Retail Collapse 2019: Bezos realized that marriage is a form of union

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QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

nepetaMisekiryoiki posted:

Do you also complain about all the other nearby buildings who didn't order the occupants out immediately after first impact? You need to be real here, waiting to organize an orderly evacuation after what seems to be an accidental disaster is standard procedure for office buildings, especially 100+ storey super-towers.

There is also whole matter that there is only 17 minutes between attack impacts, and there was surely a lot of time that had to be waited before building-wide orders could be issued. This is frankly on all levels no sensible comparison to things like a much more predictable weather emergency where there are clear guidelines on what areas are expected to be immediately dangerous.

lol

yes I would absolutely complain about any other nearby building that didn't evacuate their occupants, but the fact of the matter is that most of them did evacuate. even in the towers themselves, ~~hundreds~~ thousands of people evacuated. because that's what you do when one of the world's largest building is right next door and in flames.

an "orderly evacuation" pertains to calmly leaving and going somewhere else, not sitting down and saying "well that looks pretty bad, but let's stick around and see what happens". You seem to think that you should wait for emergency services to order you to evacuate; that is never the case.

WorldsStongestNerd posted:

In the event of an emergency, you absolutly don't jam up the stairs and streets outside with thousands of people for no good reason. They made the correct decision with the info they had at the time.

you are wrong. basically every office building is going to have one (or multiple) assembly areas for people to gather in. "jamming up the stairs and streets" is not what an evacuation leads to, most office buildings are 99% empty space and when you evacuate it's not like letting out a football stadium of people. the "correct decision", which many people in the surrounding buildings and in the towers themselves did make, was to evacuate

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jun 1, 2019

# ? Jun 1, 2019 20:16

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# ? May 10, 2024 14:03

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

This article may be of interest for this dera- I mean discussion.

It looks like NIST also did a report that touches on evacuation practices.

And here's an NYT article directly on the subject.

The commission report undoubtedly has detailed material on this question.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jun 1, 2019

# ? Jun 1, 2019 23:05

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

NIST points out that 99% of people below the impact floors evacuated successfully but goons in this thread are saying that it was cool and good that several people were being told to go back to their desks to die

lol

# ? Jun 1, 2019 23:58

Raldikuk: Apr 7, 2006; I'm bad with money and I want that meatball!

QuarkJets posted:

NIST points out that 99% of people below the impact floors evacuated successfully but goons in this thread are saying that it was cool and good that several people were being told to go back to their desks to die

lol

I found this quote from a survivor pretty illuminating on the evacuation topic:

quote:

Quote from Tower 2: I was there during the 1993 bombing. I did evacuate�with a group of people who had no clue as to where we were going. What I learned from that experience was not to trust the Port Authority�s announcements. Had I not experienced that, I might have listened to the Port Authority announcement and stayed put.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 00:24

Celexi: Nov 25, 2006; Can't post for 11 hours!

At the time that i was watching the whole thing as a child and plane 2 had just hit, and I do remember that after hearing on tv that " the office workers were asked to stay put" thinking to myself what a stupid idea that was and how I would have just run out.

Finally when I saw one tower and the next crashing my brain kept shorting as to why people didn't just run.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 01:09

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Raldikuk posted:

I found this quote from a survivor pretty illuminating on the evacuation topic:

but what if they clogged up the stairs? those thousands of people probably should have just stayed at their desks and continued working in case someone needed to use the stairwell for some other reason

# ? Jun 2, 2019 01:14

Owlofcreamcheese: May 22, 2005; Can't post for 9 years!; Buglord

QuarkJets posted:

but what if they clogged up the stairs? those thousands of people probably should have just stayed at their desks and continued working in case someone needed to use the stairwell for some other reason

Is there any news story anywhere saying anyone was told to continue working? They were just told to stay put.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 01:18

Willie Tomg: Feb 2, 2006

QuarkJets posted:

but what if they clogged up the stairs? those thousands of people probably should have just stayed at their desks and continued working in case someone needed to use the stairwell for some other reason

"I didn't learn how to do that when I was a teenager" is a poor excuse for refusing to learn how to do something. It's what fat Americans from the midwest say when they see a roundabout for the first time. Do you imagine that you're smarter than a fat American from the midwest? Then prove it by learning how to turn at a stop light (when it's allowed)

# ? Jun 2, 2019 08:04

JonathonSpectre: Jul 23, 2003; I replaced the Shermatar and text with this because I don't wanna see racial slurs every time you post what the fuck; Soiled Meat

The best thing that was ever written about 9/11.

