Post: #1

Guy works on presidential campaign as a senior political journalist.

Interviews Mitt Romney - gets fired. Six months later - is working minimum wage in a sports shoe store.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...or/284332/

Really well written piece. Reminded me how depressing all retail jobs are.

It is amazing the number of people who work - just to meet the bills that allows them to continue to work. It seems fair to live that way if you are unemployed and on benefits. But it is pretty depressing when you are in a full-time job and have to live like that.

I know it is beta - but the older I get the more sympathy I have for poor people.

Also - I think it is sad that people consider it a 'perk' being able to work as much overtime as you want. Man - what a perk that is. Being able to hand over more of your life for less than it is worth.

Post: #2

(03-12-2014 05:26 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Guy works on presidential campaign as a senior political journalist.

Interviews Mitt Romney - gets fired. Six months later - is working minimum wage in a sports shoe store.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...or/284332/

Really well written piece. Reminded me how depressing all retail jobs are.

It is amazing the number of people who work - just to meet the bills that allows them to continue to work. It seems fair to live that way if you are unemployed and on benefits. But it is pretty depressing when you are in a full-time job and have to live like that.

I know it is beta - but the older I get the more sympathy I have for poor people.

Also - I think it is sad that people consider it a 'perk' being able to work as much overtime as you want. Man - what a perk that is. Being able to hand over more of your life for less than it is worth.

I have sympathy, too. But there is more here than meets the eye, like a guilty plea to a domestic violence incident. That's a felony, as far as I know and it's why he couldn't find employment:

"Five months earlier my ex-wife and I had a fight. I pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree assault, and signed a court order to stay away from her and her residence."

This, IMO, is the real issue. Whether he did it or not, having a conviction on his record did him in. And I think that's the lesson we should take away from this. No conviction = no unemployment for him, in my opinion.

Also, like I said before, never admit to a crime. Ever. Maybe they offered him a plea that was too good to pass up. But if this was a first offense and he had to cop a plea, IMO he was guilty. I should probably say "Walk away from a fight with your wife" while I'm in lecture mode.

Post: #3

Actually - just as I was forming sympathy for the guy. I got to the end of the article when he bounced back up with a new non-job working for some charity and earning 8 times what he was in his retail job.

Nice work if you can get it...

Post: #4

If you can get a trade while working in another field go for it. You will always be able to do what this guy did after long a job but meanwhile doing side jobs on weekends etc until you get busy enough where you can kiss retails ass away.

Many trade crews work on weekends. Find one and be a labourer and start off at the bottom. Then you will get more responsibility and eventually even a license.

Post: #5

Also, don't forget the child support nightmare burried in the story:

Even though I was living rent-free in a guest bedroom, my every-other-Thursday paycheck couldn’t help me climb out of my hole, particularly after the state took half my pre-tax, $300 weekly salary for child support payments. Grateful just to have a job, I didn't think twice when I noticed Stretch sometimes cut me from the daily crew and kept my hours under 30 per week—until Mike, a longtime friend and a former union shop steward, explained.

"You're part-time," he told me. "If you work 40 hours or more, they'll have to give you benefits."

Because I live across town, meanwhile, I had an hour-long commute that cost as much as $10 a day round-trip on public transportation.

"Dude," my best friend Jamie said. "After taxes, you're making just enough to get to and from work each day."


$1200 a month, $600 in child support. $600 also gets you a vasectomy.


As he lost his job, his world was falling apart and the feeding frenzy in the Washington press was interviewing every person he had ever talked to, the quote from his lovely wife:

"“I can’t comment on a legal case but will say that I sincerely hope that Joe Williams finds his professional footing and that he also begins to take seriously his responsibilities as the father of our two children.”"
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/ex...ife_b77836

Guys - marriage makes you a mealticket to these women and nothing more. Nothing.

Post: #6

I only worked retail once.

I did three months - part time - at Blockbusters. I actually told them that the company would be bankrupt within about 5 years.

I even told them that trying to compete online wouldn't work since the 'early adopters' would be the people driven online because they hate the lack of selection available from Blockbusters. As such - they will be shopping with anyone but Blockbusters. And as with any new technology - where the early adopters start - the rest follow.

I drove past my old store the other day. It is a laundromat now.

Still - I think retail rots your soul worst than other jobs. In most jobs you can chill out - slack off and shoot the breeze with your buddies. But in retail - you are continually being harrassed by management to put on a show for the customer and pretend that you care.

That gets old - fast.

As for the divorce, criminal conviction and child support rap. Yep - definite own goals there.

Still - I feel the article provides an interesting look at retail misery minimum wage hell.

Post: #7

(03-12-2014 05:56 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I only worked retail once.

I did three months - part time - at Blockbusters. I actually told them that the company would be bankrupt within about 5 years.

