What Does The FL Think of So-called Black Friday?

[Guttersnipe]

Yeah rrrrriiiiiigghht. That is why they are broke. Great job they are doing. :rofl:

Well, if your not concerned about the negative externalities of investments, I highly recommend putting as much money into illegal methamphetamine production. It's a growth market, has a highly dedicated consumer base and, best of all, much of the industries manufacturing capacity has been brought back to the United States post-9/11!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

When speaking of unions today, unfortunately it's not your daddy or granddaddy's union anymore. Today's unions seem to be a completely different animal compared to say 1937. Now they're about getting paid the most for the least amount of work.

 

[jamespowers]

When speaking of unions today, unfortunately it's not your daddy or granddaddy's union anymore. Today's unions seem to be a completely different animal compared to say 1937. Now they're about getting paid the most for the least amount of work.

Exactly!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Typically folks will limit their straw men to one per post. But the whole tribe's come out to play here!

well, I'm seeing some folks being bitter and cynical( read that, depressed) during this Holiday season( btw, does this happen every year about this time or every holiday?) and have chosen to pick on consumerism, but is that the real reason? I think not. If we're going to rail against bad people, then why not child molesters and murderers, etc? Not to mention, are we so pure that we can judge other folks?

I've said before, afa the economy, consumerism is the best thing for it, as it provides jobs for alot of folks( alot more in the USA, if folks bought more stuff made in the USA). Do we not want folks to have jobs? Consumer spending stimulates the stock market and encourages world trade, which strengthens ties with world allies and provides a brisk trade and jobs all around and general stimulation. Who doesn't want that?


What kind of world would we have if everyone only bought necessities? Who would want that kind of world? No one could ever buy a gift for anyone else? Who here would dictate the gift or how much one can spend or what they can buy? How sad. Baah, humbug!


Nope, the only thing I'd ask is that everyone shop and shop, but please, buy American. Now there's something to complain about.

 

[jamespowers]

Well, if your not concerned about the negative externalities of investments, I highly recommend putting as much money into illegal methamphetamine production. It's a growth market, has a highly dedicated consumer base and, best of all, much of the industries manufacturing capacity has been brought back to the United States post-9/11!

ideological criteria is right:
http://unionwatch.org/how-unions-an...er-to-protect-unsustainable-defined-benefits/

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Typically folks will limit their straw men to one per post. But the whole tribe's come out to play here!

Must be something in the water.

 

[Tomasso]

Well, if your not concerned about the negative externalities of investments, I highly recommend putting as much money into illegal methamphetamine production. It's a growth market, has a highly dedicated consumer base and, best of all, much of the industries manufacturing capacity has been brought back to the United States post-9/11!

That may be an option for CalTRS ( California State Teachers' Retirement System) and CalPERS when they pull out their 1 billion dollars from Cerberus Capital Management.


https://edsource.org/today/2012/cal...und-threat-triggers-sale-of-gun-company/24336

 

[Tomasso]

When speaking of unions today, unfortunately it's not your daddy or granddaddy's union anymore. Today's unions seem to be a completely different animal compared to say 1937. Now they're about getting paid the most for the least amount of work.

Yes, it seems that a jungle morphed into a resort.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When speaking of unions today, unfortunately it's not your daddy or granddaddy's union anymore. Today's unions seem to be a completely different animal compared to say 1937. Now they're about getting paid the most for the least amount of work.

While the fellows on the other side of the table are still looking for the greatest amount of work for the least amount of pay. Seems like little has changed at all since 1937 in that respect.

As for burger flippers, there's a great many of them around here who are my age, which is something you never saw twenty or thirty years ago. I know when I'm advertising for help at the popcorn counter I regularly get applications from people in their thirties, forties, and fifties who've been laid off from jobs in banking, marketing, accounting, all that sort of thing.

Puts me to mind of the old joke from 1987: what do you call a thirty-year old stockbroker in suspenders?

"Waiter."

 

[dh66]

As for burger flippers, there's a great many of them around here who are my age, which is something you never saw twenty or thirty years ago. I know when I'm advertising for help at the popcorn counter I regularly get applications from people in their thirties, forties, and fifties who've been laid off from jobs in banking, marketing, accounting, all that sort of thing.

And why is that??
You make a very good point.