Rick Rescorla's evacuation plan is one of the reasons so many people made it out. I think of him and his twice-a-year-no-matter-what drills every time someone bitches about a fire drill or something.

Seriously, read it if you haven't, the dude's bravery in the face of death is just unbelievable.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 14:33

Spacewolf: May 19, 2014

JonathonSpectre posted:

The best thing that was ever written about 9/11.

Rick Rescorla's evacuation plan is one of the reasons so many people made it out. I think of him and his twice-a-year-no-matter-what drills every time someone bitches about a fire drill or something.

Seriously, read it if you haven't, the dude's bravery in the face of death is just unbelievable.

Thank you for this. Hard reading, but thanks.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 21:11

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; Out here, everything hurts.

JonathonSpectre posted:

The best thing that was ever written about 9/11.

Rick Rescorla's evacuation plan is one of the reasons so many people made it out. I think of him and his twice-a-year-no-matter-what drills every time someone bitches about a fire drill or something.

Seriously, read it if you haven't, the dude's bravery in the face of death is just unbelievable.

Yup.

I brought this article up to my boss when we started talking about emergency response planning, and it is a hard read but a good one.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Is there any news story anywhere saying anyone was told to continue working? They were just told to stay put.

Staying put is what gets you killed in these situations, something that anyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge about emergency planning could tell you.

Not that you, being Owlofcreamcheese, are capable of asking, or taking that knowledge onboard.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 21:29

madeintaipei: Jul 13, 2012

JonathonSpectre posted:

The best thing that was ever written about 9/11.

Rick Rescorla's evacuation plan is one of the reasons so many people made it out. I think of him and his twice-a-year-no-matter-what drills every time someone bitches about a fire drill or something.

Seriously, read it if you haven't, the dude's bravery in the face of death is just unbelievable.

If the name sounds familiar, Rescorla served with the author of, "We were soldiers once, and young.", Hal Moore, during the battle of the Ia Drang valley.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 21:45

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Liquid Communism posted:

Staying put is what gets you killed in these situations, something that anyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge about emergency planning could tell you.

Not that you, being Owlofcreamcheese, are capable of asking, or taking that knowledge onboard.

OOCC is the ideas guy, guys.

# ? Jun 2, 2019 21:45

Punkin Spunkin: Jan 1, 2010

Awwww that poor rhodesian veteran working security for morgan stanley
Gosh im super sad he died

# ? Jun 2, 2019 23:16

CongoJack: Nov 5, 2009; Ask Why, Asshole

Punkin Spunkin posted:

Awwww that poor rhodesian veteran working security for morgan stanley
Gosh im super sad he died

I don't think there was ever any place better suited for a lifelong self proclaimed adversary of communism to die than the WTC.

# ? Jun 3, 2019 02:14

JustJeff88: Jan 15, 2008; I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE

THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

of SA-Mart forever

I know nothing about this person apart from a Wikipedia search moments ago, so I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not.

# ? Jun 3, 2019 18:06

Punkin Spunkin: Jan 1, 2010

He's definitely in hell rn which would be weird cuz he'd meet the hijackers who killed him in there too
Just like "sup sup sup sup"

# ? Jun 3, 2019 18:22

ryonguy: Jun 27, 2013

JustJeff88 posted:

I know nothing about this person apart from a Wikipedia search moments ago, so I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not.

The first few paragraphs of the article talk about how he gained US citizenship specifically because he wanted to go "fight communism" in Vietnam after which I didn't read anymore because lol gently caress that guy.

He's scum, rest in piss.

# ? Jun 3, 2019 20:39

JustJeff88: Jan 15, 2008; I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE

THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

of SA-Mart forever

ryonguy posted:

The first few paragraphs of the article talk about how he gained US citizenship specifically because he wanted to go "fight communism" in Vietnam after which I didn't read anymore because lol gently caress that guy.

He's scum, rest in piss.

I have to admit, the fact that he's British makes that sting just a little bit more.

# ? Jun 3, 2019 22:25

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/06/walmart-turns-robots-its-human-workers-who-feel-like-machines/?utm_term=.7ffa2cd0b126

quote:

To Walmart executives, the Auto-C self-driving floor scrubber is the future of retail automation � a multimillion-dollar bet that advanced robots will optimize operations, cut costs and revolutionize the American superstore.

