Category: Business

Cautionary Tale

Business

A week or so ago, I talked about the Great Resignation.  Now the excellent City Journal  has this to say about that:

Younger workers opting to work less or to put in only the minimum effort may pay a future price in terms of stagnation or downward mobility. Workers receive the most pay raises in their twenties and thirties. This is also when people acquire the skills and contacts that pay off for the rest of their careers. One’s early years are not an ideal time to stay away from work, even considering the challenges that today’s younger workers face. Some jobs are certainly harder than others—especially when you’re learning skills and occupy a low rung in the workplace hierarchy. But opting out early only makes it more likely that work won’t get better later on.

All true.

Good Development

Business

As a retiree, I don’t have a dog in this fight anymore, but back in the day I might have, and my kids certainly do.

Around the world, millions of people are rethinking how they work and live—and how to better balance the two.
The Great Resignation has U.S. workers quitting their jobs in record numbers—more than 24 million did so from April to September this year—and many are staying out of the labor force. Germany, Japan, and other wealthy nations are seeing shades of the same trend.
The pandemic has taken a toll, with surveys showing an increase in feelings of burnout and a deterioration in mental health in many nations.
But the pressure has been building in developed countries for decades. Incomes have stagnated, job security has become precarious, and the costs of housing and education have soared, leaving fewer young people able to build a financially stable life.
Although the Great Resignation is a phenomenon among those who are younger than 40, it’s also reverberating across the economy and forcing a broader conversation about work. Millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) and Generation Z (the demographic cohort after them) tend to marry, buy houses, and have children later than their forebears—if at all.

Let me tell you a story about my Son&Heir.  For the past dozen years he’s been working in the restaurant business, first as a waiter, then as assistant manager, and finally as the Kitchen, Food & Beverage Director at their busiest restaurant.

He was also getting burned out.  One time I met him for lunch, and I was appalled at what I saw:  the normal laid-back, witty kid I once knew was now a nervous wreck:  pale, skinny, with shaking hands and a thousand-yard stare.

I told him to quit and find another job, and he said that he couldn’t:  the company was too dependent on him and his coworkers to keep the place afloat — no bonuses for doing so, of course.  When I told him how bad he looked, and how worried I was about him, he simply said:

“I know.  I’m tempted to quit and go and work as a bartender for a year or so, just to catch my breath and regain a little sanity.”

I nearly fell over.  But as he put it, bartending would mean less money, but shorter hours and no stress.

I didn’t want him to do that, but considering that the Son&Heir looked like he was doing speed (don’t worry, he wasn’t), I agreed, but told him to wait until after Christmas.

I needn’t have worried.  Unbeknown to me, he’d already put out feelers — he just didn’t want to tell anyone until he’d actually got a new job to avoid the stress involved in that — and as it turned out, he ended up getting a really good job with a Great Big Financial Institution thanks to someone who used to shoot with him on the US Olympic development team.

Now he’s a different guy.  The old Son&Heir is back:  relaxed, charming and witty, the excellent company he always was.  Thanksgiving Dinner was great fun, and a solo dinner with just him equally so.  He works regular hours during the week, and never over weekends.  For more money.  And he doesn’t know what to do with all his spare time.  He’s also had to slow down his hell-for-leather approach to work and adjust it to corporate time.

But that’s not my point to the story, good news though it is.

What’s important is that like the people mentioned in the article. he would have been just fine with a lesser-paying job — and if that’s true of the S&H, one of the most dedicated workers a boss could wish to have, then companies are going to have to get their shit together or face serious staff shortages, permanently.

And I don’t care.  Back in the day, a company could work you really hard for decent-but-not-great pay, because the trade-off was job security.  The minute the accountants got involved, and company loyalty became worthless (because long-term employees cost more in benefits to keep, you see), there was no way that companies could keep on overworking staff without it ending in this Great Resignation.  The game, as the saying goes, was no longer worth the candle, especially as the companies were making record profits and the bosses thereof a lot more money than in the past..

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Guess what, Boss?  Those days might be coming to an end soon.

Quelle Surprise

Business, Marxists, Politics

I wonder what made people hate the idea of this cow being the Comptroller of the Currency so much?  Oh yeah:

Saule Omarova’s stated supported proposals would cause banks to cease being depository institutions for individual accounts, reassigning these checking and savings “demand deposit accounts” directly to the Federal Reserve. That proved too radical an agenda for Democrat and Republican senators to take a risk on  [I should fucking well hope so — K]; particularly given that the head of the OCC does, indeed, have the power to facilitate such changes as part of their tenure.
Omarova also raised eyebrows with her support for the concept of a National Investment Authority (NIA) that would have the power to direct private capital investment in the US from a central planning entity.

