I’m really pleased this is getting so much attention:
A former manager at an Elkhart, Ind., Pizza Hut trying to give his employees some time off says he was firedfor refusing to open the store on Thanksgiving, local CBS affiliate WSBT is reporting.
Tony Rohr, who started out at the pizza chain as a cook before working his way up to general manager, confronted his superiors after being told the store would need to be open on Thanksgiving.
In years past, Rohr said, Pizza Hut stores have been closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas, according toFox 8.
“Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only two days that they’re closed in the whole year and they’re the only two days that those people are guaranteed to have off and spend it with their families,” he told WSBT.
His bosses told him to tender his resignation, but he wrote a scathing letter instead.
“I am not quitting. I do not resign, however I accept that the refusal to comply with this greedy, immoral request means the end of my tenure with this company,” Rohr wrote, according to WSBT. ” … I hope you realize that it’s the people at the bottom of the totem pole that make your life possible.”
The company is already seeing quite a backlash on their official Facebook page, with some commenters calling the chain “greedy” and threatening to never eat there again. The page did not respond to any of the negative comments.
One of Rohr’s bosses claimed that he quit, and being open on Thanksgiving wasn’t an individual’s decision — it was a company decision, according to WSBT
One of the things that low wage workers complain about is how chaotic their lives are due to erratic and ever-changing schedules. Constant chaos makes it really difficult to care for small children properly. Parents have to plan, hell, people have to plan if they want a life outside work, and decisions like this to open on holidays ripple out from the employee and affect whole families.
I noticed there’s a trend now among corporate honchos to advise low-level employees and others of us out here in the cheap seats on financial literacy. Have the corporate honchos considered that it might be easier for people to organize their finances if they knew ahead of time when they would be working and how much they might make in any given period, let alone planning essentials like child care, making sure they have transportation to work available, and on and on? Are we sure free lessons on “better money habits” are the only way McDonalds and Bank of America could help?
Maybe we could get a recognition that this:
I hope you realize that it’s the people at the bottom of the totem pole that make your life possible.
is true and seems to have all but disappeared from our dialogue on workers and working?
*Omnes gives us this, a list of stores that close on Thanksgiving.
Omnes Omnibus
This list of retailers closed on T-giving is worth noting as well.
From the link: Menards is also not open on Thanksgiving and actually has a note on their ad explaining that they are a family owned company and wants their employees to spend the holiday with family. They do not even open early. Stores open at 6:00 of Friday which is the normal store opening time.
BGinCHI
What is it with the fuckers who own pizza chains/companies?
If you are eating that shit you are supporting something bad. Period.
Even in Do the Right Thing the pizza shop owner was a racist….for once Spike Lee gets it right.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks. Of course, COSTCO. Can we just take COSCO management and clone them? I bought a membership about a month ago. I hate shopping and it’s an hour away but they should be rewarded. I’ve been twice! I’ll try to shop more enthusiastically!
Barnes & Noble
Burlington Coat Factory
Costco
Dillard’s
DSW
Hobby Lobby
Home Depot
Marshalls
Menards
Nordstrom
Radio Shack
REI
Sam’s Club
Sur La Table
TJ Maxx
Von Maur
jharp
Believe it or not I am going to go check out my local Wal Mart. Just to see the humanity. Or the inhumanity depending on how one sees it. Absolutely no buying.
different-church-lady
Kay, I want to take this opportunity to say something that’s been on my mind for a bit. I don’t comment in your threads very often. (In fact, I’m not sure I ever have.) And that’s because you play it straight and true, so that there’s really no need to comment other than to say, “Absolutely.”
I think it’s a sad commentary on the dynamics of the internet that your writing is some of the most valuable on this site, yet it gets the least attention.
beltane
@jharp: Be careful. I swear they put something in their ventilation system that makes everyone look stupid and sad.
Jamey
Whoawhoawhoawhoa there … What does Mr. High-and-Mighty General Manager mean by “you people”?!
/kidding
Glad to see a new front opened on the War Against Thanksgiving. I hope one of the businesses listed by Kay hires Tony Rohr. He’s clearly a guy who’s dedicated to the job and who understands that the well-being of his workers is essential to the overall success of the business!
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
That is great! I am absolutely going to vote with my dollars* and hit up those stores Thursday night. Uhh… wait…
(*Joke’s on me: I have no dollars to vote with this year.)
Steeplejack
I have been yearning to see a TV ad where a large retailer (preferably fronted by the folksy, broad-shouldered, photogenic CEO) announces that it won’t be open on Thanksgiving because of family, “traditional values” and America fuck yeah! “We’ll be open early on Black Friday to sell you all the consumer bullshit you want—and then some—but we’re not open on Thanksgiving. The end.” And he drops the mike. I feel like a company taking that stand would garner a hell of a lot of goodwill.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Thanks so much. And Happy Thanksgiving! I like it as a holiday because I’m always the guest the last decade or so :)
Jamey
@Omnes Omnibus: PC Richard & Sons, a NY/NJ electronics and appliance retailer has run the same message for years. They run a decent chain–kind of the anti-BestBuy…
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Menards has it in their ad according to Omnes’ website.
different-church-lady
@jharp: Be charitable — help the employees get the stock off the pallets and onto the shelves, since the Wal-sprog appears to be unable to put together a management structure that allows for such a basic retail procedure to occur in their stores.
