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I think nobody knows and a bunch of ghouls saw Number Go Up during covid and now they have to keep Number Going Up or answer to an elder circle of ghouls called shareholders. It all trickles down in terrible policies, keeping prices artificially inflated and slashing as much of the business as possible while keeping it running. Eventually things will get relief(via the government? who knows) or crash. Capitalism: A Cool And Good Infinitely Growing System.
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Feb 6, 2024 03:38
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We hit minimum viable product a while ago, but they keep cutting because they have to find growth somewhere. This absolutely has to snap at some point but it seems like every single power structure is desperately trying to keep it going no matter what.
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Feb 6, 2024 03:47
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I also found out that not even the district manager has any sway over our inventory. Back in the day, while there was automated ordering, the manager in charge of that could adjust those levels based on what we sold and how much stock space we have. Now, we have empty shelves everywhere and piles of backstock for items we're lucky to sell one of a month. Receiving inventory is a joke, we used to have two deliveries a week, a big one on tuesday night and a small one on thursdays. The tuesday shipment was worked after the store closed by a crew of five people and would be finished by 2 or 3am if it was a big one. The thursday was worked during store hours because it was only a few pallets of large, mostly store use stuff. Both shipments are now combined, so almost an entire semitrailer is dropped off at the store monday night, and it's not worked over night! They let us come in at 5am tuesday and it's a single manager and one other employee. I've actually been helping out by coming in that early, so there's at least a third person, but I'm not an official part of truck crew. Truck is routinely still not done when I come back into work on saturday, since i have wed/thr/fri off. And corporate doesn't want us working any truck on the weekend since it interferes with customer service. Just loving lol.
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Feb 6, 2024 04:08
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litany of gulps posted:How do you all figure the reduced hours make sense in the larger scheme of things? Unemployment is super low, wages are relatively high, and prices are relatively high. Are the bosses trying to figure out where the absolutely minimum levels of staffing might be while still being able to function, or are they actually facing real pressure if high wages and reduced demand due to the high prices are squeezing them? Having salaried managers on registers in slow times seems like it can only make sense if there's nothing left to cut except management and management is unwilling to get cut. A few points: Some managerial positions are given bonuses for coming in under staffing budget, thus it is to their personal benefit to mash costs down and simply tell everyone remaining to work harder. Staffing is about the only really "flexible" cost a business has. Rent, stock, utilities, etc. are more or less completely stable for the most part and don't respond much to bullying or entreaties. So once higher management finds that growth is no longer explosive, but someone up above still demands that number go up, slashing staffing costs are about the only way to keep number growing until the eventual implosion. This obviously will eventually gently caress up the value and functioning of the business, but before that point everyone responsible for this push will have sold their stock and bailed out. lmao at the idea that businesses are in any way suffering. It's the demand for constant growth and the greed of upper management that fucks up the equation.
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Feb 6, 2024 14:09
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PurpleXVI posted:A few points: Yeah our management constantly have labour targets to hit, specifically what percentage of daily revenue is then being spent on the staff working that day. When I started the target was usually 25% and these days it's closer to 18-20%. There's also less good stock, the asian supermarket I worked at last year does bubble tea and after I left they switched from the good tapioca that people liked to much cheaper balls that nobody liked when we trialled them. But they're cheaper so gently caress it they're using them anyway. Of course this has also meant nobody gets it there any more and instead goes to the dedicated boba place that opened about 5 minutes walk away. Mcdonalds is also pushing hard to move from the disposable sauce tubes that have been used for years to refillable tubes. The spin is something something enviroment except the cardboard tubes were recyclable and the refillable tubes use non-recyclable plastic pouches to be refilled and are also way more labour intensive, not to mention the refillable tubes don't fit properly if a sauce gun is slightly bent (which any gun more than a month old will be from being dropped once). But they're cheaper so gently caress you we're using them.
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Feb 6, 2024 14:36
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Couple of Walmart employees this morning tried to put a skid of broken concrete blocks into the trash compactor. Luckily for the store, the back room manager saw them and yelled across the room before they started. Would've loved to hear that sound tho
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Feb 7, 2024 15:55
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Couple of Walmart employees this morning tried to put a skid of broken concrete blocks into the trash compactor. Luckily for the store, the back room manager saw them and yelled across the room before they started. I... What? Why? How did they think that would go?
