"I Hear the Store is Saving Money."

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

"WAIT...they're paying you minimum wage?"

"I'm up for a raise soon." The young attendant at the Meijer self checkout took my embarrassing, late night grocery store rant in good humor.

"But...WAIT...wait...they're paying you MINIMUM WAGE?"

"A-yup."

I had just spent the past 15 minutes at the massive supermarket, trying to find a cat flea medicine that was actually priced as labeled on the shelf: "But....but....who on earth is benefiting from this new No Price Tag law thing, then?"

"I hear it saves the store money."

"Are they at least hiring more people?"

"No, I think the cut back the hours of the stock guys."

AAAARRGH!

"So....I just spent 15 minutes hunting down cat flea stuff that matched the marked price because of a law that saves the store money and the store isn't hiring more people, you're paid minimum wage to hear some guy rant at the checkout at 10 PM, and I'm STILL seeing my grocery bill go up...."

"Sorry." The young woman shrugged.

"No...no....it's not your fault. I'm sorry. I'm...I'm just ranting. Just being an ass. You know...I'd be a little better with it if I knew the folks here were at least paid more than minimum wage."

"I'm up for a raise soon!" The young woman smiled again.

"I hope it's huge. Okay...well, have a good night. Thanks for helping me get this cat stuff thing figured out."

-----> Michigan was sort of spoiled for the longest time. We had an excellent law that required stores to price each item individually, so that people could quickly and easily compare prices against the scan price at the checkout. The whole point was to give consumers as much information about their purchase as possible.

I never realized how much I USED those price tags until they were gone. Recently our Governor and conservative congress scrapped the consumer protection law, under the guise of "saving stores money" so those savings would get "passed on to the consumer" or "used to hire new workers."

But...so far none of that has happened. All it's done is make people wander around the store trying to find out how much their purchases are supposed to cost. Meanwhile, nobody is getting raises, consumer prices aren't going any lower, and stores slashed hours for stock clerks.

Great.

I was going to buy halloween candy at Meijer a few weeks ago, and went to the candy bin where a big yellow sign read "2 for $5". I reached in, grabbed a bag, went to the checkout...it scanned for $15! GRRR...went back...found another "2 for $5" bin....that bag scanned for $8.

I finally asked a guy chucking candy into the bins "Are those 2 for $5?" He looked at the sign and pulled it off..."no..."

Nobody wins with this law change.

Well.....I take that back. As the young woman said "I hear the store is saving money." Trickle down economics at work.

These are the Jerk Business Owners That Give Business a Bad Name

I'm upset.

I almost injured myself from upset. I was cutting up a green pepper while making some chili and my wife told me something her employee's old boss did that made me SO ANGRY I nearly slammed the knife down right where my other hand was. Damn I'm upset. How on EARTH can people be such assholes and not even flinch, not even have second thoughts.

For the sake of privacy, we'll call the employee "B".

Quick summary: My wife just watched as B's previous employer and staffing agency conspired openly to cheat B out of her last week of pay with a wink and a nod.

PISSED ME OFF.

Okay...and let's just get this out, this woman is AWESOME. Holy shit. She's in her mid 20s, works her ASS off, smart as a whip, nice, respectful, thoughtful, doesn't take shit and picks up slack. AWESOME. If she wasn't living in a city with nearly 12% unemployment and few job prospects she'd be some friggin' director of something or other by now. But being part of "The Lost Generation" in a high unemployment town during the Great Recession...as far as we can tell she's been treated like human filth by most of her employers up 'till now.

My wife considers herself LUCKY to have found B, because B has literally paid for herself and made that business hum like a Frank Sinatra tune, free'd up my wife's time to get more done...

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1. Last week after much agonizing about it, FINALLY...FINALLY...my wife decided to take the leap and offer B full time. She agonized over it because she didn't want to offer full time and not be able to maintain it.

Now I want to make something absolutely clear...my wife is pretty egalitarian in how she pays people. She's not taking home much more than B is at this point. And hiring on a new person full time was a bit of a leap of faith.

But she did it.

Why?

Because B is THAT AWESOME. Everybody likes her. My wife didn't want to lose her to another biz, and jumpin' geebus on a pogo stick, B freakin' deserves it. She DESERVES a better work experience where she's not treated like shit, especially after years of being under the thumb of a verbally abusive employer who wasn't even her employer since she technically worked for a staffing agency.

