Hekate
Hekate's JournalWhat a nightmare! Some people who run hotels -- shouldn't, at all, ever...
My sister and I have a story, but it’s about being turned away from someplace where we had a reservation. Their parking lot was not full, but we were told they had no rooms. Sis was exhausted from extensive driving and just about ready to blow a gasket, so I suggested she wait to one side while I talked to the man sweetly about calling around to find another place for us.
While waiting, we asked to use the restroom and were turned down. Two happy young couples came in, dressed up for an evening out, and were accommodated immediately. Seriously.
Hm. To my mind we looked like two respectable middle aged ladies dressed for travel: slacks or jeans, blouses, walking shoes, clean and neat, no biker tatts or anything off-putting. Most people look at us and can tell we are sisters, though Sis is 8” taller than I am.
Finally the proprietor gave me an address. When we were back in the car and heading down the pitch black highway, I asked what the hell just happened there? She said through gritted teeth: “He thought we were lesbians.” Shocked the shit out of me, but Sis is bi- so her youthful experiences were somewhat different than mine.
But the night was not yet over.
Far down the road it was obvious we’d passed the address we were given, so we turned into an industrial park, got lost in there, made it back to the highway.
Finally saw the hotel sign. Dark, broken. But at the end of a huge parking lot there was a building with lights on in the entry and cars clustered just there. We pulled in to the parking lot, slowly. It was dark, empty. We stopped not far from the road and watched, with the engine running: almost the only lights on were at the front door, people coming and going from their cars. After awhile I said: “Do you want to go up there?” “Oh HELL no,” said she and took off.
We had just enough energy left to briefly laugh like crazy and make up stories about what kind of business they were doing at that Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Place.
We stopped at the first gas station/convenience store we saw and parked in the brightly lit parking lot by the brightly lit store. From there, Sis called Trip Advisor and explained the situation, so she could make sure to stop payment to the hotel we were refused at. I took the phone at some point to tell the story of the Very Bad Place we were told to go to by that asshole, and the woman on the other end of the line was suitably appalled. She told us to sit tight, that she was going to find us a place to stay — and after quite awhile, she did.
It was probably 2:00 a.m. by the time we got there, and the proprietress was sweet and kind. The room was clean and comfy. Sis walked into the bedroom, shut the door, and crashed. I unfolded the couch, found the extra bedding, and did likewise.
We were okay. Someone had actively wished us ill — but we were okay.
Michael Hiltzick, econ & govt policy writer for the Los Angeles Times, references this today...
(Darn, the screen jumped and I hit the “post” button. Will try to finish shortly. // update: Done)
Recommend the whole thing. He references Dollar General, where people are sometimes required to work off the clock in “wretched” conditions.
Southern governors in particular think the federal assistance is a “dangerous entitlement” and are stopping people from getting it. They seriously believe workers should be driven back to work by starvation for 1/2 of what it takes to live — because, reasons. Maybe they should be under the lash, like the olden days? Maybe their little children should sleep under the looms at the textile mills? Whistle while they work?
He uses words like “demeaning” and “insulting” and “threatening” for the ways that employers and politicians talk about workers.
On a salient note, he writes of a woman who was unable to find enough workers for her ice cream parlor to be open 7 days a week all summer, until she advertised wages of $15/hour, at which point she had “thousands” of applications.
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=355b50d8-8825-4aa5-87cc-be0ebc92e5cc
Can’t find workers? Don’t blame federal aid
snip
The notion that unemployment benefits are keeping able-bodied workers home has become an article of faith among employers and their lobbyists, despite a lack of any evidence that this phenomenon is endemic.
In some places, the business community hasn’t been shy about demeaning workers who aren’t clamoring to join their staffs. Typically they portray the workforce as an army of layabouts.
Here’s the insulting way that John Kabateck, California state director for the small business lobby group the National Federation of Independent Business, put it: “The federal government’s extra $300 it added to state unemployment benefits comes to an end in early September, so it will be a matter of time before showing up for work is a better-paying proposition than remaining on the couch watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island.”
NFIB, by the way, has sued to overturn California regulations requiring employers to maintain safe workplaces during the pandemic. That hints at one reason why people might feel uncomfortable about taking jobs with its member companies. The lawsuit is pending in state court in San Francisco.
snip
The question is not whether employers are scratching for staff, but why.
“Employers simply don’t want to raise wages high enough to attract workers,” observes Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist for the Department of Labor who is now policy director at the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute. “I often suggest that whenever anyone says, ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ she should really add, ‘at the wages I want to pay.’”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell referred to the wage question during a news conference on April 28. “We don’t see wages moving up yet,” he said. “And presumably we would see that in a really tight labor market.”
Powell listed numerous other factors that might produce a temporary labor shortage in some sectors.
“One big factor would be schools aren’t open yet, so there’s still people who are at home taking care of their children, and would like to be back in the workforce, but can’t be yet,” he said. “There are virus fears that are weighing on people, so some people don’t want to go back to work.”
snip
For some employers, the intuitive conclusion that workers are just waiting out their unemployment benefit trumps its empirical falsity. For others, too, it’s far easier, and even cheaper, to complain about lazy workers than to entice them into work with a living wage.
As has been the case in other economic recoveries, the pace of rehiring is almost entirely in employers’ hands. Their tools are workplace conditions and wages. They just have to use them.
Not exactly off-topic, but I read a memoir of a *real* big-game hunter from over a century ago...
I disapprove of the practice, but that is beside the point; I was mainly interested because it was about the exploits of two women who had to overcome all the usual obstacles to entering a man’s world, including the snickers about how cute they were as they were setting out in Africa, before they left all the men in the dust.
That said, the author and friend went about the business of stalking and slaughtering creatures that fought back. It was fascinating, in a blood-soaked sort of way. Their trophies were many and acquired at real risk of death to themselves. Then I shut the book and was glad that times, in part, had changed, that most safaris these days are made with tripods and cameras.
The LaPierres and the Trump Boys as hunters? — yes, they are disgusting, but they are also laughable. They like to kill things, but do so at no risk to themselves or their expensive outfits. How fitting for the man who enables mass slaughter of schoolchildren and churchgoers. How fitting for the spoiled sons of a rich man who wants the government overthrown, but will in no sense appear on the barricades themselves.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: Central Coast, California
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 90,674