the end because of the obsession with these metrics and a general attitude of "I could fire you today and have someone cheaper by tomorrow".
I'd like to point out that this story takes place in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country. $10 / hour goes a lot further in Kansas than it does D.C.
I think a lot of people could live OK in the Midwest on $10 / hour.
I wish more people would move away from the super high cost of living areas (California, New England, ...etc) and "vote with their feet" so to speak. If 10% of the populations of Cali and Massachusetts moved inward, I think that would drive house prices down and wages up. All the rich people are still around to buy stuff and no poor people left to work retail.
> I wish more people would move away from the super high cost of living areas (California, New England, ...etc) and "vote with their feet" so to speak.
This is (and has been) happening for years now. Poorer people are reverse-migrating from the denser parts of the country to the Sun Belt.
And it's a problem. The high cost of living in many of the "desirable" parts of the country is artificially created by government regulation of housing (as well as other markets, thanks to the propensity of densely populated municipalities to be run by liberals). But with the services sector growing, it makes more sense for poorer people to live near the wealthy people (who are going to be in the desirable parts of the country), since those are the people who can and will buy services. It's very different from, say, manufacturing, which is far more location-independent.
I firmly believe the problem of high cost of living can be solved through more sensible housing policies and efficient public transit (among other things). See this (quite short, at 64 pages) book for more details: http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-ebook/dp/B0078X...
It's the services sector that is and will continue to be the most difficult to replace with outsourcing and automation (see Moravec's paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec's_paradox). It only makes sense that we try to create as many jobs as possible in this area. By lowering housing and transportation (and other) costs for people in the service industry, they can offer their services at a lower cost, allowing more people to purchase those services, which will drive down unemployment.
That's not true actually - migration between states is lower than it used to be and still falling. I can't remember where I first read about this, but here's a random paper on the overall decline of movement [0] and an NYT article specifically about declining migration to the Sun Belt [1].
The crux of your argument is unconvincing. Service jobs have to be near the wealthy? What kind of myopia is that? Un-wealthy people go out to eat and get their car repaired just as much as Richie Rich.
Yes, if nobody but tech workers come to San Francisco, the city will collapse. But that doesn't mean everybody else has to live there too. It's also awful presumptuous to say, "Well I'm wealthy, this is where I want to live. You are poor, you don't get a choice, live near me"
> The crux of your argument is unconvincing. Service jobs have to be near the wealthy? What kind of myopia is that?
Actually, what's myopic is this:
> Un-wealthy people go out to eat and get their car repaired just as much as Richie Rich.
People who aren't wealthy don't eat out as much and don't spend nearly as much when they go out to eat. They buy food that has smaller margins and expect less in the way of service, meaning lower wages for the workers.
And of course service jobs have to be near the wealthy. When it doesn't matter where a worker is located, that job gets outsourced. Location-dependent jobs are the ones that are least likely to disappear in the future (or to have disappeared already).
> It's also awful presumptuous to say, "Well I'm wealthy, this is where I want to live. You are poor, you don't get a choice, live near me"
It's no more presumptuous than Henry Ford was when he expected workers to move to Detroit to work in the booming automotive industry, rather than setting up a bunch of small factories all across America so he could accommodate them. Moreover, in this case, such a policy would help to keep workers from having to move (to the Sun Belt, or another low-cost-of-living locale) away from their families and communities in the first place.
You can dream all you want of a utopia where people can live in the middle of nowhere and have their ideal job. But that isn't going to make it a reality.
People who aren't wealthy don't eat out as much and don't spend nearly as much when they go out to eat.
My apologies, I didn't mean they spend the exact same $$$. Poor choice in wording on my part. My point is being poor doesn't mean your car never needs a mechanic.
And of course service jobs have to be near the wealthy. When it doesn't matter where a worker is located, that job gets outsourced.
Non sequitur. Plenty of un-outsourceable jobs exist serving people who are not wealthy.
You can dream all you want of a utopia where people can live in the middle of nowhere and have their ideal job. But that isn't going to make it a reality.
Where do I speak of dream jobs? I'm just saying it's awfully self-centered to think that the poor exist to serve the wealthy.
> My point is being poor doesn't mean your car never needs a mechanic.
I know poor people who are decent at basic car maintenance (once again, the sorts of things where you get high margins). I also know wealthy people who are car enthusiasts, but they wouldn't want to get their hands dirty, so they'd rather pay someone to do it for them. You're speaking in absolutes when the market relies on relative differences.