I even told them that trying to compete online wouldn't work since the 'early adopters' would be the people driven online because they hate the lack of selection available from Blockbusters. As such - they will be shopping with anyone but Blockbusters. And as with any new technology - where the early adopters start - the rest follow.

I drove past my old store the other day. It is a laundromat now.

Still - I think retail rots your soul worst than other jobs. In most jobs you can chill out - slack off and shoot the breeze with your buddies. But in retail - you are continually being harrassed by management to put on a show for the customer and pretend that you care.

That gets old - fast.

As for the divorce, criminal conviction and child support rap. Yep - definite own goals there.

Still - I feel the article provides an interesting look at retail misery minimum wage hell.

All points taken. And you're right for anyone over 21. But for the teenage boys who stumbled onto this forum: work retail! It's the best way to score teenage pussy.

Every time I had a friend who couldn't get laid I'd say "Get a job at the mall" and it did the trick. So long as you don't make it a lifelong vocation, it's a good deal. Plus, if you get canned, hell, you're only a teenager -- what do you care? Just get another job at another store.

(And any teenage boys reading this should read the linked article as a cautionary tale about marriage, divorce and child support as well as working retail. They call marriage an "institution" for a reason.)

Post: #8

Jesus, get a job working with your hands, be a labourer or something. At least it's a man's job.

I have no sympathy, he's too pussy to get a mans job.

Post: #9

My favourite bit:

Quote:The garbage run came after I’d already pulled my six-hour shift on the sales floor, and done some of my usual closing-shift chores. At the same time, since the other employee on duty was a petite young woman, taking out the garbage was a solo operation. Forty-five minutes later, I’d finished, sweaty and slightly winded.

Post: #10

"…Unlike him, I wasn’t working in retail because racist jokes and domestic-violence charges made me unemployable elsewhere. I did, however, manage to take pride in my work without regarding that as some sort of character flaw."

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/185262/

No sympathy here.

Post: #11

(03-12-2014 07:16 PM)Suits Wrote:  My favourite bit:

Quote:The garbage run came after I’d already pulled my six-hour shift on the sales floor, and done some of my usual closing-shift chores. At the same time, since the other employee on duty was a petite young woman, taking out the garbage was a solo operation. Forty-five minutes later, I’d finished, sweaty and slightly winded.

The Dr. Howard version of this interview would have been "other employee on duty was a petite young woman, taking out the garbage was a solo operation. Forty-five minutes later, I’d finished, sweaty and slightly winded...from banging the petite young woman in the stock room"

Post: #12

I liked the last part where he quits his job and gets gravy work at a charity, making big money doing jack shit. That's the American Dream right there.

His manager or supervisor or whoever says "Well, I guess you don't care about loyalty or hard work or whatever".

That's such bullshit, nobody at work gives a shit about you. They found some sucker to work your job before you showed up and when you leave it will be but a short time to find another guy. The only thing you can take solace in is that your absence will momentarily inconvenience and frustrate the same dicks who lorded over you for a short period of time. The "virtues" of "hard work" and paid "loyalty" are an invention.

Taking pride in working a job like retail is a character flaw and working a shit job doesn't make you a martyr, it makes you a wage slave. "Hard work" is a bullshit institution and the point of it is to get paid more by doing less of it.

On a regular basis I see incompetent shits get rewarded with promotions because people around them care too much about their jobs and would rather see those worthless fuckers leave any which way possible, even at the expense of their own egos. Not only is their own competence at the job a liability but their "hard work ethic", IMO, would make it impossible for them to tolerate a "sit-on-your-ass-all-day" management position for long anyway. The best qualification for being promoted to a management or supervisory position is being lazy and incompetent. Being too stupid to do any 'damage' wouldn't hurt either.

That being said I have no idea why the author (who was being paid probably 80-100k a year as a journalist before this mess) did not save some of his disposable income. It's unbelievable to me that somebody at 50 (pretty close to retirement) and making that much money besides wouldn't save any of it.

(03-12-2014 06:26 PM)Surreyman Wrote:  Jesus, get a job working with your hands, be a labourer or something. At least it's a man's job.

I have no sympathy, he's too pussy to get a mans job.

Do you work a "man's job"? This guy was winded carrying five bags of trash, is over fifty, and has no earlier history of doing manual labor. He has no business doing masonry or construction.

Post: #13

Yeah it isn't just bad luck that he ended up in a shitty job, part of this is his problem too.

I'm glad that my skill is one of the "clean trades" ie. IT/computers. Even if I can't get what I'd like to get paid, it won't be minimum wage. Even the low-level shit jobs where I started are $15/hour. While working my normal 8-5 I also do work on the side at $40 an hour also, it'd be sweet if I could line up enough clients to make a living that way, wage slaving sucks.

