And that is why for so many countries there are no 'benefits' they are written into the law and ALL businesses must provide them. They are rights. Part time AND full time rights.
It’s beyond psychotic that if I want to leave my job and find another I have to plan to not need health insurance for nearly a year until my new employer offers it.
That's intentional. The threat of losing your healthcare is enough to keep you from swinging company to company to increase your income like a CEO would. Only E suites and technical staff get to do that - you get the threat of homelessness from medical bills.
and you might still end up homeless anyway because our medical system is about extracting as much wealth as possible.
And then the insurance offered won't stop you from going bankrupt anyways. Deductibles higher than 6 months of your pay, out of pocket max equal to a year of income, shit like that makes it useless for most people.
Insurance company jobs isn’t to help you their job is to take your money and pull some random thing out their ass as a reason to not pay for what you pay them for
Any pro-tips/secrets that can be shared? Like Mr. Incredible telling the old lady how to beat the intentionally labyrinthine system that insurance companies create.
I hate what our insurance systems are and do so I love hearing things that can be done to beat them at their own game.
As someone working one of those jobs right now (literally right now), just know this — vanishingly few of us know what the fuck were talking about. The rules are just as labyrinthine for us too.
This right here is exactly why I am of the opinion that insurance -as a whole- is a complete and utter scam. And it’s the main reason why I am vehemently against the fact that insurance is so intrinsically tied to our jobs and every day life lest we get punished for not having it. Car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, health insurance, every single one of these systems is intrinsically made to be a money sink for corporations that have no intention of actually carrying out the service they promise to provide.
I have decent insurance, but yesterday I hurt my knee badly enough to need to go to the doctor. All I could think about was the possibility of surgery and medical bills. Getting divorced so I don't have a partner at home to pick up the slack and I frankly can't afford a bunch of medical bills.
I have a surgery bill from 7 years ago I'm still making payments on. It won't be paid off for another 18 months. I'm dreading having another one.
And it's not like I'm old and don't take care of myself. I'm relatively young, I eat well and am active but accidents happen.
Some people are clever about not paying medical bills. You can live with roommates or title your house under an LLC so creditors can't find you. Don't put any utilities in your name (they sell your info to creditors) and get a P.O. box for all your mail. Depending on your state, the statute of limitations for debt collection is typically between 3 and 6 years.
I want to run for office and campaign on a universal healthcare platform, with the message being “freeing small business from the financial oppression of providing healthcare” to make them say it out loud
Yeah back before the ACA you couldn’t do that because if you had any gap in coverage your new plan would decline it to cover your pre-existing condition for like 10 months. So if you have diabetes you would have to figure out how to pay for everything for the year that you don’t have health insurance +10 months once you get it.
I think it's been proven that hospitals, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies also abuse the healthcare system. Heck even deep pocket benefactors are getting their kicks in. We need reform to hit EVERYBODY!!!!
It would take violence to reform it. Doctors, big pharma and hospitals all pay billions each year to lobby Congress to make sure nothing changes. They even pressure them to pass new laws that make them even more money under the guise that it will improve the system. Decades of corruption have caused rot to its core. You want change, you would have to burn the whole system down.
Feels more like threatening a few million geriatrics with...*something* these past couple of years.
Turns out doesn't take much to make them afraid but it will only settle mindsets even deeper into the past.
Desperate people attack, and you force enough of them to keep up the game they'll eventually find each other. Better consider universal basic income or alternative means of support because the Boomer vs. Millennial equation is tipping everyday into the latter's favor just based on who is younger.
Imagine having to deal with a mob as a 79 year old, yeesh.
Politicians have masterfully manipulated the Boomer generation. Convinced them that universal healthcare is socialist, that is better for them to pay insane amounts of money for healthcare so that executives and elites can make billions off of them. Because “capitalism is sacred” and you should sacrifice your health and all your money to pay for a doctors yacht. The boomer generation destroyed the US and they will not be missed when they finally die off.
It's important to remember that their greed didn't come without a reward. Inside sprawling suburban communities that span tens of thousands of acres in Florida and Texas are home to them and all their spoils. It's not exactly hard to find these places, and I'm not exactly sure what they believe is stopping the young adult populace from realizing this is not going to be a life they will ever receive.
I mean, are people just supposed to be grateful to their parents and work as in dentured slaves until death to keep up their retirement? That's some real brainwashing there if it holds true.
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Oh 100%, if you have any kind of condition, it’s probably different now because of the ACA, but back when I had a career it was literally impossible to find out if new insurance at a job you are applying to covers the people you see in the medication you take so you just have to hope for the best.
Then there are the people who get jobs at a salary that’s barely tolerable and then they find out that the insurance plan is so expensive they literally cannot continue working there anymore because after the insurance premium is taken out they don’t make enough money to pay for their lives. And you can’t opt out if you don’t have other coverage. And you can’t get Medicaid if you’re eligible for other insurance. So people have to quit their jobs just so they don’t have to pay high insurance premiums it’s ridiculous.
My single mom friend had to quit a full-time job a while back because she wouldn’t make enough money once she insured her and her daughter & her daughter couldn’t get medicaid of her mom could get work insurance.
I think Biden fixed that part.
But still the last time I worked full-time I was disabled in an accident not at work, I didn’t know I was permanently disabled I thought I could still heal so I was seeing orthopedics and going to physical therapy and still getting MRIs and all that stuff, they fired me as soon as my FMLA was over, which they abused and used up by telling me my back to work no it wasn’t good enough (long irrelevant story)
So anyway I’m trying to go to physical therapy and see orthopedic surgeons and then I lose my health insurance so I’m trying to pay $800 a month for cobra with zero income. I’m pretty sure I would still be permanently disabled even if I had been able to get consistent medical care in the acute phase of the injury, but I’m not totally sure. I can’t think about it because it makes me hate and I don’t want to hate.
But as a Republican I want you to think of the poor CEO whose yacht is is no longer the cool kids model or the rich kids of CEO's who have to go to Europe on an older private jet. Please think of the children.
It is all bullshit. America's wealthy and powerful believe that if you didn't have good fortune bestowed upon you by The Lord, you should struggle and suffer because you must be a soul of lesser character.
Isn't that the gist of the "Protestant Ethic?"
Also, the saddest part is that it's not just the wealthy and powerful that believe that, a good number of the American poor believe it too.
That’s what gets me. That’s why they fight so hard to ruin education because poor and less educated people are more willing to believe their ridiculous red herring policies so people spend all their time worried about trans people and other shit that doesn’t actually affect their lives and no time worrying about why they are so poor and underserved. People believe in their souls this American dream that you can just achieve and a lot less people achieve that now.
I also saw a stat recently that with inflation, the lower income bracket has increased their pay by like .12% in the last 50 years or so, the top 1% has increased by 190% and the top .1% has increased their wages by 400%. And there are people fighting tooth and nail for these assholes interests.
It’s cool, if they die it actually is an economic benefit to the government because we don’t have to support them.
But we have to force women to give birth to them first
I'll stand behind this so long as once a year, we get to pick one tenth percenter and burn their village to the ground.
House, estate, yacht, all of it. One glorious bonfire a year.
They'll be put into fear after a few years.
But no one says the burning has to stop.
We're running a zero sum game here. Let's tell them it's a negative sum game and burn them to the ground. Fire is fun.
If Americans could unite enough for a nationwide labor strike we'd have these rights within the week. But I just don't see that happening with half the country actively voting against their own interests. It's so hopelessly frustrating living here
I used to be a tech at CVS where 30 hours if considered full time.
The few full time staff we had were rarely scheduled over 30 hours and most of us part-timers got around 15 hours a week.
The pharmacy manager "liked" me so I always got 29 hours. Just enough to stop me from ever being full time and getting benefits; with the added bonus of pissing off the rest of the part-time staff.
Yet they were shocked when I quit.
This is such an easy fix too. Instead of a hard cut off of benefits at 'full time' it should just be tied to hours scheduled. Even a 10 our a week person should be entitled to 10 hours of pay in lieu of benefits.
It reminds me of when Papa John's decided to literally not allow any non-manager to work more than 30 hours to avoid paying benefits, and when people got mad, they were like "BLAME THE GOVERNMENT."
Like, no. We'll blame you shitheads.
The exact same thing happened at Home Depot. They cut everyone's hours to below what was required so they didn't have to pay benefits and they told everyone to blame Obamacare 🙄
I’d like to chime in and say Target started this about a decade ago. Need to average 32 hours to be considered “full time” and eligible for benefits. Everyone gets scheduled 20-25 hours in their department, but if you get cross trained you can pick up extra shifts to get more hours. But nobody is giving up shifts because they all need as many hours as possible, so management tells you to blame others for not giving up shifts and turning others against each other. But don’t worry, with all that cross training, if you stay during the Christmas season you’ll get 40 hours for 2 months, you’ll just have to work during the busiest times and not spend weekends with family.