She worked for that jackass for years, part time for minimum wage through a staffing agency and was expected to take work home, and work late...did I say PART TIME? She was just PAID part time. She worked her butt off for that guy. Begged for full time for years...but nooooooo...


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2. After my wife offered her full time, she put in her two weeks with Mr. Asshole Incorporated and he tried to keep her working there for free, training the new person even after her two weeks were up. And when that didn't work....he called the staffing agency she worked for. The staffing agency he had hired her from.


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3. B's boss told B's staffing agency not to bother paying her for the final week...he wanted the honor of doing that himself.

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4. The staffing agency called B up and told her they wouldn't be paying her. They told her that their client, her boss, would be paying her.

Never. Gonna. Happen.

.................it was just two businesses having an agreement to mutually fuck over some random worker for a pittance. A PITTANCE. Maybe a hundred bucks. An amount that means NOTHING to them. But it means EVERYTHING to the employee. Groceries, gas...

Shit...you know, UltraConservatives should be pissed at these guys, because THESE are the fuckers who give Business Owners a bad name. These are the fuckers who unrepentantly piss on employees and treat them like chattle and give a bad name to entrepreneurs and bosses in general.

Pissed off about regulation? Blame assholes like this who will sleep soundly without any remourse or second thoughts for twisting the knife into the back of a young, industrious worker for nothing. For NOTHING. Just to be a jackwad. Hell...they'll probably sleep BETTER after having ripped one of their workers off.

How the Hell do you DO that?

How the Hell do you cavalierly screw over another human being like that when you have NO NEED to. When there's no gain in it other than sport?

This dude owns several businesses in town and he simply can't help himself from crapping on people, joyfully lording over them the fact that they either work twice the hours under his cruel ways for part time wages, or they're tossed out and another young man or woman, easily taken advantage of, comes along.

This Just In! You Can't Live on Minimum Wage in Michigan

A recent Michigan study confirmed what most of us already know: minimum wage isn't enough to get by.

The Basic Economic Security Tables for Michigan, a study that analyzes the cost of essential needs for singles and families across Michigan, found the cost of providing basic necessities -- such as shelter, food and transportation -- far exceeds minimum wage and the paychecks of people working full-time in low-paying job categories.

So there's that.

A bit further down I've posted a Basic Economic Securities Table. I'm going to give away the ending right now, though. The chart suggests that minimum wage should be somewhere between $12.24/hr and $24.49/hr for a person to comfortably purchase the necessities of life.

"The final income tally can be a bit of a sticker shock," said Matt Unrath of Wider Opportunities for Women, the advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that created the report using public data. "But when you go expense by expense, it makes sense. Whenever I make a presentation on this, families will say, 'Wow, so it's not my fault.' With these incomes, it's nearly impossible to cover the expenses, even if you worked 80 or 90 hours a week."

It's that highlighted section that gets me...the "Wow, so it's not my fault."

Here we are, living our lives, trying to get by, and though we may be working 60+ hours per week it never seems to be enough. And we blame ourselves.

We feel bad about it. Guilty about it. We feel that if we weren't so lazy or lousy with money we'd be able to do this. The car would be in fine working order. The paint on the side of the house wouldn't be chipping off and we could just go pick up some paint to fix it. We'd just go see the dentist...or maybe going to the eye doctor once per decade wouldn't be An Event We Save For. If only we weren't so hideously bad with money. If only we worked harder for longer hours. 60 isn't enough. Maybe 80. Maybe 100.

Heh.

There's something horribly wrong with a country where a man or woman working full time can't support their family.

I'm not entirely sure how our conservative neighbors and countrymen and women can, with a straight face, reject the notion that an American working full time should make a livable wage. That they'd reject the notion that a person who works full time should be able to feed and support his or her children. And honestly...I believe most agree that a full time worker should be able to make an honest living off of an honest days work. It's the Republican leadership that's fixated on a trickle down system that has worked smashingly for a few, but has failed everybody else.

Jacobs noted that although the state's unemployment rate is dropping, the number of requests for food assistance is climbing because many of the new jobs being created are low-paying.

If you're working full time, you should not have to use food assistance.

Here's a table of what everything costs and what Minimum wage should be:



It's just getting ridiculous.

Michigan's U6 Unemployment rate is still in the 20% range, with a statewide U3 unemployment level of 10.3%. While it's nice to not see dramatic month over month declines in employment anymore, it would be nice to start seeing some job gains.