This particular point isn't too significant though, since ideally, most poor people wouldn't need to own a car (they would use public transit instead).
> Non sequitur. Plenty of un-outsourceable jobs exist serving people who are not wealthy.
Non sequitur. The goal is to optimize new job creation. The service industry is one of the fastest growing in America, so it makes sense to harness that.
> Where do I speak of dream jobs? I'm just saying it's awfully self-centered to think that the poor exist to serve the wealthy.
And I'm just saying that worrying about whether the poor can have their dream job (where they don't have to serve the wealthy) is something you can worry about when chronic unemployment hasn't been dragging down the economy for the last several years.
It could merely be the people I've known, but I think the un-wealthy actually do spend far less going out to eat and repairing their cars. To whit, I think it's more likely to say I've been duped by Poe's Law.
I mean, one of the defining characteristics of being poor-ish to me is what a person is willing to put up with when driving junk cars. Cars which - when it inevitably gave up the ghost - would be replaced by another junker. Now, I was raised lower middle class, but for a brief period my parents got out of it; the defining turning point was managing to get financing on a new Ford Escort. It wasn't nearly as expensive to own as feared, partly due to incredibly better gas mileage, but also it drank less oil (two quarts every two days, and not a drop on the pavement... Well maybe one or two for good measure.)
Anecdata, to be sure, but I've met quite a few people with similar stories.
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.
> 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.
> 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 domestic investment risky.
> $10 / hour goes a lot further in Kansas than it does D.C.
True.
> I think a lot of people could live OK in the Midwest on $10 / hour.
Ridiculously false.
Yes, the cost of living is cheaper in the Midwest, but a lot of people seem to have the idea that it's this land lost in time where a loaf of bread still costs a nickel and where gas is 25 cents a gallon.
Definitely not "Ridiculously false". I've lived in the midwest most of my life. You can live ~1 hour within a major metropolitan area (minus chicago) and rent an apartment for $500-$800 a month.
$10 / hour is $20,800 a year. At that rate your effectively paying 0% tax and you probably qualify for heat assistance, free insurance, etc.
I didn't say live like a King. I basically said meant live life.
Public assistance is offered to maintain livable conditions. It would seem that qualifying for assistance does the opposite of what you think it does- it produces a "livable salary".
And what will you drive? Living in prettymuch any Midwestern city requires driving (or someone to drive you around). Public transportation is abysmal, and distances are large.
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 much left for food, heat, and lights.
Now it gets a bit better when two people are living together. But then that usually means a family (kids) eventually, so it then starts to get much worse.
True. This is why people living on $10/hour tend to work more than 40 hours / week. Unfortunately, this increasingly means one or more part time jobs, because service industry jobs don't generally offer overtime.
Speaking of couples living together with kids, I personally wish Americans, rich and poor, were vastly more open to adult living arrangements other than the "traditional nuclear family". Not that there's anything wrong with it, I just think the world would be a better place if there were a larger variety of equally "acceptable" living arrangements with no obvious default, to make people more comfortable seeking out the particular set of circumstances that work well for them. Some people might be happier living as an extended family, say, or communally, or alone or with platonic room-mates, even when in a committed relationship, if it weren't for strong societal pressures to conform. I'm not at all "dogmatically anti-dogmatic" about this, it's just a train of thought I've had on many occasions.
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 probably 10% of the merchandise that came off the trucks directly into the garbage compactor. If that's good business, then there's something seriously wrong with our economic system.
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.
I had the same experience at Whole Foods Palo Alto as a cashier, 2008-12. WF management can take asking about the Whole Planet foundation and shove it up their ass.
They probably don't have to say that stores are closing everywhere. Every week there's news about possible store closings. This week it's Staples and Safeway, last week it was Guitar Center, before, Pennys, Best Buy, Disney Store etc.
I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, shopping in a physical store location is mostly a terrible experience these days and I greatly prefer to shop online. But on the other, these big box stores have long been the providers of many a teen's summer job or somebody's second income or just something to keep someone afloat between "real" jobs, so I hate to see that source disappear.
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/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.'").
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 more interesting than retail. Heck, we'd have to start using graphical user interfaces for stores because we wouldn't be able to find enough people to work retail!
Service jobs aren't inherently crummy. What makes it crummy are the software systems that let managers schedule people on variable, on-demand schedules, and policies that micro-manage bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire industry focused on getting additional tenths of a percent out of service workers.