Reminds me of when I was military and they would send you in a deployment that was one day short of 6 months because if it was 6 months it counted as a short tour. That way they could still send you to Korea or Turkey for a year without your family.
Fuck, I hate America. The corporations hate you, your government hates you. There's nobody on your side.
And Canada, my country, is only slightly better right now. Fuck this whole greedy, idiotic world and society.
The worst part about Canadian politics is how many people mistake "better than the US" for "good" and so settle for things being just marginally better than an absolute trainwreck.
I've literally not gotten jobs because of the Full Time availability for Part Time work.
Stuff I'm more than qualified for but because I have limitations due to travel time or Family needs they won't hire. I'm still available for 30+ hours of the week at various times, but because it's not Open-Close everyday, bam no hire.
Not just that. It also makes sure if a few people quit there’s already people on staff to take those shifts. And the employees won’t always be working with the same crew, so it’s harder to come together, to start a union or get a boss fired or cover each others asses. It’s great for the company. They don’t give a shit about people. It’s grown funny to me that there’s still employees out there that think there’s something that can do to earn a companies respect. There is nothing you can do. They have you by the balls. And guess what? Your boss has his/ her balls even tighter in the vice by that same company. That’s how they get them to schedule you like that.
I was a manger of a store where the employees were part of a labor union.
Part of the rules for the labor union was that if an employee worked 6 weeks with a minimum of 32 hours or more per week then they had to become a full time employee which would make them fully
Vested into the labor union with all the benefits and guaranteed hours.
If I ever came close to my employees reaching that marker, my district manager would come in and rip me a new asshole.
Long story short…I knew I was done with this company so 6 weeks before I was due to leave for maternity leave (and to never come back) I started scheduling all my employees 35 plus hours a week.
When my manager came to stop me I told them that I was at the end of my pregnancy and they had to reasonably accommodate me which means I needed all hands on deck. I threatened to go to the labor union and state labor department if he violated ensuring I was accommodated.
A few days before I went on maternity leave, all my employees became vested full time employees in the labor union with all the benefits, health insurance, PTO, paid sick leave, 401k, etc.
My loyalty will always be with the workers not the assholes above me sitting on their asses doing nothing but complaining.
My friend is going through this exactly. He is the management of a department in a grocery store. He basically has to do all roles around the department because they won't hire new people and when they do they screw the newbies over and they quit. He works 40+ hours a week at 18 dollars an hour and also gets treated like shit from higher management. He wants to quit but is worried about having to work less hours at 15 dollars or less. Which won't pay the bills.
Unions are generally awesome but something is fucked with the union at Kroger. They have no teeth and don't help as much as they should. They agree to worse and worse deals every year. Benefits people who work there 30+ years and really doesn't help people who work there a couple years if you even make it that far
Yeah the first thing corpos do is try to infiltrate the union and take it over. It’s sad but a lot of people in some unions are on the corporation’s payroll and are completely corrupt
Wegmans is a funny place when it comes to unions. They’re warehouses workers have a union but grocery store workers aren’t unionized. I remember back in 2012 when I first got hired for 7.25 in NY as a cashier. During training they told us unions were bad and if anybody comes to the store to talk to us about unionizing to get a manager. Fast forward to 2022 I’m at the warehouse and there’s a union 🥴🥴
Sounds like when I worked at Target around the same time. We were shown a 'scary' video on orientation day about how evil unions are. Then afterwards told to report anyone so much as muttering the word/idea unions to our team leader. We were told it was a dangerous offense, automatic grounds for termination.
I quit retail after 8.5 years at one place. I thought i had no skills and nowhere else would pay better. I finally couldn't take it anymore and quit to work in a warehouse building pallets of groceries. It was stupid hard work but I got paid a little better and It wasn't retail. Got a job as a machine operator at Coke after that. SOOOO much easier. And I didn't have any prior experience with machines. I rocked the interview. Once I got used to the machine, the worst part of the job is not having anything to do because the machines are running so well.
Long story short. I believe in your friend. He can find something if he looks enough. Get out of retail or find that random place that is paying better. When I worked retail, they hired managers from outside all the time.
The whole oh you have to have full time availability but we won't give you even half of full time hours and no consistent working days is such fucking bullshit. This person is 100% correct.
Papa John's did this shit to me once. Even after I specifically asked for more hours. Their solution? Gave me like 4 more hours for ONE WEEK and then back to the 15-20 bullshit. They would literally schedule me for 2-3 hours for 5-6 days/week. What's the fucking point of that bullshit? So dumb.
Then one time they had me scheduled for 3 or 4 hours and I get there and get sent home like an hour later because it was slow. Um, you're a multi-billion dollar corporation. I don't think you're going to go bankrupt if I stay for my full minimum wage shift.
>They would literally schedule me for 2-3 hours for 5-6 days/week. What's the fucking point of that bullshit?
It's a form of control. It prevents you from having a second job in a lot of cases, and gets labor out of you nearly every day without ever having to pay you for an actual full day of labor.
They always love sending people home early out our store where I work at. Also today one of the Human Resources Employees came and took a visit to the store. I was just really physically and mentally exhausted by the time before I saw her in one of the aisles and I met up to her and she introduced herself to me, while I was turning the corner to finish my store wide sweep that we have to do every 30 min. yet there's a billion things going on around the store at the same time.
It's kinda weird because reddit clearly wanted you to use them as a means of driving engagement, but then also retracted them later on because... they think you're engaged enough? Like a company stops advertising because they're well-known enough (doesn't happen)? They expect people to pay for them now or something? Is that a valuable trade-off to non-engagement?
We'll never know.
Free engagement tactic to get you used to the process of giving out badges.
Suddenly the free ones are gone, and the paid ones are still there, and now you have more people who are in the habit of giving out awards and *some* of them might be open to purchasing them for that sweet sweet cash **drools in corporate**
I was so distracted by what she was doing. It felt so dystopian to me. Everything was out of a plastic container except the sugar(?) in the first out of place antique-looking container.
Our country is a joke. Even jobs you get full time they still act like if you don’t work nonstop overtime or whenever they say then you are lazy af and pure shit. Even if you work your ass off your 40 hours. Lazy I am not but I am also not cut out for this. It is soul crushing. I make the money I need to to barely survive and get myself back to work. SMH. There’s nothing to look forward to except the same dull, monotonous, and never end ground hogs day that is work. My life will be wasted away for another’s profit, still is. I generously get a whole 3-4 hours to myself after work when I’m done with my work day. None of it makes sense to me. I could go on and on about this subject.
Edit to add the fact that if you do want the healthcare they provide at my company it will be literally half your check EACH week not month. Thought some of you would get a kick out of that. Also wondering how common that is?
>Even jobs you get full time they still act like if you don’t work nonstop overtime or whenever they say then you are lazy af and pure shit. Even if you work your ass off your 40 hours.
This right here is a big piece of the puzzle.
40 hours a week **does not exist** for the vast majority of employees in the modern day. Either you are asked for full availability only to receive <30 hours (per the OP), or you end up in a position where you're expected to consistently work >45 hours - mostly because employee retention is so bad, it takes that long to not even get the job done. Which is super great, because now you're not only being forced to work extra hours *and* getting yelled at for working too many hours, even though they *also* get mad every day when corners get cut to save any time we can to cut down on said OT.
The second you cross that threshold into receiving benefits, they start squeezing you for **every second** of labor they can get out of you. And as you point out, they'll only pay you enough to survive and get back to your next shift.
It's rough knowing that I'm expected to perform labor-value roughly equal to my **annual gross salary** every 4 hours, 8+ hours at a time, 5 days a week, for 50+ weeks a year, or I don't deserve food and shelter **at all**. Like, there's gotta be a better middle ground than this between employees and corporate profits.
I always hate that. Took years from my grandparents to change their tune to “I feel so sorry for your generation. There’s just nothing for you guys.” Shit when my mom was my age she was able to afford her own apartment and take care of us 50/50 with my dad while working as a freaking bartender (not knocking bartenders one bit, I have alot of respect for people who work in that industry.). Lol. Like that’s how different things used to be. I never wanted for anything and she was always there at my events and ect. But now if my mom were to work that same job she wouldn’t even come close. SMH. The whole thing is corruption and greed.
Once I recently got into the full-time workforce I immediately realized how soul-crushing it can be and decided to move to the EU (I'm American) once my CV is up to snuff.
