Motley Moose – Archive

Hello everyone,

Note: Retail breakrooms nowadays often have microwaves, which is a blessing, to be sure. But not of all them do. Nor do subtracted employees (cleaning crews, or temp staff) always have access to the “staff” break room either…

But anyway….

The economy is pretty bad out here these days. I am working all the hours I can get, and I am fortunate insofar as I do have access to kitchen facilities. But that’s not how I know….

You know that you work in the service or retail industry with desperate poverty all around you when your friends are excited about air dryers in the company bathroom.

Because they bring their food with them….

And carefully place their food under the air dryer, balancing carefully.

Because if the air dryer runs long enough, it will heat up the food. And thus, they will be able to eat at least one hot meal during their day.

Hello everyone,

Long time no chat. I saw Melanie’s diary today, and thought I would try harder to be better Moose member. 🙂

Confessions of a Retail Worker is a series about the worklife of low-paid, non-managerial staff in the retail industry.

The reality is that life in retail is getting harder for many. Hours are being cut, and last-minute scheduling is now the norm throughout the industry. Even though Big Retail has systems in place preventing “over scheduling” of staff, those systems can be (and frequently are)overridden by management on the ground.

The worst though, is the uptick in clopening.

If you check the hashtag #clopen on twitter, you’ll see a fair number of employees from retail and food service lamenting the clopen. So what is it?

It’s when you’re scheduled for the closing shift as well as the opening shift the next day. In my case, this has meant working until midnight and then coming in by 5AM the next day. For others, it might be a 12 hour shift ending at 10pm and coming in a 4am. It varies, but it’s tough, no matter what.

The best way to identify bad management in the industry (besides poverty wages), is to see how often they require clopening.

This is a piece I originally wrote about two years back, and with the current contraction of the American economy last quarter, it seems just as appropriate today as it did then.

I thought I would talk a bit about life outside of the workplace, and address homelessness a little more in depth.

I’ve done the “squeeze into a shelter with no privacy” thing, and I’ve done “live in an SRO across from drug users” thing. To be perfectly honest, I would rather be on a park bench than do either of those things again. So I’m going to talk a bit about a popular, eclectic group of shelters called Catholic Worker shelters. But first, a caveat:

The institutional Church and the all male hierarchy have nothing to do with Catholic Worker shelters. The shelters are run by regular Catholics, not the hierarchy, not the Bishops or any Church leaders. The Catholic hierarchy makes no decisions and controls no funds in CW houses. The Pope and the Bishops have absolutely no legal authority to shut them down if they wanted to. In any country.

So let me be clear that this diary is not talking about the hierarchy or the egregious criminal behavior covering up the pedophile scandal.

Instead I am going to focus on the regular people who work in these Catholic Worker shelters. Don’t confuse the “institutional” Church programs like Catholic Charities with the people-powered, mujerista-theology inspired, Catholic Worker houses run by laity.

…

The problem with most homeless shelters run by bureaucracies like Catholic Charities or your Local Governmental Agency  is that “clients” have to jump through a multitude of hoops to qualify, and are subject to more rules than a first grade classroom. There are rules about what time you must arrive, what time you must stop reading and turn out your light, and rules about what possessions you are allowed to have. There are rules about showering, for goodness’ sake, and many more rules that only bureaucrats could dream up.

These bureaucracies implement such rules in order to promote “safety” and “order”. Depending on the particular social workers at your location, you might wind up with an authoritarian, dictatorial, “safe” place where you won’t be stabbed, but will need permission to use the toilet. Or, you might have a place that is completely unsafe, and you would be better off sleeping in the open on a day F13 decides to take on the Bloods.

But there is a third way. Peter Maurin taught us:

   1. People who are in need

   and are not afraid to beg

   give to people not in need

   the occasion to do good

   for goodness’sake.

   2. Modern society calls the beggar

   bum and panhandler

   and gives him the bum’s rush.

   But the Greeks used to say

   that people in need

   are the ambassadors of the gods.

   3. Although you may be called

   bums and panhandlers

   you are in fact

   the Ambassadors of God.

This is made manifest in the way his spiritual descendents run their Catholic Worker shelters. Catholic Worker members organize their completely individualized and autonomous shelters keeping in mind always that the poor are Ambassadors of God. And they run their shelters accordingly.

There are only two rules at the largest shelters.

No fighting.

No drinking.

That’s it. You are treated as an Ambassador of God. If you are in a true blue CW house (and no, I’m not counting you in that number, St. Joe’s of Rochester), they will help you acquire clothing appropriate for job interviews should you so choose.

Or not, if you don’t choose. If you’re severely mentally ill, and cannot, they won’t push you.

