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Shocked by online comments, reporter writes profile of hit-and-run victim
- brudgers 16y agoThe article illustrates how local editorial control and not-for-profit ownership can allow a newspaper to act as the conscience of a community. Tampabay.com is the online portal for the The St. Petersburg Times. The Times is one of the few remaining independent newspapers left in the US, It is owned by the Poynter Institute. http://www.poynter.org/ http://www.poynter.org/
- SkyMarshal 16y agoAlso, hat tip to PolitiFact (http://politifact.com/ http://politifact.com/), run by SPT, and one of the best political fact checking sites on the net.
- TGJ 16y agoHow aggravating. "I'll go through 10 people before I find another like him" yet he will continue to pay the man 7.25 an hour. Everything you want out of an employee and nothing else and you can't pay the guy better than dirt cheap minimum wage and somehow lament at his death.
- volski 16y agoYea I'm sure the manager who probably makes 10 an hour can just start giving people raises at will. How aggravating indeed.
- jimmyjim 16y agoThat he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not appreciated as a friend by his manager-- that's something completely beside the monetary wage. They should have been friends, after 10 years together. And even if the manager was earning a low amount there's no reason that in just one year out of those 10 he could not have given him a Christmas bonus. Even a small amount, so that Mr. Smith would not have been able to say that he "never got a [...] Christmas bonus."
- volski 16y ago>That he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not even appreciated by his manager "I kind of forced him" to celebrate holidays, Rogers said. That quote kind of puts a different perspective on it. His roommate had to force holidays on him, so is it a wonder his manager didn't give him cards? Maybe that's just the way he came off. "He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." - Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack. That sounds like he appreciated him to me. Quit acting like you guys care about Neil Smith more than his no-wage-raising, no-bonus-giving, no-card-giving manager. That guy actually lost somebody, you guys didn't. So don't be so quick to call him uncaring.
- jimmyjim 16y agoHe explicitly complained to his friend of not getting a card or getting a raise. Celebrating holidays or not is a completely separate issue.
- gcheong 16y agoYou're taking a couple complaints and extrapolating that to mean his manager did not appreciate him. You don't know to what extent his manager may have tried to show appreciation in other ways or what their relationship was like.
- jbm 16y agoOut of curiosity, do you feel that 10 years of loyal service should not be rewarded with any kind of raise at all? Even if he wasn't earning much more than 8 or 9 dollars an hour even then, but it probably would mean quite a bit for someone in that situation. With inflation, he was actually being paid less 10 years later.
- volski 16y agoThe real question you should be asking is if his pay is so low, why didn't he get another job? There's a reason he stayed. Did he deserve it? Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter and (moved up?) to dishwasher. Maybe dishwasher paid more, who knows. But my whole point is a manager in a restaurant has less control over raises than you seem to suggest.
- jonhendry 16y ago"Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter " I think it was the roommate, Rogers, who had been a waiter.
- BobbyH 16y ago> With inflation, he was actually being paid less 10 years later. I looked this up and Neil Alan Smith's wages grew by 41% from 2001 to 2010, outpacing inflation of 23%. Inflation from Aug. 2001 to Aug. 2010 increased prices by 23% (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/historicalinflation.aspx http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/historical...). Neil Alan Smith's wages started in 2001 at the federal minimum wage of $5.15. The federal minimum wage was constant from 1997 to 2007, but Florida passed a minimum wage law increasing its state minimum wage to $6.15 in 2005. Other adjustments to the Florida minimum wage increased his wage to $7.25 by 2010. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Florida_minimum_wage_history http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Florida_minimum_wage_histo... and http://www.floridajobs.org/minimumwage/index.htm http://www.floridajobs.org/minimumwage/index.htm)
- sliverstorm 16y agoOdds are if the manager really liked him, the manager would have liked to give him a raise. However, sometimes available finances simply do not warrant a raise. Sometimes higher management who does not know an employee says "why should we pay him more, we can just find another Joe to do the same job", without knowing the measure of the man.
- jbm 16y agoYou said it. Quote: Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack, read the story on the Times website and found himself outraged by unsympathetic comments posted by some readers. "I just can't get over some of those people reacting the way they did," he said. "This guy was a human being. He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." -- Meanwhile: -- Jeff Lackey, who lives across the street from Mr. Smith's address at Hollywood Park, recalled one of the rare conversations Mr. Smith initiated. "I was coming back from the Dumpster and he invited me over," said Lackey, 53. "He said, 'Jeff, I've worked at Crab Shack for 10 years. I never got a raise or a Christmas bonus. I never even got a card.' " -- Yeah, I'm _sure_ he was appreciated in life. /s TL/DR: Actions speak louder than words.