Hungry Joe
Corporate honchos probably HAVE considered that it might be easier for people to organize their finances if they knew ahead of time when they would be working and how much they might make in any given period. It’s just that scheduling is easier when you can jerk people around. So that’s that.
scav
Quick! Call Igor and the Nobel Prize committee! Corporate People are now thinking on their own, without executive help! But, hey, there’s a cost-cutting side-benefit too! If companies are making these decisions all by their lonesome, without individual’s help, then there’s no need to hire and outrageously compensate those poor leaders formerly making “the tough calls”.
Nah, really, all it means is the 1%ers need the safety of packs to make their asshole decisions.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: It is on their website as well. I live in the heart of Menard’s country, but i have not seen it mentioned on TV. I agree with Steep that it would probably play very well.
schrodinger's cat
This is the triumph of neoliberal economics where employees are not seen as partners but as an expense. Where profit trumps everything, even common sense.
C.V. Danes
I haven’t eaten at Pizza Hut for years out of gastronomic necessity. I wonder how many turkey pizzas they will be making on Thanksgiving?
gogol's wife
@Kay:
You are definitely a great attraction of this blog! I wish that the New York Times I pay for had some of the journalistic qualities of you, Richard Mayhew, and others — including John Cole, of course!
gogol's wife
Maybe I’ve been fortunate in the places I’ve lived (New Haven, for example) — but locally-owned pizza places have always been the best choice.
feebog
Who in their right mind would go to a Pizza Hut for Thanksgiving? I guess they might get some to-go orders early in the day for those watching the football games, but really, pizza for Thanksgiving? There really is no good reason for this other than greed, but to me it doesn’t even make good business sense.
elmo
Whoah, waidaminnit, before we go singing hosannas to every business on the list – Hobby Lobby is the Dominionist outfit that wants to impose its religious values on its employees via their health coverage.
Strange bedfellows and all that, but year-round Dominionist fascism isn’t canceled out by a single day of common empathy.
RaflW
+1000
All the “makers” out there would be f*ked if their employees decided to, as that 70’s movie put it, take that job and shove it. The s*t has been rolling downhill and the profits uphill for decades, and a lot of workers are at the snapping point.
How the rich fail to see that, historical cycle after cycle is amazing. Eventually, the price the rich pay is often very high.
scav
OT Silvio Berlusconi ousted from Italian parliament after tax fraud conviction
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Menards (managers) are happy. They like the job. It’s “Menards Country” here as well (they expanded here about 5 years ago- a distribution center and a retail outlet) and I’ve met a couple of them.
The worst part, to me, is women (primarily) leave manufacturing here to take jobs in retail (which pays worse and has no benefits) for the “flexible hours” and then they end up with these crazy, chaotic households. “Flexible hours” is a big fucking lie. The hours change, so are “flexible!” but employees have no control at all. They took the stupid job so they could better care for small children. It doesn’t work.
realbtl
Almost all of the locally owned businesses here in NW Montana will be closed Thursday with many closed until Monday 12-2. Of course it is the last weekend of hunting season so there is that.
Most close by 5:00 PM Wednesday as well, even the grocery stores. It’s nice living in the sticks.
Xecky Gilchrist
Parents have to plan, hell, people have to plan
Thanks for that second clause. Childless employees get dumped on a lot for not having families to take care of so of course they can take on more hours with no notice.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
It may well be that I’m just another dirty old hippy, but there seems to be an unsettling trend for employers to fuck with their employees just because they can. Economic necessity seems to play less of a part in the fucking than does the sick need to kick people when they’re already down. Again, just because they can.
FlipYrWhig
@elmo: yeah, I was scrolling to the bottom to raise the same issue. Be leery of family-values rhetoric. Otherwise Hobby Lobby, Chick Fil A et al will end up on lists of good guys, and we know that ain’t right.
Tommy
As others have said isn’t this a “war on Thanksgiving?” I mean heaven forbid somebody gets one or two holidays a year with a day off. I am not a huge X-mas guy, but my gosh I love Thanksgiving.
gbear
@elmo: What elmo said. HobbyLobby is trying to establish a religious exemption to providing birth control in their employee insurance. The case is about to be heard by the Supreme Court. I don’t expect this to end well. No one should be shopping at HobbyLobby.
Tommy
@gbear: I’ve seen stats all over the place, but many women take the pill not for birth control, but for other reasons. A women I dated a few years ago was on the pill, but we used other types of birth control. The pill helped her menstrual cycle. Clearly I am not an expert on this topic but how dare some company tell me or you what type of medical treatment or medicine I can and/or should take.
Knight of Nothing
@scav: I had a similar reaction to that bit – I didn’t know corporations were sentient beings capable of making such decisions! I guess that’s why they have so many rights nowadays.
srv
Obama abandons small business marketplace
Southern Beale
Your first mistake was assuming you’d be allowed a life outside work. Silly liberals.
muddy
@different-church-lady: I don’t know that it gets less attention, I think it may well be that many people have your reaction, of “Absolutely.” I know that is generally true for me.
You get more comments when people can snark instead of being serious in a lot of instances.
