6 ms·

I'm curious (and quite possibly way off base) - how much of the current trends on corporate culture have trickled down to low skill jobs? What I mean is, when I

I'm curious (and quite possibly way off base) - how much of the current trends on corporate culture have trickled down to low skill jobs? What I mean is, when I worked at a grocery store 20 years ago, we came and did our work, effectively labor work, and that was it. Do such jobs now involve constant meetings and trainings about whatever hot topic HR is working on, and reading and having to agree to forms, etc? If nothing else, covid must have definitely introduced all sorts of new rituals and instructions that are not related to the job. From personal experience, the hardest part of an office job is putting up with all the conformity and bureaucracy and politics. For a lot of people in lower skill jobs, they may just not be interested in that stuff (also a reason people didn't go to more education). And so if front line service jobs are getting dominated by all the corporate stuff we have to put up with, I can imagine that pushing more people out of the system. Even things as trivial as having to email or fill out a job application online probably exclude many people. Not to mention having to be monitored by an app, etc. Anyway, just a theory, I'm really just curious to know if this could be a factor based on what people's experience is in these kind of jobs.

gumby 5y ago
> Do such jobs now involve constant meetings and trainings about whatever hot topic HR is working on... If you have a manual labor job, the opportunity to be paid to sit down while someone yammers on about something or other and maybe shows a movie is quite welcome.
- monoideism 5y ago
  Eh, I think that depends on whether that manual job is self employed or working for someone else.
- randomdata 5y ago
  If there is no work to do, I'd rather go home and watch a movie of my choosing, or anything else I feel like doing. Idle time at work is excruciating.
  - reidjs 5y ago
    Idle time is nice if the alternative is heavy lifting or dealing with rude customers
    - randomdata 5y ago
      When it is at home, yes. When someone wants to take up your time at work that could be instead spent getting the job done so you can go home, or already be at home, it is not a pleasant experience.
      - shukantpal 5y ago
        If you get the current task at hand done, you're not going home. You're paid by the hour (in this case)
    - youeseh 5y ago
      > rude customers Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. The stuff around internal politics though - little pecking order shit, where the managers and other coworkers can and often do make working unbearable causes many exits and often violence.
      - lsiebert 5y ago
        > Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. No, it's not, many workers I know face repeated and regular stressful abuse, which is almost always worse if they are visibly part of a marginalized group of people, who also get racial and misogynistic slurs thrown in their face. There are dramatic differences in treatment, and many managers don't step in to protect their employees. That's not to say the other stuff you mention doesn't also occur. It's not even necessarily retail, I know a really sweet Latina woman, she manages and runs multiple bicycle rental places in SF. People will be incredibly rude to her, but when she says, "Hold on, let me get someone else to help you" and gets a white male employee of hers, they are suddenly all smiles and apologetic and understanding. I honestly would encourage folks here to remember to be good customers, to treat workers as you would want people to treat you, because workers in the US are almost always underpaid and dealing with work related stress. Try to know what you want by looking online, understand that workers don't owe you happy smiles and social interaction beyond the goods and services you pay for, listen to and ask for suggestions and consider them as expert advice if you are having trouble making a decision, and if possible be polite and say thank you.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Only if it came at the right time. I had to watch several anti-union videos when I started working at a grocery store. I'd already watched other training videos that day and the anti-union arguments in the video were insulting to my intelligence. I'd rather have been stocking shelves than listen to that garbage but I'm sure there were times where I'd been working a long shift (side note: 32 hours was the longest shift I ever worked) and would have been fine with watching some random HR video, insulting or not.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    This kind of "training" is frequently framed as being about "ethics". It's confusing until you realize what's being done with the word "ethics".
newacct583 5y ago
> From personal experience, the hardest part of an office job is putting up with all the conformity and bureaucracy and politics. Sorry, but this is just a staggeringly awful FirstWorldProblems/Karen kind of thing. I mean, sure, maybe that's the worst part of your "office job" (which I'm guessing is, like many people here, a six figure development position in a career you genuinely enjoy), but you say that because you've never had to be on your feet for 8 hours straight bagging groceries or emptying trash cans or entering orders from cranky customers into a POS terminal. Good grief. Bad training meetings are what you choose to complain about? Really?
- jtbayly 5y ago
  From the comment you are replying to: > when I worked at a grocery store You: > you've never had to be on your feet for 8 hours straight bagging groceries You don’t know that, and the evidence we have implies you are quite possibly wrong.
  - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
    I used to do dishes, drive thru, kitchen, and floors at a Chic-Fil-A for well under $10 an hour in 2003-2005. I now make well over 100k. Person you're replying to is the definition of a techie in his or her own bubble.
    - nucleardog 5y ago
      When I was fourteen I spent two or three years working at a place that gave refunds for recyclables in the bad area of town. I spent eight hours straight on my feet counting bottles and cans that were quite often picked from the garbage, and frequently had dead mice, broken glass, exposed needles, or other biohazards in them. I was _excited_ when I got the opportunity to mop the floor. Even when I had a couple days off, the smell of sour milk would always be in my nose. I got paid something like $6/hr USD at the time. Quit your whining about your cushy fast food job making almost twice as much, you don't even know what hard work is. /s It doesn't matter if other people have it worse. That's still something that sucks in that guys life, and the fact that other people have it worse doesn't make him feel better or invalidate how he feels about it.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
I remember the first time I received on-the-job grocery training when I put myself through college working the night shift at the grocery store. It was 3 weeks before I graduated from college. I had to drive to another town and sit through 3 hours of presentations on how to do the basic things that I had been training other employees to do for years.
thatguy0900 5y ago
One of the big ones is credit cards/rewards programs. When I worked at target all cashiers had to maintain a certainppercentage of rewards program customers going through their line

