Time and a Half
In days of yore I was in the retail business.I still have many friends and aquaintences in retail. One of the happy things about the Christmas season was that instead of hiring additional workers for the longer hours that I must have stayed open in order to be competative, I extended the hours of my current help, paying them time and a half for working over the 40 hour week. Now, keep in mind that it would have been considerably cheaper for me to hire additional part-time help. Keep in mind that the additional moneyearned by my regular help, paid for their Christmas and was looked forward by them in order to purchase many things without the need to finance them that they have been waiting all year to get. But there has been a radical change in the outlook of employees since I was in business. According to my friends still laboring in the management side of retailing, the help would rather stick to their regular hours than put in the extra work in order to get the extra pay. What? If I proposed this when I was in business the help would likely have gone on strike. I inquired do yo still pay them more for the extra hours? Yes, they sure do. then what is the problem. It turns out that there simply is bot enough payment to entice them to work the extra hours. This, to me explains everything one needs to know about the current labor situation in America. I think that every worker in every industry except in the USA welecomes the opportunity to make the extra money during the holidays.Thi really saddens me.
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Check out www.alibaba.com and you will get a flavor of the stuff thts being made in china that is showing up here (quietly).
Dinning out, at least for me, includes that person to person engagement...good food, good people and a great waitress...spells a great time.
An experience I rarely have time for these days.
Not sure that I want to be serviced by a robot at my seat in a sitdown restaurant though...It's way too impersonal and takes away from the whole dinning experience, I think.
PS...don't want to be driven places by one either!
Bring on the robots in fast food order taking and even the preparation of it. I cant wait. Replace wait staff in sit down restaurants to take and deliver orders. No tipping required !!!! Yeah. I love the self checkouts at the food markets,
As the robots get smarter with more and more sensors and microcomputers, people had better use their brains more to compete, or be left behind.
If we didnt have robots today, we would not enjoy the standard of living we currently do.
When I was young and working assembly and packing jobs...I would always challenge myself to beating the machine...I did, on every job, even still, It was boring.
Back in the day (oh gawd I sound old) there were basically NO SALES in January and February of each year in most stores. Why? Because everyone had spent every penny they had on Christmas.
Now you can hardly tell the difference between December and February, because if you don't have the money to pay for it now.....just charge it!
The lack of an actual CASH constraint on families these days is (at least part of) why they'd rather be out partying. Don't have the money? No biggie. Don't work harder or longer....just charge it.
If someone is making $10 an hour, working OT gets them an additional $5 of which they get to keep maybe $3. That $3 might get you a value meal at burger king if you are lucky. There probably isnt anything at Costco that the $3 would buy. So, why work?
No idea of the specific cases, but I would speculate that is a common problem.
Now I write and work the job I have during the same hours but the biggest job I have is maintaining the large home I built and keeping my wife's diabetes [1] under control.
Hopefully in the near future I can go on the road, promoting my next book and awaken the masses. I'd also would like to start a indoor food growing business that might sustain a few, at least, during what is sure to be a difficult Grand Solar Minimum.
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