- _delirium 16y agoNot really making a political statement either way, but I've been very surprised at how much small gestures can mean in some situations, and how relative status is. About 5 years ago, some fellow grad students and I had a fairly recent Guatemalan immigrant serving as the janitor in our part of the building. It was basically awkward all around: the janitors normally came in late-ish to vacuum and empty trash cans and such, to avoid being there when most of the employees were, but grad students, especially in CS, work pretty random hours, so we were often there at 11pm or whatever. The guy spoke no English, and none of us spoke more than about 30 words of Spanish, but somehow given our life positions, none of us were comfortable totally ignoring another human who came into our area (I imagine some people are more used to doing so). So there was always this awkward attempt to say hello and make smalltalk, which mostly ended up in Spanish because the grad students knew a tiny bit more Spanish than the guy knew English. He actually seemed pretty happy about that interaction happening at all. At some point, though, we ended up collecting like $200 and a card for Christmas (perhaps we felt a bit guilty that he came around emptying trash and vacuuming while we were doing a mixture of procrastinating on Bejeweled Blitz and maybe sometimes writing papers), which he found amazingly surprising. From our perspective it was quite strange that we were capable of making a gesture that made someone surprised/grateful, because I mean we were poor grad students, which in our context was a low-money/low-status occupation.
- Tichy 16y agoMaybe by "another like him" he meant "another who is willing to work for minimum wage".
- webwright 16y agoA lot of people make this point. I'm not sure I'm ready to pass quick judgement that the restaurant owner should reward loyalty with money. Restaurant owners can be pretty poor and a 50 cent raise would result in the owner having ~$1300 less in his pocket every year. While he appreciates loyalty, he might rather suck up the extra effort of replacing dishwashers than rewarding loyal ones. He could be armpit deep in debt, have a child in college, or otherwise have reasons that money is tight. Or, yeah, he COULD just be a rich asshole (note: restaurants are not cash cows). The first time I ran a small business, I was shocked at how my thinking turned here. Someone asks for a raise and the money goes straight out of my pocket if I say yes. Which isn't a simple decision if the business isn't a huge profit center.
- gruseom 16y agoI think that's right. Plus it goes against the spirit of the article to rush to judge the owner. It's only because he cared enough about Neil Smith that the rest of us ever heard of him. And condemning him based only on his class position is pretty much what the original comments did to Neil.
- vaksel 16y agopersonally I found the manager's comment very condescending. 10 is just such a small number. it's like "yeah this guy is VERY important, I'd have to interview like 2 whole people to find someone as "good" as him"
- jrockway 16y agoPolice said that Mr. Smith was following bicycle safety recommendations such as wearing light-colored clothing, using reflectors and riding in the bicycle lane. This is a common misconception. Reflectors are worthless. Riding in the bike lane exposes you to great danger -- car doors flying open to the right, aggressive motorists passing too closely on the left. If you take the lane, you're out of the "door zone", and motorists have no choice but to slow down and pass you like they would pass any other vehicle on the road. You may feel like you are being an annoyance, but annoying people is what makes them pay attention and not kill you. As for reflectors; they only work when there is a clear path from an illumination source to the reflector and back to your eye. Sometimes that happens, but more often than not, it doesn't. You don't need a $300 super-bright rechargeable light system -- get a $5 blinky and throw an extra AA battery in your seat bag. It may save your life. Also, read Effective Cycling: http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Cycling-6th-John-Forester/dp/0262560704 http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Cycling-6th-John-Forester/dp... Please don't get yourself killed because you don't want to inconvenience a motorist or buy an LED light. Oh, and get a helmet; the $30 ones are just as safe as the $200, if not as comfortable. I hate to be preachy, but it makes me sad when people die because they are using a safe and efficient form of transportation. (And believe me, I am not blaming the cyclist for his own death here -- the motorist who murdered him is to blame, with a close second to poor city planning and the total lack of bicycle education in the US.)
- ugh 16y agoI would be carful with the application of hyperbole. Reflectors don’t work under certain conditions but they do work very often. They are by no means worthless. I could imagine that especially reflectors in the spokes can help increase visibility. … and the total lack of bicycle education in the US. Is there really no road safety education in school? We have pretty extensive road safety education in Germany including a multiple choice and practical bike test [+]. It feels a lot like a dry run for the real driver’s license, at least for the impressionable mind of a fourth grader. I got a nice certificate when I made it. It’s obviously seen as a first and important introduction to the traffic rules – what do the road signs mean, how does right of way work, and so on. You probably shouldn’t be confronted with all of that only when you are making your driver’s license. If only because you also have to know pretty much all those rules as a biker. [+] At least in Bavaria. Education is the sole responsibility of the states. A quick search suggests that elementary schools in many if not all states in Germany have some form of road safety education including a bike test.
