GERALD L MCFARLANE JRw you can go into a large retailer and find almost no help at all, that's from slashing expenses at the wrong end of the door.
I think those changes were geared towards effecting reductions in shrinkage....lol!
Biggest change I've noticed at the big box grocery stores during the pandemic is that the time honored process of offering loss leaders is almost non-existent these days.
After a number of years I just sort of absorbed a rotating schedule for deep discounts on various products, which once you fell in sync with their rotation, you could replenish your own stocks very affordably.
Those rotating schedules are gone now, "sale" prices barely budge the needle anymore.
Euclid charlie hebdo Euclid charlie hebdo zugmann Euclid To the employees who want to get out of the boss's view and work at home, I am sure that those empolyees believe that keeping track of worker productivity is old school management. But most management is not going to see it that way. Of course not. Becuase a lot of those managers are completely unnecessary and are featherbedding their positions. Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out if them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation. I never suggested any abuse. And your hissing implication about me advocating racism is not subtle. Of course companies want to pay as little as possible. You would do the same. But all it involves is offers made, and accepted or rejected. Nobody is being abused. Sorry. I never accused you of racism but if you are grabbing for that, it may say something about your internal process. I forgot you don't comprehend anything outside of literalistic, concrete statements. Metaphors are beyond your scope. You did not have to use the word. It is all wrapped up in your light hearted metaphor about plantation overseers cracking the whip and squeezing every drop of sweat out of the plantation slaves.
charlie hebdo Euclid charlie hebdo zugmann Euclid To the employees who want to get out of the boss's view and work at home, I am sure that those empolyees believe that keeping track of worker productivity is old school management. But most management is not going to see it that way. Of course not. Becuase a lot of those managers are completely unnecessary and are featherbedding their positions. Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out if them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation. I never suggested any abuse. And your hissing implication about me advocating racism is not subtle. Of course companies want to pay as little as possible. You would do the same. But all it involves is offers made, and accepted or rejected. Nobody is being abused. Sorry. I never accused you of racism but if you are grabbing for that, it may say something about your internal process. I forgot you don't comprehend anything outside of literalistic, concrete statements. Metaphors are beyond your scope.
Euclid charlie hebdo zugmann Euclid To the employees who want to get out of the boss's view and work at home, I am sure that those empolyees believe that keeping track of worker productivity is old school management. But most management is not going to see it that way. Of course not. Becuase a lot of those managers are completely unnecessary and are featherbedding their positions. Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out if them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation. I never suggested any abuse. And your hissing implication about me advocating racism is not subtle. Of course companies want to pay as little as possible. You would do the same. But all it involves is offers made, and accepted or rejected. Nobody is being abused.
charlie hebdo zugmann Euclid To the employees who want to get out of the boss's view and work at home, I am sure that those empolyees believe that keeping track of worker productivity is old school management. But most management is not going to see it that way. Of course not. Becuase a lot of those managers are completely unnecessary and are featherbedding their positions. Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out if them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation.
zugmann Euclid To the employees who want to get out of the boss's view and work at home, I am sure that those empolyees believe that keeping track of worker productivity is old school management. But most management is not going to see it that way. Of course not. Becuase a lot of those managers are completely unnecessary and are featherbedding their positions.
Euclid To the employees who want to get out of the boss's view and work at home, I am sure that those empolyees believe that keeping track of worker productivity is old school management. But most management is not going to see it that way.
Of course not. Becuase a lot of those managers are completely unnecessary and are featherbedding their positions.
Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out if them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation.
I never suggested any abuse. And your hissing implication about me advocating racism is not subtle. Of course companies want to pay as little as possible. You would do the same. But all it involves is offers made, and accepted or rejected. Nobody is being abused.
Sorry. I never accused you of racism but if you are grabbing for that, it may say something about your internal process. I forgot you don't comprehend anything outside of literalistic, concrete statements. Metaphors are beyond your scope.
You did not have to use the word. It is all wrapped up in your light hearted metaphor about plantation overseers cracking the whip and squeezing every drop of sweat out of the plantation slaves.
I don't see any allegation of racism.
