I really believe there’s some sort of “emperor’s new clothes” phenomenon happening with Gen Z discoursers where they’re too afraid to question the logic of some of the discourse being thrown at them for fear of appearing to be unwoke so they just blindly parrot it not to be excluded by their peers
people in the notes going “this is why it’s important to have critical thinking skills, critical thinking this, critical thinking that”, but when I wrote the post I was thinking less about lack of critical thinking and more about lack of guts to look at a piece of discourse you know deep down op could be bullshitting and go “bruh, i think you’re bullshitting”, with no fear of appearing unwoke for the mere crime of publicly questioning what you’re told is the correct opinion to have. the point of the emperor’s new clothes is not that everyone was gullible, it was everyone was cowardly, they all knew there was a possibility of it all being a con, but to say it out loud would be outing themselves as stupid in case that it weren’t. it takes someone who doesn’t give a fuck about how they’d be perceived to say the truth out loud for everyone to feel safe expressing what they were thinking all along.
“Stay in your LANE!” did this to us, I think.
Honestly, now that I’m out of an environment where that’s being constantly shrieked at me I’m wondering what it was supposed to even mean.
i think gen z ppl need to stop trying to moderate social media– which is impossible to moderate– and just go on forums already. “this is for mlm, wlw dni” bruh i’m telling you, if you discover mlm forums you’ll go bananas. everyone there will be mlm, i promise. this is genuinely friendly advice. stop wasting your time trying to control your twitter and tik tok, it won’t work because it’s designed to not be controlled.
I’ve said it before but the loss of forums in place of homogenized mass social media is a huge blow to the development of communities, and trying to implement forum rules, logic & expectations on social media is doomed to failure and just results in unnecessary hostility and argument.
The funniest side effect of Star Wars’ habit of reusing characters, is you get these characters that everybody knows, or at least everyone knows someone that knows that person; Din is a good example of this, having met two other Big Star Wars protagonists in his journeys.
However imo the best example of this is Hondo. Because Hondo Ohnaka’s a fun character right? But not as an Easter egg, no, he’s fun when you introduce him to your cast, and watch the Chaos ensue! But what the end result of this is that Practically Every Major Character Is (At Most) Two People Away From knowing Hondo Ohnaka.
Don’t believe me? Here’s some fun examples:
The clones? Any of them that ever met the Clone Wars Trio or Plo Koon are one person away.
The Sith? Like half of them directly fought him (and lost), and the rest know somebody that have.
The Rebels? The Resistance? Chewie knows that guy, and everybody knows Chewie- and everyone that doesn’t know Chewie probably knows Hera Syndulla or another member of the Ghost Crew.
Dude was a pirate king for a little bit, with means your average criminal has probably heard the name, and any scoundrel that’s had the misfortune of dealing with Maul or Boba Fett personally is also one person away.
I’m pretty sure literally everyone in Rebels has either met the guy personally or knows him though the Ghost Crew or Kallus.
Its only when you get farther into the fucking First Order where the chain of familiarity starts going to two people.
Tl;dr:
Hondo Knows Everyone A.K.A:
Nobody can network like Space Jack Sparrow
The Star Wars version of six degrees of Kevin Bacon is Hondo Ohnaka.
cuyahogafalls-ohio asked: I'm glad you're speaking up about how the idea that shoplifting hurts the workers seems a little suspicious. Everywhere I worked retail, unless I guess there was suspicion that you were in on it, was "just let them go, maybe try to get a description so we can kick them out next time"
And it’s exactly the kind of thing that some bourgeois would seed online and all the woker than thou tumblr kids would eat it up and spread it as far as they can. Every time I bring this up I get several people telling me this - that they’ve never even heard of a first-hand account of this, that it’s inconsistent with how retail chains view shoplifting, etc
I mean, I’ve never had a job even train me on how to stop shoplifting! Most of the places I’ve worked have never even talked about it, and they definitely don’t expect the cashiers and stockers to be making like, citizen’s arrests lest they lose their bonuses. Oh, and you better believe that if I accused someone of lifting when they weren’t I’d be fired immediately for bad service. That’s not the behavior they want to encourage
Again I’m not going to outright say that it never happens or that the idea itself is propaganda, but at worst it’s such a negligible effect that it’s far outweighed by the benefit you get from lifting + the damage to the company
We get people shoplifting pretty often. We’re not even allowed to stop people from shoplifting by force. We have a security guard, and even they can only make police reports after a thing already happens. The most any of us can do, that we ever do, is approach a shoplifter and tell them to leave. Most of the time they leave with the items, because we can’t touch them or rip things out of their hands or bags. That’d be a legal nightmare. You can’t arrest nor can you physically confront anyone unless your store has it’s own legal precedent for detaining people (like actual cops in shopping malls).
