By the time I look up, the cashier has looked away. She is looking out over the floor of the place, scanning for problems: a spill, for example, or a customer who isn’t a regular and can’t find what they want.
Now I’m waiting, and sometimes my wait is longer than the delay I caused. But the cashier is just doing her job. The troubleshooting is built into her role. I know this with relative certainly for two reasons:
– A table near the cash registers functions as a management station, and no cashier has ever been criticized for not being at their post.
– I worked in retail seven years ago, as a seasonal Christmas hire at a large bookstore chain that I am tempted to name out of lingering loyalty and gratitude for a job I really needed at the time, but I am declining to name it because … well, I don’t want to get sued.
Seasonal hires, at this store at least, served a specific purpose: keeping the lines short at the cash registers. So everybody is a cashier, that’s the first thing you’re taught. I volunteered to work in the music section, a mistake because it’s a boring section when it’s inside a bookstore, but part of my job was “flipping” (I think that was the term). You flip through stacks of CDs. You’re looking for stuff that’s in the wrong place, or an extra security tag, because the extra tag means another CD is missing its tag, and therefore was stolen.
Another role is checking the floor for messy piles of books or misfiled books. That sort of thing spikes up considerably during Christmas shopping season, and hence the need for the additional staff. I liked this job, despite its mediocre pay: $7.50 an hour. The manager said something about seeing if she could keep me after the season, and I would have definitely considered staying on, but it never became an option; the season ended (January 2, if memory serves), and the seasonals ended. Thanks for playing.
So back to that cashier and my coffee. The coffee costs almost two bucks. Let’s say she makes 12 bucks an hour — which is probably overly generous, I really doubt she makes that much. Six cups of coffee, one every 10 minutes, would cover her salary. I need hardly note that they go past her way faster than that during morning rush, and coffee is not the only item the place sells. (Obviously there are other staff, including the guy who makes the coffee and restocks the self-service shelf.)
Yet, despite the comfortable profit margin that implies, other functions are built into her role. Cashiering alone does not justify her having a job.
I’ve noticed this at my local grocer, which I also decline to name, but it’s a fairly large local chain. In 2008 I saw Jim McGovern speak at a Democratic breakfast, and he said he had calculated that his personal grocery bill for his family had increased 30% since 2007. He compared the same basic list of items for the family (milk, bread, etc.), and he had spent 30% more.
At my local store, there are about 12 cash registers. They are never full. At the absolute busiest time, which in my experience at this store is Sunday, maybe eight of them are open. Maybe three of them have someone available to bag groceries. I don’t mind bagging my own groceries, in principle, but I’m pretty bad at it, and I can’t possibly keep up with the cashier doing the scanning. So to avoid creating that delay, I pick a line, even a longer line, to make sure I get someone to bag the groceries. But sometimes the baggers float, so I end up not getting one.
And what’s the latest thing at the grocery stores? Self-service scanners. I refuse to use them. Not until they make me. It’s my little (futile) protest against potential staff cuts.
Another store near my office is a large (really large) drugstore. It might be the only one I’ve ever seen of this chain with two floors. I tend to think of it as another food source because that’s how I tend to use it. I don’t do much convenience shopping there, and there are better options for some junk food, but the office has some community candy sources (especially right now), and I try to avoid them, but the flesh is weak, so when I feel the need to chip in, this store has the best options for that.
You should see this place at lunch. Incredible lines. Just packed. One thing they do that We the People never liked is that they try to have one line instead of several. But because the registers were behind a counter, there weren’t natural lines, and there was a snaking column of people. The system lent itself to abuse by impatient people, which we have in abundance in our fair city.
To recap: massive store, always busy.
Well, they just replaced nearly every cashier with scanners.
How long before my friends selling me my coffee and patiently waiting for me to fumble for my cash are replaced by scanners?
Jobs are disappearing. Not manufacturing jobs, not green jobs, not high-tech jobs — though more on those in a minute — but crappy jobs that you don’t want are disappearing, despite the obvious presence of heavy demand for the items.
Just after Election Day, I began reading The Rascal King, Jack Beatty’s biography of James Michael Curley. I had spotted it at the library about 10 days before the election, and read a bit and got interested, but deliberately passed. Not right now, I thought, I can’t get more cynical before Election Day. I have some GOTV to do. When I did take it out, I didn’t expect to learn anything important. I just wanted to have some laughs at the old crook’s expense.