ETA: don’t know why I said “generally” when I mean ALWAYS.
aimai
@Xecky Gilchrist: I think its important to remember that at the bottom of the heap there is no break for any worker, whether they have family or not. Maybe the manager tells you that you need to work more hours because “Susie has kids” but believe me they tell Susie she has to get her ass in to work regardless of her children’s needs and they just figure that Susie’s husband or mother or friend will pick up the slack. The system of shift work pulverizes and atomizes the worker’s relationship with management in such a way that the worker’s needs, family, home life, holidays, etc… are all simply ignored or driven out of the discussion. They don’t pay married people more, they don’t give them more breaks, they don’t demand less of them.
dexwood
@elmo:
What Elmo said. Hobby Lobby always run a full page ad in our local paper on Easter patting themselves on the back for being closed every Sunday because of Jesus and their christian values. Values which do not extend to their employees in general. Fuck Hobby Lobby.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@Tommy:
Strikes me as odd that the same crowd that’s always bloviating about “family values” is the one that adores the assholes who force their underpaid employees to be away from their families and friends on Thanksgiving and Christmas. While some jobs must be done regardless it would be nice if we had a few days of the year where no one had to work fast food or retail sales.
Southern Beale
By the way, let’s give some props to PetSmart. I had to pick up cat food yesterday and they had a big sign saying they would be closed on Thanksgiving. Don’t know if it’s just my location or corporate-wide but I thought, good on ’em.
Tommy
@FlipYrWhig: Can somebody explain Chick-fil-A to me. Personally I’ve never been cause well, I don’t eat fast food. Two stores opened for the first time by me this year and everytime I drive by there are cars literally around the block waiting for the drive through. Do they put crack or something in their chicken?
Shana
@different-church-lady: I understand the impulse, but if WalMart won’t hire enough people to keep their stores stocked and running properly, I see no benefit to doing that work for free.
Kay
@Xecky Gilchrist:
There’s this whole school of thought about poor people where if they were just better planners they would be okay. I hear it in my work, where worrying about the effect of “chaos” on children is all the rage. It’s applied to young, poor parents. It’s huge right now.
Their children live in “chaotic households” and children need regular routines. I agree that children need regular routines, they hate change, IMO, (probably because they’re vulnerable so risk is too scary) but there’s just no recognition that “they” live in chaotic households because their parents are complying with an insane focus on profit above all else in their work lives. If we want to help “poor children” we could make their parents work lives less horrible and grim and insane. THEN they can reduce the craziness in their “households”.
LanceThruster
My ex-roommate used to love working holidays in the grocery store industry because he usually got double and sometimes triple time.
While I think the guy’s heart is in the right place on this one, it’s a chain and the policy on when they’re open comes from the top down unfortunately.
Shana
@Tommy: @Tommy: In my area there are a whole bunch of Chick-fil-As. My sense, from having eaten there before the whole same sex marriage issue came up, is that, yes, the sandwiches are particularly yummy, and there are a lot of evangelical folks who patronize them to support a like-minded business.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
I won’ shop at Menards because they were large donors to walker-the-wanker, the Koch- ho governor of Wisconsin. Big hooey that they’re closed on thanksgiving, doesn’t make up for their support of mr. smarmy.
Violet
@jharp: Don’t go. You’ll be yet another number in their “How many shoppers came through the doors”. The best way to let stores know you don’t like them being open on Thanksgiving is not to go at all. No employees needed at all for that.
gwangung
There’s this whole school of thought about poor people where if they were just better planners they would be okay.
This whole school of thought actually needs to get a major sized clue. People who argue this way have no idea of what this planning entails. And what obstacles poor people have to plan around.
Shana
@LanceThruster: When I worked retail during high school and college, I always worked Easter and Christmas. Because I’m jewish they weren’t my holidays and there was very little open those days (late 70s) anyway. Granted I was only one of the employees, but it allowed someone else to be home. Staffing was usually light anyway because hardly anyone came in, but it was what I could do.
voncey
@feebog:
It’s for the shoppers. If the stores are open, so must be the fast food joints to serve them.
Nora
I worked for a resort in a large national park right out of college. I worked the holidays for the two years I was there. Because a lot of your friends and co-workers were right there with you, it was fine. The supervisors were there too. I do think employees with families may have had to make arrangements but I did not hear a lot of complaining.
There are places that will be open. Some grocery stores will be open part of the day. I had to go out for dinner a couple of years and am grateful for the hotel employees that made it possible. First time I ever had deep fried turkey. When my son was an infant, we had to travel on Thanksgiving night. He got fussy. We had to stop in an open Circle K and walk him around to calm him down. I’m happy that store was open because otherwise we have been walking in the cold wind.
But why Pizza Hut? Can’t believe they would do enough business to justify opening.
IowaOldLady
My father was a boiler operator, and he always worked holidays because someone had to be there. My mother worked for a newspaper that published every day of the year. A generation later (Thanks, accessible education!), my sister is a nurse and my brother is an MD, so they too work holidays. So on one hand, I know families adjust. But my family members weren’t working so someone could shop. That does change things.
Also, I think I’m just readier to be offended by what the greedy bosses do because their greed is so much more evident and harmful. (Bye, accessible education!)
PeakVT
Call me crazy and/or old-fashioned, but I think stores should be closed on all holidays. Right now days like the 4th and Labor Day are holidays for office workers only. Pretty much every holiday other than Thanksgiving and Christmas has already been turned into an orgy of shopping. Thanksgiving is (or was) the second-to-last remaining target.
At the very least everybody should get overtime for working on a holiday.