Management can’t, and doesn’t, make us responsible for this. And we’re a small local grocery that actually feels the pinch when people shoplift. It comes out of our budget though, not our paychecks, because every business has insurance that covers these things, not to mention an acceptable amount of loss that’s accounted for. If someone steals some orange juice, the sales-to-purchase logs I make every week lump it right in with the yogurt I opened to give out a free sample. Loss is loss and it’s part of business. Unless you’re selling TVs or something like that, you can’t always even be sure of how much you’re losing - since, again, you can’t just grab and shake em down to find what they stuffed in their bag.
If your boss tries to intimidate and make you and your coworkers feel responsible for shoplifters, it’s all hot air. You’re only screwed if you’re the one doing it and you get caught.
(hot tip though: with tiny business like us, you can actually get lucky by just asking for day-olds. It can’t hurt to try. We give food out constantly. I probably give away at least $1000 or more in food per month. Steal from Walmart)
Holy shit holy shit shut the fuck up???
You know what they do when there’s a high theft in stores? Cut hours
Cutting hours is basically, functionally, the exact same thing as cutting your wagea to the employee. All store has “theft discouragement training” so if your area has a high amount of thdft they will ABSOLUTELY cut the hours of the people working in those areas! Like this is an actual thing I have had to deal with. There’s theft in your department? It’s becaude you didn’t smile enough to make the shoplifter uncomfortable and stop? Because you didn’t pay attention to every customer that you saw nd if you had been you could’ve stopped it because then they would know you were aware of them! And if that happened that MUST mean you’re giving poor customer service!
I have actually seen this. I have worked for MULTIPLE large chains and this basically how they “make up for lost income” because cutting hours when profits are down, or because they aren’t providing good customer service, is perfectly legal. I have literally dealt with this shit before personally.
Stop saying nothing happens to employees when shoplifting occurs, that is blatantly untrue and only allows shoplifters to feel even more enabled to steal and fuck over some poor employee.
Stop.
Bad news friend: Walmart doesn’t give their employees hours out of the kindness of their own heart. Large chains always stay as understaffed as logistically possible at all times, because that’s how capitalism works. They’re incentivized to exploit you as much as possible so they do that, regardless of the circumstances
If your management tells you they’re cutting hours because of shoplifting, they’re either using it as an excuse to fuck you over even more while making you think it’s your fault, or trying to get you to work harder and betray other poor people for free by convincing you it’s in your self-interest to do so. But the best deterrent for shoplifting is a well-staffed store and they know it, they know that cutting hours due to shrinkage would be counterproductive, but they do it anyway because that’s not their motivation for doing it
I’ve worked for multiple large chains too you know, and so have dozens of people I’ve seen saying this excuse is bullshit (check the replies for more!). What I’ve learned is that it’s impossible to determine the source of shrinkage, whether theft or miscounted/damaged/lost/underdelivered inventory. I’ve learned that some amount of shrinkage, including from theft, is always expected and accounted for. I’ve learned that it’s virtually always way too much of a liability to have employees on the floor try to stop shoplifting, and most of the time the only training on the topic I received was to not do anything. I’ve had jobs where I stole something almost every shift and no one ever caught on or brought it up - I mean do you guys really think lifting is such an unexpected and uncommon thing that they have to go into panic mode every time it happens? Please
Your enemy isn’t the single mother lifting baby food, it’s your boss. These retail chains can afford to give you the hours and the pay that you need, but they don’t - not because you’re doing a bad job, but because you let them get away with it. You and your employer have an inherently adversarial relationship, and the best course of action isn’t to bow down to their demands and attack other poor people who are just trying to get by, it’s to fight back. You should be supporting the lifters, looking the other way, covering for them - joining them! - not blaming them for your boss’s abuse. Stop swallowing their propaganda
In the past I have literally worked for a grocery chain that was making increasing annual profits year after year. That same branch, let alone chain, continued to severely understaff the sales floor, resist giving out due raises, had a policy against ever coming close to overtime, and literally prevented every single cashier from being anything more than part time.
