It's not always that easy. It's difficult to find competent employees when you pay that kind of wages that retail-chains do. They tend to end up with a lot of people whose English is non-existent, morons, and the seriously disabled (and those are NOT mutually exclusive categories).
Now I have a lot of sympathy for all three groups -- learning English is difficult, particularly for those who immigrated as adults. Being stupid is generally not something that can be easily corrected. And having a disability is certainly beyond a person's ability to control.
Nevertheless, these people make horrendous employees. They drive customers away. Their deficiencies simply can not be trained away, and no amount of good treatment or excellent management can turn them into the kind of competent, useful worker that these stores really need. Yet they make up a remarkable percentage of the people who work in the service industry. It really doesn't take much to get a better job in, like, a warehouse or an office or something. There's always construction, reception, administrative assistance, and so on. With just passable English and enough intelligence to read an entire newspaper, adults can typically do better than minimum wage in a place like Circuit City.
Hey, speak for yourself. Some of us despise leaders. I send hatemail to the guy I voted into office in the last election. You can't call yourself a patriot unless you despise the people at the top.
It's possible... but it's rare enough to discount. Mom & Pop stores live and die by their word-of-mouth reputation and their regular customers, so if they have an asshole employee, they don't last long. You don't have to drive off many of your regulars to tank a small business. That's precisely why the mom & pops DO have such good reputations -- bad ones disappear so fast that they barely get noticed at all.
It's like how you almost never see wild birds with broken wings. Sure, birds break their wings -- but then they're dead and gone so fast that people rarely see it. As a result, most wild birds are relatively healthy.
Hire the right sales people, and they can turn the company around with astounding jumps in sales. Without these people, management can do absolutely nothing but what they are doing now - sucking the company dry as it sinks.
That's crazytalk. Crazy I tell you!
People really don't mind trying to buy a $5000 television set from someone who doesn't speak enough English to know what phrases like "picture quality" mean. When they go to whip out their credit card to buy that new inkjet, they truly do confident when the girl at the cash register is so disaffected that she doesn't even bother to look at the card before swiping it, let alone check the signature, or even verify that you signed the receipt at all.
All this talk about retaining the useful employees... just the mad babbling of lunatics.
Indeed. Nacturation has obviously never worked in the service industry. Either that, or he's a fucking moron. Minimum wage is pretty much the norm for these jobs, with maybe a tiny commission on the side.
You've never actually worked in the service industry have you? It's easy and cheap to hire shitty salespeople -- the kind that make customers think "I'm am NEVER coming back here". The kind that don't speak English. The kind that don't bathe real often. The kind that don't comprehend how to properly utilize the technology of the "belt", so as to prevent the display of asscrack. The kind that steal shit.
In the service industry, a competent employee is a gem, a thing of wonder and beauty to be treasured. Although they certainly are as cheap as the shitty ones, they are extraordinarily difficult to hire because they're so rare. Companies that are well-run identify those competent employees and hang on to them, work aggressively to retain them, because they make a HUGE difference in the bottom line. Failing companies routinely purge the competent employees, because they're often somewhat better paid or get more benefits -- because someone had the good goddam sense to try and retain them.
When I say competent, I'm not referring to some kind of genius wunderemployees here. I'm just talking about people who can be trained to do the job properly, who don't leave the customer/client with a bad taste in their mouth. They truly are rare.
There's something wrong with the fact that someone who has lost the company $2.24 billion dollars can't be fired on the spot. Frankly, there's something wrong with the fact that someone who has lost the company $2.24 billion dollars can't be taken out behind the warehouse and promptly dispatched.
It's ridiculous that's it's so hard to fire people.
If you fail you'll most likely not have another chance
Yes, but you fail with enough money that you could immediately retire and STILL live out the rest of your life in wealth and luxury. Hell, even one million dollars is enough -- properly invested -- to live out the rest of your life wealthier than 60% or 70% of all Americans.
How, exactly, have CEOs convinced moronic jackasses that they're soooo hard done by when they get their multimillion dollar golden parachutes?
Wait, rewarding employees for doing a good job is a bad thing?! God damn, I am SO glad I don't work for a corporation.
I suppose there are advantages to owning stock in a company that has unmotivated employees and consistently fails to retain anyone who works hard and gets shit done... I'm just not sure what they are.