But I am learning things. What’s interesting about The Rascal King is that it captures a rare moment when the tide of history was turning. Historical novels always employ this as a cheap trick. The Alienist does it ad nauseam. There are two guys who keep saying things like, “There a technique we could try, it’s largely untested, but it’s called … fingerprinting.” Oh shut up.
But The Rascal King is actual history, and Beatty takes pains in the early part of the book to provide context for Curley. The dominant party in Boston in the 1850s was the Know-Nothings, who later became the modern Republican Party. They weren’t all bad — they were abolitionists, for one thing. Boston Irish Catholic Democrats openly scorned abolitionists, and they were mocked in The Pilot (yes, The Pilot, same newspaper). The two groups came together, sort of, during the Civil War, but according to Beatty the animating issue for the Irish Democrats was not slavery. It was secession. They rallied to protect their new homeland — no potato famine here.
The Know-Nothings, in Boston anyway, were bigoted against Irish immigrants. In the name of reform, they did things like raid convents to prevent the terrible things allegedly going on there. (Who knows, maybe they were even right once or twice, but you can imagine the effect on Irish Catholics.) So when Curley later said, “I won’t be styled a reformer,” he was echoing this cultural memory — according to Beatty anyway, and I find his case quite convincing.
Curley and two cronies, banished by a rival from the dominant Irish faction, formed a club called the Tammany Club. The name was deliberately chosen, because Tammany Hall was already scandalous. But Curley said they wanted to emphasize “the good side of Tammany” — getting people jobs.
So then this tidbit gets dropped —
We got 50 men jobs in New Hampshire.
Whoa.
My grandfather worked in New Hampshire in the 1930s, at a paper mill.
Fifty men is quite a few. Google the stats on small businesses in this country, and notice how many business have fewer than 50 employees. Notice how many have fewer than 25.
Then bear in mind that women at the time, largely, didn’t work outside the home. Fifty men with jobs is 50 families being fed.
I don’t believe that Curley or anyone who worked for him got my grandfather that job. But did that sort of thing, happening in various areas and reflecting the increasing influence of Irish politicians, make it easier for my grandfather, living in Medford, Massachusetts with his si
x children, to get a job? I can only speculate. But when I told my mother that I was reading The Rascal King, she said her parents thought Curley was great.
In politics, we call that sort of thing loyalty.
And by the way, at one point during my grandfather’s employment at the paper mill, he would mail home his check, and my grandmother would bring the check — the entire check — to the grocery store to pay down the tab. I don’t know how long that went on, but it happened more than once.
We’re getting back to my cashier friends, but first I want to tell you another story about loyalty.
In 1989 or so I had a temp job at an investment firm. I was an administrative assistant — a highly unqualified one, I might add. So one day I was sitting there, nothing to do, playing with this funky and primitive little program called PowerPoint. And then my ears perked up, because I heard someone say:
IBM is dead in the water.
What? IBM? That’s the company that makes my Selectric typewriter!
Of course I never questioned the wisdom of my learned peers. For years I waited for IBM to die. Almighty Microsoft would take them down.
Still waiting. Still really don’t know why they’re still around.
Oh wait, yes I do … their stuff works. But lots of stuff works. Why did they survive when so many others failed?
Years later I heard a clue. I worked in a technology firm, and learned a little saying, a maxim if you will, that IT managers have (and it may be dated, but they said it in the late 1990s).
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
More loyalty.
It hardly needs to be said the Curley model (I’ll get you a job, and you remember me on Election Day) won’t work today, and certainly won’t work nationally.
But it’s probably time for us to think about what will work, and bear in mind that our decisions will be judged by that aforementioned tide of history.
Put another way, what are you going to do, Mr. Politician, for my friends the cashiers? Curley got the scrubwomen off the knees — because his mother was a scrubwoman, and he’d seen her bruised knees. What that meant, in practical terms, was that he got them mops. They no longer had to scrub floors on their knees.
One more story — no, two.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but when I realized we were Democrats, I asked someone in my family what the difference between Democrats and Republicans is.