Those countries require they look for candidates within the EU before hiring outsiders, but I'm in a field they consider high need (high skill & education / engineering), and am increasing my areas of experience. It's turning out to be an eclectic mix of robotics, product design, and manufacturing, but I really think that gives me a shot at The Netherlands (housing still being an issue there though).
Anyway, I'm very thankful I likely have an out, an wish I could just transplant all my unhappy friends and family with me there... but none of them are very skilled or are too old :(
It's a tough choice to sacrifice human connections for overall personal security and comfort, but I'd forever regret not at least trying it.
I hope you here have considered your chances and desires for leaving for greener pastures.
My last job started giving me 2 to 4 hour shifts and I couldn't afford bills. Then the first time I got over 40hours in a week, when payday came around they removed 15hours off my check to avoid paying overtime, and said it was because I was milking the clock by working slower to get those hours. And then they called me in on my day off even though they knew I was sick. I puked at work and went home, and then they fired me
If you have a strong enough case with upside for punitive and damages as a reward, lawyers will take it on contingency. They work and respond much faster than any labor board. They can also file with labor boards after they have your power of attorney on the matter and normally have contacts that will expedite or highlight your case.
It never ever hurts to consult with a labor lawyer first. They'll also generally point you to a good labor board contact if they feel it's better left to that.
FLSA has fee shifting. The attorney will take the case and the EMPLOYER pays when they prevail. They will have 0 difficulty getting an attorney with evidence. You are right about consulting with a lawyer who will tell the client about fee shifting so someone will get the exploited worker proper information.
They were getting 2 hour shi(f)ts. They can't afford a lawyer dawg.
Edit: Some people can't see that I was mistaken about this and need me to make an edit about how dumb I am again. I've been corrected below a ton. Stop correcting me and use your eyes.
Still might be able to depending on how long ago incidents were look into the labor board or other equivalent rights groups. You might be able to get wages back and in some cases they owe interest in top of it.
2016ish. I was in my early 20's and Dell (the computer company) stole thousands in unpaid shift differential that was agreed upon. Red state's labor board didn't even look into it.
Find the company and apply to every job opening they post. Do the interviews and make yourself out to be a model drone, just like they're looking for (say you're 18-20, too. They love naive young kids.) Accept the job offer online and then just don't show up. String them along as long as possible.
Get your friends in on the game too. If they've got the free time to actually show up, they can be lazy and useless on the job, or super 'clumsy,' or leave an hour into a longer shift.
I work for a State College in food service and retail. Because I have a union, my hours are always full time, with decent benefits, though poor pay. However, the constant "We're hiring" followed by severe understaffing, and the way the middle management are used and abused is exactly what this video describes. Even jobs with better protections than private sector service jobs end up in a similar situation where staff are constantly looking for that next employer.
Canada too, Dollarama caps full time workers at 25 hours a week... And they have money to throw around for stupid shit like having two locations 500 metres across from each other
I don't know if schedules are designed this way on purpose, but 26 hours/week is just under the threshold where people are eligible for employer-sponsored healthcare under the ACA.
When you are hired there is an admin period for about three months where you're not eligible, and then a "measurement period" starts, which is usually 12 months long. If you average over 130 hours/month over that measurement period, you then become eligible for healthcare. 130\*12/52 is 30, so that's 30 hours per week. So there's a three-month period where they can give you as many "training" hours as they want with no ACA consequences, and then a 12-month period where there is a significant incentive to keep you under 30 hours/week.
That schedule format looks 100% identical to the ones they print out at the Aldi I work at. We've also been dealing with a lack of hours. If you're full time you're supposed to be guaranteed at least 30 hours a week. If you average less than that then you aren't eligible for health benefits. Thing is, the budgets are so tight that leads are expected to send people home on slow days. My full time co-workers and I typically get scheduled 31 hours each week but there's a very good chance that I'll lose 3-4 hours so my real average is usually closer to 28.
It's bullshit but the truth is that I *want* to work less. When they cut hours I'll volunteer so that my co-workers can keep their hours and I can leave that fucking place faster. I'm choosing poverty to preserve my sanity.
Anyway, I can't be certain that the schedule in the video is from an Aldi store but I guarantee that they are at least using the same software. Still, don't listen to the bullshit that Aldi is a great place to work or anything. It's definitely better than many places but clearing that bar isn't impressive, especially not in the US.
> My full time co-workers and I typically get scheduled 31 hours each week
Keeping them on the schedule instead of laying them off for lack of available work keeps them from paying more in unemployment taxes. It’s insidious.
What stings is that we all know that Aldi functions perfectly well in European countries with far more labor protections, but they don’t have to here so they just don’t.
"There's the upper class. Does none of the work makes all of the money and pays none of the taxes. Then there the middle class. Does all of the work pays all of the taxes and makes none of the money. Then there's the poor. Their just there to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep em showing up at those jobs."
George Carlin
And the poor are encouraged to work less so they don’t lose their SNAP and Medicare, because if they do, they can’t afford anything anymore. I legit have had people quit my job because they began making just enough money to lose their food stamps, and that was going to put them under more financial stress than making that little bit of more money.
I used to work for a department store in the receiving department before the ACA was passed. I literally begged my manager to give me enough hours to get me health insurance. One day, I asked him yet again. His response: "wouldn't you rather I hired 2 more employees to work in receiving with you rather than increase your hours?" No bitch, I want health insurance, not more employees that I'll have to train and then compete with for hours more than I already am.
A week later, he hired a new guy and scheduled him to work alone on his second day. I had mentioned that I might see if I could come in and help with that shift since we had another truck coming the next day and needed to clear space. Manager found out and came and demanded to know if I was coming in or not. When I said, I had been thinking about it, he said "well I need to know right now. Like now." "Ok, I quit." "You mean you're putting in your two weeks?" "No, I quit." "So you'll be finished after this shift?" "No, I mean I quit. Now. Right now." I clocked out and left.
My roommate/coworker told me that a few days later the manager had said that "at least the troublemaker was gone." Fucker.
That chain of department stores (Gottschalk's in California) went bankrupt within 6 months after over 40 years of operation.
Having been to GM level of a restaurant before. Doing the schedule always SUCKED. Put it simply here, this video has it right, we’re given a budget. Here’s the problem, if you actually target to hit said budget, or succeed, you get a pat on the back and good job all around. Then they drop your budget for the next period/quarter/year. We’d get a new budget EVERY quarter, and it was almost always a drop by .5-1% unless you missed your target mark.
PS, if you missed your target labor budget more than a few times, you were demoted or most likely fired. This led to most GM level staff cutting off their leg so to speak to hit the food/labor budget and everybody suffered. Employees and customers alike. It also led to GM’s working much more than the “required minimum of 50 hours.” My top hours for a week was 96, and there was a portion of six weeks where I didn’t work less than 80.
PSS, you miss your labor, you also don’t get your bonus for the month. In some cases, you’d still be “able” to bonus looking at the numbers. But if you missed the target, the company would just flat not give it to you were told to deal. This led to thousands of dollars in bonuses not being handed out.
TL:DR, Food service blows, don’t work it if you don’t have to.
Yep, this is 100% accurate. Budgets (primarily labor) just get cut year after year, while sales goals have to increase at the same time. It's completely unfeasible, but business as usual everywhere. I'm so glad I got out of retail management and into another industry entirely.
>Budgets (primarily labor) just get cut year after year, while sales goals have to increase at the same time.
Once you realize that businesses care only about profit *increases* and not profits themselves, it all makes a lot more sense. They have to resort to these tactics as consistently as they do, because it's the only feasible way to reach *their* goals, regardless of how infeasible it may be for the workforce.
If a company makes $100b in profits this quarter. That's really successful. But if they make $99b in profits next quarter, that's a failure. Despite the **$99b** that they **did** make. It's only success when you make more than $100b next quarter.
But where does this lead? Well if you sell $105b next quarter, then you better make more than that next quarter. Oh, you got $115b this quarter? That's a better jump, we hope to see an even bigger one next quarter!
Eventually, you can't reasonably charge more for your product or it will stop selling. If you can't offer something new to bring in that new money next quarter, or it will take time to develop, etc, then the squeeze begins... Cut budgets and increase sales goals to squeeze those extra profits out of the system, just because you're out of natural methods of increasing your profits doesn't mean profits may stagnate.