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Feb 7, 2024 15:59
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I'll wager they don't get paid enough to care how that would go.
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Feb 7, 2024 16:05
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Compactor go cronch.
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Feb 7, 2024 16:10
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Hispanic! At The Disco posted:I'll wager they don't get paid enough to care how that would go. This. My mom likes to rail against McDonald's employees, not that we've ordered from them much lately because of how obscenely expensive it is, but saying how people want to get 15 or 18 bucks an hour and they can't even assemble a cheeseburger right! To which I counter, minimum wage, minimum effort. I remember working at a pet store, in the specialty department, which pretty much was everything but cats and dogs, and even though I had no experience with birds, or anything beyond some common reptiles in the trade, at least once or twice a day, my name would be over the intercom that I had a call on line one or two. Which usually meant it was your family calling you. Nope, it was always a customer asking a stupid question. Like how could they breed their cockatiels, or how did they hand raise a litter of hamsters. Of course, management didn't care about that, they just saw me getting personal calls every single day. Even when I explained to the cashiers not to call me unless it was for something only directly related to my department, and even then to only call me by name over intercom if it was my family calling me, not a customer, I would still get random calls from people because I actually took time to study up and read about different feeding requirements for different fish in animals and how did tame down different ones, etc etc. My co-workers got paid the same if not more than I did and they did absolutely nothing. Well actually they did do something, they would always refer the phone call to me.
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Feb 7, 2024 16:18
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njsykora posted:Compactor go cronch. At work someone once tossed an entire lawnmower still with gas in it into the trash compactor where it did, indeed, go cronch. Good luck none of that generated any kind of spark.
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Feb 7, 2024 17:54
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In the employee's defense, their manager had told them specifically to do it. I helpfully suggested to the back room manager that she go ask that manager about it because managers butting heads over stupid poo poo is amusing most of the time.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:50
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Admiral Joeslop posted:In the employee's defense, their manager had told them specifically to do it. I helpfully suggested to the back room manager that she go ask that manager about it because managers butting heads over stupid poo poo is amusing most of the time. Why did that manager suggest that they do it though?? 
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Feb 7, 2024 18:53
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Volmarias posted:Why did that manager suggest that they do it though?? They also don't get paid enough to care.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:16
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Look, if you compact the bricks they're easier to move. Stands to reason.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:26
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Volmarias posted:Why did that manager suggest that they do it though?? Not their area, not their problem. The usual manager attitude.
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Feb 7, 2024 21:39
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Cowslips Warren posted:My mom likes to rail against McDonald's employees, not that we've ordered from them much lately because of how obscenely expensive it is, but saying how people want to get 15 or 18 bucks an hour and they can't even assemble a cheeseburger right! To which I counter, minimum wage, minimum effort. I want to burn down our local McDonald's (when the regular employees aren't there, of course; just the managers or franchise owners) because of how much work they give those poor employees. The woman handling the cash register is also handling BOTH of the drive-ins at the same time and filling sodas, and that's just the stuff I can see through that little window. There has been at least one time when she's been the same person meeting me at the next window to give me my food, too, so it can't be limited to just that stuff, either. "$15-18 an hour and they can't even assemble a cheeseburger right while people dictate separate orders into each ear, giving you your change, filling your soda, and manning the handoff window simultaneously." Hell, I couldn't do that for $150 an hour. I'd gently caress poo poo up all day long. I have to make a list if I need to pick up more than three items at the grocery store.
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Feb 7, 2024 22:55
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Sundae posted:I want to burn down our local McDonald's (when the regular employees aren't there, of course; just the managers or franchise owners) because of how much work they give those poor employees. The woman handling the cash register is also handling BOTH of the drive-ins at the same time and filling sodas, and that's just the stuff I can see through that little window. There has been at least one time when she's been the same person meeting me at the next window to give me my food, too, so it can't be limited to just that stuff, either. We should have learned from the covid lockdowns. "Oh hey our lives grind to a halt if this group of the lowest paid people in the country don't go to work, maybe they shouldn't be the lowest paid" Nah though. Line needs to go up.