Republicans are the party of the rich, and Democrats are the party of everybody else.
OK then. I know which one I am.
But one thing we have to remember is that, in global terms, we are rich. I can afford a cup of coffee that costs almost two bucks. (My mother would say I can’t afford it, because I could make it at home. Well I do that too … but I digress.)
Jobs are being lost to India. Take a look at India’s per capita income sometime, or China’s. At some point people began to say the US is a service economy. OK fine, but jobs are vanishing in the service industry too.
If I were advising a Boston politician right now, I would give them one very distinct piece of advice:
Crack down on underground restaurants.
I get the appeal of an underground restaurant. It’s a chance to eat a very good meal you can’t afford for a price you can almost afford. Chances are some of the underground chefs will go legit someday, and you can say you were there, man. I’ll bet you can get a nice glass of wine for a really tiny markup too. Tempting, very tempting. I got asked to like a Facebook page dedicated to underground restaurants.
Um, no thanks, I don’t support white collar crime.
That’s what it is — the moral equivalent of kids selling OxyContin outside a drugstore.
No business is subject to greater government scrutiny than a restaurant. A town can shut it down; all kinds of state boards have input; and once I was having a drink with a guy who works for the IRS, and he mentioned, just casually, no threat implied, by way of explaining what he does, “I could shut this place down.”
And all that is just food and finances. It doesn’t begin to consider the liquor license, which is the absolute key to survival for many restaurants. The money Dianne Wilkerson got — what was it for again? And what was the margin in her final race, the one where there was no doubt that she had broken the law?
Crack down. And don’t do it for Lydia Shire and Todd English — do it for the waitresses, waiters, and dishwashers. To my untrained eye, the Boston restaurant scene seems pretty healthy — a few chains, but a number of independent, good places to eat. Why should we allow unfair competition? Anyone who’s worked at a small business knows that the anxieties of the owner will be transferred to the staff. These anxieties will affect hiring and the life of the business. These are people’s jobs — people working hard and playing by the rules. This is the economy (stupid).
Furthermore, there are actual residents of Boston. I can picture some difficult to rent space becoming home to these things. When Boston had a rave scene, the ravers knew where to go. But that’s just noise, which ends — restaurants bring restaurant problems. The underground ones won’t be inspected. There will be problems — yes, I’m talking about vermin. The residents will be left to deal with them.
Make some friends! Show some moral consistency. It’s not your job to be cool, it’s your job to enforce the law. Enforce it — now, before this gets out of hand.
And then let’s talk about what you’re doing for my friends the cashiers, and especially the woman who isn’t a cashier, who cleans the tables (which the customers are supposed to clean, but a lot of people blow it off). She says hi to me every day, and every day we have the following conversation.
“Good morning, how are you?”
“I’m good, how are you?”
“Good, and you?”
Her English might need a bit of work. But you’ll notice that I didn’t attribute the dialogue. Sometimes I’m the one who says “Good, and you?” because I’m doing my own multitasking.
And by the way, I’m loyal to this place for a specific reason. They have the best coffee.
Just remember, Republicans are the party of the rich.
Democrats are the party of everybody else.
Everybody else.
I won’t get a fast lane transponder, I won’t use the scanners in supermarkets. It’s a small protest but I do it too. These are jobs. Jobs that may provide the money for college, or make the difference for a senior citizen trying to pay for meds. No person trying to work and no job is unworthy of support.
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p>Thanks for this post Jim
What is an underground restaurant? Do they not pay taxes, pay minimum wage, or get inspected by the Board of Health? Presumably these places want business so they can’t be literally hidden from view.
They are basically dinner parties, but hosted by professional or semi-professional chefs in a non-business location, like someone’s apartment. The Globe did a piece on them a few months back. The thrust of the article was Wow, how cool is this.
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p>It’s a pretty clever idea and a clear reaction to the tough economy.
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p>But it’s also really unfair to the actual restaurants.
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What would be wrong with my hosting a dinner party at my house with friends I invite and prepared by a chef I hire or possibly a friend who is a chef? Even if it’s an open invite it seems I should be able to do what I want in my own home in this regard. Or on the other hand if I am the chef it seems I should be able to invite people to my place on my own time.
