Posted on 11/13/2011 11:06:23 AM PST by eccentric
Around the country, night workers at Walmart stores are being told to come in five hours early ON Thanksgiving. After having work until 7am that morning, they must get whatever sleep they can and then reutrn to work at 5pm for a 12 hour shift. How much time does this leave for them to spend the holiday with their family?
Walmart wants to call their employees associates. No, they are just workers.
Retailers didn’t “move” Black Friday to a holiday. It developed organically over time as unionized workers and most especially government workers demanded and got the Friday after Thanksgiving as a paid Holiday creating an artificial 4 day weekend for 1/3 of the workforce.
With schools and government offices and unionized manufacturing closed, they went shopping and retailers simply responded to the demand.
I remember when we used to go to school on Friday.
I'm going to be at work until 6am on Thanksgiving morning, getting the store ready for Black Friday, then have to be back in at 11 that night to unload and stock two trucks worth of freight and help pull all of the Internet orders that came in that day.
The way I look at it, things could be worse. In the past three months, my company has closed thirty stores and streamlined their management and support staff, resulting in 5,000 people losing their jobs. So on this Thanksgiving, I'm going to be thankful that I have a job to go to that night.
Oh, FGS, no one is holding a gun to their head, forcing them to work those hours. It’s their choice to keep the job that needs them to work the holiday hours.
No one said life is fair. And with the economy the way it is, they should be *THANKFUL* FOR HAVING A JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Little story here: I worked 25 years at my company's stamping plant in Detroit before getting transferred to the corporate office in Troy in the fall of 1997. In the summer of 2005, I would often encounter the corporate Controller enjoying a cigarette on the shipping dock at the back of the large office building our headquarters were located in. I had known Jim from years back when he was manager of the accounting dept. back at the plant until his transfer to corporate. And because of his "roots", he was one of only a handful of corporate managers and executives that you could easily talk to and consider one of the "good guys".
Jim had been given his notice that he was being forced into retirement the following November and because of his health, I was glad to see it. Over the years, Jim had undergone many back surgeries with the latest being a rod inserted in his spine and he lived in constant pain because of it. But he would always return to work.
Well that summer, we kinda became friends on that shipping dock and he would share his feelings on the corporation's CEO who was from our parent German company. Jim told me that the CEO would put in 12 to 16 hours per day, everyday including Saturday's and Sundays and would require Jim and the rest of the staff to report for work on Saturday's too, although not necessarily working the long hours.
So people with predetermined and erroneous ideas on how the upper levels of corporate management work, they need to see what it took for these people to get to their level and what it takes for them to remain there. It takes total dedication to the corporation with their families taking second place and willingness to deal with the stress and mandatory long hard hours away from home.......
As for the Supervisors in our manufacturing plant, they were fixed salary and only received payment for overtime after 60 HOURS.......and in a manufacturing facility such as ours that was a Tier I supplier to the Big 3, that was constant.
That's a great point that I forgot about.
For a number of years I used to hunt pheasant in the N.W. corner of Kansas, staying in the farmhouse of a friend's friend. The owner owner of the farm owned tons of acres and farmed it all. He was also the president of the only bank in town.
That meant that he had to attend to responsibilities of the farm and cattle early in the morning and then go into town to work in the bank. When he got off work at the bank, he then had to change back into his coveralls and head back out to the fields and the cattle..........Dawn to dusk, 24/7.
My project controller just sent me a note for last week. The hours worked over 40 will be compensated at straight time instead of simply being uncompensated OT. My wife will be happy with that.
In both cases it is an example of stating an opinion which seems out of step, but one should consider the merits of that point of view.
The store I worked in was poorly run, with the store manager giving us unloaders our assignments for the evening shift (4:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. in those days) before he went home at 5:00 p.m. The assistant store manager would then come in and give us conflicting tasks based on what he wanted, making it impossible for us to meet the store manager's original orders on time, which we were still expected to carry out.
Consequently, we were told to clock out at quitting time but then "asked" to come back and finish the job on our own time (or else). Nobody complained since they needed their jobs and did not want to rock the boat. After a couple of weeks of this, I finally found employment elsewhere and quit.
Needless to say, I don't think too highly of Walmart after seeing how it works from the inside as an unloader/stockman "associate."
Go to work.
Cry me a river. I am unsympathetic to these workers because I have been there done that and didn’t whine about it. I have worked many terrible jobs, worked many holidays in my life and was happy to have the terrible jobs when I had them or found a less terrible job.
I grew up on a ranch and not only worked hard from childhood, I was told as far back as I could remember that the cows and horses came first. And they did, if some cow had trouble calving on a holiday we helped her, didn’t make her wait until it wasn’t a holiday so her and her calf didn’t suffer and die while we were doing holiday stuff. We even had to stop and help a cow with calving on the way to one of my brother’s wedding- picture this- the groom already dressed in his tux was the one that pulled the calf. Other things came up regularly, on holidays or family time and we dealt with it. I was raised to always be greatful for what I had and not whine about what I didn’t have, but to strive to do better if I wasn’t happy with anything going on in my life.
