Retail Workers Bear Brunt Of Sluggish Holiday Sales
(NPR) Several large retailers took a leap of faith on what they thought would be a gangbuster holiday season, hiring more seasonal workers this year than last.
Sales during the two months before Christmas weren't all that stunning, however, and that's meant fewer opportunities for seasonal workers.
Some of them worked vastly fewer hours than they expected. Onieka O'Kieffe, 23, was hired by Lush Cosmetics in midtown Manhattan for the holiday season. Lush told her she'd be working 20 to 30 hours per week, she says, but instead, she's getting only 10 hours a week at most. That's bad news for someone who has a few thousand dollars of credit card debt. O'Kieffe says she's losing out on hours because Lush just hired too many people this holiday.
"There's been times where there's 10 of us in the store and there's no customers," O'Kieffe says. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/30/168283255/retail-workers-bear-brunt-of-sluggish-holiday-sales
= new reply since forum marked as read
No not offended at all, it's hard on messageboards to express or read emotions. I understand what you mean about retail customers. They are like a bunch of rabid lemmings, especially around the holiday season! Even worse if the boss treats employees like they are robots or slaves.
My business does ok around the holiday season. We work long hours now because in a couple of weeks there is no business, untill the next holiday. I look foward to afternoon naps in February. 
Try to save enough to pay the bills.
It's hard to get enough hours in todays retail stores. Many stores trend to part time hours so they don't have to pay benefits.
Even worse with some seasonal jobs (other than retail) is what the state of Florida did over the past 10 or so years. That state has about the highest unemployment in the usa. Florida used to be the place to go to get summer seasonal work and the local citizens got hired on too. The trend now is to bring in thousands of foreign visa guest workers to work the jobs that used to go to local citizens.
Obama has changed some of the visa guest worker rules to help Americans get those jobs, not enough. The states need to raise the minimum wage but they will not because they have to pay the guest worker companies the minimum wage for their 'work crews'. The company then pays them less and even charges them money to 'work in USA hotels, resorts, many places.
To wordie, sorry such a complex issue and it's the American citizen who gets the worse end of these deals. So unfair! Happy New Year.
I had no idea that Florida was doing that with the seasonal workers. Probably happening in most other states also; anything that has a "resort" economy. I remember up in Wisconsin (Door County) there were a lot of Russian and Eastern European "guest workers". It's almost as if we American citizens have become obsolete. 
What do you do the rest of the year once the season ends? Does your income stretch enough through the rest of the year? I hope so...hate for anyone to have financial difficulties.
Hope 2013 is a wonderful year for you and yours! 
of being lazy / not working hard enough / being a bum when just about most of the money that rich people make they didn't work blood and sweat for (because they got it through investments, many that are only available to the rich, as well as by tricking people to accept less pay than they deserve and reaping the difference as profits) and the heirs and the heiresses of wealthy people didn't earn that money themselves. In addition, many rich people in this country before the civil war made their money through slavery, which is the ultimate mooching. The Koch Brothers reaping the profits of higher gasoline costs to increase their fortune by 800% (on the backs of so many American people) is ok, and the CEO of a company that is earning millions of dollars on the year because he/she's cutting costs that are leading to lower wages and lost jobs in the company is ok, but how dare that common person over there not work hard as if they were being whipped by a slaveowner! Poor people should have to work as if life is a living hell! 
The American common people must work so damn hard or not get respect or sympathy! While it's ok for the Rich People to not work hard for the money, because this is a two tiered society you know! Learn your place!
the RICH owners! One "CEO" made me get down on the floor in front of my staff and customers and made me scrape gum off of the floor! I'm surprised they didn't whip me while I was down there.
Pay EVERYONE a living wage so people can afford to buy shit! Why is this so difficult to understand? 
Sweet jeebus! What was I thinking?!
so that they could buy his cars! His employees won and he won too!
I too, do not get why paying EVERYONE a living wage is so difficult to understand. In fact, it would probably make the rich even richer, why the "clutching of the pearls"??
Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc., but they sure do seem pretty stupid. Guess they were never taught supply and demand! 
Better: How to we make the employers give a rats ass about their employees? 
their employees deaths! Remember the "dead peasant" insurance clauses that Walmart and other companies were taking out on their employees, unbeknownst to the employees and their families? That's when they care. 
Hated it. Had a manager that started yelling at me when the store was open and we were behind a counter. No customers in the store, but she did anyway. I started crying and she started screaming at me "DON'T CRY! DON'T CRY!".
Well, I was such a basket case of nerves I couldn't stop. And I sold crappy "fine jewelry" that I was ashamed of.
BTW I am not lazy. I spent 12 years in college and have a doctorate in law.