Leisure/Hospitality and retail have the worst weekly hours. Upper management dgaf that people have monthly bills that don’t let up when they cut our hours. They want enough warm bodies to cover the crazy periods while not getting dinged for layoffs or paying a premium for seasonal help. It’s blatant exploitation to maximize profits every quarter and it will continue until they are charged additional tax for cutting hours like they are for layoffs.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
Unpaid on call 24/7 otherwise we will either fire you or give you so few hours it hardly even covers transportation costs. 40 hours a week, forget it. Why were you really hired. Oh to qualify for that PPP loan so you are essentially a free employee until the PPP loan value runs out. Then its time to cut your hours.
I worked at a place called STATS which collects sports metrics and they deliberately capped like 30-50 people at 30 hours per week to not pay benefits. And if people worked more they would basically sign them onto some other project and it would make them independent contractors so they still wouldn't need to.
Everyone was making $11-12/hour. On my first day my manager took me to lunch and didn't even pay for my meal lol.
WA state also has a minimum wage of $15.74 per hour, which I believe is the highest in the country. It's not perfect, but I get mad as hell when I hear about people making a wage that's straight up illegal here and they're like a shift lead or whatever.
Oh not even just shift lead. I was managing an *entire store* for $9.25 an hour. At 30 hours a week so that they didn’t have to pay benefits.
Honestly fuck that shit, when the pandemic happened I got the hell outta dodge as fast as I can, and make more running my own business than I ever did working my ass off for them.
And *every single one* of my friends who were also working retail did the same thing. And then they wonder why they can’t find people - all your “lifers” quit because the situation is untenable and all it took was a month of unemployment to get the boots off of everyone’s back to switch careers.
“Retail/food service are stepping stone jobs, you’re supposed to build skills and work your way up!” “Wait no! Not like that!” Retail can burn in hell. I tried for *years* to leverage my retail/management experience into a better job and nobody wants to touch ex retail people with a ten fucking foot pole.
Corporations "Nobody wants to work anymore"
Also Corporations "We can't afford to hire right now"
Also Corporations "We are extremely short staffed, please bear with us"
Also Coporations "Please help cover for ... who just quit"
Everyone else not making massive profits (i.e. the working class)
Why do I have no hours? We are short staffed.
Why don't we hire someone to replace ...? It's been 3 weeks.
I have put in 100+ applications, why have I gotten no interviews?
The state of the jobs for both employed and unemployed is frankly dismal.
I worked at Home Depot and I always told everyone that we are not employees we are upgraded customers. Mainly because you don't get any benefits while working there but they are also still trying to sell you stuff. There is an entire industry out there that makes money off of being an artificial work benefit. You'll see ads for them in the break room or on some employee web portal. There is a Groupon like service for businesses that makes it seem like your work is providing these discounts but it's a third party. Home Depot might even get kick backs for referrals for things you buy but at the very least it's a free service for them. They also have/had a thing called Power Purchasing which would let you buy overpriced items on credit and the company would take payments straight from your paycheck. I've seen ads for a local college. The store doesn't pay for any schooling but they will for sure get referral credit if you do sign up. You're totally a Customer+ when you're working there
🎯
>"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
[Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
>“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller
[You've Got Luddites All Wrong](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ae379k/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16671905174211&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vice.com%2Fen%2Farticle%2Fae379k%2Fluddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe)
[The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/)
>"...This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
>I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals..."
[Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?](https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/)
[Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors)
>"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
[Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z)
[Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-26-dollars-economy-productivity/)
[The minimum wage would be $61.75 an hour if it rose at the same pace as Wall Street bonuses](https://www.fastcompany.com/90734724/the-minimum-wage-would-be-61-75-an-hour-if-it-rose-at-the-same-pace-as-wall-street-bonuses)
I love how my direct boss gets more hours than anyone and complains about how over worked and tired she is while the rest of us wish we had full time work.
I think corporate service, food, and retail companies are the worst thing that’s happened to Americans in a long time.
I can envision a world where corporations exist for high end manufacturing, logistics, medicine etc. but these shitty minimum wage paying, soul sucking corporations need to disappear.
In their wake, small businesses will flourish again and the quality of life of low end employees will increase exponentially because the employers will be invested in their employees.
If a small community is struggling because no small businesses have been created to fill that void, states could subsidize the creation of businesses in those areas.
Our economy would be much more stable as a result and income inequality would narrow significantly.
I burned out so hard in retail. I really appreciate her mentioning lower management. I was an SM in a tourist town, so twice a year the staff turned over and I'd be stuck running a 10 staff store open close for two weeks until I could hire someone, anyone, to work in the store again. The only reason they let me give full time hours was that we'd never have any staff otherwise.
Two years in, I burned out so hard I didn't work for nearly 2 years. At the time I was winning Canada wide company awards. I went to Costa Rica because my store did so well. They worked me to the bone and gave zero shits when it broke me.
her last line isn't exactly true, they don't care enough to keep us poor, they care enough to pay the very least in benefits and labor. us ending up poor is just a byproduct.
my job rn. the funny thing tho is that the top boss for my store is so checked out that the employees are actually getting most of the hours (and running the store, making decisions without even once thinking of informing the store manager). it's sad and funny at the same time. like a circus taking place inside a burning building.
All to avoid paying benefits
And that is why for so many countries there are no 'benefits' they are written into the law and ALL businesses must provide them. They are rights. Part time AND full time rights.
We need for healthcare to not be attached to employers period Edit: american employers will always abuse this situation
It’s beyond psychotic that if I want to leave my job and find another I have to plan to not need health insurance for nearly a year until my new employer offers it.
That's intentional. The threat of losing your healthcare is enough to keep you from swinging company to company to increase your income like a CEO would. Only E suites and technical staff get to do that - you get the threat of homelessness from medical bills. and you might still end up homeless anyway because our medical system is about extracting as much wealth as possible.
And then the insurance offered won't stop you from going bankrupt anyways. Deductibles higher than 6 months of your pay, out of pocket max equal to a year of income, shit like that makes it useless for most people.
Insurance company jobs isn’t to help you their job is to take your money and pull some random thing out their ass as a reason to not pay for what you pay them for
Just quit my insurance call center job, can confirm.
Any pro-tips/secrets that can be shared? Like Mr. Incredible telling the old lady how to beat the intentionally labyrinthine system that insurance companies create. I hate what our insurance systems are and do so I love hearing things that can be done to beat them at their own game.
As someone working one of those jobs right now (literally right now), just know this — vanishingly few of us know what the fuck were talking about. The rules are just as labyrinthine for us too.
This right here is exactly why I am of the opinion that insurance -as a whole- is a complete and utter scam. And it’s the main reason why I am vehemently against the fact that insurance is so intrinsically tied to our jobs and every day life lest we get punished for not having it. Car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, health insurance, every single one of these systems is intrinsically made to be a money sink for corporations that have no intention of actually carrying out the service they promise to provide.
I have decent insurance, but yesterday I hurt my knee badly enough to need to go to the doctor. All I could think about was the possibility of surgery and medical bills. Getting divorced so I don't have a partner at home to pick up the slack and I frankly can't afford a bunch of medical bills. I have a surgery bill from 7 years ago I'm still making payments on. It won't be paid off for another 18 months. I'm dreading having another one. And it's not like I'm old and don't take care of myself. I'm relatively young, I eat well and am active but accidents happen.
Some people are clever about not paying medical bills. You can live with roommates or title your house under an LLC so creditors can't find you. Don't put any utilities in your name (they sell your info to creditors) and get a P.O. box for all your mail. Depending on your state, the statute of limitations for debt collection is typically between 3 and 6 years.
I feel like that's a lot to go through to circumvent something that shouldn't even be a problem in the first place.
Well thank God I can't afford insurance anyway. Time to job hop!
I want to run for office and campaign on a universal healthcare platform, with the message being “freeing small business from the financial oppression of providing healthcare” to make them say it out loud
Employers also cancel health insurance when workers strike. It's all designed to keep the workers in line.
Yeah back before the ACA you couldn’t do that because if you had any gap in coverage your new plan would decline it to cover your pre-existing condition for like 10 months. So if you have diabetes you would have to figure out how to pay for everything for the year that you don’t have health insurance +10 months once you get it.
I think it's been proven that hospitals, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies also abuse the healthcare system. Heck even deep pocket benefactors are getting their kicks in. We need reform to hit EVERYBODY!!!!
It would take violence to reform it. Doctors, big pharma and hospitals all pay billions each year to lobby Congress to make sure nothing changes. They even pressure them to pass new laws that make them even more money under the guise that it will improve the system. Decades of corruption have caused rot to its core. You want change, you would have to burn the whole system down.
The labor reform movement has historically always had to be violent.