But to the workers of Walmart Supercenter No. 937 in Marietta, Ga., the machine has a different label: �Freddy,� named for a janitor the store let go shortly before the Auto-C rolled to life.

Freddy�s career at the store has gotten off to a rocky start. Workers there said it has suffered nervous breakdowns, needed regular retraining sessions and taken weird detours from its programmed rounds.

Shoppers are not quite sure how to interact with Freddy, either. Evan Tanner, who works there, recalled the night he says a man fell asleep on top of the machine as it whirred obediently down a toy aisle.

Walmart executives said they are skeptical that happened, because the Auto-C is designed to stop if someone interferes with its work. But Tanner insists Freddy dutifully stuck to the job at hand. �Someone had to pull [the sleeping man] off,� he said. Freddy �was going to swing toward groceries, just cleaning away.�

Over the past 50 years, Walmart has recast the fabric of American life, jostling mom-and-pop shops, reshaping small towns and transforming how millions work and shop.

But the superstore titan�s latest gamble is an entirely new kind of disruption � the biggest real-world experiment yet for how workers, customers and robots will interact.

The nation�s largest private employer has unleashed an army of robots into more than 1,500 of its jumbo stores, with thousands of automated shelf-scanners, box-unloaders, artificial-intelligence cameras and other machines doing the jobs once left to human employees.

The swarm is already remaking how the retailer�s more than 1 million U.S. �associates� go about their daily work. Given the chain�s ubiquity across the country, the local Walmart store also is likely to become the first place millions of Americans meet a real-life, working robot.

Walmart executives have promised the all-hours robot workhorses will let employees endure less drudgery and enjoy �more satisfying jobs,� while also ensuring shoppers see cleaner stores, fuller shelves and faster checkouts.

But the rise of the machines has had an unexpected side effect: Their jobs, some workers said, have never felt more robotic. By incentivizing hyper-efficiency, the machines have deprived the employees of tasks they used to find enjoyable. Some also feel like their most important assignment now is to train and babysit their often inscrutable robot colleagues.

Customers, too, have found coexisting with machines to be confusing, if not alarming. Some shoppers have been spooked, for example, by the Auto-S scanner, which stands six feet tall and quietly creeps down the aisles, searching for out-of-place items by sweeping shelves with a beam of light. Other shoppers, store workers said, have made a game of kicking the things.

Employees at a half-dozen newly automated Walmarts said the machines at times are helpful, even charming. Some talked about the robots� personalities and said they had adorned them with employee name tags. But others also felt this new age of robotics had accelerated the pace of work and forced them to constantly respond to the machines� nagging alerts. Some said it made them doubt the company valued their work.

This awkward interplay of man vs. machine could become one of the defining tensions of the modern workplace as more stores, hotels, restaurants and other businesses roll in robots that could boost company reliability and trim labor costs.

Many Walmart workers said they had long feared robots would one day take their jobs. But they had not expected this strange transition era in which they are working alongside machines that can be as brittle, clumsy and easily baffled by the messy realities of big-box retail as a human worker can be.

Walmart executives say that the machines are helpful companions that will allow workers to focus on more-creative, customer-facing goals and that early responses from workers have been �overwhelmingly positive.� In an announcement last month titled �#SquadGoals,� the company said it would be expanding its robot program and compared the machines to the Star Wars droid R2-D2 and the Transformer Optimus Prime. �Every hero needs a sidekick, and some of the best have been automated,� the company said.

The robots also don�t complain, ask for raises, or require vacations and bathroom breaks. During a company earnings call in August, Walmart president and chief executive Doug McMillon said the machines were an important part of how the company, which has annual revenue of $500 billion, could trim waste and �operate with discipline.�

�We�re testing or scaling new automation efforts in several areas,� he said. �Our mind-set and specific plans and actions around cost management are vital.�

Employees process incoming products at a Walmart fulfillment center in Bethlehem, Pa., in 2017. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News)
The scale of the effort is impressive. The Fast Unloader machines automatically scan and sort freight as it is tossed off shipping trucks. Auto-S camera robots roll past shelves to scan which products are mislabeled or out of stock. Giant orange obelisks, called automated pickup towers, spit out goods for online shoppers like 16-foot-tall vending machines. Scurrying little Alphabots bring items to workers for packing. Auto-C robot Zambonis come out at night to buff the floors.