Charlie is accusing you of supporting management bullying and harassing ALL their workers. In this case the overseer analogy is meant to evoke the abusive tactics practiced by supervisors, not the racism that was behind those actions back during the slavery era.
I am not optimistic that you will understand this explanation, and fear that I have wasted 5 minutes of my precious quarantined time.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
And once again I didn't say that. You made the conflation because you only understand the literal, the concrete use of language. Furthermore, you try to stick your words and ideas in others' posts, over and over. If you don't understand that metaphor, how about cease and desist?
GERALD L MCFARLANE JRHas anyone noticed people stopped making less impulse buys the more retail outlets streamlined their operations by reducing floor staff? Now you can go into a large retailer and find almost no help at all, that's from slashing expenses at the wrong end of the door
Trust me on this, retail is an art, not a science. And like any other business if you don't understand it it won't matter how well you did at the "MBA Mill," everything you touch will turn to ***.
It's no mystery to me why so many large retailers were failing, even well before COVID-19 reared it's ugly head. The rot started a long time ago.
Paul of Covington I never smoked and never could figure out why anyone would want to, but in the army, just about everyone else did. Many of them claimed they started smoking when they saw smokers getting breaks that they didn't.
Reminds me of a joke...
A nurse at a VA hospital stepped outside and saw a Vietnam vet lighting one up. "Just when did you start smoking?" she asked.
"Lady, when the first damn VC rocket flew past my head!"
Euclid charlie hebdo Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out if them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation. I never suggested any abuse. And your hissing implication about me advocating racism is not subtle. Of course companies want to pay as little as possible. You would do the same. But all it involves is offers made, and accepted or rejected. Nobody is being abused.
charlie hebdo
If you go back and re-read Charlie's statement, you'll see that he did not imply that you were advocating racism.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
zugmann BaltACD Too damn (hot cold wet windy - take your pick) out there and I gave up smoking 35 years ago. I didn't say smoke - I've never smoked, but if everyone else is getting a cigarette break, I ain't staying inside.
BaltACD Too damn (hot cold wet windy - take your pick) out there and I gave up smoking 35 years ago.
I didn't say smoke - I've never smoked, but if everyone else is getting a cigarette break, I ain't staying inside.
I never smoked and never could figure out why anyone would want to, but in the army, just about everyone else did. Many of them claimed they started smoking when they saw smokers getting breaks that they didn't.
Euclid GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Convicted One GERALD L MCFARLANE JR doesn't matter how long an office worker takes to do it, keeping track of your office workers time is old school management practices not valid in todays world. To the contrary, being able to determine how effectively an employee handles their workload, enables management to decide if they can "load up" more work on the employee, or extend them additional "opportunities". Plus, if I have two employees performing roughly the same jobs, and both are completing their duties in half a day......guess what? I know what you're going to say, but a smart businessman would have 3 solutions for such a scenario already in his head. Solution 1 is to solicit more business(the smart move) by slightly lowering your cost. Solution 2 is to make both employees part time(also smart) there by keeping them on the payroll should business grow. Solution 3 is the stupidist one, and that's to fire one employee and make the other do all the work. If you can't figure out why solution 3 is the stupidist I'll give a few days to think about it before telling, but I will give you a hint: If you're for sale you'd be a prime target for Berkshire Hathaway. I have been inside of a lot of different companies, and I never got the sense that management believes that tracking empolyee productivity is old school and not valid. It is quite the contrary. It is a management obsession because they believe that fundamentally no empolyees will pull their share if given the freedom not to. Management welcomes every new tool to micromanage employees. ~snip~ Solution #3 is done all the time. It is probably the most preferred. Typically, there are enough employees to pick up the extra work created by laying off that one empolyee. Basically companies have more work than the existing empolyees can handle. They like to keep it that way so it does not drift into phases where empolyees having nothing to do.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Convicted One GERALD L MCFARLANE JR doesn't matter how long an office worker takes to do it, keeping track of your office workers time is old school management practices not valid in todays world. To the contrary, being able to determine how effectively an employee handles their workload, enables management to decide if they can "load up" more work on the employee, or extend them additional "opportunities". Plus, if I have two employees performing roughly the same jobs, and both are completing their duties in half a day......guess what? I know what you're going to say, but a smart businessman would have 3 solutions for such a scenario already in his head. Solution 1 is to solicit more business(the smart move) by slightly lowering your cost. Solution 2 is to make both employees part time(also smart) there by keeping them on the payroll should business grow. Solution 3 is the stupidist one, and that's to fire one employee and make the other do all the work. If you can't figure out why solution 3 is the stupidist I'll give a few days to think about it before telling, but I will give you a hint: If you're for sale you'd be a prime target for Berkshire Hathaway.