You can eat whenever you feel the need (they always have bread and butter, if nothing else), you can make a cup of tea, or join them for a Friday Roundtable. They might ask you to help on the soup line, if they have one, or answer the phone. If you’re any sort of trustworthy person, you will probably even have a key so that you can come and go as you please. You will not have your privacy invaded, and you will be treated as a person at all times.

And while some of the shelters are definitely behind the times on LBGT issues (I’m looking at you directly New York City), others houses are full steam ahead with regard to advancing the rights of LBGT homeless people. The Des Moines house has led the way on that one. Their article, a “Catholic Worker Statement on Hetrosexism”, is one of the better pieces on the subject. Most Catholic Worker houses are too poor to have much in the way of computers but some individuals have email. This statement was republished over at Soulforce. Those of you familiar with Soulforce might know already that Kara Speltz comes from a Catholic Worker activist background.

The shelters have done much since their origins that Dorothy spoke of. Her words:

We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in.

   -Dorothy Day

Hello everyone!

This is a diary I originally posted over at orange, but a brief exchange here today with Chris Blask made me think of it.

Phil Berrigan was a big fan of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. The founders of Viva House in Baltimore knew him and vice versa.

…But sometimes, bridging the gap between the lives of the comfortable and those are who are disempowered is challenging. It’s challenging because the lived realities of the two groups are very different. So, with apologies to St Thérèse of Lisieux, I’ll continue to try in a small way.

So let me talk about Sunday.

Sunday has always been a difficult day for homeless people. Church-run soup kitchens tend to be closed on Sundays, and government offices are also closed. Libraries are closed too, and the generous people who put a dollar in your hat or pass you a smoke on their way to work are still at home, snug in their beds. So what do you do?

You do the same the housed people do. You buy the Sunday paper of course!

The only difference is that there’s eight of you contributing to the cost, because Sunday newspapers are expensive. The owner of the tiny newspaper stand is a old friend. You buy Local Paper, and if he happens to be around, you also receive a gift.

A copy of the Sunday New York Times.

Elated, you head to the day shelter. It should be open now. The morning volunteer has made a large pot of coffee, and put out a bit of bread. The shelter is temperature controlled, and you are comfortable. This is one of the better day shelters, because free showers are available. (That works out nicely, because it is one less person reading the paper at any given moment.)

You walk in with the two newspapers.

And you are mobbed. Seven homeless people come up to you, their eyes bright. “What’s the news?”, “Dibs on the Book Review!” The New York Times Sunday Magazine might as well made of gold, it is handled so carefully. The morning volunteer rushes over to help us all navigate a fair distribution of all the reading material. We flip through the magazine, looking at Leona “Only Little People Pay Taxes” Helmsley’s old advertisements, and we look with amazement at the floorplans for luxury buildings with ensuites bigger than the day shelter. We laugh.

John holds back.

He’s in no rush to read the New York Times Magazine, you see.

He prefers to be last.

He does the crossword puzzle.

In pen.

Again.

The volunteer beams.

We smile.

And we scatter, ready to do it all again next Sunday.

A couple of people had asked me to post about schedules in retail.

This piece is something I wrote about on another website in the past. Unfortunately, retail hasn’t changed much.

So here it is…

Vice President – you met him in Diary One – doesn’t like to be at the door to let people in very early on a Sunday morning (Yes, I’m sure you’re shocked by that.)

Therefore, “Bob” who is a non-manager, is given the responsibility of letting in overnight and early staffers. It’s very common for us to work without any managers or “assistant managers” in the facility. Bob is the go-to guy.

Bob also has the responsibility of printing everyone’s work orders based on a just-in-time schedule. He’s not in charge of creating the work orders, that’s done out of state. He just prints them.

We never know what the work plan is for the day until we physically see our work order. The work order might “authorize” overtime, so you need to be available. If you’re not available when overtime is asked, your hours are reduced as punishment.

The work orders can run hundreds of pages. This is harder than it ought to be for Bob to print because none of us, including Bob, are allowed a desk or computers of any kind. He usually asks a sympathetic back office person to leave a computer on for him, and then carries his paperwork around in cardboard boxes.

The work orders change every 24 hours. For example, members of the inventory control team might find out on Tuesday that they are working overnight that night. Or they might find out they need to show up on Wednesday at 2:30am to unload trucks.

Or a combination of both.

(One of the few changes for the better is that Corporate’s insurance company no longer allows the facility to schedule work shifts less than X hours apart. It used to be pretty common).

Otherwise, the expectation is that all workers will be available at all times.

We have no full-timers amongst our number except Bob.