One Walmart Neighborhood Market in Levittown, N.Y., has 100 servers, 10 cooling towers, 400 graphics-processing cards and 150,000 feet of cables in service of a complicated artificial-intelligence system designed to assess the store in real time. Cameras and weight sensors automatically detect when the shopping-cart pen is empty and the bananas are overripe.

But the technology can only do so much. When the AI senses a problem, it sends an alert to the handheld devices most Walmart workers are expected to carry, saying it is time to corral the carts or replenish the produce. The store�s roughly 100 human associates are the ones who do the physical work.

That has added a layer of discomfort to a job some workers said already could feel demeaning. Quitting or getting fired, some joked, is like getting �promoted to customer.� Now they find themselves in the uneasy position of not only training their possible replacements but also tending to them every time something goes wrong.

The self-driving floor scrubbers, for instance, must be manually driven until they learn the store�s layout � and when the aisles are shifted around, as is common during seasonal displays and remodels, the machines must be retrained.

Technical glitches, surprise breakdowns and human resentment are commonplace. Some workers said they have cursed the robots out using their employee-given nicknames, such as �Emma,� �Bender� and �Fran.�

The human customers have to be trained, too. Walmart workers said they have seen people following the robots around, recording them, talking to them, slapping their emergency-stop buttons, jumping in their way suddenly � and, yes, assaulting them with kicks and shoves.

The inventory-scanning robot is well-traveled: Its kind has captured more than 3 billion images across 24,000 miles of Walmart shelving, all at speeds of less than a half-mile per hour. But to customers, it remains a stranger. �Customers freak out when they see him,� said Dreama Lovett, who works at a supercenter in Jacksonville, Fla. �They�ve not seen anything like him before.�

Other customers find their time with the robots to be unsatisfying, including older shoppers for whom a trip to the store is as much about human interaction as anything else. �A lot of them will say, �I didn�t come here to talk to a machine,� � said a worker at a Walmart in Dunedin, Fla., who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn�t want it to affect his job. � �I came here to shop and have someone help me with my groceries.� �

Martin Hitch, the chief business officer of Bossa Nova Robotics, which makes Walmart�s inventory-scanning robots, said the company has spent years teaching its machines to be as human-friendly as possible. But there�s no agreed-upon etiquette for how robots and people should communicate.

Engineers did not, for instance, want the robot to silently skulk up and scare anyone � but how exactly should it announce itself? They tested a wide range of noises, from Road Runner-style �beep-beeps� to the honks of reversing forklifts before settling on a pleasant yet insistent chirp they mixed from a clip of birdsong.

�The last thing you want it to do is talk,� Hitch said. �Because if you talk, people think they can talk back.�

Signals that seemed obvious to human testers have failed spectacularly when applied to the real world. The company put turn signals on a test robot, Hitch said, but it just confused people, because no one expected to see blinker lights while shopping for Cheerios.

Walmart said last month that it has reduced its worker turnover to the lowest level in five years and that more than 40,000 U.S. workers are in roles that did not exist two years ago. Most of the company�s U.S. workers make an average of about $14.26 an hour, company figures show.

But some said the automated tedium is getting to them. The robots have taken away some simple pleasures, such as walking the store, and pigeonholed them into some smaller, mind-numbing tasks. Self-checkout aisles, for instance, have replaced some cashiers and shifted much of the work to customers. But workers still have to stand by to guide confused shoppers, fix glitches and soothe the machine when it sounds the alert that there is an unexpected item in the bagging area.

Michael Webb, an economist at Stanford University who researches labor markets and AI, said it is no coincidence that the machines are first arriving en masse in big-box stores.

Those companies depend on volume � jumbo stores, lots of sales � so the burden of investing in robots can more quickly balance out. Higher-priced stores, he said, are also less likely to shift to robots. �The human service is this thing you�ve got to pay extra for now,� he said.

So what is the harm in working with a robo-sidekick that is helpful sometimes and a headache otherwise? In March, Boston University and MIT economists Pascual Restrepo and Daron Acemoglu argued that many of today�s automation efforts were not designed to boost productivity but to replace it, by swapping out humans for cheaper machines. That could make workers� lives worse, they said, �if these new technologies are not great but just �so-so� � � good enough to be adopted but not that much more productive than the people they pushed out.

For Tanner, the employee at the Marietta supercenter, the rise of automation has made major changes to how he works. Formerly a department manager in the toys section, he now says he has to pick up the slack of a hugely trimmed staff: After the Fast Unloader was brought in, he said, the store cut the number of workers it had unloading trucks and saddled him with many more hours of putting away freight.

