Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Self Serve: Who does it really serve?
I've been meaning to discuss this topic for a long time but I didn't want to leave a flippant remark about it when in fact it is a deep discussion to be had. Have you noticed that more and more things are becoming self serve? I think it was in 2003 that I encountered my first self serve checkout lane in a supermarket. It was puzzling. My first response was that robots were taking our jobs. Then, after trying it out and taking an inordinate amount of time checking the items (the computer has sensors to make sure you are actually bagging items -these sensors cause many delays as the computer keeps telling you to put the items in the bag, even if you just want to carry and go) I realized, it's not computers taking jobs, we are taking the jobs. By willingly doing work for free that used to be paid work, we are giving the supermarket permission to externalize the labor onto us.
I think many of us assume that self-help means reduced cost for us so we automatically take part. There is no tangible reason to believe that the prices go down when we participate more. In fact, since most companies make decisions solely for the sake of greater profit, a large chain supermarket wouldn't invest the money into new machines just to pass the savings to the customer. More importantly, even if we are saving, how much are we saving at the expense of some one's job? A really lovely and concise analysis in Obamanomics by John R. Talbot regarding the increase in a fast food hamburger cost relative to raising the minimum wage to $10 applies. By increasing the minimum wage, even if fast food joints pass the cost onto the consumer, we pay $0.10 more for our burger. If this is true, the amount we save for the inverse situation as in the supermarket, if the savings is actually passed onto us, is pennies to the dollar and fewer jobs for all of us.
In the case of checkout lines, much like Fastrak or whatever automated toll system you use, we are willing to take on this added function in our lives for the sake of time conservation. This is the same reason why I tried out the self-serve lane in the supermarket. All the other lanes were so long and I was always going going going (not anymore!) just to save a few minutes here and a few minutes there, so I can do 4 errands during my lunch hour so that I don't have to do these errands after work before other businesses close, so that I can make it to pick up my daughter from daycare on time. In effect, the initial time investment learning the device made me as late. Similarly, you have to go online to order a Fastrak device. Eventually, after a short spell, going on those self-serve lanes saves you time b/c you have already made the time investment and now can breeze through. But what happens next is that everyone else gets the same bright idea so the self-serve lane is no longer any faster than the other lanes. This is how they phase everyone into the system. Slowly, they increase the number of self-serve lanes and decrease the number of service lanes, indoctrinating more and more people into the system. But once we are all indoctrinated, there won't be a service lane (maybe one for those stubborn old geezers who remember in their day they used to get service with a smile) and we are all going the same speed, waiting on the same lines as we used to, only the jobs are gone.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Fastrak and in that case, there is no continuous added labor for me and it does go faster since there is no stopping and getting change. But then it really is a case of robots taking the jobs.
Service is a very touchy topic for lots of reasons. We are increasingly a nation of predominantly service oriented jobs. What else is left when manufacturing is gone? Though most of us are service providers for a living, we still have a taint of class distinctions when we think of being servers or being served. I left my service industry (waitressing) job for an office job b/c there is a sense that service industry people are disrespected by others. Those others also most likely do service jobs but for some reason serving food as apposed to pushing papers seems more demeaning. For a while, I regretted leaving the service industry because the pay was always pretty great, that is if you are a trained waitperson working in a descent establishment. Ultimately, I didn't want to be schlepping trays when I am 50.
So for those of us who eat at places where we bus our own tables and pick up our trays we feel like we are taking part in a non-classist system. We don't get served, we serve ourselves. There isn't someone being demeaned by our dirty plates and bad attitudes. And often the prices are reasonable where there is no server. But is it too much to ask to have reasonably priced food at an establishment that has a server? That's yet another job we are eliminiating in our quest to feel socially responsible. And, the cashier has a tip jar so we end up tipping anyway! Would it be so terrible to charge an additional $0.50 for each plate so that someone who brings you your food while you take a load off can get paid a decent hourly wage plus tips too? When I worked in service, I worked mostly in NYC back when we worked for tips only. The food I served was two to four times the cost of what is served at these self-serve places. But given California requires wait persons to receive at least minimum wage too, a person can make a living wage serving inexpensive food and we can afford to pay a little more so that we all have more jobs.