Steeplejack
@LanceThruster:
And in a lot of jobs that “Hey, it’s okay because they’re well compensated for working the holiday” thing is a myth. When I worked at Barnes & Noble there was a slight bump for working a holiday, but it was cloaked in some arcane formula that was impossible to figure out. It was nothing like a straight time-and-a-half or double time. Usually it worked out to the equivalent of an extra 1-2 hours’ pay—and that was for a full eight-hour shift, which few people got. If you got scheduled on a holiday for your typical bullshit four-hour shift, the pay differential was microscopic.
jonas
I recently ate at a local restaurant that noted in its menu that it was no longer necessary to tip the servers because the management decided paying a living wage was a better alternative. I thought that was neat, so I asked our waitress — who provided great service, btw — how the employees felt. She says there was some grousing at first because a few of her colleagues felt they would get shortchanged, esp. during busy times of the year, weekends, etc. But in the end, getting steady a higher hourly wage made up for slower times and, apropos of this article, the waitress said it was just so much easier to budget and pay bills if you knew what your income was going to be month-to-month. Same with getting a steady work schedule. People have to know what their budget is. People have to know when to arrange child care.
Tommy
@Shana: Again I’ve never been, but the one by me is in with a Wal-mart. Also a Jimmy Johns, Hardees, and Burger King. Most days there are more folks in just the drive thru of the Chick-fil-A then the other three places combined. It just blows my mind.
LanceThruster
@Shana:
I like working the days leading up to the holidays (like today) because so many other departments are closed and aside from being light duty, it makes you feel like the indispensable staff. There’s departments here that work 24/7-365. I used to be part of that. Glad I no longer am. They usually get comp time instead of a pay differential. My old phone company job you got a 10 or 15% pay boost for working night or graveyard shifts.
Yeah unions!
Tokyokie
@Shana: When I was in the newspaper biz (and daily newspapers tend to need people to come in daily), I’d usually volunteer to work holidays so co-workers with family obligations could have the day off. And I recall the Jewish employees would tend to similarly volunteer to work on Christmas.
Thanksgiving, however, was always a tough day to get off, because the Black Friday edition of the paper was usually the largest one of the year, in terms of live pages, and we would need all hands on deck. But most places I worked, they’d cater dinner for us, and we’d generally bring in potluck as well.
But we never got anything from Pizza Hut. I mean, what the hell?
SarahT
@different-church-lady: what you said
IowaOldLady
@LanceThruster: “Yeah unions!”
Amen!
Tommy
@jonas: I both love this and dislike it some. I am lucky now I made a good living. That wasn’t always the case and I often worked jobs in college and pre-college where I got tipped. So now I can afford it, I tip pretty big. Almost always 25%, cause I know many of them live off of tips. And if I get stellar service, well I feel that should be rewarded.
LanceThruster
@Steeplejack:
I agree that the odds are usually in favor of the house.
LanceThruster
@IowaOldLady:
xD
catclub
@jonas: wow! There was a recent thread on that.
Tommy
@Nora: I never eat fast food, but my folks are in town and that is about all they eat. We went to one of those all you can eat buffet places the other day (Ryans I think) and I was stunned they were open on Thanksgiving. I asked our server if they would be busy and she said it was their/her best day of the year. She looked forward to working cause the tips were amazing.
I mean I guess if you are older and your kids have moved away. College students. Single person. Maybe it makes sense, but honestly I thought it was kind of sad folks would spend their Thanksgiving in a fast food restaurant.
With that said, I can actually see Pizza Hut making some money.
Gretchen
I work at a small private laboratory that employes college graduates as testing personnel, and high-school grads as set-up people. They treat the set-up people like crap. They are chronically understaffed, so they routinely work 12-hour days. If that messes with their child-care or transportation arrangements, too bad. Yesterday, because of the storms on the East Coast, our shipping was disrupted. I got to work at 2am to find the set-up department dark. Why wasn’t anyone there? Management decided there might not be enough work for them, so they called them all at 5pm (they got off their 12-hour shift at 1pm, and were expected back to work at 1am – guess what they were doing at 5pm?) and told them not to come in till 3. And, despite being short-staffed, the big boss lent 4 of their people to another department, because he wanted to look good to the son of the CEO, who asked for help. They don’t expect their professionals to work 12 hours, or change their start time from 1 am to 3 am to 6 am in the same week, but those losers in setups aren’t quite people, so it’s totally ok to expect it of them, and tell them to be glad they have a job that pays the princely sum of $8.50 an hour when they complain. I hate my boss.
Gretchen
I work at a small private laboratory that employes college graduates as testing personnel, and high-school grads as set-up people. They treat the set-up people like crap. They are chronically understaffed, so they routinely work 12-hour days. If that messes with their child-care or transportation arrangements, too bad. Yesterday, because of the storms on the East Coast, our shipping was disrupted. I got to work at 2am to find the set-up department dark. Why wasn’t anyone there? Management decided there might not be enough work for them, so they called them all at 5pm (they got off their 12-hour shift at 1pm, and were expected back to work at 1am – guess what they were doing at 5pm?) and told them not to come in till 3. And, despite being short-staffed, the big boss lent 4 of their people to another department, because he wanted to look good to the son of the CEO, who asked for help. They don’t expect their professionals to work 12 hours, or change their start time from 1 am to 3 am to 6 am in the same week, but those losers in setups aren’t quite people, so it’s totally ok to expect it of them, and tell them to be glad they have a job that pays the princely sum of $8.50 an hour when they complain. I hate my boss.
