Aholed.

[Therin]

Title really says it all, but I'll elaborate anyway, because these things annoy me.

Ok, most of you probably don't know of a east-coast grocery chain called Giant Food, right? Right.

Well, some background: Giant has a very good name among people round here for always being fully stocked with pretty much everything you could ever want. Also for being one of the best places around that you could work at.


Correction. Had.

Somewhere around *thinks back* five, maybe six years ago (I think. Probably wrong.), the founder and owner of Giant, fondly remembered by all as "Izzy", died, and Giant Food was bought out by a multibillion dollar international food mogul called Ahold.(Pron.: Ay Holed. Say it out loud. You'll get it.) Six months later, the Giant Bonus Card was introduced, instantly doubling sales.
Contract Negotiation time came up. Starting wages. Was: $8/hour. Now: $6.50/hour. No benefits for part time. Doesn't sound like much, right? Just apply for full time, no big deal. Right. They don't hire full time. They hire part time and give you 40 hours a week. It takes two years to work your way to full time. Not to mention the complete shafting of all the benefits you used to get anyway. They all suck now. But that ain't the worst of it, not by far, because I don't really care that much about my fellow employees. They can take care of themselves. Customers, on the other hand, seem to me to be completely at the mercy of Giant. Prices have almost doubled. The shelves are never fully stocked. The meat and produce are among the worst in the business, where six years ago they were the best. And now they're starting to get dirty about it. They rearrange the entire store every month or so to keep people in there just that little bit longer so that they can increase the rate of impulse purchases. They completely redid the electronic payment system, and hell, even I can't figure out why it does some of the things it does. And I deal with the damned thing like a hundred times a day!
In the last month or so, it's gotten even worse. They're deliberately understaffing us so that they don't have to pay as much in wages. Deliberately. Management can't get anything done anymore because they're always running the register because we never have enough people working. Not that we couldn't call in more, we've got plenty of workers. We're not allowed to call in more. Last week, I worked 12 and a half hours. All week. I've never worked less than 20 in a week before.
Sunday night, a bunch of guys came in and completely redid the front end. All the cahier terminals have been replaced with shiny, new, good-looking ones that are a different style. Before, I used to pull things across the barcode reader towards myself and drop them in the bags.

Now, they've changed it so that I stand facing to the side, reach to the right to grab an item, run it to the left across the barcode reader, and bend far over to the left to drop it in a bag. After eight hours, my back is fucking killing me.

That ain't all. They've now installed 4 self-scan registers. Now, where it takes a single cashier to run one regular register, it takes a single cashier to watch over all four self-scans. Which means scheduling is going to drop off a cliff. Next sunday, our busiest day of the week, here's what I'm guessing they do: 1 cashier running express. 1 cashier running a regular register. 1 cashier running the four self-scans. Part of the contract that we have now says that they're not allowed to out and out fire us because of self-scan, but I fully expect them to do everything in their power to use as few people as they can get away with. Notice, I didn't say as few people as humanly possible. We're not humans anymore. We're tools. Expensive tools, to be gotten rid of as soon as possible so that the honchos can make their boat payments on time.

What pisses me off the most is that no one is doing anything about it. They've gotten the economy so locked down, the job market is so pitiful that there isn't anybody who's willing to do anything. We're all too concerned with just surviving, and the government is held firmly under the capitalist thumb. Now, don't get me wrong, the idea of capitalism is all well and good, but we need limits here, people! The world as we know it is controlled by the desire, the want, the drive to make money! Money is no longer just the driving force behind our economy. Money has become the only thing that matters!

God, words can't even express how much I hate corporate america, and the way we've lost ourselves in the pursuit of wealth. Worse is the fact that nobody is going to do anything about it. Not even me. Yes, I admit it fully. I have neither the ability nor the motivation to do anything but sit here and moan and grumble about the way things are. 'S one of the many things I detest about myself.

[Ultrawolf]

you are a member of a union am i correct? You could go on strike maybe?

[Therin]

'S not my decision to go on strike, and it wouldn't help anyway.

[Daijaga]

Money is lame.

As soon as you get it, people want to take it away from you, and you want to have it from somebody else dso that you can give it away to people.

A-Holes.

[Ming]

Yeah, they've been implementing those things in supermarkets around me for a long time now. They start with like, 2 of them, and gradually increase the number, driving away jobs. Hell, even Home Depot has them now. And the train system that runs around us is getting automated as well. Rarely do you ever find the station house open anymore because of the presence of the "machines". And God forbid the machine doesn't work. You're then forced to pay exorbitant rates on the train, despite your pleas that the machine didn't work.

Being a business student, I must play a bit of devil's advocate here. Yes, part of the problem is the desire for money. But the problem as I see it is three-fold:

1. Money, as mentioned above. People seem to do anything for it, including forgetting how to treat other human beings with respect.
2. The increased cost of living. Yes, I know that this comes back to money ultimately, in some way, but let's face it...it's not cheap to have a business in the US. Why do you think we have so many cases of outsourcing to other countries? Because we can pay someone there a fraction of what you would pay an American here, to do the same job, and that person will live as well if not better than the American. Unfortunately, there's really no way to fix this problem, unless we can force our economy to tank, so that prices of everything go down. But that will never happen. Just try to get 10 people to stop buying things for a week and see how successful you will be...
3. The continued increase in technology. We have no one to blame here but ourselves. Everyone wants to automate their lives so much nowadays, so we keep creating the technology to do so. Why? Because we're lazy bastards who are obsessed with efficiency. Why do something when the damn computer will do it for us? It really is a shame, and this is my theory of what will ultimately cause the downfall of society. Its a shame that we will eventually have a society of children who no longer know the fine art of penmanship, because everything will be on the computer.