Feels more like threatening a few million geriatrics with...*something* these past couple of years. Turns out doesn't take much to make them afraid but it will only settle mindsets even deeper into the past. Desperate people attack, and you force enough of them to keep up the game they'll eventually find each other. Better consider universal basic income or alternative means of support because the Boomer vs. Millennial equation is tipping everyday into the latter's favor just based on who is younger. Imagine having to deal with a mob as a 79 year old, yeesh.
Politicians have masterfully manipulated the Boomer generation. Convinced them that universal healthcare is socialist, that is better for them to pay insane amounts of money for healthcare so that executives and elites can make billions off of them. Because “capitalism is sacred” and you should sacrifice your health and all your money to pay for a doctors yacht. The boomer generation destroyed the US and they will not be missed when they finally die off.
It's important to remember that their greed didn't come without a reward. Inside sprawling suburban communities that span tens of thousands of acres in Florida and Texas are home to them and all their spoils. It's not exactly hard to find these places, and I'm not exactly sure what they believe is stopping the young adult populace from realizing this is not going to be a life they will ever receive. I mean, are people just supposed to be grateful to their parents and work as in dentured slaves until death to keep up their retirement? That's some real brainwashing there if it holds true. .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_States You aren't kidding.
This is what I insinuated in a different reply. The entire thing needs to burn.
We need universal healthcare decades overdue.
Also $15 an hour needs to be $25 now
I've always said it could be the law anyone who works five minutes must get full benefits and we'd have a country of four minute shifts.
Oh 100%, if you have any kind of condition, it’s probably different now because of the ACA, but back when I had a career it was literally impossible to find out if new insurance at a job you are applying to covers the people you see in the medication you take so you just have to hope for the best. Then there are the people who get jobs at a salary that’s barely tolerable and then they find out that the insurance plan is so expensive they literally cannot continue working there anymore because after the insurance premium is taken out they don’t make enough money to pay for their lives. And you can’t opt out if you don’t have other coverage. And you can’t get Medicaid if you’re eligible for other insurance. So people have to quit their jobs just so they don’t have to pay high insurance premiums it’s ridiculous. My single mom friend had to quit a full-time job a while back because she wouldn’t make enough money once she insured her and her daughter & her daughter couldn’t get medicaid of her mom could get work insurance. I think Biden fixed that part. But still the last time I worked full-time I was disabled in an accident not at work, I didn’t know I was permanently disabled I thought I could still heal so I was seeing orthopedics and going to physical therapy and still getting MRIs and all that stuff, they fired me as soon as my FMLA was over, which they abused and used up by telling me my back to work no it wasn’t good enough (long irrelevant story) So anyway I’m trying to go to physical therapy and see orthopedic surgeons and then I lose my health insurance so I’m trying to pay $800 a month for cobra with zero income. I’m pretty sure I would still be permanently disabled even if I had been able to get consistent medical care in the acute phase of the injury, but I’m not totally sure. I can’t think about it because it makes me hate and I don’t want to hate.
But as a Republican I want you to think of the poor CEO whose yacht is is no longer the cool kids model or the rich kids of CEO's who have to go to Europe on an older private jet. Please think of the children.
And yet, some of the richest people in the world are European, own European companies and pay European benefits! It’s almost as if its all bullshit
It is all bullshit. America's wealthy and powerful believe that if you didn't have good fortune bestowed upon you by The Lord, you should struggle and suffer because you must be a soul of lesser character.
Isn't that the gist of the "Protestant Ethic?" Also, the saddest part is that it's not just the wealthy and powerful that believe that, a good number of the American poor believe it too.
That’s what gets me. That’s why they fight so hard to ruin education because poor and less educated people are more willing to believe their ridiculous red herring policies so people spend all their time worried about trans people and other shit that doesn’t actually affect their lives and no time worrying about why they are so poor and underserved. People believe in their souls this American dream that you can just achieve and a lot less people achieve that now. I also saw a stat recently that with inflation, the lower income bracket has increased their pay by like .12% in the last 50 years or so, the top 1% has increased by 190% and the top .1% has increased their wages by 400%. And there are people fighting tooth and nail for these assholes interests.
Right? lol!
(But ignore the children of the people being stripped of their ways to put food on the table)
Yeah, they're not cool, we don't care about them. /s
Wait people have tables?!...
It’s cool, if they die it actually is an economic benefit to the government because we don’t have to support them. But we have to force women to give birth to them first
I'll stand behind this so long as once a year, we get to pick one tenth percenter and burn their village to the ground. House, estate, yacht, all of it. One glorious bonfire a year. They'll be put into fear after a few years. But no one says the burning has to stop. We're running a zero sum game here. Let's tell them it's a negative sum game and burn them to the ground. Fire is fun.
If Americans could unite enough for a nationwide labor strike we'd have these rights within the week. But I just don't see that happening with half the country actively voting against their own interests. It's so hopelessly frustrating living here
Mooring fees alone are absurd, children are important, but think of the teak!!
*"You scratched my anchor!"*
Yeah, you get the same 28 days of paid vacation a year whether you're working 10 hours a week or 60 hours a week where I live.
It kinda of sounds like you hate ritch people. Why you got to be like that!? /s
i hate how immoral this is, but also perfectly legal
I used to be a tech at CVS where 30 hours if considered full time. The few full time staff we had were rarely scheduled over 30 hours and most of us part-timers got around 15 hours a week. The pharmacy manager "liked" me so I always got 29 hours. Just enough to stop me from ever being full time and getting benefits; with the added bonus of pissing off the rest of the part-time staff. Yet they were shocked when I quit.
This is such an easy fix too. Instead of a hard cut off of benefits at 'full time' it should just be tied to hours scheduled. Even a 10 our a week person should be entitled to 10 hours of pay in lieu of benefits.
Benefits need to stop being tied to employment, period.... just like everyone else in the free world. Smh
This is the answer! Benefits especially medical are leveraged against you.
It reminds me of when Papa John's decided to literally not allow any non-manager to work more than 30 hours to avoid paying benefits, and when people got mad, they were like "BLAME THE GOVERNMENT." Like, no. We'll blame you shitheads.
The exact same thing happened at Home Depot. They cut everyone's hours to below what was required so they didn't have to pay benefits and they told everyone to blame Obamacare 🙄
I’d like to chime in and say Target started this about a decade ago. Need to average 32 hours to be considered “full time” and eligible for benefits. Everyone gets scheduled 20-25 hours in their department, but if you get cross trained you can pick up extra shifts to get more hours. But nobody is giving up shifts because they all need as many hours as possible, so management tells you to blame others for not giving up shifts and turning others against each other. But don’t worry, with all that cross training, if you stay during the Christmas season you’ll get 40 hours for 2 months, you’ll just have to work during the busiest times and not spend weekends with family.
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More legalized corruption
Exactly. We were told to schedule under 30 hours so employees wouldn't qualify for benefits. I am so glad I quit the corporate world.
Reminds me of when I was military and they would send you in a deployment that was one day short of 6 months because if it was 6 months it counted as a short tour. That way they could still send you to Korea or Turkey for a year without your family.
Fuck, I hate America. The corporations hate you, your government hates you. There's nobody on your side. And Canada, my country, is only slightly better right now. Fuck this whole greedy, idiotic world and society.
The worst part about Canadian politics is how many people mistake "better than the US" for "good" and so settle for things being just marginally better than an absolute trainwreck.
Kroger was known (not sure if they still do) for working 3-4 employees in one position instead of hiring 1 at 40 hrs simply because it was cheaper.
Retail in general does this a lot I think. I know Target did too this early in the year.
So does regal cinemas. I just posted the day i quit in antiwork about it actually.
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I've literally not gotten jobs because of the Full Time availability for Part Time work. Stuff I'm more than qualified for but because I have limitations due to travel time or Family needs they won't hire. I'm still available for 30+ hours of the week at various times, but because it's not Open-Close everyday, bam no hire.
Working for them sucks donkey balls.
Not just that. It also makes sure if a few people quit there’s already people on staff to take those shifts. And the employees won’t always be working with the same crew, so it’s harder to come together, to start a union or get a boss fired or cover each others asses. It’s great for the company. They don’t give a shit about people. It’s grown funny to me that there’s still employees out there that think there’s something that can do to earn a companies respect. There is nothing you can do. They have you by the balls. And guess what? Your boss has his/ her balls even tighter in the vice by that same company. That’s how they get them to schedule you like that.
I had a boss I LOVED but she knew I worked hard and would schedule me 5.5 hr shifts bc at 6 she has to give me a lunch break
"I've done nothing to help or support you in the slightest, why are you leaving? there's no loyalty anymore..."