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Feb 7, 2024 23:10
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Fast food work is something I'll only consider as a last option, I don't think I could handle the stress without snapping.
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Feb 7, 2024 23:51
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Fast food work is something I'll only consider as a last option, I don't think I could handle the stress without snapping. I did it for a summer in high school and that was enough to convince me not to make a career of it.
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Feb 8, 2024 01:03
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Fil5000 posted:We should have learned from the covid lockdowns. They did learn, though. They learned that workers can be paid nothing extra except thoughts and prayers, and still mostly show up because worse than catching covid is catching covid while homeless. HeRoEs WoRk HeRe (banging pots out the window)
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Feb 8, 2024 01:39
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I worked at McDonalds for my first job over 20 years ago, and the grill was the best part. Sadly most of the grill workers never left that area, because they spoke no or little English; I was shoved on register nonstop until I threw a fit and demanded to learn the grill. Learned more Spanish there than in two years of high school. The grill was awesome; no customers to scream at you. Working drive-thru sucked the worst. People being the definition of rude, screaming at the box, never turning their radios down, their kids ordering from the backseat, almost every conversation starting with "I WANT AHH UHHHHHHHHH UHHHHHHH." And while you did the back booth/order taking with register, you also did all the dishes, stocking, and helped prep all kinds of poo poo for the grill. Front booth was order delivery, which even back then was horrible. I mostly remember hating all register work/ordering taking, and how pissed I was when the manager hired her niece, a very quiet girl who wasn't able to do 90% of any position, so manager delegated everything to everyone else. She'd usually get to work the order taking in drive through, got to use a nice stool to sit, and never handled any money. So yes, manager made a special slot just so she didn't have to take any money directly, or do anything but talk quietly to get orders, most of which were redone at the register window. She only lasted a few weeks; I think she knew most everyone there didn't like her because of the blatant favoritism. I left right before they started doing the latte poo poo. I do remember having a breakdown at work; it was around the time of my parents' divorce, summer in between my last year of high school. My mom had lost her job, my dad wanted us to sell the house so he got money from it to buy a new one with his new girlfriend, and we had TEENY BEANIE BABIES in Happy meals. This was the second round or so of them, so corp had decided customers could order at max 10 Happy meals and yes they needed to order the meals, they could not buy the toys separate. Cue counter fulls of abandoned meals that we had to throw away in the dumpster instead of, you know, not wasting food. The toys were locked in the loving fridge so no employee could steal any, so you needed a manager to get anything from the fridge or freezer. And only one toy was sold at a time. I remember being the only register worker up front, a packed lobby, and the lady in front of me detailing how each of her three kids' Happy Meals needed to be: kid 1 needed chicken nugs with bbq sauce, 3, not 2, she needs 3, and fries, and TBB1. Kid 2 needed this and this and TBB4. Kid 3 needed this and this and TBB8. Well, we didn't have any TBB but the loving ostrich, not the husky or the penguin or cat, and the lady started screaming when I told her that. Like full on meltdown screaming and cussing me out about being worthless and stupid and all kinds of poo poo. I had just turned 18, and I remember looking into the lobby at something like 30 people who...looked back and said nothing while this lady screamed at me while I cried. And something in me kinda snapped; I still remember that look on her face when I slammed both hands on the counter, and I think for a second she realized that she was screaming at a crying teenager who had about 5 inches and 100 pounds on her, and I had hit the counter hard enough I knocked over whatever dumbass toy display was on it, and she fell silent as poo poo and took a step back. My manager finally came out, saw me, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back to the break room and told me to calm down. She went back out, where the customer started screaming again how stupid and worthless I was. If I hadn't been terrified of losing my job and the only money we had coming in, I would have walked out. I will never forget how that lobby full of people just stood there and did gently caress all. These days, even if I'm in work uniform, even with morons ready to TikTok everything, you will see me in a viral video putting someone out if they make some poor cashier loving cry like that. These days it is almost funny as gently caress to see a huge sign outside the drive-thru, and one inside, stating that customers need to treat the staff with respect, and service can be refused.
