let me hear your voice tonight (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexseanchai) wrote2015-11-12 08:47 pm
alexseanchai) wrote2015-11-12 08:47 pm
(no subject)
Why the hell is Walmart spinning $2.7 billion of wages increase (if it's even all wages increase) as a bright idea Walmart had? Walmart costs taxpayers $6.2 billion by underpaying their employees! And Walmart is one of the entities feeling a lot of pressure from Fight For $15!
I have seen this same Walmart commercial about the wages at least four times today.
I have seen this same Walmart commercial about the wages at least four times today.
If you're going to lie, lie BIG
The problem WE have as a family is that we cannot afford to shop where our ethics would prefer, and we're STUCK with... Wal Mart, just for SURVIVAL.
So as nice as it would be for people to be HONEST about the weight that company throws around, the fact of the matter is, my shopping there won't change the company's mind one whit. It's not ENOUGH.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Says someone who was shopping at Walmart just yesterday. (I can't find anything resembling the Chinese entrees at Redner's, is part of it, but money is another part of it.)
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
You can do the same thing with Chinese foods. Basic "fried rice" is meant to be made with leftovers, which makes it even more fun. Try a basic recipe and then adjust it as you like, and the stuff in the store will start to feel like a whole lot of hassle to heat up...stale cardboard.
I can't whack down much of the cost to replace towels or a broken casserole, but I am vicious when it comes to making the food budget work!
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
I mostly eat the frozen entrees when I am experiencing, or have over the weekend experienced, a lack of spoons. So yeah, buying spoons still. Only so much I can do about that, I think.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Hot rice, plus "milk" and a little cinnamon/sugar makes a great breakfast. Heats just as fast as nuking water for packaged oatmeal.
A couple of servings of rice, an egg, and some veggies, equals stir fry.
OR, try a meatloaf (if you're not vegetarian/vegan)- BUT separate it into muffin wells and bake about 20mins. Each one is a good serving size, slices well for sandwiches, and they freeze beautifully as "muffins," which keeps them from drying out in the fridge.
EVERY meal you can pop in the freezer saves spoons for LATER. Yell or PM if you want some ideas.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Have not got muffin tin. Yet. But that is easily enough acquired.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Take it easy, find a few things you like and can have OFTEN, and then change them up as your mood suits. You're getting on top of a new set of skills, so give yourself some extra room to ENJOY the good parts of your new life.
Anything I can suggest that might help you wrest more time for YOURSELF is worth it, so PM if you have any questions.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Insufficiently brain-equipped now, but later I will definitely PM with questions. Thanks.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
I shop from Amazon a lot -- disability, can't drive or carry, the internet's amazing -- and I know how they treat their warehouse workers. And I wish I weren't supporting Amazon, but honestly, my boycott of Amazon would mean bupkis, whereas my doing anything I can to help those warehouse workers organize or fight for better conditions or even have access to better jobs would be a more fruitful use of the same stress.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Which is total BS. (In fifty-foot capital letters.)
Frankly, the idea of "corporate personhood" just burns my biscuits. Add the whole concatenation of sidesteps, manipulations, and Oooh, don't forget corporate lobbyists--- We're in a freaking corporate oligarchy with red-white-and-blue-window dressing.
Sigh. I'm sorry, I tend to avoid political topics for this reason. I'm extremely socially liberal, but I cannot find a political/economic framework that doesn't make my brain ITCH.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
And Amazon can follow the demands of its customer base without making people like my sister and her husband (who work at one of the Amazon warehouses) walk ten miles a day to pick people's orders. They make such damn much profit they could double their employees in any given warehouse at any given time, make people walk only five miles a day (which is still upwards of reasonability) and alternate picking runs with paid sit-down breaks (because they have run their employees to death before, I saw the article on one of those deaths) and barely notice the jump in their labor expenses.
Make such a framework? Call it a creative exercise, if nothing else.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
But at the same time, I dread seeing the POLITICAL reactions during an election year...
No easy answer.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
I also obviously have FEELZ about this, and so:
My brother was in the Navy, and I was at first excited when he left to have more time with his kids (even when on shore leave, he still had to spend nights guarding the aircraft carrier and every fourth weekend or something). Plus I was never really a fan of my brother working directly for the military industrial complex and worried for the state of his soul or whatnot.
Then he got a job for Amazon at one of their warehouses as a manager which was pretty brutal (both in terms of what he had to do, the not-climate-controlled-part, and I don't think he ever treated employees that way in the Navy). Later he climbed into corporate in Seattle, and now he works 60+ hours a week, is on call most weekends, is sometimes still *in* Seattle at 9 pm dining clients or teleconferencing overseas or fixing a software bug. His kids are in daycare or school 12 hours a day during the school week (which he and his wife can afford with his Amazon job and her doctoring).