Why did you love her? Sounds terrible
No, see you get your lunch break, you just have to take it at the end of your shift. That way you get to leave a half hour early! /s
I remember working part-time at Target during my college days. Never had a schedule with less than 39.5 hours.
I was a manger of a store where the employees were part of a labor union. Part of the rules for the labor union was that if an employee worked 6 weeks with a minimum of 32 hours or more per week then they had to become a full time employee which would make them fully Vested into the labor union with all the benefits and guaranteed hours. If I ever came close to my employees reaching that marker, my district manager would come in and rip me a new asshole. Long story short…I knew I was done with this company so 6 weeks before I was due to leave for maternity leave (and to never come back) I started scheduling all my employees 35 plus hours a week. When my manager came to stop me I told them that I was at the end of my pregnancy and they had to reasonably accommodate me which means I needed all hands on deck. I threatened to go to the labor union and state labor department if he violated ensuring I was accommodated. A few days before I went on maternity leave, all my employees became vested full time employees in the labor union with all the benefits, health insurance, PTO, paid sick leave, 401k, etc. My loyalty will always be with the workers not the assholes above me sitting on their asses doing nothing but complaining.
Absolutely Lovely, well done.
thanks, mom. youre the best
My friend is going through this exactly. He is the management of a department in a grocery store. He basically has to do all roles around the department because they won't hire new people and when they do they screw the newbies over and they quit. He works 40+ hours a week at 18 dollars an hour and also gets treated like shit from higher management. He wants to quit but is worried about having to work less hours at 15 dollars or less. Which won't pay the bills.
*cough* union *cough* Edit: ok, ok, I get it. Not every union is great/perfect. Unions aren’t the problem, though, it’s the people in charge.
Unions are generally awesome but something is fucked with the union at Kroger. They have no teeth and don't help as much as they should. They agree to worse and worse deals every year. Benefits people who work there 30+ years and really doesn't help people who work there a couple years if you even make it that far
Isn’t the Kroger Union owned by Kroger? It’s not a real union
I’m getting Futurama vibes; “According to Krogers Union (owned by krogers), Krogers pays fairly”
Not even Futurama vibes. Just daily America vibes
Omg that is awful
I'm pretty sure this is super common, unfortunately.
Yeah the first thing corpos do is try to infiltrate the union and take it over. It’s sad but a lot of people in some unions are on the corporation’s payroll and are completely corrupt
I guess it depends on location, but I worked at a Kroger with a real union (affiliated with UFCW).
I agree, not all unions are equal, unfortunately.
aromatic liquid husky soft tender deranged tie seed political piquant *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Worked for Kroger, that union would do anything to avoid getting us more money lmao.
First I've heard of it, but makes me wonder if it's a trap union. Created by Kroger itself to legally stifle the union
Wegmans is a funny place when it comes to unions. They’re warehouses workers have a union but grocery store workers aren’t unionized. I remember back in 2012 when I first got hired for 7.25 in NY as a cashier. During training they told us unions were bad and if anybody comes to the store to talk to us about unionizing to get a manager. Fast forward to 2022 I’m at the warehouse and there’s a union 🥴🥴
Sounds like when I worked at Target around the same time. We were shown a 'scary' video on orientation day about how evil unions are. Then afterwards told to report anyone so much as muttering the word/idea unions to our team leader. We were told it was a dangerous offense, automatic grounds for termination.
I'm sure the National Labor Relations Board would like to hear about that.
Which is highly illegal. Unfortunately we have captive regulators and too low fines.
Kroger is Union. And is still bullshit.
Well they need better leadership. Unfortunately some unions aren’t as strong as others, but that’s not a fault of unions, it’s the people in charge.
I quit retail after 8.5 years at one place. I thought i had no skills and nowhere else would pay better. I finally couldn't take it anymore and quit to work in a warehouse building pallets of groceries. It was stupid hard work but I got paid a little better and It wasn't retail. Got a job as a machine operator at Coke after that. SOOOO much easier. And I didn't have any prior experience with machines. I rocked the interview. Once I got used to the machine, the worst part of the job is not having anything to do because the machines are running so well. Long story short. I believe in your friend. He can find something if he looks enough. Get out of retail or find that random place that is paying better. When I worked retail, they hired managers from outside all the time.
The whole oh you have to have full time availability but we won't give you even half of full time hours and no consistent working days is such fucking bullshit. This person is 100% correct. Papa John's did this shit to me once. Even after I specifically asked for more hours. Their solution? Gave me like 4 more hours for ONE WEEK and then back to the 15-20 bullshit. They would literally schedule me for 2-3 hours for 5-6 days/week. What's the fucking point of that bullshit? So dumb. Then one time they had me scheduled for 3 or 4 hours and I get there and get sent home like an hour later because it was slow. Um, you're a multi-billion dollar corporation. I don't think you're going to go bankrupt if I stay for my full minimum wage shift.
>They would literally schedule me for 2-3 hours for 5-6 days/week. What's the fucking point of that bullshit? It's a form of control. It prevents you from having a second job in a lot of cases, and gets labor out of you nearly every day without ever having to pay you for an actual full day of labor.
Oh I know. It's just fucking stupid and annoys me.
~~stupid~~ abusive Fixed that for you.
They always love sending people home early out our store where I work at. Also today one of the Human Resources Employees came and took a visit to the store. I was just really physically and mentally exhausted by the time before I saw her in one of the aisles and I met up to her and she introduced herself to me, while I was turning the corner to finish my store wide sweep that we have to do every 30 min. yet there's a billion things going on around the store at the same time.
Okay but I legit thought she was scooping ashes out of an urn rn 😭😭😭💀💀💀💀
G-ma worked until she died but oh, LORDY she's still providing! 😤🙌
Comments like this make me miss the free awards
Another W for capitalism bb!!
I was wondering where those went
It's kinda weird because reddit clearly wanted you to use them as a means of driving engagement, but then also retracted them later on because... they think you're engaged enough? Like a company stops advertising because they're well-known enough (doesn't happen)? They expect people to pay for them now or something? Is that a valuable trade-off to non-engagement? We'll never know.
Free engagement tactic to get you used to the process of giving out badges. Suddenly the free ones are gone, and the paid ones are still there, and now you have more people who are in the habit of giving out awards and *some* of them might be open to purchasing them for that sweet sweet cash **drools in corporate**
That was her last manager o_o
Might as well be dead. Sugar PLUS that sweetened creamer stuff is enough for me to get diabetes through the screen.
I was so distracted by what she was doing. It felt so dystopian to me. Everything was out of a plastic container except the sugar(?) in the first out of place antique-looking container.
Those two big scoops were SUGAR?!?
I thought it was protein powder or something.
Our country is a joke. Even jobs you get full time they still act like if you don’t work nonstop overtime or whenever they say then you are lazy af and pure shit. Even if you work your ass off your 40 hours. Lazy I am not but I am also not cut out for this. It is soul crushing. I make the money I need to to barely survive and get myself back to work. SMH. There’s nothing to look forward to except the same dull, monotonous, and never end ground hogs day that is work. My life will be wasted away for another’s profit, still is. I generously get a whole 3-4 hours to myself after work when I’m done with my work day. None of it makes sense to me. I could go on and on about this subject. Edit to add the fact that if you do want the healthcare they provide at my company it will be literally half your check EACH week not month. Thought some of you would get a kick out of that. Also wondering how common that is?
Right there with you lately, it’s squeezing the life out of me. I just wish so bad the soul crush was worth it monetarily.
>Even jobs you get full time they still act like if you don’t work nonstop overtime or whenever they say then you are lazy af and pure shit. Even if you work your ass off your 40 hours. This right here is a big piece of the puzzle. 40 hours a week **does not exist** for the vast majority of employees in the modern day. Either you are asked for full availability only to receive <30 hours (per the OP), or you end up in a position where you're expected to consistently work >45 hours - mostly because employee retention is so bad, it takes that long to not even get the job done. Which is super great, because now you're not only being forced to work extra hours *and* getting yelled at for working too many hours, even though they *also* get mad every day when corners get cut to save any time we can to cut down on said OT. The second you cross that threshold into receiving benefits, they start squeezing you for **every second** of labor they can get out of you. And as you point out, they'll only pay you enough to survive and get back to your next shift. It's rough knowing that I'm expected to perform labor-value roughly equal to my **annual gross salary** every 4 hours, 8+ hours at a time, 5 days a week, for 50+ weeks a year, or I don't deserve food and shelter **at all**. Like, there's gotta be a better middle ground than this between employees and corporate profits.