Convicted One GERALD L MCFARLANE JR doesn't matter how long an office worker takes to do it, keeping track of your office workers time is old school management practices not valid in todays world. To the contrary, being able to determine how effectively an employee handles their workload, enables management to decide if they can "load up" more work on the employee, or extend them additional "opportunities". Plus, if I have two employees performing roughly the same jobs, and both are completing their duties in half a day......guess what?
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR doesn't matter how long an office worker takes to do it, keeping track of your office workers time is old school management practices not valid in todays world.
To the contrary, being able to determine how effectively an employee handles their workload, enables management to decide if they can "load up" more work on the employee, or extend them additional "opportunities".
Plus, if I have two employees performing roughly the same jobs, and both are completing their duties in half a day......guess what?
I know what you're going to say, but a smart businessman would have 3 solutions for such a scenario already in his head. Solution 1 is to solicit more business(the smart move) by slightly lowering your cost. Solution 2 is to make both employees part time(also smart) there by keeping them on the payroll should business grow. Solution 3 is the stupidist one, and that's to fire one employee and make the other do all the work.
If you can't figure out why solution 3 is the stupidist I'll give a few days to think about it before telling, but I will give you a hint: If you're for sale you'd be a prime target for Berkshire Hathaway.
I have been inside of a lot of different companies, and I never got the sense that management believes that tracking empolyee productivity is old school and not valid. It is quite the contrary. It is a management obsession because they believe that fundamentally no empolyees will pull their share if given the freedom not to. Management welcomes every new tool to micromanage employees.
~snip~
Solution #3 is done all the time. It is probably the most preferred. Typically, there are enough employees to pick up the extra work created by laying off that one empolyee. Basically companies have more work than the existing empolyees can handle. They like to keep it that way so it does not drift into phases where empolyees having nothing to do.
I'm going to reply to this but specifically reference retail sales work, which is mostly commission work as well. I'm going to guess you can remember when you used to be able to walk into a retail store and there was always someone available to assist you if needed. You never had to walk around to look for help or use a "Call" button to request help. Has anyone noticed people stopped making less impulse buys the more retail outlets streamlined their operations by reducing floor staff? Now you can go into a large retailer and find almost no help at all, that's from slashing expenses at the wrong end of the door. Get rid of your excessive middle management layers and keep lots of staff on the floor. Do you have sales/customer service people standing around doing nothing some of the times? Most likely yes, but they're also always available to assist a customer should one want assistance, and we all know how much people complain about a lack of customer service. Look at some of these companies leadership heirarchies, I can guarantee you they could easily cut 33% to 50% of management staff and not notice a difference(other than the huge savings in payroll and ancilliary expenses).
Also, I was just going for some basic solutions to the problem, there's actually a lot more than just 3 options that could be considered, but I didn't want to get into those as it's not really relevant to the issue...not that any of this is really relevant to what the discussion started out on.
Tracking performance and efficiency is better than ever, thanks to advanced metrics. Treating employees like cannon fodder is not just unprincipled and outdated, it's stupid and ultimately less successful and less profitable. Decency skills work.
In the quote above, all three solutions are valid. In a company with say 100 employees, if it is found that one of them is not sufficiently loaded with tasks, I doubt they would ever go out and solicit just enough new business to fill that empolyee's task load. Generally, they solicit new business all the time and adjust their employee count to match the business level.
I doubt they would solve the problem by making the employee part time to match a part time task load. Most employees would quit and look for full time work if they they were forced to change to part time. Although a company might offer that option. A lot of times the work load in a company changes, so going to part time might be offered as a temporary solution.