I left home at 16 without finishing high school and went to work so I know all about being unskilled and finding work. I worked many jobs that supposedly people won’t do; motel maid, washing dishes and waiting tables in restaurants and bars, construction site laborer, you name it I was happy to do it. At times I had more than one job just so I could survive- especially during the Carter years. I knew it was on ME to do better and I did, I got my GED, worked my way through college- so I could get better jobs.
I imagine most of us that you find to be so unsympathetic have similar stories. Job conditions are always subject to change as the employer sees fit. NO ONE forces these people to work at Walmart and if it is truly the only job they can get becuase of their situation or the economy then they really should be THANKFUL they have a job, and GREATFUL that Walmart gave them one.
I don’t see a purpose in all these holiday sales like Black Friday, and have never gone shopping then. At holidays I choose to spend what time I can with my family and not shopping. Obviously many people do shop these sales and it is a money maker for retail merchants, so Walmart has to play the game as it is if they want to stay in business. That is reality and their workers should understand that especially in these times they all need to bust their arses and help their employer do well so they will continue to have jobs.
Be warned.
Some on this thread would call you a “Communist.”
I say you are an accomplished lady and a joy to encounter.
Yep, one of my daughters is a nurse and a single parent- she is working Thanksgiving and we will have her son. She is scheduled to work 12 hours but never gets out on time...something always happens. We live over 100 miles from her so she won’t even see him at all on Thanksgiving. As you know that can happen to her on Christmas too. She is not currently scheduled to work Christmas but you know how that goes. She is not complaining about it either, she is happy to have a job.
Good God, stop your whining!
I think you are a Union Troll.
Many good people here on FR have to work the Holidays, especially nurses, doctors LEO, EMTs, and so on.
As said before, I am a Medical Technician, and hospitals and nursing homes do not close.
I love what I do, and I love being there on the Holidays to try and make it better for my patients.
I have driven in blizzards, some of the worst Northeast weather you can imagine.
I’ve stayed over to work plenty of times when some dumb a$$ kid decides they are not coming in.
I don’t get free nursing uniforms or anything else.
I don’t wanna hear about the poor folks at Wal Mart, whether it is YOU or your friends.
Loving what you do for work is important, and if you don’t like it, get another job and SHUT UP about it.
More obedient wage slave jive. Obey obey obey obey and don’t complain about crap wages. Be very grateful to your employer and above all shut your mouth!
Job market is different then when you were young but your ilk will keep rattling on, on this thread with dated, irrelevant, self-justifying posts. You did this, you did that....years ago of course. Boring and dumb! America was a different place with a different economy.
Good post. Just by your initial post you subjected yourself to the slings and arrows of countless freepers eager to jam their life experiences (how they triumphed over all years ago when America’s economy was very good) down your throat.
These people are >>way<< over the top.
They are oblivious and highly into tooting their horn over their economic triumphs from years ago. No young (or not so young) person can draw life lessons from such curmudgeons. Not in this fuxated economy.
Still 90% of freepers are for the high lofty principle of “free trade” that helped put us in the crapper
They are oblivious and highly into tooting their horn over their economic triumphs from years ago.
To be perfectly honest, some of these people are probably slightly insane.
Not that I don’t believe you, I just know too many people who LOVE working there. I also know people who say that those who don’t really want to be a team player, don’t make it there. If one does not want to do anything out of the ordinary or “it’s not my job” comes out of a mouth, that is not a person who will be happy at Walmart.
Not quite. My area as a night stocker encompassed Housewares, Stationery, Furniture, Candles and Photos. Ask your niece what kind of effort that entailed. By the end of my third week there, because of my initiative, my younger supervisors (two over three years) told me "I don't have to worry about you, just do your thing - and left me alone for the rest of the shift. That lasted the three years I was there. On those occasional nights my workload was light, I'd go help the Mexican guy in Pets hump those 40-pound bags of dog food. (The damned stuff flew out the door. Evidently a lot of hungry dogs in that area.)
After six months, management was after me to become a supervisor. I told them this was a beer money job and not a career path. I earned four "exceeds expectations" and the highest pay raise allowed during the time I was there. I must have been "out of the ordinary" and considered "a team player" for I was offered a supervisor's position after each performance review.
Maybe that’s you and Mardi59.
I can't vouch for mardi59, but I suspect he didn't get to where he was by being a slacker. Go back and read some of the shady deals W-M used to deprive its workers of the bonus. In three years I was there, there was one bonus - and none for the six years after. When I was there one manager brought up people from the Las Vegas store to help with inventory. She put them up at the local casino and charged our employee injury fund for the lodging, which drove us negative and cancelled the bonus.
Yes some are stark raving loony, proclaiming from the rooftops in their underwear.
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