So the point I am making, if it isn't obvious, don't serve yourself. It might make you feel more egalitarian but you're just taking jobs away from yourself and others. If you're thinking, well, I have a specialized degree and therefore one lost service industry job doesn't effect me, think again buddy. There are lots of smart people who serve food b/c the money is good and fast. If hard pressed to find a job, those same people can be competing for the same specialized degree and eventually, your job.
I think many of us assume that self-help means reduced cost for us so we automatically take part. There is no tangible reason to believe that the prices go down when we participate more. In fact, since most companies make decisions solely for the sake of greater profit, a large chain supermarket wouldn't invest the money into new machines just to pass the savings to the customer. More importantly, even if we are saving, how much are we saving at the expense of some one's job? A really lovely and concise analysis in Obamanomics by John R. Talbot regarding the increase in a fast food hamburger cost relative to raising the minimum wage to $10 applies. By increasing the minimum wage, even if fast food joints pass the cost onto the consumer, we pay $0.10 more for our burger. If this is true, the amount we save for the inverse situation as in the supermarket, if the savings is actually passed onto us, is pennies to the dollar and fewer jobs for all of us.
In the case of checkout lines, much like Fastrak or whatever automated toll system you use, we are willing to take on this added function in our lives for the sake of time conservation. This is the same reason why I tried out the self-serve lane in the supermarket. All the other lanes were so long and I was always going going going (not anymore!) just to save a few minutes here and a few minutes there, so I can do 4 errands during my lunch hour so that I don't have to do these errands after work before other businesses close, so that I can make it to pick up my daughter from daycare on time. In effect, the initial time investment learning the device made me as late. Similarly, you have to go online to order a Fastrak device. Eventually, after a short spell, going on those self-serve lanes saves you time b/c you have already made the time investment and now can breeze through. But what happens next is that everyone else gets the same bright idea so the self-serve lane is no longer any faster than the other lanes. This is how they phase everyone into the system. Slowly, they increase the number of self-serve lanes and decrease the number of service lanes, indoctrinating more and more people into the system. But once we are all indoctrinated, there won't be a service lane (maybe one for those stubborn old geezers who remember in their day they used to get service with a smile) and we are all going the same speed, waiting on the same lines as we used to, only the jobs are gone.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Fastrak and in that case, there is no continuous added labor for me and it does go faster since there is no stopping and getting change. But then it really is a case of robots taking the jobs.
Service is a very touchy topic for lots of reasons. We are increasingly a nation of predominantly service oriented jobs. What else is left when manufacturing is gone? Though most of us are service providers for a living, we still have a taint of class distinctions when we think of being servers or being served. I left my service industry (waitressing) job for an office job b/c there is a sense that service industry people are disrespected by others. Those others also most likely do service jobs but for some reason serving food as apposed to pushing papers seems more demeaning. For a while, I regretted leaving the service industry because the pay was always pretty great, that is if you are a trained waitperson working in a descent establishment. Ultimately, I didn't want to be schlepping trays when I am 50.
So for those of us who eat at places where we bus our own tables and pick up our trays we feel like we are taking part in a non-classist system. We don't get served, we serve ourselves. There isn't someone being demeaned by our dirty plates and bad attitudes. And often the prices are reasonable where there is no server. But is it too much to ask to have reasonably priced food at an establishment that has a server? That's yet another job we are eliminiating in our quest to feel socially responsible. And, the cashier has a tip jar so we end up tipping anyway! Would it be so terrible to charge an additional $0.50 for each plate so that someone who brings you your food while you take a load off can get paid a decent hourly wage plus tips too? When I worked in service, I worked mostly in NYC back when we worked for tips only. The food I served was two to four times the cost of what is served at these self-serve places. But given California requires wait persons to receive at least minimum wage too, a person can make a living wage serving inexpensive food and we can afford to pay a little more so that we all have more jobs.