Papa John's founder said it'd cost something like $0.50 extra per pizza to offer his employees health insurance. I'm not even talking about a luxury like health insurance. What would it cost to let employees take a few extra sick days or be able to plan on when they'll work or the occasional unplanned bathroom break? http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1djlt0/pregnant_tmobil...
>"What makes it crummy are the software systems that let managers schedule people on variable, on-demand schedules, and policies that micro-manage bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire industry focused on getting additional tenths of a percent out of service workers."
The problem that you see here could also be characterized as a lack of demand for the labor services of the employees. Perhaps we should attempt to find more, new productive activities for low-skill workers.
> 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.
The customer is the most likely to benefit, which is why they often choose to shop at stores which are highly automated and optimized. The employers are often automating or optimizing to compete with alternatives, and these companies often see the gains competed away. Managers may benefit, though they often face issues similar to the employees.
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 makes people miserable.
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,
That'd just push down wages for the parts of your schedule you're actually working, though. Minimum wages are the type of thing where if you push on one side, it incentivizes employers to extract more value by any means possible out of you.
I'm a broken record on this, but: an unconditional basic income is the answer to this situation. The only way you can make sure every job has dignity is for every person to be able to quit their job without worrying about starving or being unable to afford any housing. Once everyone is guaranteed that bare minimum, employers have to treat their employees with a basic level of respect and dignity. Otherwise they'll quit.
So, what happens if the unconditional basic income becomes 'the new poverty' as the economy adjusts and the price of basic goods and services change? We'd end up in the same spot - they can treat you like crap, because you are replaceable, and you still need the money.
I should say I also have no idea if that's what would happen. Just a concern.
Freely available, more or less safe and sanitary public water fountains have not resulted in economic or cultural collapse; nor have they wiped out the bottle water market.
The people who really hate the idea of a basic income often have a religious background... how dare they be allowed a civilized level of charity without following religion, etc.
One way to work around price manipulation is to cut out the highly profitable middleman... Here's your bag of rice and block of cheese, see you next week. Need a safe warm place to sleep? Here have this empty unlocked jail cell. It would likely close resemble a long term version of natural disaster / hurricane aid, perhaps more formally run. In culturally inferior areas it'll almost certainly resemble the worst imagination (caricature) of the projects. In better cultural areas, it'll probably look a lot like a student dorm. People gonna be themselves, no matter if you like it or not.
If you want even the slightest tiny bit better, and most will, that'll cost a bit. In fact it probably will cost a bit more than now.
An increase in the cost of living would occur, particularly for people for whom essential goods form the large part of their consumption (luxury goods, in contrast, would likely decrease in price). The details of extent, however, depend on the magnitude of the basic income.
A couple things counteract that increase in price. For one, capital would flow more toward producing essential goods owing to a larger demand: this would prioritize research and development in those goods, and in hunting out inefficiencies that hamper their production and distribution, leading to a lower real cost. For two, most people already consume the bare essentials of life--the real question is just where that money comes from, be it a basic income, a demeaning job, a good job, or debt. (These two counteracting factors are at odds, btw: the more one is a factor, the less the other is. The second prevents inflation from being an issue at all, while the first merely mitigates against it. Two is the larger factor, imo.)
In addition, there's an individual psychological factor that helps. Not having a guaranteed income means that, at a moment's notice, you can have no financial ability to take care of yourself: this puts you into bad situations and leads you to make locally rational decisions that are globally suboptimal (where you do less-than-ideal things to survive today that cost you a lot more down the line than the benefit you got today). And this has a broader deleterious social impact: for instance, you might be forced to abandon all your social networks to move back home (if you have a home to go back to!), which significantly increases search costs and destroys valuable information, making labor markets less efficient. So even if there's been serious inflation because of a basic income, it still allows you to stay afloat instead of throwing your life into radical chaos.
I share your concern about the exact shape of what would happen, and the level of basic income that best improves social outcomes depends on such a number of factors that it seems very difficult to calculate. Phasing it in over a range of increasing values seems like one way to deal with that.
So, that is an interesting point you brought up regarding the psychological factor of knowing that your well-being is tied completely to your job that prevents you from making rational decisions. But we are speaking about this from the perspective of a well-adjusted (presumably) adult.
