Saw this commercial art outside Home Depot. Who woulda thought a manure advert could be so cute?
I was listening to XMPR yesterday, an interview with a lawyer who has been representing people who work for tips in class action suits. She apparently worked on the case where Starbucks (Charbucks) was forcing their baristas to share their tips with the store managers. Seems they wanted to pay their managers out of the earnings of the worker bees rather than out of the corporate coffers. An immense judgment was entered against Starbucks in favor of the baristas.
The lawyer also was/is involved in tipping class action litigation against American Airlines (one of the most poorly operated large businesses in the world). Apparently American saw all that money being handed to skycaps at the curb and decided they wanted it. So, AA started charging $2 a bag for curb check-in (but not counter check-in), none of that money went to the skycaps, and, of course, the public didn’t really know their generosity was wasted. Well, AA lost that litigation, and had to pay money back to the skycaps. So, AA being the benevolent employer that it is, they decreed (maybe just at Boston Logan) that the skycaps could not accept tips. A retaliatory no-tipping policy. That is now in litigation. Some other litigation involving tipping was also discussed.
Well, here’s my point. Every day (and probably every night) some bean-counters are thinking about what little bits of money are going to regular folks and perhaps–horrors!–staying with those regular folks. These vampiric-number-crunchers have only one assignment from Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler, maybe): separate money from the “little people,” or, better yet, keep them from getting it in the first place. These folks live with the deep-seated fear that the peasants are doing better than mere subsistence, or that the very word “subsistence” has come to include such luxuries as regular meals and warm clothing, etc. When these worms find ways to fleece the peons in order to enrich the nobility (the corporations), they get bonuses, promotions, and a TV in their cubicle showing what they’d see out the window if they had a window.
Recently I ranted about David Rockefeller giving $100,000,000 to Harvard (instead of perhaps actually giving away his unneeded money for real charity). Last night on the NBC evening news they were praising some zillionaire who has invested many millions of dollars bringing foreign students to study in American colleges. Well, I guess this nouveau riche arriviste thinks if he acts like a Rockefeller, maybe he, too, can go to openings at the Met or some such thing. Don’t worry, Richie Rich, there are no hungry people in this country, no people lacking the basics such as housing and medical care. Bring some guy from Kazahkstan to study something at Colby College of some other school with a cute name. The world will be a better place. Right.
So, that’s today’s load of shit. Don’t forget the Black Kow.
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