So the point I am making, if it isn't obvious, don't serve yourself. It might make you feel more egalitarian but you're just taking jobs away from yourself and others. If you're thinking, well, I have a specialized degree and therefore one lost service industry job doesn't effect me, think again buddy. There are lots of smart people who serve food b/c the money is good and fast. If hard pressed to find a job, those same people can be competing for the same specialized degree and eventually, your job.
Monday, March 9, 2009
One of the things that keeps me from writing is abhorance of redundancy. I read something somewhere and I don't see why I should write about it when someone else can read the same thing I read and think about it on their own. Well, by this standard, my blog is becoming more and more obsolete. At the onset, I was writing about something that wasn't being talked about much. The concept of working less, the idea that refocusing our minds away from incessant production of wealth for the nation would assist us in living more fulfilling lives full of art and invention; that ultimately, this would result in more expendable income for wage earners who have seen no growth in their income while America boasted about our amazing growth that is mostly distributed to share holders and CEOs.
Now, thanks to the recession, article after article talks about how the shrinking economy will refocus our youth's attention to civic duty. That the bottoming out of the art market will see an increase in innovation since artists aren't really making art for the sake of the market. Along with the obsessive reporting of how we need to and are becoming a greener nation and a greener world, I feel as if the recession has taken away my platform, yet another job lost.
Well, I'm not crying about it. I think it's amazing that mainstream news is filled with this stuff. Everyone is trying to cheer everyone else up and soberly discussing what it means to live with less. It's incredibly refreshing.
In fact, I am beginning to feel like there is a lot more for me to write about as other bloggers and journalists ruminate over the same things, perhaps from a different direction than where I was coming from. In the end, we are trying to get to the same place, a place where our economy is secure, and by extension our individual lives are secure.
Also, since the collapse of the finance industry, the language that is being used is becoming less and less ambiguous. As people continue to clarify what is going on and how we got here, there is more clarity in the way money is discussed. Hopefully this will lead to a more engaged populace who can tell the difference between an article that is boasting about corporate gains and one that actually is regarding the positive effect that gain has on the wage earner.
I like Paul Krugman's blog a lot! I like how he now posts 3 to 4 times a day, sometimes one liners. It's adorable. But because he writes with an assumption that people understand economics already, reading his work needs to be supplemented with other stuff, for instance, listening to This American Life's episodes regarding finance and banking.
Now, thanks to the recession, article after article talks about how the shrinking economy will refocus our youth's attention to civic duty. That the bottoming out of the art market will see an increase in innovation since artists aren't really making art for the sake of the market. Along with the obsessive reporting of how we need to and are becoming a greener nation and a greener world, I feel as if the recession has taken away my platform, yet another job lost.
Well, I'm not crying about it. I think it's amazing that mainstream news is filled with this stuff. Everyone is trying to cheer everyone else up and soberly discussing what it means to live with less. It's incredibly refreshing.
In fact, I am beginning to feel like there is a lot more for me to write about as other bloggers and journalists ruminate over the same things, perhaps from a different direction than where I was coming from. In the end, we are trying to get to the same place, a place where our economy is secure, and by extension our individual lives are secure.
Also, since the collapse of the finance industry, the language that is being used is becoming less and less ambiguous. As people continue to clarify what is going on and how we got here, there is more clarity in the way money is discussed. Hopefully this will lead to a more engaged populace who can tell the difference between an article that is boasting about corporate gains and one that actually is regarding the positive effect that gain has on the wage earner.
I like Paul Krugman's blog a lot! I like how he now posts 3 to 4 times a day, sometimes one liners. It's adorable. But because he writes with an assumption that people understand economics already, reading his work needs to be supplemented with other stuff, for instance, listening to This American Life's episodes regarding finance and banking.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Inflation is Good
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/business/economy/11leonhardt.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/opinion/16krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
I am so grateful for these two articles above. For months I was debating about the recession with friends and finally the things being published are starting to sound more and more like what I have been preaching. The first article states that saving and spending are both bad and both good. My friends keep insisting that the problem is that people are not spending enough. My stance is that spending more could not solve this problem. The article explains that when banks need money, saving helps banks because it keeps more money in the banks for the banks to work with. The second article talks about how WW II created jobs and inflation that made the prior debts seem only half as daunting because the real value of the debt shrank thanks to inflation. Finally there is in print something that states inflation is good! Inflation, again refers to increased wages. Increases in the cost of living for the working class is not what is meant by inflation. In 2008, I watched article after article decree that inflation is still down as my cup of coffee and bagel went up 30% along with gas prices one month in May. I am ecstatic to read Paul Krugman tell us that inflation saved us during WW II.