Convicted One GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Solution 3 is the stupidist one, and that's to fire one employee and make the other do all the work. I'm afraid that you are wrong again. The stupidest option, by orders of magnitude BTW, would be to fail to keep track of your employees time in order to be able to make an informed evaluation of other available options.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Solution 3 is the stupidist one, and that's to fire one employee and make the other do all the work.
I'm afraid that you are wrong again. The stupidest option, by orders of magnitude BTW, would be to fail to keep track of your employees time in order to be able to make an informed evaluation of other available options.
Technically yes, but I was just responding to your prior post and the direction you where going in relation to what you would do with the two employees presuming you had already developed the tools to monitor their time working(and you would have done or you wouldn't know they were getting their work done in 1 hour instead of the whole 8 hour work day).
I always tell my co-workers that you don't have to smoke to come outside with us on our smoke break. Actually we get more problems solved and ideas at the 2 picnic tables we use than if we had stayed at our desks. It's a productive mini meeting. Non smokers get resentful.
Right along the lake on Federal Land not school property. Better still!
Sometimes I chum it up with the students out there but mostly not , I stay away, don't want to be their 'Dad' out there. Besides they need the break to complain about me !
BaltACDToo damn (hot cold wet windy - take your pick) out there and I gave up smoking 35 years ago.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
zugmann BaltACD Always felt I should have been paid more for being at my desk for the full tour of duty as opposed to those that spent 10 minutes every hour outside burning one. Well, why the hell didn't you go out and hold a cigarette?
BaltACD Always felt I should have been paid more for being at my desk for the full tour of duty as opposed to those that spent 10 minutes every hour outside burning one.
Well, why the hell didn't you go out and hold a cigarette?
Too damn (hot cold wet windy - take your pick) out there and I gave up smoking 35 years ago.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDAlways felt I should have been paid more for being at my desk for the full tour of duty as opposed to those that spent 10 minutes every hour outside burning one.
SD70Dude zugmann Euclid zI doubt you will find enthuiasm by companies to allow their employees to work from home. It is an idea for which employees think the time has come. Big surprise that they would welcome staying home instead of driving off to work. Now maybe it can be made to work by applying a lot more of the technolgy that enables people to send data back and forth in the first place. That may very well come to past. People will be comfortably at home with every imaginable technology tracking every move they make. Every day will be an 8-hour time and motion study. There will be charts and graphs to compare employees and their productivty cost right down the the penney. Everything on the clock will be separated with everything off the clock. And then there will be the weekly inspection of your home workplace to make sure you are in compliance. My belief is your thinking is a bit out of date. But time will tell. Even in my old-thinking industry, you don't see the trainmaster sitting in his office smoking cigarettes all day like when I started. They are pretty much out and about, at home, or in their truck anymore. If the RR is embracing it.... You aren't allowed to smoke indoors in the workplace anymore. That must be why they are so eager to stay home.
zugmann Euclid zI doubt you will find enthuiasm by companies to allow their employees to work from home. It is an idea for which employees think the time has come. Big surprise that they would welcome staying home instead of driving off to work. Now maybe it can be made to work by applying a lot more of the technolgy that enables people to send data back and forth in the first place. That may very well come to past. People will be comfortably at home with every imaginable technology tracking every move they make. Every day will be an 8-hour time and motion study. There will be charts and graphs to compare employees and their productivty cost right down the the penney. Everything on the clock will be separated with everything off the clock. And then there will be the weekly inspection of your home workplace to make sure you are in compliance. My belief is your thinking is a bit out of date. But time will tell. Even in my old-thinking industry, you don't see the trainmaster sitting in his office smoking cigarettes all day like when I started. They are pretty much out and about, at home, or in their truck anymore. If the RR is embracing it....