�The monotony in the store has increased a ton since we�ve gotten these robots. It�s insane,� he said. But he blames the managers, not the robots, for how decisions in his store get made. He said Freddy, the self-driving floor scrubber, is �basically just another employee.�

# ? Jun 7, 2019 00:39

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Walmart executives have promised the all-hours robot workhorses will let employees endure less drudgery and enjoy “more satisfying jobs, such as panhandling, riding the hobo rails, and recycling scrap metal"

# ? Jun 7, 2019 04:58

Invalid Validation: Jan 13, 2008

Doug McMillion is the perfect CEO name of retail hell.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 05:17

SSJ_naruto_2003: Oct 12, 2012

Overnight at the local Walmart a bunch of "Walmart is investing in American Jobs!" signs appeared.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 06:42

Poil: Mar 17, 2007

How do they expect people to be able to shop if they keep them from working or earning money?

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

Overnight at the local Walmart a bunch of "Walmart is investing in American Jobs!" signs appeared.

quote:

invest
/ɪnˈvɛst/
verb
gerund or present participle: investing

1.
put (money) into financial schemes, shares, property, or a commercial venture with the expectation of achieving a profit.

Well, they are putting money into getting rid of American jobs with the expectation of profit.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 11:27

TyroneGoldstein: Mar 30, 2005

quote:

Over the past 50 years, Walmart has recast the fabric of American life, jostling mom-and-pop shops, reshaping small towns and transforming how millions work and shop.

You know, every time I tend to think that people sometimes throw around the neoliberal bogeyman concept too much, one of our sterling Papers' of Record reminds me how hosed we are.

Jostling! A friendlier form of the destruction of The Commons and the very fabric of the Social Contract!

# ? Jun 7, 2019 11:30

Owlofcreamcheese: May 22, 2005; Can't post for 9 years!; Buglord

TyroneGoldstein posted:

You know, every time I tend to think that people sometimes throw around the neoliberal bogeyman concept too much, one of our sterling Papers' of Record reminds me how hosed we are.

Is the neoliberal bogeyman the loss of mom and pop shops or the exhaultation of mom and pop shops?

# ? Jun 7, 2019 13:33

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Is the neoliberal bogeyman the loss of mom and pop shops or the exhaultation of mom and pop shops?

Yes.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 15:27

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

What happens when the robot runs into a bathroom meth lab.

Does it just slowly reverse out, or does it break bad?

# ? Jun 7, 2019 15:32

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

Sodomy Hussein posted:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/06/walmart-turns-robots-its-human-workers-who-feel-like-machines/?utm_term=.7ffa2cd0b126

I'm skeptical this thing actually replaced anyone's job. Actually scrubbing the aisle floors is a relatively small part of maintenance's job at Walmart, maybe 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift. Before floors can be scrubbed they have to be swept for debris, and the scrubber machines have to be filled/drained and have parts which require regular replacement (scrub pads, squeegees). You also have areas like apparel which have wooden floors and need to be cleaned/waxed differently and have racks moved off them before they can do any of it. There are also regularly hazardous spills which have to be cleaned up on their own before a floor scrubber can go over them.

Other maintenance position things this robot presumably can't do: Clean the bathrooms, do the trash :barf:

# ? Jun 7, 2019 15:58

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

It definitely seems to be in the class of "automation" that only exists to funnel kickback money to an executive's friends.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:07

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

Put this racist on ignore immediately!

OtherworldlyInvader posted:

I'm skeptical this thing actually replaced anyone's job. Actually scrubbing the aisle floors is a relatively small part of maintenance's job at Walmart, maybe 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift. Before floors can be scrubbed they have to be swept for debris, and the scrubber machines have to be filled/drained and have parts which require regular replacement (scrub pads, squeegees). You also have areas like apparel which have wooden floors and need to be cleaned/waxed differently and have racks moved off them before they can do any of it. There are also regularly hazardous spills which have to be cleaned up on their own before a floor scrubber can go over them.

Other maintenance position things this robot presumably can't do: Clean the bathrooms, do the trash

When I was at Aldi's someone spilled blueberries on the ground and then smooshed them, so they just drove out the scrubber and cleaned it up immediately.