I haven't posted in months and there are several drafted but unedited blog posts that I never bothered to publish because I was tired of arguing a confused sounding point. Especially now that we are losing hundreds of thousands of jobs monthly, my friends look at me cross-eyed when I say, "I don't think it's such a terrible thing." For the poorest of us, making minimum wage with family that cannot offer a safety net, it really stinks. But if unemployment goes from 5% to 8%, that's only 3% of the working population that needs to receive support from the remaining 92% of the working population. That is really a small number if you consider that prior to women entering the workforce, the working population was a much smaller portion of the general population than it is now. For someone like me, and I sit in the middle of the middle income/middle class, it's sort of a relief that we are all snapping out of this delusion of spending. And though I am, by national standards, a little higher up than the middle of the middle, in the Bay Area, I was NOT making a living wage.
For the first time in my life, I am fine with having a roommate. If I am unable to find decent work in the next 9 months, the time it will take for my unemployment insurance to run out, I will move in with my parents, something I would have never ever thought was ok. I bake bread now and spend hours and hours with my kid. I am really enjoying this slump, partly because, it is no longer an imperative that I eat out two to ten times a month or go to the movie theatre every other weekend. I don't need new clothes and because most people are in the same boat, most of my friends are asking if I want to come over and cook dinner together as apposed to dinner and drinks out.
Perhaps those who identify with shopping and certain amenities get depressed at the thought of losing certain comforts but for me, I feel freed from a life style that did not make me any happier but deluded me into thinking that living with less would make me less happy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/opinion/16krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
I am so grateful for these two articles above. For months I was debating about the recession with friends and finally the things being published are starting to sound more and more like what I have been preaching. The first article states that saving and spending are both bad and both good. My friends keep insisting that the problem is that people are not spending enough. My stance is that spending more could not solve this problem. The article explains that when banks need money, saving helps banks because it keeps more money in the banks for the banks to work with. The second article talks about how WW II created jobs and inflation that made the prior debts seem only half as daunting because the real value of the debt shrank thanks to inflation. Finally there is in print something that states inflation is good! Inflation, again refers to increased wages. Increases in the cost of living for the working class is not what is meant by inflation. In 2008, I watched article after article decree that inflation is still down as my cup of coffee and bagel went up 30% along with gas prices one month in May. I am ecstatic to read Paul Krugman tell us that inflation saved us during WW II.
I haven't posted in months and there are several drafted but unedited blog posts that I never bothered to publish because I was tired of arguing a confused sounding point. Especially now that we are losing hundreds of thousands of jobs monthly, my friends look at me cross-eyed when I say, "I don't think it's such a terrible thing." For the poorest of us, making minimum wage with family that cannot offer a safety net, it really stinks. But if unemployment goes from 5% to 8%, that's only 3% of the working population that needs to receive support from the remaining 92% of the working population. That is really a small number if you consider that prior to women entering the workforce, the working population was a much smaller portion of the general population than it is now. For someone like me, and I sit in the middle of the middle income/middle class, it's sort of a relief that we are all snapping out of this delusion of spending. And though I am, by national standards, a little higher up than the middle of the middle, in the Bay Area, I was NOT making a living wage.
For the first time in my life, I am fine with having a roommate. If I am unable to find decent work in the next 9 months, the time it will take for my unemployment insurance to run out, I will move in with my parents, something I would have never ever thought was ok. I bake bread now and spend hours and hours with my kid. I am really enjoying this slump, partly because, it is no longer an imperative that I eat out two to ten times a month or go to the movie theatre every other weekend. I don't need new clothes and because most people are in the same boat, most of my friends are asking if I want to come over and cook dinner together as apposed to dinner and drinks out.