The irony is that Canada is NOT a Nuclear power... strictly speaking, that is.
But think about it -- if one plant can supply that much of the world's supply, why would there be a whole bunch of them? I mean, a bit of redundant capacity would be nice at a time like this, but it's not like every nation should be able to produce it's own Mo-99 when one or two free-trade-inclined nations can make enough for everyone.
Nicely stated. This may very well be the most cogent spiel I've read about nuclear power all year. Fact-based, considered, and with just enough crankiness to make it hilarious. You get a cookie*.
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Of course eugenics is inherently bad. Its goal is to "improve" people -- and without their permission, since you're doing it before they're even born. It applies your standards of what constitutes "improvement".
we could increase tendencies to be smart, scientific, responsible, just, good-natured, conscientious
Scientific? Tell that to the Amish, or to Fundamentalist Christians. They may not WANT their children to grow up to be skeptical and ultra-rational.
Good-natured? Not everyone thinks that being polite and demure and smiling like an idiot ALL the time is necessarily a good thing. Some people happen to think that there's nothing wrong with some adversarial tendencies. Some of the best people I know are downright surly. Since when do YOU get to decide that they are genetically "bad"?
It is inherently wrong to try to control the fundamental instincts and behavioral tendencies of other people without their consent. You might as well say that it's a good idea to put psychoactive drugs in the water supply.
Now, if you want to offer me a pill or some gene-therapy or something that I can take which will make me smarter and more good-natured, sign me the fuck up, because that sounds great. But if you want to decide for me? You'll find out just how useful my adversarial, belligerent side can be.
EM waves aren't emitted from the tips of an antenna, they're emitted from the body of it -- why do you think that homes with aerials don't keep the "main body" of the antennae below the roof (in the attic, presumably), rather than above it?
Most of the antenna -- 5 to 7 feet long -- would need to be exposed. I'm guessing you didn't actually check out the pictures in the article.
Well, given that the device is described as a 200 pound unit affixed to the roof of a car... I suspect that the cops will be able to locate the criminal and his vehicle without the need for close pursuit of any kind. It's hard to hide when your vehicle is pimped out like Ecto-1.
Heh, that may be the most insightful comment in this entire discussion.
I've had so many arguments with people about politics, all because they simply couldn't fathom the simple fact that most top-level politicians are NOT idealists; they just want to make themselves and their cronies wealthy. Looked at from that perspective, almost every single thing that the Republicans and Democrats (and Tories and Whigs and Liberals and Progressive Conservatives and NDP and so on) have done over the years, no matter how apparently stupid it was, makes perfect sense.
I remember reading about how the entire concept of "recycling" started with aluminum -- because the difference between refining new aluminum from bauxite and reprocessing existing aluminum is so incredibly great. Even iron is recycled to an extraordinary degree. And they say that 99% of all the gold that has ever been mined is still in use. There are even a few companies that believe that they can profitably recover platinum from the dust on America's highways left behind by catalytic converters!
Is it any surprise that silicon, being so expensive to purify, would ultimately start to see at least some measure of waste recovery?
Indeed, the bank will always be a factor, even for little things. Like, I used my bank's ATM to withdraw $20... and got just a five dollar bill. A quick call, and they had credited my account within the hour.
Granted, that's just $15 -- but given that I just had a cheap-ass student account, it's kind of amazing that they even cared enough to bother. Most bank's don't give a flying shit about anyone other than their business clients and homeowners with mortgages, so it's cool that they took the time (particularly since they had absolutely no way of verifying whether or not I actually got ripped off by the ATM or not).
There is a WORLD of difference between Amex and the "others". American Express is a million times better than VISA and Mastercard. They actually take security seriously, and they make at least token efforts to help their clients.
I'd never accuse Amex of being awesome or benevolent or anything... but every single credit card incident I've ever heard of that didn't end in tears turned out to involve Amex. I've even heard a few customers rave about how well American Express treated them compared to the other companies they had dealt with.
Jargon is certainly a special case... but then again, jargon has a tendency to be one of the more notable mechanisms by which languages change. Jargon by its very nature gets used intensely by those who need it, so it would probably regularize faster. And as the metaphors captured by that jargon spread, so does the jargon.