As scheduling is so fluid, the paychecks are variable. It’s not unusual for me to have a difference of more than $150 in my weekly earnings from one week to another, or to have a few weeks at less than $100. On the best weeks, I’m scheduled to work a full 8 hours on a federal holiday, plus 32 hours of straight time: that can be nice money. On the other hand, for the weeks where I’m only scheduled for 8 hours split over two or three days, it’s hardly worth the transportation cost to come in.

Even that wouldn’t be so bad if we only knew ahead of time. Bob can sometimes guess: “Oh, for the last few years we have a sale on the Monday after Have a Solar System Day, so they’ll probably schedule you for 6am to 10am to stock Suns, then you’ll have off Tuesday. But the Other Team will probably have to work Tuesday night and you should be prepared to restock the entire Solar System on Wednesday. We’ll probably be scheduled for eight hours of that beginning at 8am.”

But those are only guesses at best. Bob is often right, but management likes to keep things “flexible” for “just-in-time inventory control”, and therefore won’t allow work orders to be issued more than 24 hours in advance.  

It’s all subject to change at any time; therefore, we don’t know what our paycheck size will be either.

It’s very hard to manage a budget when your hours are varied and your pay fluctuates. It’s also hard to look for a second job, take a class, or socialize.

Hi everyone! Great place you have here. Love the coffee. Let me tell you a bit about my life and work. The best way to do that might be to utilize the intro piece I had at a different place. 🙂 So here it is.

Let me tell you a bit about my workplace.

I do manual labor in retail. (Note: Some details here are deliberately changed to obfuscate my workplace. Because the last thing I want to do is be unemployed right now, but all of these things about the workplace have actually happened  either to my coworkers or myself.)

Our work day is challenging. One of my coworkers cries and hides in a stockroom for the entire break period. Another had a nervous breakdown and is in therapy because the stress of the work got to him. A third co-worker who is now switched to On-Call, has lost their home and moved in with the newly married adult child. Another was out on official leave, because OSHA compliance is a joke and he was injured very severely. Our stock rooms and our dock areas have never been painted, much less heated or air conditioned and all environmental controls, including lights are controlled by computers out of state. You don’t know fun until you’re trying to unload stock and the lights go out mid-lift. The fire department actually came out once and made Retail Store hire an electrician so that our emergency lights would work. Yay for fire departments!

There’s no middle class workers here at my Retail Store. Well, there might be, but I’ve never met them. There’s us, some salespeople who are fired if they don’t make quota (lots of turnover there), and Senior Management of Retail Store. If we have a work problem we can’t resolve, we go to someone with the title of Vice President. We’ve never met anyone from Human Resources, because Human Resources is run out of another state. Our performance review is based on a computer generated set of statistics that have absolutely no relation to how effective we are. For example, one of my coworkers (I’ll call him “Dude”) had a performance review a couple years back that commended him for his highly productive work in spring of 2008, but criticized him for his lack of efficiency during the holiday season of 2008.

Difficulty: Dude wasn’t hired until 2009.

It’s a fireable offense to share our performance reviews and raises, if any, with each other but Dude thought this particular one was so hysterically funny that he did share it. Even the VP had a laugh and said “I don’t control how the performance reviews are done.”

Every morning Vice President stands by the employee entrance to let us peons in the store. We usually share fun stories about how many rodents we saw the previous day and or how many dead rodents we stepped on by accident when the Fire Drill was called.

Ah, yes. The Fire Drill. This is Senior Management’s way of telling us They Care About Us and Do Not Want Us to Die in A Fire.

Our fire drill requires us to meet at Popular Coffee Shop in the neighborhood when we evacuate. Senior Management take attendance, and also take turns popping in for Fancy Coffee Drinks that cost more than we earn in an hour. Usually a few of us Peons will go in to buy a large coffee with two espresso shots. Any of us Peons buying  “One Large Coffee” when we’re there as a part of Fire Drill is served exceptionally well by the owner. The Peon purchaser ordering a simple iced coffee will receive: A very large iced coffee usually used for sodas, four empty cups, a cup of milk “for creamer”, enough sugar to excite a class of children, and a zillion napkins. The coffee shop owner will ultimately charge Peon only for “One Large Coffee”. That way, it can be shared among us at a price we can manage. Senior Management  gets a glare from this owner, and a Fancy Coffee. Senior Management doesn’t notice because they don’t pay attention to service people. But I tell you, we notice it.

…..

So that was my introductory post about retail. Hasn’t changed much, unfortunately.

Hello everyone.

A little bird elsewhere on the net told that you were all moving over here in these times, so I snuck in behind Nurse Kelley. Do you have room for one more? Because I have tons of news.

🙂

Oh, and Hi!!!