I'm going to do something I shouldn't and try to imagine myself as a teenager again (urgh), and whether or not I would have ever held down a job if I had guaranteed money to fall back on. There are times I think I would have done it, and times I could easily see myself throwing hands in the air and going home to play video games at the first sign of adversity.
The whole exercise leaves me wondering, even though I think the 'Basic Income' is an interesting idea for replacing needs-based programs, whether or not these individual choices, acted out en masse, would cause some severe productivity problems down the line. We aren't post scarcity just yet, after all.
Not that it matters. Most of us will be dead before something like 'Basic Income' ever makes it to the US. We are still hanging on to some pretty severe depression-era baggage.
It's hand wavy, but you can probably say that Northern Europe is quite a lot closer to having a basic income than the U.S. I think the basic standard of living is higher there than the U.S., by a variety of measures.
(not sure it's clear: by basic standard of living, I mean the standard of living typical at the bottom end)
edit: I guess it's probably not great to compare the package of social policies to basic income though.
"I guess [you] don’t care about hard work or loyalty." -- Stretch
That's ripe. Pay your employees a low wage, treat them like shit, and then expect loyalty? Gimme a break. Loyalty is a two-way street and I don't see any reciprocation from corporate America (in this case, or in general).
When a job is low skill, they have a huge pool of labor they can draw from. There really isn't any need to treat employees well, since there are so many applicants.
I think it is fairly simple. The more in-demand your skills are, the better you can expect to treated by your employer because you have options.
Is this 'right'? I don't know. But it seems to be how things work.
"There really isn't any need to treat employees well"
All you have to do is sell your soul and abandon your own humanity. Cheap, right? You can learn a lot about someone, or a culture, by seeing how they treat those less fortunate.
I didn't say I agree with that statement. But it certainly seems to reflect reality.
I personally believe that low-skill/pay workers should be treated better in this country. The important question is: How do we accomplish this? Mandates like higher min. wage? Or, societal pressures of some sort? It doesn't appear that (most) corporations will treat employees better out of the goodness of their heart.
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 Sweden to remain competitive and the huge responsibility put on them by representing so many people without hurting the economy. So they come with reasonable demands.
All this is supported by the Swedish mentality of fairness, which makes employees happy just taking their fair share.
I think the reason it's easier in Sweden is the key cultural value of fairness. America is more of a "mine" society, where everyone cares about what's "mine" and lacks an ability to self-moderate based on what's fair or right.
I wouldn't generalize here since there are people in every society who are above petty desires for material gain. It's just that in the US, we have significantly more wealth-addicts than any other country, and it leads to a bad perception of the nation as a whole.
Another thing about self-moderation: my consulting firm gets an occasional contract at a public school. I know it sounds terrible to say this, but if these kids are the future of the US, I want to move somewhere else. I went to public school myself, and the value system that the kids subscribe to nowadays is bloated by our celebration of people who make immense amounts of money. There's also this fucked up sense of entitlement, an addiction to social media, and a lack of desire to explore anything beyond the assigned schoolwork.
> I know it sounds terrible to say this, but if these kids are the future of the US, I want to move somewhere else.
> fucked up sense of entitlement, an addiction to social media, and a lack of desire to explore anything beyond the assigned schoolwork.
Has it occurred to you that since your generation is responsible for the profoundly sad state of our economy, educational system, and justice system, you don't have much room to criticize Generation Y?
I'm a person. I didn't cause economic or education downturns, and my firm actually does the opposite - we create jobs in education and improve core standards. This is a classic situation of critic meets the generalist.
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.
Well you could trust your 'feelings' or you can look at the evidence and determine whether or not Sweden is a prosperous society with a good standard of living, competitive businesses and motivated people.
I visited Sweden for a couple weeks during a school program in high school. My feelings were largely based on my experiences during that trip meeting tons of students and staying with a family there.
Honestly there were tons of drugs, little motivation, and a happy yet seemingly poor society. The mom I stayed with complained endlessly about how her lazy son was throwing his life away.
Maybe I just had a misleading experience. But I just can't say I saw it the same as you do.
My first job was retail, and I worked it for about four years total, including during college and after service in the Navy. At the time I had skills that translated into being valuable enough to not work in retail that didn't involve a lot of risk (police, security, etc), so it seemed about the best option.
I don't think I quite experienced anything like this, but sometimes it was close. If I felt like a replaceable cog, it's because I was, and I was a replaceable cog in a machine already operating on razor thin margins, which means I had to be a good cog. The funny thing was that due to my Navy experience, I didn't perceive it as all that bad, though the pay was pretty miserable even at two dollars above minimum wage.