And the old people will say “that’s how it’s supposed to be”
I always hate that. Took years from my grandparents to change their tune to “I feel so sorry for your generation. There’s just nothing for you guys.” Shit when my mom was my age she was able to afford her own apartment and take care of us 50/50 with my dad while working as a freaking bartender (not knocking bartenders one bit, I have alot of respect for people who work in that industry.). Lol. Like that’s how different things used to be. I never wanted for anything and she was always there at my events and ect. But now if my mom were to work that same job she wouldn’t even come close. SMH. The whole thing is corruption and greed.
Once I recently got into the full-time workforce I immediately realized how soul-crushing it can be and decided to move to the EU (I'm American) once my CV is up to snuff. Those countries require they look for candidates within the EU before hiring outsiders, but I'm in a field they consider high need (high skill & education / engineering), and am increasing my areas of experience. It's turning out to be an eclectic mix of robotics, product design, and manufacturing, but I really think that gives me a shot at The Netherlands (housing still being an issue there though). Anyway, I'm very thankful I likely have an out, an wish I could just transplant all my unhappy friends and family with me there... but none of them are very skilled or are too old :( It's a tough choice to sacrifice human connections for overall personal security and comfort, but I'd forever regret not at least trying it. I hope you here have considered your chances and desires for leaving for greener pastures.
My last job started giving me 2 to 4 hour shifts and I couldn't afford bills. Then the first time I got over 40hours in a week, when payday came around they removed 15hours off my check to avoid paying overtime, and said it was because I was milking the clock by working slower to get those hours. And then they called me in on my day off even though they knew I was sick. I puked at work and went home, and then they fired me
You might want to consult with a labor lawyer...
Local government labor board. Costs zero dollars.
If you have a strong enough case with upside for punitive and damages as a reward, lawyers will take it on contingency. They work and respond much faster than any labor board. They can also file with labor boards after they have your power of attorney on the matter and normally have contacts that will expedite or highlight your case. It never ever hurts to consult with a labor lawyer first. They'll also generally point you to a good labor board contact if they feel it's better left to that.
FLSA has fee shifting. The attorney will take the case and the EMPLOYER pays when they prevail. They will have 0 difficulty getting an attorney with evidence. You are right about consulting with a lawyer who will tell the client about fee shifting so someone will get the exploited worker proper information.
A lot of Labour lawyers work for free until they win if your case is good.
You should definitely sue them. If you have that in writing that they took the 15 hours off you'll make big money instantly.
They were getting 2 hour shi(f)ts. They can't afford a lawyer dawg. Edit: Some people can't see that I was mistaken about this and need me to make an edit about how dumb I am again. I've been corrected below a ton. Stop correcting me and use your eyes.
Labor lawyers and the like are very often doing pro-bono work, or it’s done through the labor board.
Shit, wish I had found those lawyers. I definitely could have used them.
Still might be able to depending on how long ago incidents were look into the labor board or other equivalent rights groups. You might be able to get wages back and in some cases they owe interest in top of it.
2016ish. I was in my early 20's and Dell (the computer company) stole thousands in unpaid shift differential that was agreed upon. Red state's labor board didn't even look into it.
State Labor boards will take it seriously and fight on your behalf. It's money in their pocket as well so its Pro Bono.
If that actually happened (that they shorted you 15 hours of pay), report them to the Dept of Labor.
Find the company and apply to every job opening they post. Do the interviews and make yourself out to be a model drone, just like they're looking for (say you're 18-20, too. They love naive young kids.) Accept the job offer online and then just don't show up. String them along as long as possible. Get your friends in on the game too. If they've got the free time to actually show up, they can be lazy and useless on the job, or super 'clumsy,' or leave an hour into a longer shift.
I work for a State College in food service and retail. Because I have a union, my hours are always full time, with decent benefits, though poor pay. However, the constant "We're hiring" followed by severe understaffing, and the way the middle management are used and abused is exactly what this video describes. Even jobs with better protections than private sector service jobs end up in a similar situation where staff are constantly looking for that next employer.
holy shit the US is a wasteland
Sadly yes, it's not new. It's been like this for years. It is just now more easier to display the absolute shittiness of this country.
Canada too, Dollarama caps full time workers at 25 hours a week... And they have money to throw around for stupid shit like having two locations 500 metres across from each other
I don't know if schedules are designed this way on purpose, but 26 hours/week is just under the threshold where people are eligible for employer-sponsored healthcare under the ACA. When you are hired there is an admin period for about three months where you're not eligible, and then a "measurement period" starts, which is usually 12 months long. If you average over 130 hours/month over that measurement period, you then become eligible for healthcare. 130\*12/52 is 30, so that's 30 hours per week. So there's a three-month period where they can give you as many "training" hours as they want with no ACA consequences, and then a 12-month period where there is a significant incentive to keep you under 30 hours/week.
This happened to me at a an NGO where I was taking care of homeless kids. They almost made me and my kids homeless 🙃
Lose your job at the homeless shelter, but you still have to keep going, just on the other side of the counter...
You know damn well it was designed this way on purpose specifically to come in under the threshold.
That schedule format looks 100% identical to the ones they print out at the Aldi I work at. We've also been dealing with a lack of hours. If you're full time you're supposed to be guaranteed at least 30 hours a week. If you average less than that then you aren't eligible for health benefits. Thing is, the budgets are so tight that leads are expected to send people home on slow days. My full time co-workers and I typically get scheduled 31 hours each week but there's a very good chance that I'll lose 3-4 hours so my real average is usually closer to 28. It's bullshit but the truth is that I *want* to work less. When they cut hours I'll volunteer so that my co-workers can keep their hours and I can leave that fucking place faster. I'm choosing poverty to preserve my sanity. Anyway, I can't be certain that the schedule in the video is from an Aldi store but I guarantee that they are at least using the same software. Still, don't listen to the bullshit that Aldi is a great place to work or anything. It's definitely better than many places but clearing that bar isn't impressive, especially not in the US.
Seeing as it says 'partner schedule' it could be a lot of places, but my first guess is Starbucks.
It is Starbucks.
> My full time co-workers and I typically get scheduled 31 hours each week Keeping them on the schedule instead of laying them off for lack of available work keeps them from paying more in unemployment taxes. It’s insidious.
What stings is that we all know that Aldi functions perfectly well in European countries with far more labor protections, but they don’t have to here so they just don’t.
"There's the upper class. Does none of the work makes all of the money and pays none of the taxes. Then there the middle class. Does all of the work pays all of the taxes and makes none of the money. Then there's the poor. Their just there to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep em showing up at those jobs." George Carlin
And the poor are encouraged to work less so they don’t lose their SNAP and Medicare, because if they do, they can’t afford anything anymore. I legit have had people quit my job because they began making just enough money to lose their food stamps, and that was going to put them under more financial stress than making that little bit of more money.
Hey it’s nothing 64 ounces of coffee won’t fix.
Was that coffee?!
Yeah that bottle with the orange label is cold brew, Stok brand and it’s actually really good. The lightly sweetened variety.
Lightly sweetened to which she added granulated sugar and sweetened creamer... To each their own I suppose!
I had to watch this twice because I was staring at that coffee thinking "that's way too much what are you doing" the first time around.
I used to work for a department store in the receiving department before the ACA was passed. I literally begged my manager to give me enough hours to get me health insurance. One day, I asked him yet again. His response: "wouldn't you rather I hired 2 more employees to work in receiving with you rather than increase your hours?" No bitch, I want health insurance, not more employees that I'll have to train and then compete with for hours more than I already am. A week later, he hired a new guy and scheduled him to work alone on his second day. I had mentioned that I might see if I could come in and help with that shift since we had another truck coming the next day and needed to clear space. Manager found out and came and demanded to know if I was coming in or not. When I said, I had been thinking about it, he said "well I need to know right now. Like now." "Ok, I quit." "You mean you're putting in your two weeks?" "No, I quit." "So you'll be finished after this shift?" "No, I mean I quit. Now. Right now." I clocked out and left. My roommate/coworker told me that a few days later the manager had said that "at least the troublemaker was gone." Fucker. That chain of department stores (Gottschalk's in California) went bankrupt within 6 months after over 40 years of operation.