I worked retail during my first year and a half of college, before I had enough stats to get a real IT job (A+ and Network+ certs took care of that), and it SUCKED. Cardguy is right, supervisors constantly finding something for you to do even when it slows down, the only break time is the official breaks where they still try to screw you out of the time.

Post: #14

(03-13-2014 07:02 AM)Sombro Wrote:  "…Unlike him, I wasn’t working in retail because racist jokes and domestic-violence charges made me unemployable elsewhere. I did, however, manage to take pride in my work without regarding that as some sort of character flaw."

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/185262/

No sympathy here.

Me neither. Except for the part about pleading guilty to the assault charges (fire your lawyer if they tell you to plead guilty, unless you really are and the prosecution can provide witnesses), his story sounds like the job search of every other person over 50 these days.


He should take SOME responsibility for believing he was bulletproof. His portrayal grossly underplays the situation:

"Others on the right, like Andrew Breitbart’s Big Media, mined my personal Twitter account and unearthed a crude Romney joke I’d carelessly retweeted a month before. "

The joke in question:
"Either Ann Romney meant Mitt is flaccid or that when we 'unzip him' we'll find he's a dick."

Keep in mind he was the White House correspondent for a serious publication. If he was a pundit he should have been reprimanded for the joke being unfunny. But he was in a key position - for a website of a serious news organization - making dick jokes.

Post: #15

(03-13-2014 09:18 AM)Hades Wrote:  I liked the last part where he quits his job and gets gravy work at a charity, making big money doing jack shit. That's the American Dream right there.

His manager or supervisor or whoever says "Well, I guess you don't care about loyalty or hard work or whatever".

That's such bullshit, nobody at work gives a shit about you. They found some sucker to work your job before you showed up and when you leave it will be but a short time to find another guy. The only thing you can take solace in is that your absence will momentarily inconvenience and frustrate the same dicks who lorded over you for a short period of time. The "virtues" of "hard work" and paid "loyalty" are an invention.

Taking pride in working a job like retail is a character flaw and working a shit job doesn't make you a martyr, it makes you a wage slave. "Hard work" is a bullshit institution and the point of it is to get paid more by doing less of it.

On a regular basis I see incompetent shits get rewarded with promotions because people around them care too much about their jobs and would rather see those worthless fuckers leave any which way possible, even at the expense of their own egos. Not only is their own competence at the job a liability but their "hard work ethic", IMO, would make it impossible for them to tolerate a "sit-on-your-ass-all-day" management position for long anyway. The best qualification for being promoted to a management or supervisory position is being lazy and incompetent. Being too stupid to do any 'damage' wouldn't hurt either.

That being said I have no idea why the author (who was being paid probably 80-100k a year as a journalist before this mess) did not save some of his disposable income. It's unbelievable to me that somebody at 50 (pretty close to retirement) and making that much money besides wouldn't save any of it.

(03-12-2014 06:26 PM)Surreyman Wrote:  Jesus, get a job working with your hands, be a labourer or something. At least it's a man's job.

I have no sympathy, he's too pussy to get a mans job.

Do you work a "man's job"? This guy was winded carrying five bags of trash, is over fifty, and has no earlier history of doing manual labor. He has no business doing masonry or construction.

I would say loyalty only matters at a small scale. If you work for a business where you know/work with the owners then yes loyalty matters or is worth investing in. However, if your supervisor has no stake in the success of the company or can promote out of being your supervisor loyalty is not worth it.

Post: #16

His "mistake" was getting to 50 without a game plan for an unexpected period of unemployment. His "mistake" was buying into a liberal/feminist/conservative trust of women and not fully anticipated getting screwed over in family court. His "mistake" was spending the first 50 years of his life failing to build up a side hustle and enough f*** you cash to maintain some level of independence instead of suckling at the teat of big media.

If he had grown his own "brand" in the thirty years he spent being a talking head for big media, he would have been able to simple "hire himself" when he got too toxic for the mainstream.

Heck, if he'd played his cards right, he could have leveraged having his name blasted in news outlets across the country to drive plenty of traffic to a personal blog and made some money off of AdSense clicks and views.

People have been asking me lately why I'm pursuing the career path that I am and my answer for them is always the same. I'm working on being equally employable working for someone else or myself.

I'm probably never going to rake in the big bucks at some non-profit like this guy, but I won't end up working retail with a bunch of high school graduates when I'm 50.

Of course, I'm also not going to be stupid enough to even consider getting married before 35.