I'll say this - working retail was very motivating. I knew I didn't want to do that forever. But I don't know what the 'solution' is as applied to everybody, but I know the solution for me was to finish college and make myself valuable.
Socioeconomic separation of the consumer class from the servant class. As discussed in the article, humans shop there and buy $25 socks for their $300 shoes, but a thirty-something part time minimum wage no benefits homeless dude is not part of that class.
My last retail job was a decade ago, but yeah, I'm getting the same impression. I think it is because the margins are getting even smaller thanks to a variety of factors (the prevalence of online shopping being the biggest influence, IMHO).
I'd like to see harder numbers on the hourly value the store gets from the employees. As a for instance, Dick's Sporting Goods has a per employee operating income of about $15,000. That isn't an amazingly solid number, but it's enough to say they have quite a bit of cash moving around after they pay wages.
And this is why I desperately save money. Even though I've only been out of college for less than a year and I know my parents would graciously take me back in for as long as necessary should something catastrophic happen to my career, I'm paranoid about depending so much on a job for my livelihood.
My admittedly very lofty goal is to reach a point in my mid-30s where I don't need a job. By no means do I plan on actually retiring at that point, but I want the peace of mind knowing that my career could end and I could lead a humble, comfortable-enough life without working, probably in the midwest.
I feel the exact same way. Yesterday there were a bunch of questions about what happens to middle age programmers and those were depressing too. The answer for me (and sounds like you too) absolutely has been to save as much as possible and be able to "never need to work again" as fast as possible. I'll probably be mid-30s at that point too and I'll feel much much better about my life knowing that I don't need a job to survive.
> Even though I was living rent-free in a guest bedroom, my every-other-Thursday paycheck couldn’t help me climb out of my hole, particularly after the state took half my pre-tax, $300 weekly salary for child support payments.
> * got the opportunity to leave Sporting Goods Inc. for a temporary job as a communications director for a Capitol Hill nonprofit, a gig that paid twice as much per week as I’d earn in a month at the store. That salary still didn’t come close to my Politico paycheck, though it was a step in the right direction.*
- 300 * 52 = 15,600 annually
- 15,600 * 4 * 2 ("twice as much per week as one month") = 124,800
- "That salary still didn’t come close to my Politico paycheck"
So, at least $150K or even $200+K? Gah-damn! I know big beltway journalists get a decent salary, but Politico is a relative newcomer (though profitable and growing).
I'm not surprised that a journalist managing an 80-person team was paid $200k+.
What I am surprised by is how he ever ended up working retail with a salary like that. I'd expect him to have saved up enough to last a year or two of low expenses.
Seriously, I'm just consistently shocked at how many people making huge amounts of money don't even manage to put away $20k or so to survive if needed. Additionally, no one seems to be able to stomach cutting costs until they're already homeless and on the street. Every time I see one of these stories, it seems like the person tries to hold on to the exact standard of living they're at up until the moment they can't pay rent and are on the streets.
I make $15k annually as a student right now and I still have managed to save up enough that I could live for 3 or 4 months if I lost my job. It would just be a matter of being very careful with my spending.
journalism has a power-law income distribution where most earn nothing but a tiny few at the top can earn 7 figures or more. Well-known bylines are supposed to bring the audience and not just crank out anonymous content.
A 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.
Between ages 15-21 I worked a lot of retail. I had managers who would do the "on time is late" thing, or make me clock out and then wait for 20 minutes for them to unlock the door at closing time. I knew those things weren't legal, and I'd make a stink about it. I was an exemplary worker, which I'm sure afforded me some leeway, but more importantly I was young, white, and living at home with my middle-class parents. I didn't need the job. I wanted the job of course (56k modems aren't free!) but I didn't have the fear that I or my family might starve if I talked back.
What's the solution? Mandatory severance for every job?
I believe you did not read the article, as less than one paragraph was on the topic of physical labor, and the rest of the article was about extremely toxic occasionally outright illegal employee / employer relations.
Luckily, due to the "retailapocalpse" or whatever its called, soon virtually no one will have to labor under those conditions, because there will be almost no positions like that. Not that Amazon's warehouses are some kind of workers paradise.
I worked my way thru school in retail supermarkets roughly contemporaneous with the author's youthful experiences a couple decades ago. I see things have gone somewhat downhill since then...