LanceThruster
@Gretchen:
Working crazy shifts always made me feel like I was coming down with malaria.
Ahh says fywp
@jharp: Why don’t u join the protests? Seriously. A light avocado green is the color.
kc
One of the things that low wage workers complain about is how chaotic their lives are due to erratic and ever-changing schedules
This is true, and any job seeker will tell you that these positions advertise that employees must be willing to work a “flexible schedule,” including days, nights, weekends, and holidays.
Makes it hard for people to get a second job to supplement the lousy income from the first job. Not to mention how difficult it must be for parents of small children.
Tommy
@LanceThruster: I am somewhat OCD. Type A personality. If I didn’t know my shift. If it wasn’t set in stone, I would lose my mind. I mean I work for myself, out of my house, and my schedule is exact down to the minute.
SarahT
@dexwood: @elmo: @gbear: fuck Hobby Lobby indeed – shop at these stores instead: http://teensleuth.com/blog/?p=24381
pseudonymous in nc
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
Well, yeah. It’s now MBAbro playbook material, because it keeps the peons feeling vulnerable. Learned helplessness turned into a theory of management.
Belafon
I suspect that, considering the way Thanksgiving works in my family, there will be one thing we will have forgotten to get, and I’ll end up at Wal-Mart trying to get it. Since I know it’s coming, I’m trying to figure out how to tip the cashier without anyone else finding out.
@Tommy: We went to a Ryan’s one year because we just did not want to cook. It was actually kind of nice getting steak for Thanksgiving. From then on, we’ve been making stuff other than turkey. And I can understand the tipping, as I gave a 30% tip that day.
kc
@Kay:
The worst part, to me, is women (primarily) leave manufacturing here to take jobs in retail (which pays worse and has no benefits) for the “flexible hours” and then they end up with these crazy, chaotic households.
My impression is that to the bosses “flexible hours” means “you will work whenever we tell you to on real short notice.”
pseudonymous in nc
@Nora:
Feeding the peons who have erratic working schedules at other retailers.
Southern Beale
My sister used to be a checker in a big grocery store chain, Safeway (do they still have Safeway??) She was union, got double and triple and even quadruple time for working holidays like Labor Day and Thanksgiving and such. Since she was a struggling college student, she gladly worked the holiday for the extra money.
But, this was back in the ’70s. I’d say it’s safe to say no one gets paid extra for working on holidays anymore. Now you’re lucky to keep your job, as our Pizza Hut GM’s example proves.
Tommy
@pseudonymous in nc: Many years ago when I was getting my MA in public relations I got the Journalism school to let me take a few MBA classes that would apply to my Journalism degree. I felt I was going into business and therefore, well a few classes on management might not be a bad idea.
I loved those classes. Most of them were very helpful. I recall reading that Henry Ford paid his workers almost three times that of this competition. When asked why he said something like: “I want my employees to be able to afford to buy what they make.”
This also did several other things. All the best workers wanted to come work for him. And they did. It also caused the rest of this competition to offer the same wages to compete.
I now look at some of the MBA stuff being taught and it is the exact opposite. Keep pay as low as possible. Makes no sense to me.
Belafon
@Southern Beale: Safeway is a major chain in the western part of the country, and they own Tom Thumb.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
Sport Chalet, a west-of-the-Rockies sporting goods chain, will be closed on Thanksgiving.
Chat Noir
@different-church-lady:
Same for me. Kay is awesome.
Tokyokie
@pseudonymous in nc: Has anybody done an academic study tracking the correlation between the rise in MBAs and the rise in income inequality? My gut instinct is they’re roughly congruent, which would make sense, because the rise in MBAs has brought with it the notion that an enterprise’s only obligation is to the short-term benefit of its stockholders, and that attitude, in turn, has fueled the rise in income inequality.
And yeah, I’m prejudiced, because I can think of no socially beneficial purpose somebody with an MBA can use his/her training to perform.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@Southern Beale:
My son works for Vons, a California supermarket chain that is part of Safeway. He does get a bit of a bump for working on a holiday. Vons has a two tiered wage structure. Employees still covered by the “old” contract get a substantial premium for working on holidays. Employees covered by the “new” contract get a modest increase to their hourly rate for working the holidays.
LanceThruster
@Tommy:
I got depressed quite a bit when my hours weren’t regular. There was no getting around that for me.
Tommy
@Belafon: I can’t believe I am going to say this, cause I am a foodie and a health nut. But Ryan’s salad bar was pretty nice. I might even go back myself just for it and nothing else. Most of what else they had kind of scared me :).
About you eating steak on Thanksgiving. I was born in Baton Rouge when my father was finishing his PhD. I went back to LSU for grad school myself. Heck we go to New Orleans every year as a family for a week.
I can assure you we eat things as “Yankees” that we picked up in Louisiana, for Thanksgiving that are not “normal.” Turkey gumbo (yes that is a thing) the next morning, oysters, and of course we’ll fry a turkey!
Person of Choler
How about a list of dairy farms, hospitals, power plants, airlines and such that close on Thanksgiving.