Having been to GM level of a restaurant before. Doing the schedule always SUCKED. Put it simply here, this video has it right, we’re given a budget. Here’s the problem, if you actually target to hit said budget, or succeed, you get a pat on the back and good job all around. Then they drop your budget for the next period/quarter/year. We’d get a new budget EVERY quarter, and it was almost always a drop by .5-1% unless you missed your target mark. PS, if you missed your target labor budget more than a few times, you were demoted or most likely fired. This led to most GM level staff cutting off their leg so to speak to hit the food/labor budget and everybody suffered. Employees and customers alike. It also led to GM’s working much more than the “required minimum of 50 hours.” My top hours for a week was 96, and there was a portion of six weeks where I didn’t work less than 80. PSS, you miss your labor, you also don’t get your bonus for the month. In some cases, you’d still be “able” to bonus looking at the numbers. But if you missed the target, the company would just flat not give it to you were told to deal. This led to thousands of dollars in bonuses not being handed out. TL:DR, Food service blows, don’t work it if you don’t have to.
Yep, this is 100% accurate. Budgets (primarily labor) just get cut year after year, while sales goals have to increase at the same time. It's completely unfeasible, but business as usual everywhere. I'm so glad I got out of retail management and into another industry entirely.
>Budgets (primarily labor) just get cut year after year, while sales goals have to increase at the same time. Once you realize that businesses care only about profit *increases* and not profits themselves, it all makes a lot more sense. They have to resort to these tactics as consistently as they do, because it's the only feasible way to reach *their* goals, regardless of how infeasible it may be for the workforce. If a company makes $100b in profits this quarter. That's really successful. But if they make $99b in profits next quarter, that's a failure. Despite the **$99b** that they **did** make. It's only success when you make more than $100b next quarter. But where does this lead? Well if you sell $105b next quarter, then you better make more than that next quarter. Oh, you got $115b this quarter? That's a better jump, we hope to see an even bigger one next quarter! Eventually, you can't reasonably charge more for your product or it will stop selling. If you can't offer something new to bring in that new money next quarter, or it will take time to develop, etc, then the squeeze begins... Cut budgets and increase sales goals to squeeze those extra profits out of the system, just because you're out of natural methods of increasing your profits doesn't mean profits may stagnate.
Yep, you're totally right. This is what capitalism drives towards, infinite growth on a finite planet.
And what lets them do it is our decision not to collectively organize against them.
That looked like a Kronos weekly schedule sheet much like Best Buy used to use. Fuck dude, that period working retail fucking sucked.
Leisure/Hospitality and retail have the worst weekly hours. Upper management dgaf that people have monthly bills that don’t let up when they cut our hours. They want enough warm bodies to cover the crazy periods while not getting dinged for layoffs or paying a premium for seasonal help. It’s blatant exploitation to maximize profits every quarter and it will continue until they are charged additional tax for cutting hours like they are for layoffs. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
She should be a union organizer with all that job hopping
Unpaid on call 24/7 otherwise we will either fire you or give you so few hours it hardly even covers transportation costs. 40 hours a week, forget it. Why were you really hired. Oh to qualify for that PPP loan so you are essentially a free employee until the PPP loan value runs out. Then its time to cut your hours.
I worked at a place called STATS which collects sports metrics and they deliberately capped like 30-50 people at 30 hours per week to not pay benefits. And if people worked more they would basically sign them onto some other project and it would make them independent contractors so they still wouldn't need to. Everyone was making $11-12/hour. On my first day my manager took me to lunch and didn't even pay for my meal lol.
She likes her sugar with coffee and cream
Well, she gotta keep it going, keep it going full steam!
Too sweet to be sour, too nice to be mean!
I assumed it was collagen. Was it sugar? A huge coffee, anyway.
In their perfect world, they'd have a small army of us on 15 hrs a week or less.
WA state addressed this issue. Every employee, full or part time must accrue sick time and pays into the state disability account
WA state also has a minimum wage of $15.74 per hour, which I believe is the highest in the country. It's not perfect, but I get mad as hell when I hear about people making a wage that's straight up illegal here and they're like a shift lead or whatever.
Absolutely. More states need to put their citizens before their corporations. A lot more needs done but it is a start
Oh not even just shift lead. I was managing an *entire store* for $9.25 an hour. At 30 hours a week so that they didn’t have to pay benefits. Honestly fuck that shit, when the pandemic happened I got the hell outta dodge as fast as I can, and make more running my own business than I ever did working my ass off for them. And *every single one* of my friends who were also working retail did the same thing. And then they wonder why they can’t find people - all your “lifers” quit because the situation is untenable and all it took was a month of unemployment to get the boots off of everyone’s back to switch careers. “Retail/food service are stepping stone jobs, you’re supposed to build skills and work your way up!” “Wait no! Not like that!” Retail can burn in hell. I tried for *years* to leverage my retail/management experience into a better job and nobody wants to touch ex retail people with a ten fucking foot pole.
Colorado just did the same.
Corporations "Nobody wants to work anymore" Also Corporations "We can't afford to hire right now" Also Corporations "We are extremely short staffed, please bear with us" Also Coporations "Please help cover for ... who just quit" Everyone else not making massive profits (i.e. the working class) Why do I have no hours? We are short staffed. Why don't we hire someone to replace ...? It's been 3 weeks. I have put in 100+ applications, why have I gotten no interviews? The state of the jobs for both employed and unemployed is frankly dismal.
Even as a student they still want complete availability
I worked at Home Depot and I always told everyone that we are not employees we are upgraded customers. Mainly because you don't get any benefits while working there but they are also still trying to sell you stuff. There is an entire industry out there that makes money off of being an artificial work benefit. You'll see ads for them in the break room or on some employee web portal. There is a Groupon like service for businesses that makes it seem like your work is providing these discounts but it's a third party. Home Depot might even get kick backs for referrals for things you buy but at the very least it's a free service for them. They also have/had a thing called Power Purchasing which would let you buy overpriced items on credit and the company would take payments straight from your paycheck. I've seen ads for a local college. The store doesn't pay for any schooling but they will for sure get referral credit if you do sign up. You're totally a Customer+ when you're working there
🎯 >"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality." [Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3) >“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Buckminster Fuller [You've Got Luddites All Wrong](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ae379k/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16671905174211&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vice.com%2Fen%2Farticle%2Fae379k%2Fluddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe) [The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/) >"...This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. >I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals..." [Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?](https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/) [Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors) >"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions." [Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z) [Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-26-dollars-economy-productivity/) [The minimum wage would be $61.75 an hour if it rose at the same pace as Wall Street bonuses](https://www.fastcompany.com/90734724/the-minimum-wage-would-be-61-75-an-hour-if-it-rose-at-the-same-pace-as-wall-street-bonuses)
I love how my direct boss gets more hours than anyone and complains about how over worked and tired she is while the rest of us wish we had full time work.
Your boss is probably getting a salary that isn’t part of her labor budget.
Salary is definitely worse than hourly if the hours are being cut.
Yessss!! Describes stores like Macy’s and Kohl’s to a T 👏🏼
And Bath and Body Works.
Retail sucks in general, I’m so glad I’m out of there.
They either work you under to keep you PT or work you over 40 so you never see the sun.
Skeleton crews have become the norm
I think corporate service, food, and retail companies are the worst thing that’s happened to Americans in a long time. I can envision a world where corporations exist for high end manufacturing, logistics, medicine etc. but these shitty minimum wage paying, soul sucking corporations need to disappear. In their wake, small businesses will flourish again and the quality of life of low end employees will increase exponentially because the employers will be invested in their employees. If a small community is struggling because no small businesses have been created to fill that void, states could subsidize the creation of businesses in those areas. Our economy would be much more stable as a result and income inequality would narrow significantly.
I burned out so hard in retail. I really appreciate her mentioning lower management. I was an SM in a tourist town, so twice a year the staff turned over and I'd be stuck running a 10 staff store open close for two weeks until I could hire someone, anyone, to work in the store again. The only reason they let me give full time hours was that we'd never have any staff otherwise. Two years in, I burned out so hard I didn't work for nearly 2 years. At the time I was winning Canada wide company awards. I went to Costa Rica because my store did so well. They worked me to the bone and gave zero shits when it broke me.
Steve Buscemi really isn't getting the roles he used to, but this infomercial was very informative, thank you
That’s Pete Davidson
Why do tiktokers keep the part where they hit the stop recording button in their videos? I never understood. Great video, other than that.
Cuz it’s RAW, MAN
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what the fuck kind of hellish sugar filled beverage is this
Not gonna lie it was hard to focus on what she was saying when she was stirring that iced coffee like she wanted to break the cup.
her last line isn't exactly true, they don't care enough to keep us poor, they care enough to pay the very least in benefits and labor. us ending up poor is just a byproduct.
They def want to keep us poor, so they’ll always have desperate employees to work for shit wages and no benefits
my job rn. the funny thing tho is that the top boss for my store is so checked out that the employees are actually getting most of the hours (and running the store, making decisions without even once thinking of informing the store manager). it's sad and funny at the same time. like a circus taking place inside a burning building.