> Not that Amazon's warehouses are some kind of workers paradise.
I read an article a while back (apologies for no links) that basically had a reporter go work at an Amazon warehouse as a stocker. It sounded like the type of hell I wouldn't wish on an enemy.
When I did retail & fast food work, I don't recall having to do unpaid work. Showing up "on the floor" at time was expected, but that was no more than stuffing my bag in the break room and going out.
That said, if I was looking at the prospect of working in these shops long-term, I'd also be seeing what I could do to unionize the shop - they are a pretty crummy environment with abhorrent pay for anyone over the age of 16 (as the author points out).
> That said, if I was looking at the prospect of working in these shops long-term, I'd also be seeing what I could do to unionize the shop - they are a pretty crummy environment with abhorrent pay for anyone over the age of 16 (as the author points out).
I respect your optimism, but standard practice at big retailers for anyone who even breathes word of unionization is to fire them instantly. If that doesn't do it, they close the store. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart#Labor_unio...
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.
Racist jokes? Can you please link or quote some of these racist jokes? In the article, he quotes himself saying: “Romney is very, very comfortable, it seems, with people who are like him. That’s one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in town hall settings … But when he comes on ‘Fox and Friends,’ they’re like him. They’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company.”
Which I don't think is racist. Presumably, he also could have said "they're men", or "they're middle aged", but would not have been accused of being sexist or ageist.
This while article adds weight to my opinion that the USA is not a civilized country. Sure, there are the trappings. But a society that can afford to, but does not, look after those on the margins, is not civilized.
Sounds a little ridiculous, all right, but that's politics these days. I paid more attention to this stuff in the early 2000s, and was more on the right, so I remember what seemed like countless examples of Republican figures being hounded to the destruction of their careers for having made some statement that could be interpreted as being vaguely racist once in their lives. Now people on the center-left are getting the same treatment. I wouldn't say they deserve it either, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. Maybe someday we can all learn to back off from these ridiculous media feeding frenzies powered by dug-up dirt, but I'm not holding my breath.
I don't think it's racist either, but imagine a white reporter saying "they're black folks who are very much relaxed in their own company". I don't think that's automatically racist, but the torches and pitchforks would be out in full force.
Actually, he made a fairly accurate observation about the behavior of a guy he was covering. Some extremist supporters of the guy he was covering were not very happy with that, but it doesn't matter if 95% of the population says "duh, obviously".
(edited to add, reporting that the emperor has no clothes is not just a firing offense, but an economic death penalty, or if not an economic death penalty its at least incredibly harsh... I saw that fable as a theatrical play as a child, and have often thought the inevitable conclusion, as shown in this example, is more interesting than the play as portrayed.)
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.
First of all, what he said wasn't racist. Even if it were, should someone be banned from his profession for life, for one mistake? That is a very cruel punishment.
If we banned people for life for saying dumb things, we would have no politicians, movie stars etc left.
I guess [you] don’t care about hard work or loyalty.
Wow, just wow - humiliating him by checking his bag every day, making him do extra work (after work hours) for free, restricting him to less than 30 hours so the store doesn't have to give him benefits .... Even after all this, the author seemed to have worked hard. All of this is still not enough.
I'm still surprised how close to my last job this is. The do everything, get nothing [1]. Same mindset about being robbed by employees. The worst part there, to me, was the absurdity of it. You have to be on 100% ~24/7 even when there's nothing to do. But you're certainly not allowed to change things in any way to simplify or increase productivity. Something any programmer will cringe at to death. This is something very different from other jobs like mcdonalds where the rush impose high productivity constraints meaning things are already quite optimized. No time's wasted: you're active and for some valuable reason. Helps a lot.
[1] optional bonus: being slightly mocked by less educated people that will then ask you for hints about things they don't understand. Of course, I helped. Slave genes.
What struck me as really odd about his job was the obsession with anti-theft measures. How big is is this store that they have enough to hire a full-time loss prevention officer? I've never heard of any retail store giving employees bag-checks and pat-downs every time they entered and left the building either. It's been a long time since I've worked any job like that, but I've never heard of anything like that. From everything I've read, most major retailers have little to no protection against employee theft. Is the neighborhood they're in that bad that they have to go to these extremes, or is the owner/manager just nuts about this issue for some reason?
