Long working hours kill.

[MikeH]

That is so missing the point, alby. Even without a world-class education, people have choices in careers and jobs. EVERYONE can decide how hard they want to work.

It is an incredibly recent modern luxury, which only applies to a proportion of the world, that you can decide how hard to work.

How hard you have to work is determined by how hard you need to work to provide for your basic needs. If your labour is so valuable that you can fulfil your basic needs with a minimum of work, then your choice is how much you work above those hours in order to provide yourself with luxuries, savings etc.

If your labour is not valuable, you do not have that choice.

It's a societal choice what we do about that issue. Either we choose not to care about that, let people who have low labour value fend for themselves. But the downside for society is that find that their choices aren't limited to a choice between working very hard long hours for little pay or starvation, they have a third choice which is crime. Which is high risk but can also be high reward.

[Darius871]

I can only hope he was being dense on purpose like people here usually are in response to my posts.

Is there any other reason to be here?


In any event, I wasn't commenting solely on the red herring of labour's value, as your bizarre self seems to think, but rather noting that MikeH's and KH's positions were hardly different. KH was saying that people like he and MikeH were smart enough to look after their self-interest, while Mike was saying that their labour is valuable enough to have the bargaining power to look after their self-interest, and yet it is the very same intelligence that KH referred to that causes the higher labor value and bargaining power that Mike referred to. There wasn't much of a difference; either way smart people are in a strong position to negotiate their work hours and dumb people aren't, which is why some think our paternalistic overlords should step in on behalf of the latter. Wow, are you still reading this? Wasting Alby's abundant time truly is becoming an art form. Anyway, I don't think any of this matters in the grand scheme of things.

[Solomwi]

Company directive.

For the purposes of incentivising cashiers we have decided that any cashier who makes an error shall be hanged by the neck until dead. This measure is to assist cashiers with accuracy of accounting for their daily takings. This is to support our policy of helping and supporting our people in their endeavours.

Solomwi
Chairman, MoneyGrubbers Inc.

Transaction costs of summary execution are too high. No, it's perfectly fair and reasonable to simply expect the person responsible to make the till right.

[Solomwi]

Wait, Solomwi...

Why do you think it is okay.. nay, that companies should be encouraged... to deduct pay from an employee for drawer shortages? I want to see your reasoning.

You said incentivizing cashiers to not make mistakes. Why are these mistakes extraordinary enough for a business to warrant being addressed, as opposed to not common and inevitable losses from business operation? What is the extent of employee culpability for these losses? What is the reasoning for the existence of said culpability? Does this culpability extend to other losses? For example, a tradesman unintentionally breaks a piece of equipment; is he responsible for remunerating the value of the equipment? What, if any, differences exist if the losses were intentional? What if the losses exceed wages paid or result in employee compensation to be below federal minimum wage rates?

Humor me.

Simple: the loss is recoverable from the party who caused it, and the act of that recovery gets the incentives right and will, over time, reduce that type of loss. If it's such a heinous practice, some business owner will be able to take advantage of that fact and attract better or cheaper labor by not doing it. The cashier has total control over the till, to the exclusion of all others. Simply requiring repayment on a strict liability basis is a low transaction cost way to limit losses and properly align incentives. If the cashier's intentionally skimming, it's theft, and that opens up other disciplinary avenues, including criminal prosecution. Why would I care if it results in less than minimum wage or the cashier paying the company on net? That level of incompetence doesn't need to be tolerated.

Your equipment analogy is inapposite. Equipment has a finite life, meaning it often breaks with nobody being at fault. You don't say whether the tradesman is at fault or simply happened to be handling the equipment when fatigue caught up with it. Also, since the equipment is necessary for the tradesman to do his job, he already has incentive to take care of it.

As far as really smart people writing the laws, even when that's the case, it doesn't mean the law is a pure product of their intellects being applied to find the optimal solution to a legitimate problem.

[notyoueither]

Should wait staff have to pay for bills when people dash?

[MikeH]

No.

[b etor]

Dude...

Carnegie Mellon: Undergraduates 5,705
Central Michigan: Undergraduates 21,633



Central Michigan is the REAL CMU. And see the reason why I especially know Central Michigan as CMU is because Temple and CMU play football in the same conference, the Mid-American Conference. This past season, the Owls beat the Chippewas in OT.

...we just refer to that school as Central. Where... not so intelligent people go to school. Fun parties though.

[Krill]

Last time I checked no one had the balls to steal my alma maters name...