Multi-tasking is...

How many people believe that multi-tasking is just a way to get more work out of a person without paying them more?...

...And are using full staffing only at the high sales volume periods to justify cutting back hours and placing more burdens on the individuals remaining at work?


Let's say there is a department in the company which requires 5 people to do the job correctly over a two shift period. Each shift functions with 2 people and the fifth person spans the transition from one shift to the other, covering lunch and coffee/smoking breaks and extra customer service.

Some wise executive has determined that expenses can be reduced and efficiency increased by laying off two employees and having each of the remaining employees take on a portion of the work of the layed off employees.

Their reasoning is that , say in a sales position, there are not customers every single second of the shift and therefore there are times when they are just "standing around doing nothing".

So "back up work", that is the chores which maintain the department (stocking, cleaning, preparation), can be done at these times.


While this might be true sometimes, the fact is that the executives making these decisions never actually go to or work in the department for any length of time, if at all, to determine if employees ever actually do "just stand around doing nothing"...and they don't verify whether this back-up work can be done any old time, or has a specific time line, which does in fact, keep the workers busy with no down time, ever.

The executives (who are eyeing the short term rewards of huge bonuses for creating efficiencies and cutting costs), put pressure on the managers and assistant managers (who also get rewarded) to push the workers in finding shortcuts or alternative means to get the work done.


While this may be effective in some departments, this method used in ready-to-eat food departments brings the department into marginally complying with Food Safety requirements. The work is aggressively inspected and documented multiple times a day, which adds a pressure to the work above the already stressful roles as Sales Associate, Cook or Baker, Cleaner, Stocker and Inventorian at the very least.

The reward to the worker is possibly a bonus, if these inspections have high marks, but that is rarely the case...Why? Is it not self-evident that there is a limit beyond which a certain amount of work can actually be done, well, if at all.

This concept is a perversion of a good idea, which at one time was labeled, "employee feedback to help make work more efficient and productive", because the powers that be never actually ask the workers what is a good idea and what isn't.

Workers today, considered Associates and not employees, are called Stakeholders, as if there were some kind of democratic participartion in the workings of the company, are in fact disposable factotums, desperate to hold on to any source of income in these hard times.

More on FACTOTUM and AUTOMATON later...

Just visualizing the image of a pyramid illustrates how the "Pyramid Scheme" concept has more meaning than just a lucrative business model structure.

Stone block by block, it is inherently hierarchal socially, as well as economically, because there will always be minions below supporting the few above who take from every single one of them in their efforts to survive.

I wonder how this codified aristocratic model fits in with true Capitalism?

Slavery in Modern Times

This is one of the reasons for the erosion of the value of labor everywhere...

http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/department_of_labor_releases_list_of_slave-made_goods

The Meaning of Labor in America Today

What does Labor mean in America today?

The questions below (and more to come) represent an intellectual and instinctive investigation into what has become of the American workplace and the role of the American worker. Although it seems that these concepts are recent, or recently dominant, they have hardly sneaked up on us over the last 40 years or so.

The trend is troubling, and I believe is one of many tools or devices implemented by forces/people/organizations who are manipulating economies to consolidate power and control. Paranoid as it sounds, I have heard or seen no other logical reason for this sad and failed state of capitalism to exist.

Does hard work mean work hard anymore?

Or has multi-tasking, that is, one person doing more than one job simultaneously, come to mean hard work?

Does work still mean to produce...or does it mean

to perform repetitive tasks which create profits for an entity?

What is a job?

Is it a contractual agreement, spoken or written, to perform specialized tasks in exchange for money and/or other benefits on a predetermined schedule and place?

Or is it a non-contractual agreement to be available 24/7 and to be summoned to perform assorted, non-specialized tasks, with flexible scheduling and locations?

To whom or what is one's allegiance and loyaty?

The actual work?

The workplace?

One's supervisors/managers?

The chain of command?

The Company?

The shareholders?

The Profit Margin?

What is an Associate?

How is an Associate different from an employee?

How have labor laws been eroded to such a point as it effectively destroys family life and impoverishes people?

What has happended to the protections and advancements which unions fought so hard to integrate into the work place?

Why do people feel so helpless to do anything about it?