Sent from my SGH-T959V using Tapatalk 2

 

[LizzieMaine]

What happened around here was kind of instructive, I think. In the mid-'90s a very large, very well-known credit card bank came to this area and set up a "call center" in a certain nearby town. They knew we had a lot of underemployed people here and they knew they could be made to work cheap. They arrived, threw around a lot of money donating to All The Right Causes, museums and such, and promised that they were here to stay, together we would all work to build a bright future, blah blah blah, and most of the local press bought into it (I didn't, but I'm like that.)

At their peak they employed several hundred people, in facilities spread over three different towns. But they also got a reputation fast as a lousy place to work -- long hours, relentless sales quotas, essentially a white-collared, non-union factory floor. They ended up having a *lot* of turnover and word got around that you didn't want to go there unless you had no other choice, that it was basically an upscale fish cannery, only instead of fish they sold debt. Finally, after less than a decade, the head of the company decided to cash out and collect his millions, and it was sold to an even bigger bank -- which promptly shut down the local operation and skipped town without so much as a "smell ya later!" So much for that bright future they promised while finagling the state and the towns for their tax-incentive breaks, and so much for the people who took them at their word and stuck with the company despite the harsh working conditions.

 

[Tomasso]

I regularly get applications from people in their thirties, forties, and fifties who've been laid off from jobs in banking, marketing, accounting, all that sort of thing.

Knowing the level of respect you hold for those in that line of business, I wonder how the process works when you receive a resume from one of the boys. Is he summarily rejected or hired immediately, with the intent to torment him in his new position?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The three things I look for when I hire people are honesty, reliability, and personality, and I try to give every benefit of the doubt, even if they may have once been in league with the Boys. Generally I don't end up hiring any of these types because I know as well as they know that they're only looking for a stopgap job, and the majority of them just don't have the personality for the work. I usually hire working-class kids in their late teens/early twenties because I know they're going to stick around a while and they have the kind of personality I'm looking for. Our staff is very much a family, and the rest of the kids also have a say in who we add -- I poll each of them before hiring somebody new.

It's been pointed out that an inordinate number of them are bookish brunettes with glasses, but I deny wholeheartedly that I am in any way attempting to form an unholy army of Lizzies for the coming final war against the Boys.

 

[Tomasso]

"call center" ......... a lousy place to work -- long hours, relentless sales quotas, essentially a white-collared, non-union factory floor. .......... harsh working conditions.

I'd rather work at the Union Stockyards (circa 1905).

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd rather work at the Union Stockyards (circa 1905).

There were certainly similarities. Only in this case it was aspiration-driven consumers who were being fattened and led to the 33 percent interest rate slaughter.

 

[Nobert]

I actually work in one of those places. Not sales, thank heavens, but "market research." While the company has been good to me personally, and I have no complaint with the people who manage it, it's still demoralizing to have to make a living hassling people over the phone for something I don't even believe in. The building I work in used to be a large bakery for one of the well-known bread makers in this neck of the woods; closer to where I grew up call center work also became the main economy in Wilton when the Bass shoe factory and the Forster's mill closed. I really don't know what to make of a world where the value of things so intangible is taking the place of shoes, bread and the birthplace of the toothpick.

 

[ButteMT61]

Well, we've managed to get this far without a lockdown. Impressive.
I decided to sleep on my thoughts and best leave it as-is. Happy Hump-Day all

 

[dh66]

All I can say is THANK GOD I learned a trade. Plumbing may not be the most glamorous work, and sometimes it can get pretty dirty, but it's proven to be a fairly recession proof industry. When the economy slowed down and fewer new buildings were going up there still was plenty of repair and service to be done.

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[V.C. Brunswick]

I actually work in one of those places. Not sales, thank heavens, but "market research." While the company has been good to me personally, and I have no complaint with the people who manage it, it's still demoralizing to have to make a living hassling people over the phone for something I don't even believe in. The building I work in used to be a large bakery for one of the well-known bread makers in this neck of the woods; closer to where I grew up call center work also became the main economy in Wilton when the Bass shoe factory and the Forster's mill closed. I really don't know what to make of a world where the value of things so intangible is taking the place of shoes, bread and the birthplace of the toothpick.

Yes, I'd love to know what genius thought it was such a wonderful idea to switch from a manufacturing based to a service based economy. We might not like the idea that practically everything we buy is now made in China but the thing is they get it. They understand the importance of a manufacturing based economy and are doing what we used to do and still should be doing.

 

[Tomasso]

Plumbing may not be the most glamorous work

One of my best friends since childhood is a plumber. He drives a Bentley, has three homes and a good size motor yacht.