LanceThruster
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
Yeah, the new hires got shafted.
mainmati
@different-church-lady: I agree that Kay is outstanding.g but disagree that no one pays attention to her.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Good for that guy. I hope somebody worth working for finds him and hires him. It makes me happy to see how often people like him, who lose their jobs for doing the right thing, end up working for somebody decent. I only wish all workers ended up in the same boat.
pseudonymous in nc
@Tokyokie: I think it’s a more intertwined relationship than a causal one. The shift towards short-term profitability and the self-enrichment of the executive class at the expense of workers is far broader, and the MBA is to some extent its initiation rite.
Consider how Amazon stacks its warehouses completely at random: there’s no organisation, so no patterns to learn that can build efficiency. Human automata. In contrast, Chinese factories are now developing tiers of skilled workers that get better pay and conditions. Who’da thunk it.
Southern Beale
@kc:
Oh it’s not just retail. I teach at a language school. For six weeks I had 2 classes, now I just have one, no notice, nada. Just, “we don’t have enough paying students in your class so it’s on hold.” Welcome to the glories of state and federal funding for ESL.
You’d THINK these wingers harping on about how immigrants need to learn English would put their fucking money where their mouths are but no, the free hand of the market is just supposed to magically create funding for language education. And yet, the fact that it HASN’T doesn’t clue them on that not everything can be profitable.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
a Mr. Marx would agree.
Tommy
@pseudonymous in nc: I think you are totally mistaken on Amazon. There are amazing stories out there on how Amazon does warehouses here in the US. They don’t stock stuff at random. The exact opposite. In many they use robots to pull most products. The data analysis and where products are put is staggering.
In fact, it is rumored that when Jeff Bezes bought the Washington Post the thought was he might use the network to deliver papers to deliver goods. Same day. They offer same day in a few select markets for groceries.
Belafon
@pseudonymous in nc: I did an interview with Amazon, and the job I was interviewing for was a group whose job was to analyze their warehouse organization, optimizing it when new products arrive. Their optimization is entirely build around getting product out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible.
JustRuss
@LanceThruster:
Probably back in the days when most grocery stores were unionized. I’ve worked jobs where holiday pay is regular pay plus zero, I suspect that’s true of most of these places.
Citizen_X
@Person of Choler:
Here’s that list:
And here’s the list of retail outlets whose work is as critical as that of the above places:
Hope that helps. Asshole.
LanceThruster
@JustRuss:
Give it time…it will become regular pay *times* zero.
Origuy
Fry’s Electronics is closed on Thanksgiving, opening at 6AM on Friday. That’s a few hours earlier than normal, but better than midnight.
LanceThruster
@newdealfarmgrrrlll:
Excellent point (Or as the Kochs might say…“Eeeeeexcellent!”)
rdldot
I think somebody should start protesting outside the owners’ houses of these places, just to ruin their Thanksgivings like they are ruining the workers’ Thanksgivings. There is no reason whatsoever that anyplace (and that includes cinemas) should be open on major holidays (I would also include Jewish and Muslim ones) except for critical needs. Shopping and entertainment, no.
Quaker in a Basement
May the awesome power of karma comfort that former pizza store manager and smite his tormentors.
Kyle
But..but..that’s CLASS WARFARE!
The “natural order” is the 1% get to mow down the rest of us with economic gatling guns, but if you should so much as pick up a metaphorical stick in response you’ll be hounded as a Marxist.
Yatsuno
@Person of Choler: Okay that was funny DougJ.
When I was a supervisor at a fast food restaurant, I always did schedules that were as regular as I could make them. Since I had a lot of single moms working for me, this wasn’t all that difficult. Hell I could still give the part-timers more hours than they would normally get (if they wanted them) and still make the labour the franchisee wanted me to hit. That tells me a lot of this shit is just corporate greed.
@Citizen_X: The dairy farms gave it away. It’s DougJ trolling again.
Mnemosyne
@Person of Choler:
Because your need to buy a cheap TV is just as important as the need of someone who got into a car accident on Thanksgiving Day and needs emergency medical care?
Firefighters and cops also work on holidays, which means that Wal-Mart should stay open 24/7 because it’s exactly the same!
scav
@rdldot: Still, remember the High & Mighties only wander off to “spend time with their families” when they’ve done something they’re about to get shitcanned for. They, or at least some of them, might appreciate the interruption, especially if it gives then an inch to kick insufficiently servile “inferiors” over.
bemused
Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones tried out some of Ann Romney recipes from The Romney Family Table. Jello salad and other old church cook book dishes relying heavily on stuff out of cans kind of surprised me. I was alternately laughing and feeling vaguely nauseated.
Jeffro
@Tommy: No crack, buuuuuut:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/07/the-food-lab-how-to-make-a-chick-fil-a-sandwich-at-home.html
Plus they brine the chicken breasts in sugar/saltwater. That plus the MSG, paprika, cayenne, and frying the whole thing in peanut oil, make it pretty irresistible. Or so I hear.
NotMax
@rdldot
No reason whatsoever? Really? Ludicrous assertion.
Jewish & Muslim ones (and why just those two religions)? That would include the month of Ramadan and (though not religiously major, culturally major) the eight days of Chanukah. Not to mention every Sabbath for some (there goes Friday, Saturday and Sunday). Plus the equinoxes for some religions. And why specify (and how justify) religious rather than secular as a definer?
Would you carve out an exception for areas heavily dependent on tourist traffic, many of whom may not celebrate a holiday (or even be aware of it)? Ban places which offer dinner and a show (there’s that entertainment creeping in)? Hold a lottery as to which gas stations should open?