Tax-free money, in an unregulated environment.
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p>In the example I saw, the host didn’t hire the chef. Every guest paid.
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p>Here’s a workable analogy: If you have a car, you can give your friends rides. They can even chip in for gas. But if you start giving strangers rides, and charging them, now you’re a cab (and treading on the turf of a regulated, licensed business). The government that issues the cab’s medallion is obligated to make you stop.
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p>
There’s definitely a part of me that says I should be able to do what I want with my own car. This is part of why I’m sympathetic to sales tax. You don’t have to worry about how the money changes hands or if I’m charging for rides in my own car on the side. It seems like these parties are more analogous to a private club that doesn’t have to follow all the same rules as public restaurants.
A crackdown like you suggest was used against the black community in Alabama who basically did this as an alternative to the buses they were boycotting after the Rosa Parks incident.
I find that point somewhat off-topic.
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p>Of course laws have been abused, at various times, but most food safety laws are benevolent and necessary. The long arm of the law, which already leans on restaurants in many ways, ought to protect them too. That’s my point.
JUst not sure how far I would go with regards to what sounds like a private function at a private residence.
…that the safety of the food itself was checked at the point of manufacture rather than final distribution.
But then there’s food prep, the cleanliness of the establishment, and other things the local Board of Health looks at. Proper trash disposal … I don’t know all the issues. But it’s a burden we place on businesses for the privilege of doing business. Underground restaurants skirt this burden.
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p>And — I speculate — wine is (probably) served. I could be wrong. But if I’m right, that’s a major no-no, and the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission would be interested. Very interested. At minimum, someone should check.
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JC – underground restaurants skirt a LOT of laws.
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p>Nobody’s going to be poisoned in one – it’s the myriad of other laws. You picked up on wine – but how about the dining room chairs being illegal? In a for profit establishment, you must use Boston Fire Code foam and fabrics, and each restaurant has to have a sample from the bolt being used tested in a special burn test in a law passed after Coconut Grove – and that’s all public places, even church kneelers. Which is why unpadded plastic seats are so common.
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p>Liabiltiy, worker’s comp., minimum wage, staff smoking regs, bartending education requeirements, mandatory stove inspections, mandatory range hood requirements – FEES for all these requirements and inspections – no, the food is just the tip of the iceberg.
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p>FULL DISCLOSURE – I used to insure several restaurants. Until many/most were driven out of business.
in all places, throughout history. Frankly, I don’t believe it’s the regulations and fees which do it; it’s the fickle nature of culture and trend and fashion and flavor.
all those places had wildly different levels of government regulation, taxation, etc. All areas had tremendous turnover of restaurants.
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p>Acknowledging that running a successful restaurant has a number of tremendous challenges which can’t be controlled by the proprietor is not blaming the victim. It’s being part of a reality based community.
There is also a move afoot to allow for more “Lunch” trucks. You know those trucks that park on the street and serve a variety of different types of food. Don’t get me wrong, the food can be very good, but they destroy brick and mortar restaurants. How? They don’t have the same expense base that the restaurant has, the rent, utilities, staff, real estate taxes and all the other stuff that goes along with have a restaurant. Trucks have some of these costs, but in vastly lower amounts.
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p>If we keep on the current path we will have the storefront restaurants going out of business to be replaced by trucks. Then we will all bemoan the loss of these restaurants and our empty storefronts. Don’t take my word on it, ask someone who owns a pizza place (and not Upper Crust who uses illegal labor to cheat them out of a fair wage) and they will admit that they could make more money operating out of a truck.
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p>I would also like to acknowledge your comment on working in a bookstore. They are great places that are also being put out of business by us. Instead of going to a local bookstore we use Amazon. Why? Its cheaper with no sales tax (never mind that there should be a use tax paid as part of your annual state tax return) and you don’t have to leave your house, they deliver to you (never mind the carbon emissions from the production of the cardboard boxes, and driving and flying your untaxed book(s) around).
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p>Its time we all worked to return to a local economy be it banks, restaurants or bookstores. It is these businesses that make a community, offer people jobs and support various local charities. All things that illegal, unethical or out-of-state companies do not do.
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p>Thanks for your post it was good reading.
