That message on my Web site and the stuff they said in the original complaint was so outrageous, I became terrified that nothing would make them happy unless I was disappeared.
Employers own you, even after you're through with them, in ways that most people don't understand. Well, they don't _normally_ try to own you like this, it's not worth it. But, if they are feeling as if you are somehow a disloyal employee who didn't sink quietly into the mud and become a complete failure after you lost your job....
At 11:17 AM 8/30/2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
>ThatRogersWoman wrote:
>
>>But I have to admit, the supervisor demanding toll booth workers
>>stand all the time is oppressive. What did he expect? Were the toll
>>booth workers supposed to clean windows, rotate the tires and pat the
>>car on the trunk on it's way out?
>
>No, we were just suposed to appear at maximum alert to passing drivers,
>like they cared. Most people ignore a toll collector (which, by the way is
>a miserable job - boring, smelly, noisy). Believe me, nothing brightens a
>toll collector's day like a smile and a "thank you" from a passing motorist.
>
>Doug
I always say "hi!" or somehow say something. [1] A toll booth worker's job is not just miserable, it is extremely unhealthy. I knew a guy who worked the NYS Thruway for years. He said that it's a pretty dangerous job: you're breathing fumes all day. This, he always had to say in response to someone complaining that they made such "good" money. At the time, ISTR that he was making $19/hr. ?? Not sure, but that's the number that comes to mind.
As for sitting/standing. I dunno, Deb. I am one of those people who can't stand to be still while on the job. Whereas other checkers would just chill, I'd clean or organize. Frick, I'd probably polish the pennies if it was dead enough. I worked for a couple of years as a cashier at a drugstore. I can't see how a stool would have impaired me from doing my job. You just hop on and off if you need to. Most of the time, though, you are just standing there, ringing through one person after another. This was in the days before computers, so you also had to memorize a flyer's worth of sale prices and ring them up properly. YOu also had to know how to calculate sales tax in your head.
I can see, though, how now a grocery cashier couldn't sit because she has to slide things through the scanner and then plop them in the plastic bag -- or grab paper sacks for those who want them.
I wonder, Wojtek, if you're shopping in stores that don't use the new setup -- the one designed to eliminate the need for baggers?
If you're shopping at smaller stores, I can see that they don't use this new setup -- with the little wire frame to hold the grocery bags which the cashiers fill?
Aside: I swear that the new Walmart set up, with the round wheel holding bags for bagging merch was designed so that people routinely left a bag behind thus paying for more merch than they actually took home. I can count at least five times when I almost walked out the door without a bag of items because it was still on the round wheelie thing. Anyone else have that experience? At any rate, that round wheelie system Walmart instituted was universally despised by any Walmart cashiers I'd asked about it when they introduced them. But, if you look at the design, it is quite obvious that they were intended to ramp up productivity and increase the 'workload' on the customer.
I also notice that, while I always like to bag the groceries when I can, a lot of cashiers don't want you to. Store policy? Dunno. I bag anyway when they let me. When Sonshine was little, he totally loved "helping". It was hilarious, he'd get so excited about placing the groceries on the conveyer belt and then bagging those groceries at the bagging station.
[1] (But see Robin Leidner's fascinating study, _Fast Food, Fast Talk_ which is a comparative study of routinization in the work lives of McDonald's workers and door-to-door insurance salesmen. Leidner finds that workers take refuge in the routinization which appears to turn them into robots: the uninterested, almost statement (not a question): "Would you like fries with that?" They take refuge in the routine because they can dissociate them"selves" from the work and/or avoid dealing with people, who they're forced to deal with nearly every minute of their time on the job. They _want_ to ignore you. Not all the time mind you and there are plenty of exceptions, it's just what she found when working among fast food workers.
"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
-- rwmartin