Shoplift. Shoplift to your heart’s content. Because I’m telling you that the guff they give low level/minimum wage workers is 100% bullshit. They’re feeding you lies in order to take the onus off of the bosses and owners for leeching off of your labour. They want you to despise both your fellow workers (“More workers steal than customers do”) and the poor and working class masses.
A franchise does not suffer from petty theft, even en masse. Unless we all unanimously rose up to tear these fuckers down, they have an intricate system of protections from banks, insurance, other company ventures, hoarded wealth of the owners, the state, etc that will protect the owners from ever taking a real hit. If they lay you fellows down it’s to boost their own salaries and year-end bonuses.
Don’t peddle their crap for them.
i was a softlines department manager back in like 2007, when they had department managers. they are lying to you when they say your hours are being cut due to shoplifting. the less hours used the better because it goes to the store manager’s bonus. shoplifting is 100% already taken into account as a reality of running a retail business. Literally all any employees besides higher management and A.P. (assets protection) was permitted to do when they see shoplifting was report it and approach the person and ask them if they need help, making it known that an employee is now aware of them.
the one department they kept telling us before i was a manager that they “didn’t staff because of theft” was women’s accessories, aka, bras and panties. truth of the matter was that the fitting room’s person was supposed take care of it, and that person WAS the women’s accessories employee. it was a lie to keep people on their toes. yes, a lot of theft happened in that area, but not of bras and panties. electronics was around the corner, and customers are smart enough to notice that no one is ever organizing the bras. electronics remained fully staffed to walmart’s qualifications. do did softlines.
they want you desperate, it makes their use of you easier. they want you blaming each other, instead of working together; it makes you easier to use.
I once had a boss admit flat out, “letting the shoplifter go is way cheaper than the lawsuit we’d have to deal with if you got hurt trying to stop them.”
i can attest that at joann’s we were specifically instructed to never ever accuse someone of stealing and we were not allowed to do absolutely anything about it
Can also confirm that when I worked retail, the shoplifter apprehension policy was that I had to see the customer take an item, see them conceal it on their person, see them heading out the exit, not take my eyes off of them once this entire time, and then alert a manager. This policy was designed to be nearly impossible to obey; how can I find a manager and alert them in time if I can’t take my eyes off the customer that’s actively walking out the door? And the most a manager could do would be to ask the person if they misplaced any merchandise; if they said no then that was it. Employees were more highly encouraged to report “internal loss” AKA anything another employee did that resulted in missing or damaged merchandise.
The price of any good sold under capitalism is hugely inflated to create a profit for someone else, to the point that inventory loss is near-negligible in comparison. Other working class people also struggling for crumbs are not your adversary, the capitalists are. The point of this system is to oppress us and keep us under their boots.
Read this part out loud for yourself to hear:
“The price of any good sold under capitalism is hugely inflated to create
a profit for someone else, to the point that inventory loss is
near-negligible in comparison. Other working class people also
struggling for crumbs are not your adversary, the capitalists are. The
point of this system is to oppress us and keep us under their boots.”
I wanted to add to this because I feel things about working in retail. I worked at a supermarket for 8 years and we weren’t even allowed to watch someone suspected of shoplifting. We had to treat them like any shopper aka ask if they needed help and move on. Maybe call a manager but they couldn’t do anything either except maybe call loss prevention assuming one was there and more often than not there wasn’t anyone there. Someone could literally fill up a shopping cart in front of an employee and walk out the door and there was nothing we could do (I mean even calling the police was limited to the store director). We were told all the time to do nothing about shoplifting as the cost would be less than if we went after a shoplifter and were hurt. Like so many people have said before, the store budget assumed there would be theft (there’s literally a budget for theft) but any negative impact theft has to store profit was extremely small. When it comes to loss the biggest issues we had was food waste (if I think about how much food is wasted in an average supermarket I could easily start crying it is SO MUCH!) and breakage both of which far outstripped even the largest theft loss. For instance I was just reminded that where I worked, book vendors tear off the covers of books that have been on the shelf “too long” and then the books are thrown away. I could come up with dozens of examples like that. Anyone saying theft is the reason for cutting hours is straight up lying or don’t know what they are talking about.