Let’s not even get into things like mass transit, airlines, trains, toll booths, etc. None of them are strictly “critical.” (things functioned, inconvenienced but essentially unimpeded) during strikes, shutdowns and such).
And on and on and on.
NotMax
@rdldot
Oh, and besides cinema, let’s shut down radio, TV, newspapers and the internet as well. After all, a goodly part of them are for entertainment, and not critical.
LanceThruster
@NotMax:
I agree. There’d have to be a hell of a lot more Shabbat goys (or their equivalent).
fuckwit
I have never seen it said better than this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVxI6XZAuE
That, right there, is all of it. Every bit of it. Right there.
Southern Beale
Top PA GOP Official Accused of Drugging, Raping Coworker.
This is your horrible Republican news du jour.
That is all.
ruemara
I have to say, it’s not just private enterprise doing this. My job, at least in it’s prior incarnation, was part-time. However, since I did broadcast and media, it was 24/7 availability due to special events coverage, a FEMA training requirement and the general nature of government. And there’s no OT. Nothing was OT, no special pay, no holiday pay. If I went over one week, it was cut from the next week or, since it was never up to 40hrs, it was never OT. I’ve had weeks where I worked T-Th, Sat, Sun, Mon and none of it merited any extra recompense. It’s sneaky but it was agreed to by the associated employees. 6 years and no such animal as OT/Holiday pay, but the extra 5-10 hours in a pay period did come in handy. I also have to say my schedule was more regular at the retail job I worked than the media job, but it’s kinda the nature of media.
jl
@NotMax: I don’t think the main problem is working on holidays per se. I haven’t read about the same gripes about working on holidays from airline pilots, train engineers and conductors and muni bus drivers. But, I guess most of them have the ability to schedule their work preferences in advance, they have more job security, overtime, etc.
The problem is the median worker getting treated like a piece of crap, job insecurity, no benefits, and crummy pay, unpredictable and mandatory rescheduling on short notice, and a general ‘F-you, loser, let’s rub your nose in it, ’cause that’s how to run a business, that’s the way we make the best of all possible worlds, and in that dreamy world, you are a miserable serf piece of garbage, so you can thank me now.”
Southern Beale
@Belafon:
Yeah I remember Safeway when I was growing up but I’ve lived East of the Mississippi for the past 27 years, and we don’t have them here. Everything is Kroger here. Which I despise.
fuckwit
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Hires him? Fuck that. I hope he puts up a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo for starting his OWN RESTAURANT or buying a franchise, and all of us progressives chip in a few bucks to help him get a start in his own life, running his own show, and fuck these fucking corporations. A guy who is that decent deserves to be rewarded. Hell, now with Obamacare he can even get medical care for his family and help his employees get it too. There’s no reason for a smart guy like that to have to work for assholes. He’s an experienced restaurant manager, he should own one. I’m in for a few bucks for sure.
Kyle
@Person of Choler:
How about you take a day off from being a dull-witted asshole.
fuckwit
@JustRuss: “Ex ROOMMATE” is the key. Single. Young. No spouse. No kids. Holidays are not a big deal for single people, fuck it, work that day, get drunk on your real day off with your buds and buy a few rounds with the extra bank you made working doubletime. It’s when you have kids that hoiidays are a big deal, and when you have childcare that your schedule becomes a logistical nightmare.
Mnemosyne
@rdldot:
I don’t have a problem with movie theaters being open, probably because I have distinct memories of all us kids being dropped off at the movie theater around 6:00 pm on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Eve just so our parents wouldn’t kill us. Homicide avoidance seems like a valid reason to stay open.
I don’t see any reason for non-critical shopping to be open, though. None. I can see having an emergency need for, say, milk on a holiday and running to the 7-Eleven for it, but I don’t see the critical need for, say, a big-screen TV that can’t even be delivered until after the holiday.
Mnemosyne
At long last, my favorite modern Christmas song is relevant to a thread!
“Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas (Sometimes)” — Harvey Danger
dedc79
Giving certain retailers credit for staying closed on thanksgiving is like giving certain Republicans credit for not being birthers.
fuckwit
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set): Likewise, Trader Joe’s, headquartered a few miles down the 210 from Sport Chalet, closed on Thanksgiving.
Southern Beale
I would also like us to dispense with the fantasy that we’re getting some kind of bargain or deal by shopping on Thanksgiving or Black Friday. That is utter horseshit.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
And a lot of these companies have eliminated “holiday pay” where you would get double or triple-time for agreeing to work on that day. Now, as steeplejack and others said, it’s just another day with regular pay.
fuckwit
@Tokyokie: It was in the 1970s that we went from being a nation that made things to being a nation that made money. The shift to financial services, “knowledge work”, and MBA’s all happeend beginning about then, and really took off in the Gordon Gecko Wall Street 1980s. By the 1990s it was just reality, and the dot-com bubble was its latest manifestation. Our economy has become completely divorced from the reality of making and selling products. It’s about “services”, and most of the services are bullshit, and the most profitable ones are simply moving money around and the equivalent of playing roulette, poker, lotto, and/or shell games.
Tokyokie
@Southern Beale: After accompanying the spousal unit to Black Friday predawn sales a few years back, I pretty much try to stay in the house on the day after Thanksgiving. Hell, for that matter, I generally avoid malls between the middle of November and the end of December. Not my idea of a good time.