Perhaps those who identify with shopping and certain amenities get depressed at the thought of losing certain comforts but for me, I feel freed from a life style that did not make me any happier but deluded me into thinking that living with less would make me less happy.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
A Fruitful Digression
I am terribly sick of research. It has been a harrowing journey, mostly because the majority of people who discuss labor extract themselves from that definition. It is to me very odd considering intellectual activity is no less labor, and no more financially rewarded than skilled physical, clerical and service labor. In any case, I want to get back to the work of listing positive labor practices, or should I write Positive Labor Practices, lest I find it actually signifies something in the general discourse that I have not yet found, PLP proper. I have already discussed shortening work hours by taking a part time job or swapping the job you have now for one that doesn't require overtime. What about job hunting?
It is a great idea to peek at the want ads regularly and apply to better paying employment if not for yourself, for the sake of promoting the idea that better pay will give employers better choice of employees. Let's reward the employers who want to pay us more by making ourselves readily available. After all, it won't hurt us. This of course brings me to the actual issue at hand, employers who don't post their intended compensation range.
When I was a wee worker bee, long ago in my preteens, I was under the impression that real jobs didn't post income ranges because it is unsophisticated to do so. I thought that once you got to a station in life where you had a respectable title and benefits, publicly announcing the dollar value of one's work was tasteless. I believed that a grown up sat with a potential employer and with true savvy, negotiated income with confidence, knowing their worth. As I got older, I realized that we all bought into this myth as young people new to the work force and it takes decades to see it for what it is, a construct that gives the employer the benefit of the negotiation.
"Compensation Commensurate with Experience" is a ploy that successfully convinces laborers that if the employer doesn't offer a decent wage, it is due to the fact that the employee lacks competence. What if we all decided that any employer that did not post a tight-range income figure was insulting our intelligence? We can individually decide not to respond to employers that use this ploy and eventually render this practice obsolete. It's kind of like how it is now really cool to support "being green" or how we all know, thanks to the Kaiser commercials, that 50 is the knew 40, given we eat right and exercise. If we make it obvious to employers through repetition that refusing to post a genuine salary range will garner poor results, it is truly possible to change how all employers approach a job post. After all, people who are responsible for hiring are just people who too respond to repetitive messages.
If it seems that this practice will limit your list of potential jobs and if you have that nagging feeling that the mysterious posts without a compensation range could potentially be offering much more than the posts that are transparent, that is because the ploy works. Just ask yourself, why would someone truly offering a competitive salary fail to tell you how competitive that salary is? Why would someone who wants to offer you far more than other employers hide the fact that they pay really really well? In real estate, the listing agent doesn't list the price of a house as "competitive". They list the price close to what the seller really wants and thinks she can get for the house because they are involved in an open competition with other sellers trying to get the attention of buyers with industry representation. This is in no way intended to promote the role of headhunters and temp agencies. Though employment agencies have their place in the infrastructure of labor exchange, if employers listed their intended compensation, there would be less mystery around the employment process, therefore, less need for such middlemen.
As an aside (aside squared), don't buy into the other myth, raising income causes inflation. Raising income only causes inflation in so far as corporations will not reduce their profit margins. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corporations taking a little less profit. In fact, in theory, inflation doesn't match the raises of workers, what it matches is the increase in cost of labor in addition to the exponentially larger increase in profits that companies will demand to keep profits and the paychecks of CEO's vastly larger and ever expanding at a much higher rate than inflation. Also, considering the bottom 80% doesn't have investments, it really isn't such a big loss to us (we in the middle) if the value of shares do not climb at historical rates every year. So get out there and rest more and demand more pay with a clear conscience.
It is a great idea to peek at the want ads regularly and apply to better paying employment if not for yourself, for the sake of promoting the idea that better pay will give employers better choice of employees. Let's reward the employers who want to pay us more by making ourselves readily available. After all, it won't hurt us. This of course brings me to the actual issue at hand, employers who don't post their intended compensation range.
