Though perhaps some 13 year old kids value their time more
highly than $10.  Nothing wrong with that.

                                                           P. Tierney

On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 19:07:58 -0800, Scott in Aztlán
<slothkills@THEyahooOBVIOUS.com> wrote:

Huh??  I thought shovelling snow was "menial" and "mindless".

Nan

<laugh> Yeah, you WOULD be the exception.  Upstate New York does get a
lot of snow from what I see on the news reports.  I grew up in
Missouri, which didn't really get a lot of snow, but is cold as hell
in the winter.

It was pretty impressive though - people don't see "biggest single
snowfall in recorded history of area" very often!!

Cathy Weeks
Mommy to Kivi Alexis 12/01

Is there something wrong with cleaning as a job?

Honestly, someone has to do it and if you own your own business doing
this, there may be some benefits to that which have nothing to do with
the particular kind of work.  Some people actually like cleaning,
though usually not the dirtiest jobs.  

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:21:47 -0800, Scott in Aztlán
<slothkills@THEyahooOBVIOUS.com> wrote:

I don't do lawns.
My accounts included restaurants and bars.  I probably made more in
one month sending out employees to do the cleaning than you do,
sweetie.

Nan

Or he's too embarrassed to admit he actually did end up paying someone
a decent wage, or hired a pro to do it since he didn't want to do it
himself ;-)

Nan

"do it for the children"?  No, we're simply disputing Jon's apparent
attitude that the teenager he griped about should have taken
sub-wages.
If Jon posted from rec.motorcycles, that's your issue.

Nan

Your trolls, your problem.

I never delete x-posts to other groups because I am never sure
where the poster is posting from, but if you don't want to hear
parents opinions on a matter, then don't x-post to parenting groups.

mk gets plenty of trolls that say *don't have children* or *get your
kids away from us*

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

This may be true  :-)

I was trying to think of something that would make the job something to
avoid....

And hope like hell that there's no ice underneath the snow!

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 22:28:57 -0800, Scott in Aztlán
<slothkills@THEyahooOBVIOUS.com> wrote:

Creative job of clipping.  I suspect adult checkers do much more than
just cashiering too.

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Checkers are unskilled labor, huh?
You night customers are overwhelmingly men; domestically bored
husbands, Daddies getting diapers, divorced, hapless types, and the
socially autistic or freakishly tall Scandinavian Pepperdine students.
The hours between 7 pm and 9 pm are nicknamed the “Sad Bastard
Hours”.
 
Later in the evening the ‘Ellis Island’ effect begins. “Bring me
your tired, your poor, unbathed, wretched masses who apparently
don’t own mirrors”; substance abusers straggling in at different
levels of ‘high’; the eating disorder people; food orders over
four hundred dollars with not a vegetable or piece of fruit in them.
The human x-rays; laxative and enema queens, many with breast implants
and scar tissue outlines bulging taught, sun-damaged skin against
visible ribcages, and the always fun generally disoriented.

The day shoppers, a different breed, are mostly stay at home Moms with
their Nannies pushing the carts, or older people escaping the confines
of their home, needing to get a walk in, arguing about the sales
circular or chit chatting with the lottery ticket dispenser. “No
annual payments, I need the cash now”.
 
Interesting correlation between age and bag preferences.  The older
the shoppers, the more intricate the demands are, and paper bags are
almost always involved.  The orders they give the baggers make us all
stop what we’re doing sometimes to absorb the complexity of their
wishes.  These people are convinced that there is an evil cabal
waiting to improperly arrange their groceries; hot chicken with Ice
Cream, bananas under cat litter, Drano with raspberries.  Bagging is a
big deal.

Most of our patrons are pretty nice.  Cheerful, happy to be off work
and on the way home, a genuine response to our pat “Hi, how are
you” opener, and a pleasure to help.  Then there are the others,
about 10% of the total, a little higher during heat spells and full
moons, who live to make everyone’s life difficult.  We spot them
coming in, all the checkers bracing for the Russian roulette game of
chance, having to deal with them in our respective lines.
Germ-a-phobes, nitpickers, fill in your ethnic preference-princesses,
ones with superiority complexes or inferiority complexes- their
defense mechanism an outright offensive or passive-aggressive assault.
There are the useless parents; you’ve shopped with them, not reining
in little Skylar or Madison, ignoring them completely, letting the
fruit of their loins scream at full volume, whine incessantly, roll in
the aisles and make German spectacles of themselves through the entire
store, getting nerves raw.
Everyone shooting each other the if they were mine look.