You might want to reconsider revising your specific reference to that specific establishment that you mention, unless you’re prepared to back it up to the satisfaction of David, Bob, Charley, and your legal team. Just saying.
that ConsEph is referring to this story. And I assume that he/she meant to insert “allegedly” before the word “uses.”
Yes, allegedly on the use of workers from Brazil. However, they did settle for $300,000 or so a case of underpayment of rightfully earned overtime. This is mentioned within the same story to which David refers.
The DOL fined the company and numerous employees were deported. The DOL went so far as to try and track down deported workers who were owed back pay. The only edit should have been “used” and allegedly still uses.
… and editor, David.
They’re good for a quick bite, but a restaurant is very different and my preference.
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p>While backup would be helpful I think you’re OK with your Upper Crust reference because libel requires that you know the statement to be false and malicious. Plus you are not using your name.
Um, just for the record, that’s for sure not a defense!
…as stacking the odds against being targeted.
if we’re talking “dining”, then no. If we’re talking a sandwich shop or burrito joint, then yes.
I work in Back Bay, with a disappointing number of affordable and diverse lunch food options. I often wish for the presence of a few lunch truck routes to pass near my office for the good of digestive diversity.
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p>They are a thriving food economy in California. L.A. county just passed laws to make them conform to the same letter-grade health code laws that restaurants must adhere to.
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p>I certainly don’t want the competition to shut down all of the local store-front lunch places, but some diversity would be good.
There is no way that any number of lunch trucks could possibly impact real restaurants to a meaningful extent when compared to the existence of thousands of fast food chains. More choices, more opportunities for small entrepreneurs to provide food that people want to eat at a price they want to pay is a good thing. If they are skirting the rules that is a bad thing. If they are reducing staff that is not a good thing but I would much rather see a small lunch truck ,especially one that offered interesting well prepared ethnic dishes for instance, than another brick and mortar “quick serve” restaurant.
I don’t mean to say it is ok for them to bypass tax and food-safety laws, and so on, but I would really be surprised to find that there is enough of these underground restaurants out there to put a noticeable dent in the real restaurant business.
But I believe in preventive medicine. We know some exist, and we know they’re breaking the law. We know because they told us.
Just last summer a number of cities and towns took advantage of changes in state law to charge local option meals taxes to help fill some of the holes in their budgets left by the severe economic downturn. These “restaurants”, allegedly avoid, among other things:
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p>- meals tax
– payroll tax (all the fica, SS, etc.)
– unemployment tax
– health inspections
– liquor licenses
– construction requirements
– ADA requirements
– fair labor law practices for overtime, etc.
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p>I am sure that there are many things being added to the list. Each is there for a purported purpose, mostly to protect the consuming public or their employees.
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p>The number of violators doesn’t matter as each one puts people at risk and costs the federal, state and municipal governments revenue.
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p>So let’s see why they are popping up and how can we work with them on the municipal level to help them take their underground restaurant into the sunlight of law abiding food establishment.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who can see that 4 scanners just cost 4 High school kids a job. Or 4 college grads who can’t find work, a temporary source of income. I make a point of telling people in lines at the scanners not to use them – I count the number of scanners whether it be 4, 6 or 8 of them and say those things just eliminated X number of jobs. Then I add in the little nugget
which really gets people thinking long and hard of how wrong it isDid they decrease the price of your groceries with the money they saved cutting those jobs? Or have they only gone up? Almost instantly – you see everyone in line walk over to the one or two registers that are being operated by a live person. I think it is at that point people begin to realize, that its their 10 year old son, who is at home, that will be short changed in 6 years when he is looking for work, and the avenues of work the parents had growing up are disappearing before their very eyes.<
p>People have been angry at seeing the amount of manufacturing jobs going overseas for years, telephone technical support just over the last 10-15 years, and now slowly IT jobs over the last 5-10. I’ve read articles that India is rapidly training people in the basics of accounting – just wait another 5-10 years when many of our financial services jobs begin going overseas- once it full creeps into white collar work, that is when the people will finally care beyond a momentary sense of injustice. We are truly quickly slipping into a society of the rich elite with connections and everyone else. That blurs both party lines.