- sliverstorm 16y agoThe comment on the article reveals completely the lack of intelligence and elitism of the commenter. It may be wonderful to think that the people who man lower-end jobs are somehow less deserving than you, and somehow should be executed. But without those people filling those low-end jobs, our world would fall apart. No matter what you think of them, you need them, whether you realize it or not. And on the other hand, if the commenter was thinking "he will most certainly be happier dead than working at that job", that illustrates that he has never been in a position lower on the economic scale. While low-quality jobs are no walk in the park, it is possible to enjoy one's self and take pleasure in life without being at the top of the totem pole. Either way, it is obvious the commenter is a fool.
- points 16y agoI disagree. It shows a lack of taste and tact maybe, but I wouldn't read anything else into it. It's just some guy trying to be funny on the internet. IMHO It's not clever or witty enough to be very funny, so it's more in the 'infantile humor' bucket.
- BahUnfair 16y agoAs a student who worked in a fast food kitchen for 3 years, I can confirm that you can absolutely love a job that is bottom-of-the-pile.
- mattm 16y agoReminds me of the scene from the movie "American Beauty". After he gets laid off from his soul-sucking office job, Kevin Spacey's character applies at a fast-food burger joint saying "I want a job with the least amount of responsibility."
- yters 16y agoSometimes the reason jobs pay more is because they are less enjoyable.
- ovi256 16y agoI think this reveals something about the commenter's mindset: he probably would never enjoy that job, and he deducts no one else could. Similar to the qualia debate in philosophy, he is generalizing way too much. He's not really guilty of that, it's the way he is. He is incredibly rude and callous though.
- points 16y agoUm Why is this hacker news?
- Sandman 16y agoI agree with you. I guess you're being downvoted because, according to the guidelines, a proper thing to do when you feel that an article isn't HN material is flagging it, not commenting that it shouldn't be on HN.
- noahlt 16y agoIt's interesting to many of us here who are interested in building online communities. If a person happened to walk by this man's funeral, they probably wouldn't shout that he was "better off dead". But a person who happens to see this man's obituary online apparently has no qualms about the online equivalent. As hackers, we build things that are used, ultimately, by fellow human beings. Those things we build can have unintended consequences. This story highlights that fact.
- mixmax 16y agoNot trying to be snarky, but why is this upvoted? It's an article about an unfortunate guy that got killed on his bike and died. How is this interesting? What am I missing? Since the article has 100+ points there's obviously something I've sompletely missed. What is it?
- GiraffeNecktie 16y agoYou clearly missed the point of the article which was specifically to respond to the insensitive anonymous online commenters who had dismissed the man as a worthless nobody. The reporter dug into his life to give us a rounded picture of who he was and why every life, no matter how modest, has meaning and value.
- Sandman 16y agoI don't believe mixmax missed the point at all. I believe that he/she is genuinely interested in what exactly 'gratifies one's intellectual curiosity' in this article, to quote the guidelines. I'm sorry if I come of as rude here, I am appalled by the insensitivity of those anonymous comments just like the rest of you, but, like mixmax, I too don't quite get what is it in this article that 'hackers would find interesting'. There must be something, otherwise it wouldn't receive over 100 votes.
- GiraffeNecktie 16y ago"Hackers" are not a monolithic group that share exactly the same interests. Some people (hackers or not) might have intellectual curiosity about the lives of ordinary people, about how a media organization responded (or, in other stories, failed to respond) to nasty online comments, or about how a simple news item (man on bike killed in hit and run) can be given layers of meaning. Personally I found a great deal of stimulation for my intellect (much more so than reading yet another item about antenna issues on the iPhone), but I don't mean to suggest that everyone would see it the same way.
- mixmax 16y ago
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- 100k 16y agoAs a cyclist I am familiar with the unbelievable outpouring of bile in newspaper commets whenever a cyclist is killed. Thank you to the St. Petersburg Times for publishing this article.
- danielnicollet 16y agoNeil Alan Smith and all the other dependable and beneficial members of society who try do good without making waves or deriving fame, power, or wealth from it owe a great deal to that rare kind of journalism! I hope that my own contributions in life can be seen as such positive as Niel's were. It's not that simple to do good and be appreciated in life even for seemingly very minute jobs like that of a dishwasher. Reminds me of the ferryman in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. Wise, humble, happy.