Saturday, July 20, 2019

The McConnell-Trump Economy in Kentucky

Yeah, it's an isolated anecdote, although it explains and confirms a lot of things we've been seeing over the past year, so anyway:

I was in Kroger this morning, in a white, well-off section of Louisville, where I noticed that there were no baggers.

The poor cashiers were struggling to handle long lines of shoppers, backed up because the cashiers had to do the bagging, too.  And because on the busiest grocery shopping day of the week, there were only four checkout lines open.

Recently this Kroger had closed four checkout lines and replaced them with self-checkout, thus eliminating at least four cashier jobs, not including the departed baggers.  There was no waiting at the self-checkout, because everybody hates them.

And even though everyone in line whom I could see and hear was being patient and polite, the stress on the cashiers was evident.

Just as I reached the cashier, an elderly woman in her 70s, her phone buzzed.  She said, apologetically, "may I beg your indulgence?  I have to take this call. My mother just fell and broke her arm."

I'm a liberal Democrat, not a child-caging repug, so of course I said "please, go ahead."  It was the hospital, just texting to let her know her 94-year-old mother had broken her shoulder plus her arm in three places and they were prepping her for surgery.

She kept working.  And she kept thanking me.  And I kept reassuring her that we must support everyone caring for elderly or disabled loved ones.

What the FUCK kind of economy requires a woman in her 70s, with a 94-year-old mother undergoing emergency surgery, to KEEP WORKING instead of going to the hospital to be with her mother.

The kind of economy Mitch McConnell and the Pumpkin Traitor are working to create: Lords and Serfs.

Also, fuck Kroger for trying to force us all into self checkout by eliminating jobs. 

6 comments:

Ed said...

How's that "democracy" thing working out for you?

Professor Chaos said...

Fuck Kroger. Publix is employee-owned and has better produce,

Admiral Obvious said...

Not just Kroeger's, but Meiers, even McDonalds with kiosks to order & pay.

At this rate, NO one will have a job.

emjayay said...

Sorry, but efficiencies at the supermarket lead to not only more profits but lower prices. Remember the outrage over bar codes which meant that instead of entering each price off the label on the item the checker just runs it by a laser, cutting down on checker time per customer by about 75%? The bar codes also made for far less inventory checking. Should bar codes be barred in order to increase employment?

Should cash registers be outlawed so that checkers have to write down each item on a receipt and then add up the numbers in their head? That's how it used to work. This would certainly provide more jobs. All these back to the future reforms would double food prices - like they used to be a hundred years ago. Maybe all farming machines should be horse drawn. Maybe all farm machinery should be banned. Then food can cost ten times what it does today just like it used to two centuries ago, and there would be many more farming jobs.

Kroger is not the only supermarket. Supermarkets operate in a free enterprise competitive environment, and a particularly competitive one. It would actually appear to be cheaper for them to have baggers, working at a lower wage, than have the checkers do it. Did you ask why no baggers?

European supermarkets do not have baggers. Space is provided for each customer to bag their own, and in their own bags. Free bags are not provided either. Aldi (German chain) markets in the US follow this procedure.

Yellow Dog said...

Anonymous: Please re-post under a name.

Yellow Dog said...

Ed: Ask me again when we have a Democratic president.