I've never worked at a big box retail store. When you say 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift, do you mean of every 8 hour shift? Because at a 24 hour Wal-Mart that would be 3-6 hours a day and sufficient justification for firing the laziest janitor.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:16

crazy cloud: Nov 7, 2012; by Cyrano4747; Lipstick Apathy

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Is the neoliberal bogeyman the loss of mom and pop shops or the exhaultation of mom and pop shops?

Jostling, reforming, and reshaping, known synonyms for destroying, ruining, and condemning to even more crushing poverty

# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:23

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

crazy cloud posted:

Jostling, reforming, and reshaping, known synonyms for destroying, ruining, and condemning to even more crushing poverty

Reshaping your apartment into a car. Which you can conveniently park in the lot of the Walmart you used to work at.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:33

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

Gobbeldygook posted:

When I was at Aldi's someone spilled blueberries on the ground and then smooshed them, so they just drove out the scrubber and cleaned it up immediately.

I've never worked at a big box retail store. When you say 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift, do you mean of every 8 hour shift? Because at a 24 hour Wal-Mart that would be 3-6 hours a day and sufficient justification for firing the laziest janitor.

I don't know about something like blueberries, but a lot of paper/plastic/ect ends up on the floor and if it's not picked up first will clog up the machine or the drains they empty it into. I think our floors get scrubbed once a day, in theory one of the day shifts scrubs the floors a second time during the winter but I'm skeptical this actually happens regularly. Cleaning up broken glass jars, spilled chemicals/detergents, bodily fluids are all fairly regular occurrences and have to be cleaned up separately before the floor scrubbers can be run.

Probably like half of maintenance's job is cleaning the bathrooms, the stuff some of Walmart's customers will do to them is horrible. The store I work at has been understaffed on maintenance for like 3 years (and it keeps getting worse) and finding some one else willing to ride the scrubber around has always been the easy part.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 17:09

JustJeff88: Jan 15, 2008; I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE

THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

of SA-Mart forever

TyroneGoldstein posted:

people sometimes throw around the neoliberal bogeyman concept too much

I was going to post something about how this is just another cost-cutting, profit-boosting measure and is inevitable in the capitalist system, but instead I will post this... I understand fully the scepticism of people towards alternate economic systems - I really do. Every fairly recent attempt at a new form of social organisation has fallen pray to a combination of fatal flaws/bad actors/lies and propaganda, and people are surrounded with media screaming about "creating jobs" when the system wants to do the exact opposite. However, it is na�ve beyond comprehension to think that capitalism is somehow the "end game" in terms of socioeconomic organization. Were anyone to say that technology or the arts were never going to improve or change from the present would be considered an utter idiot, yet people accept that tacitly in terms of economic and social relations. I'm stealing from another poster whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, but anarchy-primitivism, feudalism and chattel slavery were "just the way it was" until they weren't, and to pretend that humanity has somehow reached the apogee of economics is ludicrous. Capitalism has shown massive flaws over the years, and a lot of time and thought and arguments have been consecrated to patching over its many cracks and trying to find something better. While I am an appalling cynic who wonders if humanity can function when they are not motivated by pure greed, I'm not arrogant enough to think that things won't change. Whether that's for better or for worse is another matter entirely.

Rent-A-Cop posted:

Reshaping your apartment into a car. Which you can conveniently park in the lot of the Walmart you used to work at.

... until you are run off by the security ~~guard~~ bot. I'm kidding, of course. We all know that your car will be repossessed and then you will have to sleep on the ground in the carpark of your former employer, until chased away by the Officer Roboto.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 17:29

Pembroke Fuse: Dec 29, 2008

Walmart gently and playfully jostled my wages below the poverty line while reshaping my household into a cardboard box and resformed my future into never-ending nightmare.

Pembroke Fuse fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Jun 8, 2019

# ? Jun 7, 2019 19:33

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

OtherworldlyInvader posted:

I'm skeptical this thing actually replaced anyone's job. Actually scrubbing the aisle floors is a relatively small part of maintenance's job at Walmart, maybe 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift. Before floors can be scrubbed they have to be swept for debris, and the scrubber machines have to be filled/drained and have parts which require regular replacement (scrub pads, squeegees). You also have areas like apparel which have wooden floors and need to be cleaned/waxed differently and have racks moved off them before they can do any of it. There are also regularly hazardous spills which have to be cleaned up on their own before a floor scrubber can go over them.