Plus at least with the Navy, any ethical violations could technically be held accountable to Congressional committee or military tribunal or whatnot. I feel this is more likely than Amazon going to court over most of the shit that they do.
Not that I pity my brother -- he has made his choices and has his fancy house and savings accounts for college for his kids -- but holy chickens, batman. The whole NYTimes article about how Amazon treats white collar workers is not something I doubt (nor do I doubt any of the reports I hear about any of their other workers.)
I recently read something about Amazon not selling devices in their store that don't read Kindle ebooks? So no Nooks or whatever. Which in my brain I was all, "Maybe now there will be an anti-Trust suit!" But so far nothing, and even then the fines would be a drop in Amazon's profit bucket.
Also my parents still subscribe to WaPo (Bezos' private propaganda machine!) and their coverage of both Amazon and other corporations is really...like, they throw some *serious* shade in the direction of competitors. I can't remember exact wording but it's things like, "Target, the struggling big-box behemoth, is redesigning their retail stores in big cities in an effort to stay relevant with millenial shoppers." Or "Gamestop announces sale of classic video games as shoppers move online." >.> Or anytime there's something negative with Amazon going on, it's covered deeeep in the A section in a tiny column next to something negative about a competitor. And they also ran a multi-part front page series on the dangers of drones which I think was a push to be all, "Look we need modern drone regulations they could land on your lawn because of hobbyists! Wouldn't it be better if a company like Amazon controlled drones? Why isn't the FCC issuing new regulations already!"
/rant
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
(My sister's career ambition is to get a job with Amazon corporate and move to Seattle environs. This is not implausible; they really like her at that warehouse, and—actually I had better not share her and my brother-in-law's current job problem without their permission, but part of the reason it's taking so long to resolve is they really like her, and that's sure to be part of the solution as well.)
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
they also really liked my brother and he gets a lot of perks! but he has officially been waiting for them to take over the second half of the two jobs he is working for...over five years? Sooooo I don't think that is ever happening because why pay two salaries! He also feels a lot of corporate loyalty because he had a lot of trouble getting a job out of the Navy and yeah. :(
(Amazon's corporate problems: also not something employees can fix by "working somewhere else")
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
THEN click that link!
WONDERFUL! (Thanks.)
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
And the whole "save the world through retail" thing is, much as I try to do it myself, a smokescreen designed to obscure that capitalism is part of the problem we need to save the world from!
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
I went to the J Jill sale the other day (because their clothes last *forever* and are comfortable and easy to care for and look way more professional than a lot of "made for larger people professional" clothes) and managed to get a dress that was originally $90 for $28, which still fits in my category of "expensive clothes" but I needed a dress and also IT HAS POCKETS. But they apparently don't regularly stock XL clothes in the store, only online. It was just there because someone had returned it. They don't regularly stock XL clothes in the store. Is that because having larger people in their store will scare away all the thin people by ruining their image? What is that even?
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Why?
Every guy working there is lean and bufffed, while every girl in there is at MOST a size four.
Yet they claim to be for all kinds of sports fans, and carry the few items I want to add to our home weight collection. The closest to "buff" in our family is the youngest, who was immediately pressured by the salesperson to look at their new "whey protein supplements," just a few feet inside the door.
He told the clerk he's allergic to milk. "But this is WHEY, not milk!" The clerk kept insisting that he had "just the thing' for kiddo to 'bulk up faster.'
The management doesn't see anything wrong at ALL with their 'training.'
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Ugh.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
We don't shop there, even if it's the only place in town with item X. I'd rather do without FOREVER than support that kind of crap.
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
Re: If you're going to lie, lie BIG
with their hiring practices it sounds like they are setting themselves up for an Abercrombie-esque type lawsuit, though someone would have to be able to "prove" discrimination.
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No, wait. FIGHT FOR $15 STRIKERS SMASH.
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YES SMASH
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I do have some hope that at least some politicians (Sanders) are able to talk about class and business and unions with public support. And even suggest that capitalism isn't the bees' knees!
Cynical me says Sanders can only get away with it because he's an old white cis het dude.
*sigh*
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Yeah, I imagine that's so. Maybe once Sanders gets elected (please gods, because he's the best candidate standing—problems with racism notwithstanding, because sad to say he's better than all the other candidates on that count too), we'll make some progress, and then we'll elect a woman of color who'll get more progress made.
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Yeah, that makes an aggravating sort of sense.