Post: #17

My experience working retail was somewhat different:

• My biggest annoyance as a cashier is the asshole customer who wants to make your day miserable. The kind they write about at http://notalwaysright.com. I did the math, and it's about one customer in 2,000 that's like that.
• People treat you a lot better when you're a store cashier than when you work at a restaurant. People are reasonable about your job duties when you're a cashier; people expect you to be their slave when you are at a restaurant.
• Most people are pleasant and enjoyable to talk to while being a cashier.
• The pay is crap.
• When I left my cashier job to move on to something else, I never got a speech about "loyalty" or what not. People congratulated me for moving on and were very supportive
  

The only time I have even gotten anything like the "loyalty" speech was from an abusive bullying supervisor who I did my utmost to stay away from until I could move on.

Post: #18

This reminds me of a pre-calc class in college. Some chick was bitching about not needing pre-Calc, she just wanted to graduate and get a job. The TA launched into a great rant. TL;DR, the point of college isn't to learn a skill, it's to make you smart.

She was a Journalism major. I think of her every time I read another article that misuses statistics or just displays a basic ignorance of mathematics. I wonder sometimes if she's still employed in the field (unlikely considering she would've graduated right at the start of the Internet explosion and the massive downsizing of the news).

@Placer, I got the reverse loyalty speech when I was working in a warehouse. I was through a temp agency and told one of the sales guys one time I was hoping they'd hire me direct - at the time it seemed like more regular hours and security. He told me "they'll never hire you, you're a bright kid and too much on the ball. The guy they'll hire is a loser with no better options". That was awesome advice, really opened my eyes.

Post: #19

Yea, there's a book called Nickel and Dimed which does a pretty good job of describing the hell that is low-wage labor. I'm starting to think that the term "low-skilled" is used by the establishment to justify shitty wages.

Meanwhile, a DMV clerk pulls in close to $60k in some states

http://www.salaryexpert.com/index.cfm?fu...nid=246918

Post: #20

The hardest thing with any well-paid job is not doing the job. But getting the job.

You could drop most regular guys into CEO level positions, and the company would do no better or worse than before.

Indeed - recent research in economics suggests CEOs are paid so much money - not because they are worth it - but as a way of keeping those below them loyal to the company in the hopes of getting the big promotion.

Post: #21

The sad part was reading about the treasury department lady who gave him the "What are YOU doing here?" talk.

Post: #22

@Hades: I loved this line of yours from earlier in the thread:

Quote:I liked the last part where he quits his job and gets gravy work at a charity, making big money doing jack shit. That's the American Dream right there.

So true.

Post: #23

(03-13-2014 02:52 PM)cardguy Wrote:  The hardest thing with any well-paid job is not doing the job. But getting the job.

You could drop most regular guys into CEO level positions, and the company would do no better or worse than before.

Indeed - recent research in economics suggests CEOs are paid so much money - not because they are worth it - but as a way of keeping those below them loyal to the company in the hopes of getting the big promotion.

Yep. The further up the ladder you go, the easier your work gets. However, you have to spend more time managing people, which is actually kind of fun and gives you a power trip.

I hate to say it, but most corporations are make-work scams.

Post: #24

(03-13-2014 01:51 PM)Cunnilinguist Wrote:  Yea, there's a book called Nickel and Dimed which does a pretty good job of describing the hell that is low-wage labor. I'm starting to think that the term "low-skilled" is used by the establishment to justify shitty wages.

Meanwhile, a DMV clerk pulls in close to $60k in some states

http://www.salaryexpert.com/index.cfm?fu...nid=246918

The antidote to Nickel and Dimed:

Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam W. Shepard

http://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Beginnings...0061714275

Quote:What can you get with $25 and a dream?

Adam Shepard graduated from college feeling disillusioned by the apathy around him and was then incensed after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's famous work Nickel and Dimed—a book that gave him a feeling of hopelessness about the working class in America. He set out to disprove Ehrenreich's theory—the notion that those who start at the bottom stay at the bottom—by making something out of nothing to achieve the American Dream.

Shepard's plan was simple. With a sleeping bag, the clothes on his back, and $25 in cash, and restricted from using his contacts or college education, he headed out for Charleston, South Carolina, a randomly selected city with one objective: to work his way out of homelessness and into a life that would give him the opportunity for success. His goal was to have, after one year, $2,500, a working automobile, and a furnished apartment.

Scratch Beginnings is the earnest and passionate account of Shepard's struggle to overcome the pressures placed on the homeless. His story will not only inspire readers but will also remind them that success can come to anyone who is willing to work hard—and that America is still one of the most hopeful countries in the world.

Post: #25

(03-12-2014 06:26 PM)Surreyman Wrote:  Jesus, get a job working with your hands, be a labourer or something. At least it's a man's job.

I have no sympathy, he's too pussy to get a mans job.

Wtf?? Hell no. Unless you want to live in a world where media, law, academia etc. are the exclusive purview of women.
The feminist utopia would put all men in your "man's job."