But not that I don't feel for you Gen. Its a travesty what happened to your company, and I hate to hear about what happens when good companies get bought out by asshole ones. I have vowed never to conduct business that way when I get into the real world. I believe in sticking to values and honest business, and I want to make it known to the world that you do not have to be a jerk to conduct successful business.

[Therin]

...You're gonna hate me for this...I can barely write with pen and paper.


But also, and I have to ask this, what does the cost of living have to do with it? I mean, if you're playing devil's advocate and saying that it's costing the company more and more to stay afloat, then I have this to say to you: Ahold USA makes something around $3,000,000 a year. Now look me in the eyes and try to tell me, honestly, that someone who makes three million a year in profit is poor.

Also, they're doing things that are just plain stupid! I mean, come on! They're driving away customers because they don't feel like paying for good produce! Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole objective of retail to attract customers? So, even if they're not paying as much for produce, they're not making as much due to customers who get fed up and leave. And, instead of noticing this and trying to rectify it the smart way, by trying something different, they just do it some more, paying less money for lower quality meat, and driving away more customers, which motivates them to find ways to pay less for labor, which means they no longer have quality labor, which drives away even more customers! What's next!? I mean, I'm just out of high school, never took a business course in my life, and I can see where this is going! Don't you think the honchos, with their years of experience at making money in the market, would at least take a small tip from Izzy? I mean, Izzy was friggen rich, man! He was loaded! Can you tell me why? Was it because he cut costs by buying lower quality foods? No. Was it because he found ways to cut his employees out of the loop? No. It was because he paid top dollar for the best, in labor, produce, meat, food, all of it, and attracted customers by the herd by being a great place to shop!

And yet here's the guys at Ahold just plodding along with the same old routine. Does this make any sense at all to you?

[Ming]

It makes a lot of sense, and that is precisely the point I was trying to make. You don't need to be an ass to be successful. I think that the best thing you can do when running a business is go out of your way to do whatever the customer wants, to make them happy because they are your life blood. I agree, messing with the store is bad business, bad management, and poor marketing.

But seriously though, $3 million by today's business standards is nothing. Its probably not enough to invest in any one venture. Rent is VERY expensive, and its very expensive to run a store, especially a supermarket. $3 million leave you nothing really to invest with. And when I used the cost of living example, I didnt mean this situation specifically. I meant it in that the cost of living goes up, so rents etc go up. To offset this, companies must either a)charge more for their products or b)cut costs. And you can see where this is leading...

But anyway, that's my two cents. Im off to bed now to dream of a perfect little capitalist society where unemployment is low and net income is high.

[Therin]

Profit. $3,000,000 after accounting for the expenses and everything. Hell, they just put up two new stores around here in the last six months!

[Daijaga]

Part of the problem is in perspective, too. Picture the company like a pyramid. You can see the bottom of the pyramid very easily and can see how decisions higher up have negitive effects further down because you are very close to the bottom. As you get higher up, you are in control of the part of the pyramid that is below you, so you cant see every peice of the floor until you cant see any of it. You have to look at status reprts, summeries, and analyzations - numbers basically.

When they make a bad decision, they cant see the effects as clearly as you can, all they can see is numbers.

As for the Kill Switch idea....theres so many factors it would probably just bomb. People would simply buy more of the thigns from the selected retailer, driving his production costs super high as well as the labor to make his goods, then he cant afford to pay his suppliers because no one buys his product any more - because everyone already had two of it.

The only good way to reverese inflation is recession. The depression showed that tried and true. Another one is probably on its way - although who can say how long? Personally, although I dont like to think of it, I think that the current world economy is sort of a huge wave theat we're all riding and its only a matter of time before wipe out.

I certianly hope that Im wrong though! Ming, how do you feel about the economy as a whole? Restore my faith in money!

[Ming]

I like your idea for a kill switch, its all well and good, but Daijaga has a point. There are too many OTHER factors that a simple theoretical analysis of the economy does not touch upon.

Let's take your Bill Gates example. Say he cuts costs to become the Kill Switch. He drives himself in a MASSIVE amount of business, and now the government has even MORE incentive for saying that Microsoft broke anti-trust laws and is a monopoly. One of the ways that big companies achieve this Monopoly status is to grossly undercut the competition so as to drive it away. Since the company is so big, they can afford to sustain a loss because in the end it will lead to more profit. It's called "predatory pricing", and Walmart is chastised for it all the time. Given what's been recently going on with Microsoft, I don't think that Bill Gates would be too keen on the idea.

Speaking of Walmart, therein lies a possible solution to the problem. Did you know that Walmart is so big, that if it were to ever fall, we would have an economic crisis on our hands? It's because so many companies rely on Walmart to sell their products. If Walmart fails, they inevitably fail. It's a huge snowball effect. Not that that would ever happen, but it is possible, and it could drive costs down so that companies wouldn't have to get rid of its employees.

The only thing is that you still have to conquer the hurdle of people insistant on automating their lives. Stores will continue to put these things in for the same reason that ATM machines are EVERYWHERE now. People (Americans) are impatient bastards, who always seem to be in a hurry. If we get Americans to chill out, and to reaccept the value of good, hard work withouth the need for machines, then we can solve the problem. But again, that's not very likely to happen.

~Ming