Lots of tech jargon has become just a normal part of English (not to mention all of the other languages that don't have governments deliberately managing them). EVERYONE knows what you mean when you say upload, and they have a pretty clear idea what you're talking about when you say bandwidth. They've been already been extensively adapted to non-technical domains.
One of my history professors had apparently done some very interesting research into how language has changed due to the rise of science -- and made the point that, although western languages haven't actually changed much since then, the metaphors and concepts used in those languages have changed so much that it would be nearly impossible to carry on a conversation with people from Copernicus's time. The underlying concepts and ways of looking at the world would be too different. The changes in how verbs are conjugated, and other seemingly trivial changes, are very much related to that. They all affect the metaphors that we can use effectively, which is a critical aspect of how Humans reason and understand the world.
I shudder to think what someone from 50 years ago would have imagined if they heard the phrase "Internet domain squatting". It sounds like some kind of hobby for fecephiliac landowners.
Strictly speaking, there aren't any gases in space. It's all ionized -- the universe is mostly plasma.
As for density, the article is about a star-forming region, where densities are much higher. That's the whole point; gravitation is bringing all this matter together into a big cloud, and densities are becoming high enough that molecules -- especially ultra-stable ones like water -- can form.
What do you care? No one is forcing you to fly in a private spacecraft. If other, more adventurous souls are willing to try their luck, what's it to you? Or are you of the mindset that any activity too risky for YOU is worth banning outright?
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Now I have a lot of sympathy for all three groups -- learning English is difficult, particularly for those who immigrated as adults. Being stupid is generally not something that can be easily corrected. And having a disability is certainly beyond a person's ability to control.
Nevertheless, these people make horrendous employees. They drive customers away. Their deficiencies simply can not be trained away, and no amount of good treatment or excellent management can turn them into the kind of competent, useful worker that these stores really need. Yet they make up a remarkable percentage of the people who work in the service industry. It really doesn't take much to get a better job in, like, a warehouse or an office or something. There's always construction, reception, administrative assistance, and so on. With just passable English and enough intelligence to read an entire newspaper, adults can typically do better than minimum wage in a place like Circuit City.
Hey, speak for yourself. Some of us despise leaders. I send hatemail to the guy I voted into office in the last election. You can't call yourself a patriot unless you despise the people at the top.
It's like how you almost never see wild birds with broken wings. Sure, birds break their wings -- but then they're dead and gone so fast that people rarely see it. As a result, most wild birds are relatively healthy.
People really don't mind trying to buy a $5000 television set from someone who doesn't speak enough English to know what phrases like "picture quality" mean. When they go to whip out their credit card to buy that new inkjet, they truly do confident when the girl at the cash register is so disaffected that she doesn't even bother to look at the card before swiping it, let alone check the signature, or even verify that you signed the receipt at all.
All this talk about retaining the useful employees... just the mad babbling of lunatics.
Indeed. Nacturation has obviously never worked in the service industry. Either that, or he's a fucking moron. Minimum wage is pretty much the norm for these jobs, with maybe a tiny commission on the side.
In the service industry, a competent employee is a gem, a thing of wonder and beauty to be treasured. Although they certainly are as cheap as the shitty ones, they are extraordinarily difficult to hire because they're so rare. Companies that are well-run identify those competent employees and hang on to them, work aggressively to retain them, because they make a HUGE difference in the bottom line. Failing companies routinely purge the competent employees, because they're often somewhat better paid or get more benefits -- because someone had the good goddam sense to try and retain them.
When I say competent, I'm not referring to some kind of genius wunderemployees here. I'm just talking about people who can be trained to do the job properly, who don't leave the customer/client with a bad taste in their mouth. They truly are rare.
It's ridiculous that's it's so hard to fire people.
How, exactly, have CEOs convinced moronic jackasses that they're soooo hard done by when they get their multimillion dollar golden parachutes?
I suppose there are advantages to owning stock in a company that has unmotivated employees and consistently fails to retain anyone who works hard and gets shit done... I'm just not sure what they are.
But think about it -- if one plant can supply that much of the world's supply, why would there be a whole bunch of them? I mean, a bit of redundant capacity would be nice at a time like this, but it's not like every nation should be able to produce it's own Mo-99 when one or two free-trade-inclined nations can make enough for everyone.
