and by gum, can i leap on a keyboard, too!
i-o-v-a
Friday, June 23, 2006
walmart: not merely taking manufacturing jobs from working americans
... Now taking retail jobs from working Americans, too!
So I was at the local Wal-Mart today, looking to pick up some consumer electronics at low-factory-wage-covering prices. Now, the store was staffed with plenty of blue-aproned minimum-wage shopwalkers. But one of the checkout counters advertised self-service. No way was I to leave without trying this thing out, wide-eyed scrivener that I am.
And it is pretty astounding. I got to recreate those happy moments swiping bar codes at Price Chopper. I avoided eye contact with the harrijans. And I saw Wal-Mart's clever solution to the shoplifting possibilities that had long hindered the advent of similar self-serve checkout stations: after one swipes their product, they place it in a bag on a weighing station. Any failure to produce the item with the correct weight will, presumably, end the transaction and alert the local police. I didn't test the process today, though -- I wanted to establish a baseline. Maybe next time.
And of course, the self-serve station is right in front of the supervisor's stand. So they don't really save money from reduced workers as they do improve the shopping experience.
This may be the first time I've ever bought anything from Wal-Mart (it was a $25 "Durabrand" discman with car adaptor kit to go in the Jaunty Volvo (a Blue Volvo, might I add)). It was a moment of Friedmanian rapture when I walked down the aisle and surveyed the unfolding visions of cheap consumer goods. A Continental Theorist would have more to say on the subject, probably involving the words 'reify' or 'reification,' but the goods on offer are an approximation of expensive doo-dads that I could never have imagined in the Caldor-roaming days of my youth. Leather footrests, satellite radios, barstools: these would be luxury goods, if a luxury good cost less and lasted longer than a fill-up at Mobil. In the lee of the economic gales are the working middle-class who fill their homes from those shelves.
Should talk more about purchase as identity and other hip themes, but it's late and this is less coherent than I'd like. I can't talk right, but by gum can I rant on the keyboard, generally.
So I was at the local Wal-Mart today, looking to pick up some consumer electronics at low-factory-wage-covering prices. Now, the store was staffed with plenty of blue-aproned minimum-wage shopwalkers. But one of the checkout counters advertised self-service. No way was I to leave without trying this thing out, wide-eyed scrivener that I am.
And it is pretty astounding. I got to recreate those happy moments swiping bar codes at Price Chopper. I avoided eye contact with the harrijans. And I saw Wal-Mart's clever solution to the shoplifting possibilities that had long hindered the advent of similar self-serve checkout stations: after one swipes their product, they place it in a bag on a weighing station. Any failure to produce the item with the correct weight will, presumably, end the transaction and alert the local police. I didn't test the process today, though -- I wanted to establish a baseline. Maybe next time.
And of course, the self-serve station is right in front of the supervisor's stand. So they don't really save money from reduced workers as they do improve the shopping experience.
This may be the first time I've ever bought anything from Wal-Mart (it was a $25 "Durabrand" discman with car adaptor kit to go in the Jaunty Volvo (a Blue Volvo, might I add)). It was a moment of Friedmanian rapture when I walked down the aisle and surveyed the unfolding visions of cheap consumer goods. A Continental Theorist would have more to say on the subject, probably involving the words 'reify' or 'reification,' but the goods on offer are an approximation of expensive doo-dads that I could never have imagined in the Caldor-roaming days of my youth. Leather footrests, satellite radios, barstools: these would be luxury goods, if a luxury good cost less and lasted longer than a fill-up at Mobil. In the lee of the economic gales are the working middle-class who fill their homes from those shelves.
Should talk more about purchase as identity and other hip themes, but it's late and this is less coherent than I'd like. I can't talk right, but by gum can I rant on the keyboard, generally.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
three cheers for immigrant labor (sorry, mom!)
today i had my hair cut by a lithuanian woman.
she started at 6:35, even though 'the men's room: barber lounge & spa' normally closes at 6 in the summer, because i walked in at 6 pm and i had on my swank intern clothes and looked like a high-rolling motherfucker. some friend called her at 6:45 because she was late. but she buzzed the sides too short and so i made her cut the top all over again to even things out. by this time it was 7:05. then, because it was a rather swank establishment, she had to spend about fifteen minutes clipping the ends to make them look tidily uneven, and giving me a straight-razor shave, and massaging my scalp while wearing this orgasmic vibrating-massager that fits over the back of her hand. but she was a good lithuanian haircutter, because she did this all slowly and with great care even though she really, really wanted to be somewhere else. i didn't leave irina's chair until 7:25 at the earliest.
i think i could love making people sacrifice themselves for my benefit. it's kind of an insecure needy thing. but i tipped her at 25%. that's gotta mean something.
so i wrote this up because of the appointment she was late for. apparently her husband won't move out of sleepy Rochester. and he won't let her buy a cat that has long hair. but finally she found a cat she liked with short hair, and she was going to go look at it at six, except i came in and made an appointment for 6:30. it was a siamese cat that was all white except for its ears, which were orange, and its eyes, which were blue. how's that for relevance? i need a picture for this site. maybe i'll go back after hours next month and let her fix the mess she made of my formerly stylish 'do.
she started at 6:35, even though 'the men's room: barber lounge & spa' normally closes at 6 in the summer, because i walked in at 6 pm and i had on my swank intern clothes and looked like a high-rolling motherfucker. some friend called her at 6:45 because she was late. but she buzzed the sides too short and so i made her cut the top all over again to even things out. by this time it was 7:05. then, because it was a rather swank establishment, she had to spend about fifteen minutes clipping the ends to make them look tidily uneven, and giving me a straight-razor shave, and massaging my scalp while wearing this orgasmic vibrating-massager that fits over the back of her hand. but she was a good lithuanian haircutter, because she did this all slowly and with great care even though she really, really wanted to be somewhere else. i didn't leave irina's chair until 7:25 at the earliest.
i think i could love making people sacrifice themselves for my benefit. it's kind of an insecure needy thing. but i tipped her at 25%. that's gotta mean something.
so i wrote this up because of the appointment she was late for. apparently her husband won't move out of sleepy Rochester. and he won't let her buy a cat that has long hair. but finally she found a cat she liked with short hair, and she was going to go look at it at six, except i came in and made an appointment for 6:30. it was a siamese cat that was all white except for its ears, which were orange, and its eyes, which were blue. how's that for relevance? i need a picture for this site. maybe i'll go back after hours next month and let her fix the mess she made of my formerly stylish 'do.
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