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Feb 8, 2024 01:51
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I worked fast food as a teenager. I'd have to be just about homeless before I would consider going back. And even then I'd have to really, really push myself to do it.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:34
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I’ve lost track of the number of times a 14/15 year old kid gets a job at KFC or McDonalds then 6 months later ends up working at my grocery store because they couldn’t tolerate fast food any longer. They end up being so much happier working in my front end.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:53
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I worked fast food (McDonald's) for 3 hours. Did one shift of exceptionally silly "training" on a computer, broke my hand in an unrelated accident later that night, found a better job before it healed.
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Feb 8, 2024 04:04
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I've been in those particular trenches for 17 years now.Cowslips Warren posted:we had TEENY BEANIE BABIES in Happy meals. This was the second round or so of them, so corp had decided customers could order at max 10 Happy meals and yes they needed to order the meals, they could not buy the toys separate. Right after we reopened after covid, the first new Happy Meal was Pokemon, and they came with a small pack of Pokemon cards. This was right at the peak of people going loving crazy scalping Pokemon cards so we limited standalone toy purchases to only one extra per meal. Exact same thing happened for the first week before things started to calm down and people realised no-one was going to pay £30-40 for a 3-card booster from Mcdonalds that wasn't even in short supply. Fortunately I've been there long enough now that I get a lot of leeway to make my own decisions, so if a customer is being a poo poo I do get trusted to say no gently caress off I'm not serving you. Another useful skill is knowing if a customer asks to see a manager because you've told them they can't have free food from their obviously fake complaint reference or whatever, knowing which manager on shift will happily have that fight instead of just giving them what they want and making you look like an idiot and teaching them that screaming for a manager is some magical incantation to get them free food. What really makes it horrible these days is the delivery drivers, if you go on front counter for 5 seconds some twat with a Deliveroo bag shoves their phone in your face and expects food to just appear within 10 seconds. There's one regular driver who loves this shirt that says "Pro Life, Pro God, Pro Gun" and every time I see it I just think my dude you're a Bulgarian expat in the English Midlands who the gently caress do you think looks at that and thinks anything other than you're a sad bellend?
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Feb 8, 2024 04:42
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At least once a year I’ll be out getting food and somebody will start acting like an rear end, so I politely speak up and tell them as such. It’s funny how people shut the gently caress up when other customers call them out. Only time I’ll stay quiet is if I’m in work uniform, because it makes me kinda not hard to find if someone wants to harass me.
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Feb 8, 2024 04:55
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Coasterphreak posted:At least once a year I’ll be out getting food and somebody will start acting like an rear end problem solved: eat that rear end
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Feb 8, 2024 21:14
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Coasterphreak posted:At least once a year I’ll be out getting food and somebody will start acting like an rear end, so I politely speak up and tell them as such. It’s funny how people shut the gently caress up when other customers call them out. Same. Few years ago at a gas station I went to every work morning, some old dickhead started whining to the counter employee about the air machine not working. She gave him the phone number to call them and explained the air machines are rented out by another company and there's nothing she can do about it. He's just going on and on about how many bags of ice he's bought over the years and that since it's on their property it's their responsibility. Just holding up the line to complain and demand they do something. I finally raised my voice and told him to stop harassing the employees, he's been given the only answer he can get, and he's holding up the line. He feebly tried to talk back that he wasn't talking to me but he shuffled back out to his car and left. The next morning I told the manager that she needed to fix their air machine because of all the ice I've bought; she laughed and gave me my breakfast for free 
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Feb 8, 2024 21:32
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AngryRobotsInc posted:I worked fast food as a teenager. I'd have to be just about homeless before I would consider going back. And even then I'd have to really, really push myself to do it. It whips rear end that I have six and a half years experience in a grocery store, was a floor clerk and a produce clerk who worked both the floor and unloaded the trucks, was forklift and WAV certified, and I can't even get a job at another grocery store and so I may have to stop being picky and grab a fast food job. And even then, a few places put signs up on their windows and I applied there and haven't gotten a call in over a month. The signs are still up. Also I'm extremely restricted in where I can work because of course my loving car is acting up and I have to bike now. My hail mary is going to be talking to a manger at a jack in the box who kept trying to poach me from my last job, but I really don't want to because their menu is absurdly large. But my bank account isn't getting any bigger.