Kathleen
@Kay: I’ve been a member for several years. I rarely go because it’s somewhat of a trip, but I feel it’s important to support them. They post the holidays on which they close at the stores.
pseudonymous in nc
@Tommy:
Okay, I’ll give you “not at random”, but it’s perceived as random by the human drones working there. It’s not human-readable. It’s an unskilled job that is specifically designed to remain unskilled.
Origuy
Apple’s Macintosh factory back in the 80s was run like that. The computer system figured out where to put a package of parts and kept track of it. It reduced wasted space so that the storage area was relatively small. The assemblers entered what they needed and the robots fetched it for them.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: This, yes. I usually just lurk here but wanted to come out and say, you’re right – it *is* all the rage now to talk about the effects of “toxic stress” on kids 0-3 – (seriously, I just got an email inviting me to a webinar on the subject). Thich is great – but how many people are seriously connecting the dots between the way we make the working poor live (which is more and more of us every day) and the stress effect it has on kids?
There’s a potential great new study for the early childhood education crowd in there – measure the stability, school readiness, stress levels etc of kids whose parents have a stable work schedule and those who don’t. And who also have access to sick leave, holiday leave, reasonable vacation time, etc.
MattR
@pseudonymous in nc: I don’t think this is really true as well. Well, the last part is but that has always been the case for manufacturing and factory work. And it has always been the case that automation is decreasing the role of humans in unskilled work. So I am not really sure what your point is with that. But I do think you are underselling the humans that work at these warehouses. Most workers at a warehouse don’t see stocking decisions as random. They usually gain a pretty good understanding of how the computer “thinks” and how it wants the facility organized so they usually have a pretty good idea of roughly where the product is going to go before the computer gives them an exact location.
KS in MA
@Violet:
But be sure to drop by your local Walmart on Friday and support the workers’ protest:
http://forrespect.org/
NobodySpecial
@MattR: I believe his use of the phrase “human drones” is a pretty large tipoff of what he thinks of blue collar workers, myself.
Pogonip
@Tommy: No, but their chicken is a lot better than Wendy’s or Burger King’s.
Pogonip
@rdldot: I like the idea, but don’t think it practical. Even if we could get anywhere near their houses, they’d just have us tased and arrested.
Interrobang
A lot of North Americans would be pretty surprised at how much stuff you can shut down. I grew up in a place with blue laws which prohibited most stuff from being open on Sundays, but if you want to see a real statutory holiday, try being in Jerusalem on a Saturday. Nothing’s ticking but the clock, and that’s only because it doesn’t require human intervention to tick.
You can get a cab, because a lot of the cabdrivers are Arabs, but unless you’ve got somewhere specific to go, there’s basically no point, because there’s nowhere to go. Restaurants and stores are closed. Public transit doesn’t run, El Al doesn’t fly, and Ben-Gurion International airport closes.
They have people whose job it is to go with sabbath-observant Jewish doctors in hospitals to take notes for them, so they don’t have to break the sabbath by writing.
Hotels are usually on a skeleton staff of non-Jews, and forget about getting room service, dining room service, or using the pool or any of the other public amenities. If you get stuck without anything to eat, you’re going to be hungry until after sundown! A lot of hotel elevators get set to “shabbat mode,” which means they stop at every floor going up and the doors open automatically, so nobody has to break the sabbath by pressing a button (which is the same as kindling a flame in Jewish law, ergo prohibited).
In other words, they take the whole “day off” thing seriously. And they do this every week. Which is why I think a lot of this “We can’t close down [foo] for $holiday!” whining is basically bunk.
Person of Choler
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, I don’t eat at restaurants or shop on Thanksgiving day or, heaven forfend, the day after. Or any holidays at all for that matter.
Person of Choler
@Kyle: Plenty of people have to work holidays. I’ve been one of them.
Betsy
@Interrobang: I thought that the strictly orthodox minority had succeeded in imposing that particular kind of religious law on the country against the majority will.
Person of Choler
@Citizen_X: The point, citizenx, is that lots of people have to work holidays. Why do you get to decide who should or should not be required to do so by those who pay their salaries?
HeartlandLiberal
Well, Thanksgiving morning this appears on the Pizza Hut corporate Facebook page, as posted 11 hours ago, which would have been about 9:00 pm Wed night:
different-church-lady
I know the thread has pretty much ended, but I did want to clear up a potential misconception: I didn’t mean nobody paid attention to Kay’s post — I meant that it was a shame that sloppy threads or outright BS will get 300 comment pile-ups and revisited front-page posts, while Kay’s excellent offerings would sit the quietly being excellent. Certainly people did pay attention to them, but in an understated and under-appreciated way. Light always seems to generate less involvement than heat.
different-church-lady
@Kay: All the planning in the world doesn’t make up for insufficient income.
Fort Geek
I can’t think of a job I’ve ever had where the corporate fuckers weren’t ratfuckers. There was the District Manager who wouldn’t talk to anyone below Assistant Manager. There’s the DM who bought himself a $50,000 fishing boat while cutting our hours and payroll, freezing raises, and shuffling people around or laying them off. The manager who tried to ban restroom breaks. None of these pricks cared that it was people like me who made their jobs–and those above theirs–possible. (blatant blog plug: I made these fuckers rich.) Turns out permanent disability is a blessing…and a pox on all those bastards.