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 retailers do, in fact, have quite extensive controls in place to prevent and detect internal theft -- exception reporting, inventory tracking, etc. That these massive losses still occur should give you an idea of how complex the problem is.
The reason the store requires two employees to take out the trash has nothing to do with watching for thieves or "armed intruders." It's actually a simple and surprisingly effective deterrent to internal theft. Diverting merchandise through non-public exits is a common theft strategy.
Also, Ike was not "fired because [he] got a promotion." He was fired for lying on his job application about a previous conviction for theft. Ike's conviction strongly suggests a tendency to act dishonestly, which is further reinforced by his attempt to cover it up when applying for the job. This is precisely the type of individual that the background check is intended to screen.
Lastly, the author says it happened when Ike was a teenager, so it could only have happened when Ike was either 18 or 19. Juvenile court records are not available to background check services.
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 think of a solid legal reason not to do bag checks, but it sounds so demeaning and pointless, unless you work somewhere where tens of thousands in inventory could legitimately be snuck out through somebody's backpack. If you're selling diamonds or gold jewelry, I could see it, but sporting goods? What are they supposedly stealing that can be snuck out in a backpack and will lead to a meaningful loss before somebody figures it out?
Ike's situation is what bothers me about the current criminal justice system, though. If you get a conviction on your record for anything moderately serious, you're just done. He could tell the truth, and get locked out right off the bat, or lie, and maybe get caught later. We've probably all done dumb stuff when we were young. If you happen to get busted for something at the wrong time, well, good luck ever getting a semi-professional job again. Years and years of dedicated service are nothing against some dumb mistake a decade ago.
I'll admit that I tend to think that a lot of petty thieves are doing it for the thrills rather than desperation for survival. But what do we really expect them to do after they get caught? Even if they do some time and learn their lesson, it looks like they have damn few options for making a clean living, no matter how skilled and dedicated they are. I don't have any idea how many ex-cons are making a legit effort to live a clean life after they do their time, but we sure don't seem to be making it easy for them. And we're surprised that most of them go back to crime and get busted again? I'm not sure exactly how to solve it, but it surely needs some work.
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.
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.
> Ike's conviction strongly suggests a tendency to act dishonestly, which is further reinforced by his attempt to cover it up when applying for the job.
I wouldn't make it out to be such a personal moral failing. Given the job climate described in the article, I wouldn't expect him to be able to get a job by telling the truth about his conviction. If they were actually concerned about producing profit instead of covering their butts, Corporate would sweep it under the rug with the realization that he is effectively required to lie about it in order to participate in society.
Doesn't surprise me. Many years ago my first job was retail security guard. One day I was assigned to a sporting goods store. I was the victim of a scam where some woman accused me of losing an expensive bag. Pretty sure the manager of the store was in on it. Another store I worked in sold baby clothes and was constantly being robbed regardless of which guard was on duty. I've heard that Target has its own crime lab. I imagine things have gotten worse since I had that job in 1998.
Having two friends who have careers in "LP", both who have worked at a litany of stores, pretty much any chain you've heard of has a full time loss prevention officer or two.
It's probably the best paying job on the store premises.
Keep in mind their job is also to stop shoplifters in addition to "internal" theft, embezzlement, return fraud, etc.
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 urgent detail of this story.
I recently heard from someone who worked at Target that each day the managers would lock the doors after the last customer left, and physically lock the employees in. Nobody was allowed to leave until they were done checking for theft. This would last 10-15 minutes, and they didn't get paid for this time.
Not to belabor the point, but could someone please attempt to explain what rational goal is served by our society's choices to keep entire segments of the population in conditions the well-off regard as absolutely terrifying nightmare lives?
Controlling the people through fear doesn't sound like the "free world", you know.
Conditions have been deteriorating for a while now. Extended hours on holidays, terrible scheduling, and peculiar "performance measurement" tools. At my particular store, they adopted a system of tracking how many transactions a cashier performed per hour and then penalizing them when those transactions exceeded a certain number. The thought was that if a cashier rang up so many customers an hour, then some of them had had to wait in line and the cashier was at fault for not calling backup. (What backup? And what if they were just a really fast cashier?) Another was the obsession with collecting customers' email addresses. Cashiers were expected to collect so many email addresses a day or week or whatever or be threatened with losing their job.
My silly, between school semesters little retail gig had become very stressful towards the end because of the obsession with these metrics and a general attitude of "I could fire you today and have someone cheaper by tomorrow".