gumby 5y ago

> Do such jobs now involve constant meetings and trainings about whatever hot topic HR is working on... If you have a manual labor job, the opportunity to be paid to sit down while someone yammers on about something or other and maybe shows a movie is quite welcome.

monoideism 5y ago
Eh, I think that depends on whether that manual job is self employed or working for someone else.
randomdata 5y ago
If there is no work to do, I'd rather go home and watch a movie of my choosing, or anything else I feel like doing. Idle time at work is excruciating.
- reidjs 5y ago
  Idle time is nice if the alternative is heavy lifting or dealing with rude customers
  - randomdata 5y ago
    When it is at home, yes. When someone wants to take up your time at work that could be instead spent getting the job done so you can go home, or already be at home, it is not a pleasant experience.
    - shukantpal 5y ago
      If you get the current task at hand done, you're not going home. You're paid by the hour (in this case)
  - youeseh 5y ago
    > rude customers Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. The stuff around internal politics though - little pecking order shit, where the managers and other coworkers can and often do make working unbearable causes many exits and often violence.
    - lsiebert 5y ago
      > Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. No, it's not, many workers I know face repeated and regular stressful abuse, which is almost always worse if they are visibly part of a marginalized group of people, who also get racial and misogynistic slurs thrown in their face. There are dramatic differences in treatment, and many managers don't step in to protect their employees. That's not to say the other stuff you mention doesn't also occur. It's not even necessarily retail, I know a really sweet Latina woman, she manages and runs multiple bicycle rental places in SF. People will be incredibly rude to her, but when she says, "Hold on, let me get someone else to help you" and gets a white male employee of hers, they are suddenly all smiles and apologetic and understanding. I honestly would encourage folks here to remember to be good customers, to treat workers as you would want people to treat you, because workers in the US are almost always underpaid and dealing with work related stress. Try to know what you want by looking online, understand that workers don't owe you happy smiles and social interaction beyond the goods and services you pay for, listen to and ask for suggestions and consider them as expert advice if you are having trouble making a decision, and if possible be polite and say thank you.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Only if it came at the right time. I had to watch several anti-union videos when I started working at a grocery store. I'd already watched other training videos that day and the anti-union arguments in the video were insulting to my intelligence. I'd rather have been stocking shelves than listen to that garbage but I'm sure there were times where I'd been working a long shift (side note: 32 hours was the longest shift I ever worked) and would have been fine with watching some random HR video, insulting or not.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  This kind of "training" is frequently framed as being about "ethics". It's confusing until you realize what's being done with the word "ethics".

newacct583 5y ago

> From personal experience, the hardest part of an office job is putting up with all the conformity and bureaucracy and politics. Sorry, but this is just a staggeringly awful FirstWorldProblems/Karen kind of thing. I mean, sure, maybe that's the worst part of your "office job" (which I'm guessing is, like many people here, a six figure development position in a career you genuinely enjoy), but you say that because you've never had to be on your feet for 8 hours straight bagging groceries or emptying trash cans or entering orders from cranky customers into a POS terminal. Good grief. Bad training meetings are what you choose to complain about? Really?

jtbayly 5y ago
From the comment you are replying to: > when I worked at a grocery store You: > you've never had to be on your feet for 8 hours straight bagging groceries You don’t know that, and the evidence we have implies you are quite possibly wrong.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  I used to do dishes, drive thru, kitchen, and floors at a Chic-Fil-A for well under $10 an hour in 2003-2005. I now make well over 100k. Person you're replying to is the definition of a techie in his or her own bubble.
  - nucleardog 5y ago
    When I was fourteen I spent two or three years working at a place that gave refunds for recyclables in the bad area of town. I spent eight hours straight on my feet counting bottles and cans that were quite often picked from the garbage, and frequently had dead mice, broken glass, exposed needles, or other biohazards in them. I was _excited_ when I got the opportunity to mop the floor. Even when I had a couple days off, the smell of sour milk would always be in my nose. I got paid something like $6/hr USD at the time. Quit your whining about your cushy fast food job making almost twice as much, you don't even know what hard work is. /s It doesn't matter if other people have it worse. That's still something that sucks in that guys life, and the fact that other people have it worse doesn't make him feel better or invalidate how he feels about it.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

I remember the first time I received on-the-job grocery training when I put myself through college working the night shift at the grocery store. It was 3 weeks before I graduated from college. I had to drive to another town and sit through 3 hours of presentations on how to do the basic things that I had been training other employees to do for years.

thatguy0900 5y ago

One of the big ones is credit cards/rewards programs. When I worked at target all cashiers had to maintain a certainppercentage of rewards program customers going through their line