Euclid zI doubt you will find enthuiasm by companies to allow their employees to work from home. It is an idea for which employees think the time has come. Big surprise that they would welcome staying home instead of driving off to work. Now maybe it can be made to work by applying a lot more of the technolgy that enables people to send data back and forth in the first place. That may very well come to past. People will be comfortably at home with every imaginable technology tracking every move they make. Every day will be an 8-hour time and motion study. There will be charts and graphs to compare employees and their productivty cost right down the the penney. Everything on the clock will be separated with everything off the clock. And then there will be the weekly inspection of your home workplace to make sure you are in compliance.
zI doubt you will find enthuiasm by companies to allow their employees to work from home. It is an idea for which employees think the time has come. Big surprise that they would welcome staying home instead of driving off to work. Now maybe it can be made to work by applying a lot more of the technolgy that enables people to send data back and forth in the first place.
That may very well come to past. People will be comfortably at home with every imaginable technology tracking every move they make. Every day will be an 8-hour time and motion study. There will be charts and graphs to compare employees and their productivty cost right down the the penney. Everything on the clock will be separated with everything off the clock. And then there will be the weekly inspection of your home workplace to make sure you are in compliance.
My belief is your thinking is a bit out of date. But time will tell.
Even in my old-thinking industry, you don't see the trainmaster sitting in his office smoking cigarettes all day like when I started. They are pretty much out and about, at home, or in their truck anymore. If the RR is embracing it....
You aren't allowed to smoke indoors in the workplace anymore. That must be why they are so eager to stay home.
Always felt I should have been paid more for being at my desk for the full tour of duty as opposed to those that spent 10 minutes every hour outside burning one.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JRSolution 3 is the stupidist one, and that's to fire one employee and make the other do all the work.
zugmann Euclid It is really part of the green movment to reduce CO2 from commuting. It is part of the New Urbanism political movement that says you must either walk to work, or take transit. Soon it will include a third option: work from home. Or maybe people are starting to figure out it's a waste to commute hours a week jsut so they can sit at a computer. And maybe the companies are starting to figure out that it isn't worth having these multi-million dollar buildings just so people can sit at a computer. Your thinking of "green movement" and the sort is dated.
Euclid It is really part of the green movment to reduce CO2 from commuting. It is part of the New Urbanism political movement that says you must either walk to work, or take transit. Soon it will include a third option: work from home.
Or maybe people are starting to figure out it's a waste to commute hours a week jsut so they can sit at a computer.
And maybe the companies are starting to figure out that it isn't worth having these multi-million dollar buildings just so people can sit at a computer.
Your thinking of "green movement" and the sort is dated.
I doubt you will find enthuiasm by companies to allow their employees to work from home. It is an idea for which employees think the time has come. Big surprise that they would welcome staying home instead of driving off to work. Now maybe it can be made to work by applying a lot more of the technolgy that enables people to send data back and forth in the first place.
SD70Dude cx500 charlie hebdo Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out of them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation. No, it sounds more like Hunter Harrison's approach to the running trades. They are one and the same. Recall Hunter's favourite 'nickname' for Canadian railroaders......
cx500 charlie hebdo Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out of them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation. No, it sounds more like Hunter Harrison's approach to the running trades.
charlie hebdo Euclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out of them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation.
No, it sounds more like Hunter Harrison's approach to the running trades.
They are one and the same.
Recall Hunter's favourite 'nickname' for Canadian railroaders......
Managements have no idea how to supervise jobs that require thought, not action.
charlie hebdoEuclid's notions of management are no unions and crack the whip on workers. Pay as little as possible and squeeze every drop of sweat out of them. Sounds like an overseer on a slave plantation.
EuclidIt is really part of the green movment to reduce CO2 from commuting. It is part of the New Urbanism political movement that says you must either walk to work, or take transit. Soon it will include a third option: work from home.
Balt said:
In dealing with contractors, company wash their hands of any responsibility for anything beyond paying the amount due for services rendered.
In the railroad industry, every effort is made to pay contrctors less that employees get paid.
From the vantage point I have had - the contractors 'hired' were retired former employees that were trading on their skills while dodging the requirement that under RRB rules they can't be EMPLOYED by a railroad. Thus as a contractor they could supplement their RRB and Company pension payments.
No business wants to pay any more than necessary to get the job done. Why should an employer have any responsibility beyond that?
What you describe about how this fits into the railroad industry seems rather unique. As has been mentioned, there are IRS rules to prevent a company from hiring a person as an indpendent contractor to work under the normal condtions of being a direct employee.
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