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Feb 9, 2024 05:46
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Lots of places have more or less permanent HIRING signs up but are not actually hiring. They're just an excuse to tell customers to put up with horrendously slow service from a horrendously overworked staff because  nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk!!! while management pockets higher margins.
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Feb 9, 2024 14:16
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Eric the Mauve posted:Lots of places have more or less permanent HIRING signs up but are not actually hiring. They're just an excuse to tell customers to put up with horrendously slow service from a horrendously overworked staff because When I am king of the world, corps that do this will have their CEOs and shareholders up against the wall. They will have a choice of being in the lowest place in their company for the rest of their life, or being a slave to each of their employees for a year a piece.
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Feb 9, 2024 14:54
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Cowslips Warren posted:When I am king of the world, corps that do this will have their CEOs and shareholders up against the wall. They will have a choice of being in the lowest place in their company for the rest of their life, or being a slave to each of their employees for a year a piece. If working retail is the first layer of hell, having a CEO follow you around for a year trying to serve you must surely be the sixth or seventh layer. Plus I've seen how they run their own business, I absolutely don't want them anywhere near mine 
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Feb 9, 2024 16:05
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Just make it so the CEO is paid a low multiple of what the lowest paid workers get (say 5x) and watch as salaries rise across the board and all vacant positions are filled
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Feb 9, 2024 17:51
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Even like 30x is workable. You want to pay the teenagers working the grill $9/hr, great, but that means you the CEO make $540,000 a year and not a penny more. Total compensation, all inclusive. That is the natural solution to this problem. It will, of course, never happen.
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Feb 9, 2024 17:56
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Cowslips Warren posted:we had TEENY BEANIE BABIES in Happy meals. That "era" must have been awful. I thought consumer frenzies like that died in the 90's but it seems corporations have cracked how to crank up idiots into committing assault over Baby Yoda or whatever. Cowslips Warren posted:These days it is almost funny as gently caress to see a huge sign outside the drive-thru, and one inside, stating that customers need to treat the staff with respect, and service can be refused. At the hospital I visit they used to have a "please be respectful to staff" sign. Its now been replaced with a riot-act "acceptable behavior" list. Notably, no pulling out your phone and filming other patients. And alas I know its necessary as one of my waste-of-oxygen relatives nearly got arrested in an ER. They weren't even the sick one.
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Feb 9, 2024 18:14
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Eric the Mauve posted:Even like 30x is workable. You want to pay the teenagers working the grill $9/hr, great, but that means you the CEO make $540,000 a year and not a penny more. Total compensation, all inclusive. this is how you get the bottom two thirds of employees in every corp reclassified as contractors or temps
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Feb 9, 2024 23:13
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cephalopods posted:this is how you get the bottom two thirds of employees in every corp reclassified as contractors or temps Thanks to the gig economy this happened anyway. Legislating against lovely corporate behaviour will always be a game of wack a mole, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.
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Feb 9, 2024 23:19
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How convenient, DerpCorp, a whole owned subsidiary of Farts Ltd, has workers paid $10/h and a "CEO" paid 600k annually. Yet, DerpCo has contracted out parts of its internal services to employees of Herp GmbH and Farts Ltd, among others. Coincidentally, DerpCorp's CEO makes $10m, and the company is itself used as one of several investment vehicles for CantTaxThis LLC, which pays its owner-employees some amazing dividends! Anyway, tax law is a land of
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Feb 9, 2024 23:27
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Fil5000 posted:Thanks to the gig economy this happened anyway. Legislating against lovely corporate behaviour will always be a game of wack a mole, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. I would propose that we simply make it so that the more you own, in both assets and liquidity, the less legal protections you have. Don't own a buck? You're a human being with full rights. Billionaire? It's legal to hunt you for sport and turn your corpse into an ornament. But yeah, piecemeal legislation will just lead to ever more arcane workarounds. The only lasting solution would involve simply... outlawing being rich, in some fashion, followed up by whatever educational and social changes would be necessary to make everyone aware that rich people are assholes and should be spat on.
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Feb 10, 2024 00:02
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