* This post should not be in any way construed as a legally binding cookie-delivery contract. But in the event that a cookie finds its way into your possession, we reserve the right to take credit for it even if you purchased the aforementioned cookie yourself.
- Scientific? Tell that to the Amish, or to Fundamentalist Christians. They may not WANT their children to grow up to be skeptical and ultra-rational.
- Good-natured? Not everyone thinks that being polite and demure and smiling like an idiot ALL the time is necessarily a good thing. Some people happen to think that there's nothing wrong with some adversarial tendencies. Some of the best people I know are downright surly. Since when do YOU get to decide that they are genetically "bad"?
It is inherently wrong to try to control the fundamental instincts and behavioral tendencies of other people without their consent. You might as well say that it's a good idea to put psychoactive drugs in the water supply.Now, if you want to offer me a pill or some gene-therapy or something that I can take which will make me smarter and more good-natured, sign me the fuck up, because that sounds great. But if you want to decide for me? You'll find out just how useful my adversarial, belligerent side can be.
Most of the antenna -- 5 to 7 feet long -- would need to be exposed. I'm guessing you didn't actually check out the pictures in the article.
Tucked in the trunk? Surrounded by METAL?! These are microwaves that we're talking about. It MUST be out in the open in order to function.
Well, given that the device is described as a 200 pound unit affixed to the roof of a car ... I suspect that the cops will be able to locate the criminal and his vehicle without the need for close pursuit of any kind. It's hard to hide when your vehicle is pimped out like Ecto-1.
Makes you wonder how many airplane crashes were caused by the introduction of proteinaceous solutions into the control systems?
I've had so many arguments with people about politics, all because they simply couldn't fathom the simple fact that most top-level politicians are NOT idealists; they just want to make themselves and their cronies wealthy. Looked at from that perspective, almost every single thing that the Republicans and Democrats (and Tories and Whigs and Liberals and Progressive Conservatives and NDP and so on) have done over the years, no matter how apparently stupid it was, makes perfect sense.
You don't have kids, do you? Healthy kids go to the hospital all the time. Check-ups, immunizations, bruises and scrapes, etc.
Is it any surprise that silicon, being so expensive to purify, would ultimately start to see at least some measure of waste recovery?
Granted, that's just $15 -- but given that I just had a cheap-ass student account, it's kind of amazing that they even cared enough to bother. Most bank's don't give a flying shit about anyone other than their business clients and homeowners with mortgages, so it's cool that they took the time (particularly since they had absolutely no way of verifying whether or not I actually got ripped off by the ATM or not).
I'd never accuse Amex of being awesome or benevolent or anything... but every single credit card incident I've ever heard of that didn't end in tears turned out to involve Amex. I've even heard a few customers rave about how well American Express treated them compared to the other companies they had dealt with.
Lots of tech jargon has become just a normal part of English (not to mention all of the other languages that don't have governments deliberately managing them). EVERYONE knows what you mean when you say upload, and they have a pretty clear idea what you're talking about when you say bandwidth. They've been already been extensively adapted to non-technical domains.
One of my history professors had apparently done some very interesting research into how language has changed due to the rise of science -- and made the point that, although western languages haven't actually changed much since then, the metaphors and concepts used in those languages have changed so much that it would be nearly impossible to carry on a conversation with people from Copernicus's time. The underlying concepts and ways of looking at the world would be too different. The changes in how verbs are conjugated, and other seemingly trivial changes, are very much related to that. They all affect the metaphors that we can use effectively, which is a critical aspect of how Humans reason and understand the world.
I shudder to think what someone from 50 years ago would have imagined if they heard the phrase "Internet domain squatting". It sounds like some kind of hobby for fecephiliac landowners.
As for density, the article is about a star-forming region, where densities are much higher. That's the whole point; gravitation is bringing all this matter together into a big cloud, and densities are becoming high enough that molecules -- especially ultra-stable ones like water -- can form.
What do you care? No one is forcing you to fly in a private spacecraft. If other, more adventurous souls are willing to try their luck, what's it to you? Or are you of the mindset that any activity too risky for YOU is worth banning outright?