I feel duty bound to note that it’s not the scanner itself. The scanner is a useful, labor-saving device designed to help the person who has the job (and providing high-tech employment for someone else, somewhere). I just don’t like seeing them used as job elimination devices. Some of that is inevitable, but it’s overdone, in my observation.
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p>Stating the obvious perhaps, and not that you didn’t think of that too … but I’m
a masteran amateur of the obvious.<
p>
I haven’t followed all the ins and outs of the net neutrality debate, but it seems evident that “convenience” will be one argument for favoring corporate interests. I saw a stat last month that 20% of bandwidth use during the evening in the US is Netflix. Twenty percent!
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p>So convenience will be one argument — You don’t want to wait for your movie, do you? — and the other argument will be small d democratic points about access for everyone. And if you poll the American people, we can be pretty sure that Hollywood will win out over pajama-clad political activists with their potty mouthed blogs, Mr. T. Vs. Everything, and even the piano-playing cat, because she’s probably got a three picture deal in the works by now.
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p>Oh, so confusing … what to do?
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p>One argument favors corporate interests; the other one is fair to everybody. Not everyone has the luxury to surf from home, but those who don’t should have equal access at least.
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p>Winner — net neutrality.
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I think.
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p>I defer to my more technical peers.
If you like The Rascal King, see if you can locate a copy of The Purple Shamrock – it was written at the time (by the model for ‘Ditto Boland’) and has a really different flavor. Besides, diddntja ever wonder where the restaurant name came from?
Or, you know, heavily divided. Corporations are people too! Well, no, not really.
Oh yes, because no one knows if Kit Kats have more calories than Milky Ways.
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p>To this one, I would say no. It’s an unnecessary burden on the distributors. In the machine at my office, items rotate (not that I’d notice).
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p>Banning junk food vending machines from elementary schools is another matter, and one I would support. That does more for public health, and allows the choice of bringing one’s own soda or whatever.
Bumped. I was going to fix some typos tonight. Can I still do that?
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p>Either way, thanks Bob!
This was a long post but I like long posts when they are interesting and thought /conversation provoking. This was all of that. Glad it got front-paged. Thanks.
So, should we turn back the clocks for all our achievements in human efficiencies? Is that what you want?
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p>How many of us drove to work today in our cars? What did this do to the horse carriage business? Hell, I’ll ride my horse to Cambridge today (ala Dr. Samuel Prescott) as a protest. 90 day Mail order drug prescriptions must blasphemous!
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p>Stop being foolish. Use the scanners, use your FastLane transponder, drive a car, use your computers with Word even though they put millions of typists/clerks out of work… what did Pampers do to the cloth diaper world? … This is progress!
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p>I assume this is how you’ll be heading out to CA…
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p>
… at the IBM section.
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p>Technology is part of the tide of history. My question is, how do we ride it? IBM changed. Do they still make Selectrics? Best typewriters ever. Wouldn’t use one now, though.
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p>Your car is a horse and buggy (mine too). Or maybe it’s a Roman chariot — a state-of-the-art feat of engineering in its time.
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p>And someday, an iPod nano will be a quaint object from the past, looking (to someone in the future) the way a rolltop desk looks to us.
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p>
Jim, this is an interesting post.
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p>You suppose that the old saying, “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” was really about loyalty. My sense is that it was really about middle-management bureaucratic CYA. When I hear the phrase–and I still hear it–it’s as a criticism of overly-cautious decisionmaking that leads to mediocrity.
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p>I think that fulfilling work is one of the requirements for real happiness, and I detect in your post a little nostalgia for the cashier as opposed to the scanner that maybe disguises the fact that the cashier may not feel challenged or fulfilled by the job. (That may not be true of every cashier, of course!) The real promise of technology that frees up labor from some kinds of job is that we could use the savings to innovate other kinds of job that would be more satisfying for the people who no longer need to stand behind a register all day, or who no longer need to harvest crops by hand, or whatever. In my mind, that’s the real challenge posed by your post.
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p>TedF
I have two questions.
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p>1. How does the Democratic Party (or American politics in general, since your mileage may vary) become the C for the the greatest number of As, when things get tough? (As they always do.)
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p>2. How do we get those cashiers to that more fulfilling work?
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p>No nostalgia, by the way. They’re right in front of me (and you).
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p>