There are the growing hordes of oblivious cell phone addicts.  Unless
you’re Dick Cheney or an on-call brain surgeon, trust us, your banal
conversation can wait until you’re outside.  Always beginning their
conversation, “Hi, I’m in the grocery store, yeah, in the checkout
line.”   We do our best to rifle their orders through our lines at
Chuck Yeager / Mach II speeds, ‘Hello, thank you and Goodbye’
being the only verbal interaction with these charmers.  We hope.
Struggling to keep our reptilian “Kill, Kill, Kill” brains at bay,
our faces locked in the grimace passing as a smile, we say ‘thank
you’ and hope they beat it quick, because after all, “It’s Your
Store”, and they just might be a mystery shopper, grading our work
performances for Corporate, who are already at the drawing board
thinking up a new catchphrase to sum up your whole lovely shopping
experience, protecting market share and above all else, the Brand.

Thanks to the expansion of Wal-Mart and the grocery strikes all over,
you really will get to enjoy lots of UNSKILLED labor checking you out
now.
All the good people who worked in the Albertsons, Von's and Ralphs
stores have had to scramble and find other jobs, and the dregs of the
workforce have stepped in, so you won't have to worry about what their
being paid, and you'll get to pay their medical expenses through
raised taxes because someone will have to cover the bills now, won't
they?

Maybe. All I can say is that I have had very little success with them. They
are generally not turned on at all when I go into the store, and the one
time I tried to use them, I had a problem with the scanner and so did
another person who was using another machine. I pretty well gave up on them
as a bigger waste of my time than standing in line to wait for a human
checker.

I know several people that do it privately with a snowplow on their
truck and rake in the bucks every winter.

Love your sig :-)

Nan

On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 19:18:22 -0800, Scott in Aztlán
<slothkills@THEyahooOBVIOUS.com> wrote:

No, I consider it physically hard work, and worth a helluva lot more
than a measly $10.

Nan

That's a very salient point, as the Dad agreed to be the backup for free,
to get his son the experience.  So this makes sense.

In a way.  In pure business terms the parents are subsidizing the
child's experience to help them gain job experience.  You pay a
reduced rate for training time.  :)

I just can't believe that they actually had the gall to demand the
same rate after the original rate was fairly negotiated.

WOW! That's a lot of rings accumulated.  When was the last time someone
took a core sample?

Wrong.  No license is required to ride a motorcycle on private property.

How about this: The kid had every right to refuse to take the job for $10, just
as Jon had every right to refuse to hire the kid for $40. No harm, no foul -
that's the capitalist marketplace functioning correctly.

The overindulgent part is that the kid EXPECTED $40 for a job worth, in Jon's
adult judgement, $10. In other words, the kid has an unrealistic, overinflated
opinion of the value of his labor. And where else could such an overinflated
opinion come from but the kid's parents?

We can argue about whether the job was really worth only $10 until the cows come
home, but until the sidewalk superintendent gets back to us with the official
measurements of Jon's sidewalk, we'll never know who was right and who was
wrong.

What's *really* interesting is to see who accepts the premise and who doesn't.
"Mommy to Kivi Alexis" rejects the premise out of hand - she automatically
assumes that the 13-year-old kid was right and Jon was wrong. This, of course,
reinforces Jon's point that kids of this generation can do no wrong in the eyes
of the parents. :)

Just don't complain when they treat you as an a.shole in return.  

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

The kid downloading porn might grow up to make a mighty fine date
rapist. The blueblood educated silverspoon darling, just might someday
become president with disastrous consequences for all.

I got news for you... America was always run by and for the benefit of
a small minority. The majority of the population is/was a bunch of
clueless flesh monkies being manipulated for fun and profit.

Nothing wrong with that, but whining about its expression in society
(such as in brats running around on scooters) is ultimately fruitless.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Useful George Bush stats:

Born        1946
Graduated    1975 (29 years to attain Masters)
First known job    1989 (bought Texas Rangers with daddy's money)
---------------------------------------------------------------

That's crap. I know from experience. The teachers know who the victim
and the perps are. But to make things easier they write up a 'zero
tolerance policy' or some other BS so they can just point to the policy
and not think. Seriously, a kid can walk up to another kid, hit him, and
the kid who got hit will get suspended for fighting without ever have
thrown a punch. And that was like 18 years ago, I shudder to think what
it is like now.

Well let's see, stop asking for infinite tolerance. And actually
come down hard on the harrassers in the first place. Schools are
asking for children to just sit there and take the abuse. The staff
doesn't do anything to stop it. When a kid stands up for himself,
he often gets punished too or alone. This puts a kid that is trying
to play by the rules in a really bad spot. All he can do is just
sit there and take it. And even then he isn't safe from punishment.

I think the inability of kids to fight back on a low level is a
contributor to this eventual explosion where frustration manifests
itself in a lethal event. I can only go by my personal experience,
and what I've seen/read.