Other maintenance position things this robot presumably can't do: Clean the bathrooms, do the trash

It's fine to be skeptical but in one of the stores they literally named a robot after the janitor that lost his job when the robot appeared. So maybe they had 4 janitors and dropped that down to 3 + some robots, but that's still a job replaced. That's commonly what happens; robots aren't designed to be literal 1:1 human replacements, they're meant to provide enough efficiency gains to reduce the size of the human workforce.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 20:24

NerdyMcNerdNerd: Aug 3, 2004; Lol.i halbve already saod i inferno circstances wanttpgback

Gobbeldygook posted:

When I was at Aldi's someone spilled blueberries on the ground and then smooshed them, so they just drove out the scrubber and cleaned it up immediately.

I've never worked at a big box retail store. When you say 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift, do you mean of every 8 hour shift? Because at a 24 hour Wal-Mart that would be 3-6 hours a day and sufficient justification for firing the laziest janitor.

It's often not an eight hour shift. Maintenance people at retail stores are often part-time and on 4-7 hour shifts, depending. A 24/7 store might have three shifts a day. Most stores have 2; open and close.

In the average supermarket, floor care usually involves doing a thorough sweep of the store with a push broom. This doesn't get everything, but it gets the larger pieces of trash, plastic, food, etc. There's a lot of stuff you really don't want to get sucked into the machine. The floors can get surprisingly filthy, and this only gets worse the larger/more popular the store is. Breaking the floor machine out after a certain time of day is a huge pain in the rear end because people are stupid and don't pay attention and want desperately to get run over by a half ton of scrubbing, sucking plastic fury.

That's just the sales floor. You also have to take care of the back room ( which is full of freight and equipment that moves around constantly ), break rooms and offices, bathrooms, etc.

Every surface in the stupid loving store gets gross stuff on it that needs to be cleaned. The shelves, the tag rails, the doors, the cooler doors, the trash cans, the toilets, sinks, desks.

Trash needs to be collected and disposed of, not just from the cans, but ( depending on policy ) from every department, and the parking lot.

If a janitor isn't on hand to handle incidental messes, that means someone from somewhere has to- usually a cashier, because other departments are staffed so thinly that they can't spare anyone ( because then there will be no one in that department ). This can range from a spill / slip-hazard on the sales floor to whoops! all feces in the bathroom.

In theory, you can/do also cross-train the janitor so not only do you have someone around to do maintenance stuff ( which nobody else ever wants to do ), but you have another person around to float from place to place as labor is needed.

Janitors that know what they're doing can end up with a lot of downtime and end up making work to run out their clocks when things are slow, but when things are busy they do a lot more than people think.

# ? Jun 7, 2019 21:23

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

OtherworldlyInvader posted:

I'm skeptical this thing actually replaced anyone's job. Actually scrubbing the aisle floors is a relatively small part of maintenance's job at Walmart, maybe 1-2 hours of an 8 hour shift. Before floors can be scrubbed they have to be swept for debris, and the scrubber machines have to be filled/drained and have parts which require regular replacement (scrub pads, squeegees). You also have areas like apparel which have wooden floors and need to be cleaned/waxed differently and have racks moved off them before they can do any of it. There are also regularly hazardous spills which have to be cleaned up on their own before a floor scrubber can go over them.

Other maintenance position things this robot presumably can't do: Clean the bathrooms, do the trash

Even if it broke even for Wal-Mart or significantly under even they would still do it. Robots don't call in sick and they can be easily fixed by a single regional technician. Operating costs become more predictable, even if they are the same or higher, letting you streamline things and adjust budgets accordingly. Even if you have the same amount of employees on staff, they spend less time standing around and more time taking orders from the robot supervisor. Employees on staff need less training to do their work. So, the robots solve both on-paper and "hidden" costs.

JustJeff88 posted:

... until you are run off by the security ~~guard~~ bot. I'm kidding, of course. We all know that your car will be repossessed and then you will have to sleep on the ground in the carpark of your former employer, until chased away by the Officer Roboto.

This is why most attempts at Officer Robotos (and there have been a few) are mysteriously destroyed days after deployment on "harass the homeless out of doorways" duty.

Name Change fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jun 7, 2019

# ? Jun 7, 2019 23:03

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# ? May 10, 2024 14:03

OhFunny: Jun 26, 2013; EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/heres-where-the-jobs-are-in-one-chart.html

Retail lost 7,500 jobs in May.

# ? Jun 8, 2019 02:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Retail Collapse 2019: Bezos realized that marriage is a form of union

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