This steely-eyed Stalinist bitch (a graduate of Moscow State University — yes!) would have, at a stroke, completely demolished the entire concept of private property — yes, money earned is actually property, just not as far as Communists are concerned — and made the almighty Federal Government the controller of our personal finances.  And ditto for private investment — centrally controlled by government and not by companies, shareholders and individuals.

Of course, “President” Braindead called this opposition a “personal attack”, when in fact it was simply sharp opposition to her little plan to destroy the economy of the United States.

I need to stop now before I say something terrible.

Ah, Texas

Anti-Gun Nannies, Marketing / Advertising, The Gun Thing

Here’s one guaranteed to make the GFW Brigade have fits:

The owner of a Texas gun store and shooting range is holding a “not guilty sale” after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges last Friday.

The Saddle River Range in Conroe sent a text message to customers about the “Pre-Black Friday clearance sale” which started Saturday and will last through Thanksgiving.

My favorite part?

“We would like to clear up some confusion, the post states. “We are celebrating the life that Kyle Rittenhouse now gets to live because he was able to defend himself without being penalized for it. This is a big win for the Second Amendment and cause for celebration. For those of you who think we are celebrating “the death of innocent people”, we apologize that you didn’t take the time to gather and evaluate the actual facts from the case.”

Brilliant.  And thankee Reader Mike S who sent it to me.

Accursed Menus

Business, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s a rant after my own heart:

I was puzzled, so I checked the website and got nowhere. The password I’d used for the account was suddenly not accepted.
So I phoned the number on the website. And got nowhere. This time the problem seemed to be my PIN.
Or maybe my account number. Or maybe my customer ID. Or my PCN number. Whatever that was. The recorded message didn’t really care. I gave up.
I had become the innocent victim of the new digital age in which the algorithm reigns supreme.
There was a time when a human being with a problem talked to another human being who helped to get it sorted. Those days are gone.
The lives of big companies and government officials are made so much easier if we customers or clients can be kept at arm’s length.

The online experience is bad enough — but when you dare to call the “Customer Care” (ha!) telephone number, that’s really when the SHTF.

A combination of the two above means that I will be changing my Medicare supplemental insurer, because it seems to be the only way I can punish these assholes for their bovine indifference to my situation.

I’ll let Humphrys finish this rant:

Increasingly, we are being deprived of even a semblance of what we once thought of as customer service.
We are left talking to a computer screen behind which sits not another human being, but an algorithm. Or a recorded telephone announcement that may or may not respond to our pleas for help.
It’s as though any human compassion in the relationship between customer and provider has simply disappeared. And that’s very sad.

Or enraging.  Ten guesses which side I’m on.

License Revoked

Business, Wokism

FFS, when AT&T relocated their head office to Dallas, someone at the place which handles business licenses must have been asleep at the wheel, because I’m not sure that this bullshit is going to go down very well at all:

I have obtained a cache of internal documents about the company’s initiative, called Listen Understand Act, which is based on the core principles of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility.” CEO John Stankey [sic] launched the program last year and, subsequently, has told employees that private corporations such as AT&T have an “obligation to engage on this issue of racial injustice” and push for “systemic reforms in police departments across the country.”
According to a senior employee, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, managers at AT&T are now assessed annually on diversity issues, with mandatory participation in programs such as discussion groups, book clubs, mentorship programs, and race reeducation exercises. White employees, the source said, are tacitly expected to confess their complicity in “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” or they will be penalized in their performance reviews. As part of the overall initiative, employees are asked to sign a loyalty pledge to “keep pushing for change,” with suggested “intentions” such as “reading more about systemic racism” and “challenging others’ language that is hateful.” “If you don’t do it,” the senior employee says, “you’re [considered] a racist.”

Look, I know that most corporations are engaging in this wokeist fuckery, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t snarl at them for doing so.

Under the reign of World-Emperor Kim, these assholes would be forced to move their HQ to California, where they can play these little reindeer games to their hearts’ content, but among people who love to be forced to wear the White Man’s Hairshirt (not to mention face condoms).

Fuck ’em, and their racist crap.