When I was a wee worker bee, long ago in my preteens, I was under the impression that real jobs didn't post income ranges because it is unsophisticated to do so. I thought that once you got to a station in life where you had a respectable title and benefits, publicly announcing the dollar value of one's work was tasteless. I believed that a grown up sat with a potential employer and with true savvy, negotiated income with confidence, knowing their worth. As I got older, I realized that we all bought into this myth as young people new to the work force and it takes decades to see it for what it is, a construct that gives the employer the benefit of the negotiation.
"Compensation Commensurate with Experience" is a ploy that successfully convinces laborers that if the employer doesn't offer a decent wage, it is due to the fact that the employee lacks competence. What if we all decided that any employer that did not post a tight-range income figure was insulting our intelligence? We can individually decide not to respond to employers that use this ploy and eventually render this practice obsolete. It's kind of like how it is now really cool to support "being green" or how we all know, thanks to the Kaiser commercials, that 50 is the knew 40, given we eat right and exercise. If we make it obvious to employers through repetition that refusing to post a genuine salary range will garner poor results, it is truly possible to change how all employers approach a job post. After all, people who are responsible for hiring are just people who too respond to repetitive messages.
If it seems that this practice will limit your list of potential jobs and if you have that nagging feeling that the mysterious posts without a compensation range could potentially be offering much more than the posts that are transparent, that is because the ploy works. Just ask yourself, why would someone truly offering a competitive salary fail to tell you how competitive that salary is? Why would someone who wants to offer you far more than other employers hide the fact that they pay really really well? In real estate, the listing agent doesn't list the price of a house as "competitive". They list the price close to what the seller really wants and thinks she can get for the house because they are involved in an open competition with other sellers trying to get the attention of buyers with industry representation. This is in no way intended to promote the role of headhunters and temp agencies. Though employment agencies have their place in the infrastructure of labor exchange, if employers listed their intended compensation, there would be less mystery around the employment process, therefore, less need for such middlemen.
As an aside (aside squared), don't buy into the other myth, raising income causes inflation. Raising income only causes inflation in so far as corporations will not reduce their profit margins. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corporations taking a little less profit. In fact, in theory, inflation doesn't match the raises of workers, what it matches is the increase in cost of labor in addition to the exponentially larger increase in profits that companies will demand to keep profits and the paychecks of CEO's vastly larger and ever expanding at a much higher rate than inflation. Also, considering the bottom 80% doesn't have investments, it really isn't such a big loss to us (we in the middle) if the value of shares do not climb at historical rates every year. So get out there and rest more and demand more pay with a clear conscience.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Money Can’t buy Corporations Happiness Because Corporations aren't People
Studies show that once you have covered basic needs, money does not increase levels of happiness. For people who can't make ends meet, money will definitely increase happiness levels. Thus, increased wages for the middle and lower classes will have a marked effect on national levels of happiness but increased income for the rich has no effect.
Why then has inflation outpaced wage increases while the wealth of the affluent increased exponentially in the past three decades? It certainly hasn’t been because our national agenda has been to increase the Gross National Happiness Quotient, despite the fact that this agenda is clearly stated in our constitution. Many other countries are now taking into consideration the Gross National Happiness per capita as well as the gross national product in their policy making but the United States doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with these nations. Doing so would mean a tremendous change in government policy as it pertains to wage increases and taxing the wealthy (reverting back to policies that were in place prior to the Reagon Administration would pretty much take care of it).
Until our country becomes smart enough to start making these policy changes, it is our responsibility to use our considerable influence to nudge it in that direction. In every study that I have read thus far, it is assumed that higher unemployment is due to a reduction in available jobs. I have not yet found any studies that have been able to determine the affects of intentionally reduced employment for political purposes. An intentional reduction of labor by the labor force would result in diminished supply of labor whereas a population that has lost jobs by force causes an excess labor pool. This is why it is so hard to wrap our minds around what it would be like if members of the middle class made a conscious choice to work less-it just hasn't been done.
A small percentage of the population is already intentionally unemployed, roughly 4%. They are not counted in the national unemployment statistics because they are not actively looking for work, therefore not considered unemployed. If that group became an organized political body and grew to about 15% I wonder what the landscape of our economic future would look like? Let's try it and find out! If worse comes to worst, we can all go back to letting corporations run our lives and things won't be any different than they are now.
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