it’s so refreshing getting world news that isn’t an immediate threat to anyone’s life or just otherwise depressing. this is what world news should be. a big ole boat drew a penis and then got stuck in a canal and now a sizable chunk of world trade has ground to a halt. wonderful. this costs me nothing
shipment officers, gently nudging Ever Given with their 8 tugboats: Ever Given move out of the way please so you don’t block the entire global trade
Ever Given, her lamplights enormous: you SHOVE ever given? you shove her hull like the big boulder? oh! oh! no commerce for human! no commerce for human for One Thousand Years!!!
i’ll say it til the cows come home but as undeniably strange as the star wars prequels are, george lucas’ direction with anakin was downright fucking inspired. people were waiting for whatever badass backstory lucas was sure to give them, awaiting a naturally intimidating actor with rogueish charm to be cast, waiting for this masterpiece of badass villainy or whatever, and george lucas is like no, no, i’ve got you. and then he finds the one man on the planet who looked babier than baby mark hamill and says, “his main personality trait will be being weird and awkward, secondary personality trait loving his wife, tertiary personality trait being incredibly good at murder, and all of these traits will do battle on the silver screen for three movies until they all win in possibly the worst way.” that fucking rules. george lucas could’ve done anything with darth vader and he willingly, enthusiastically chose mentally unstable college student who is somehow married but his only friend is his kind-of dad. that fucking rules, top down, that’s fucking exquisite. if you don’t think that premise is inherently entertaining you’ve got no taste
The cast of the Original Trilogy had cliched, boring character concepts that were executed wonderfully enough for it not to matter.
The cast of the Prequel Trilogy had interesting concepts that were executed poorly enough to make them seem utterly stupid.
The cast of the Sequel Trilogy had amazing, thought-provoking concepts that were executed in the town square and put up on pikes as a warning to others.
the entire plot of black sails is simply that Silver is a man that’s like, “Do not ever put me in a situation” except he continually keeps getting put in situations.
“I was just gonna be in the story for like 2-3 episodes to get my money and then leave” but then he becomes its main and most culturally famous character by accident
honestly pointing out that wellerman is a work song about having a shit job with a shit employer and that it isn’t some kind of endorsement of the slave trade is valid and all but like
are we not going to talk about how ridiculous the idea of “cancelling” a song from the 19th century for having problematic themes is
broke: you should stop singing or listening to the wellerman because it’s about the slave trade and suppression of native maori
woke: wellerman is literally about working in indentured servitude for an oppressive company and isn’t a fucking endoresement of that do you even understand what work songs are, like, as a genre jesus give me strength
bespoke: debating the moral purity of a song from the 19th century is fucking stupid
yes, the company wellerman was oppressing maori people, but in a lot of ways it’s like how amazon is now. the people that work there have no choice but to work there, and they themselves can’t do anything about the fact that it’s oppressing another group because they need money to live, because that’s how capitalistic monopolies work.
you are correct! it is also important to note roughly 1/3 of the shore whalers involved here were themselves native maori and would have joined in with singing “soon mr. fuckface will come back and give me the tea he pays me in lieu of actual money. hopefully someday i can stop cutting out whale tongues and fuckin’ LEAVE! if we’re really lucky he’ll get killed by a whale!”
no part of this song is remotely positive towards the weller brothers, let alone “glorifying violence against maori” or whatever the fuck.
but the point remains that trying to cancel a song from the 1800s for referencing problematic themes is really really stupid because it’s acting like a) a colonialist-era work song referencing the colonialist system in which they worked is somehow news and b) that it would be at all reasonable to expect otherwise.
“there’s stuff about the 1800s in my song from the 1800s!” oh word? on god?
Next we’re gonna be facing sexism discourse from “Cape Cod Girls”.
Bold prediction coming from a codfish
This site has literally tried to cancel ancient Greek mythological figures for being problematic, Wellerman discourse is not even slightly shocking.
Things should be judged IN CONTEXT of the time they were written. es the company was shit but thats what the people singing the song are saying.
do you ever read a ‘callout post’ where the summary on top is like ‘they EAT BABIES and RUN A COFFEE SHOP FOR MURDERERS and they HATE GAY PEOPLE’ and then you scroll down and actually read the post and it’s like, they posted about lamb chops once, they work at starbucks and one time someone who killed someone had a coffee at that starbucks, and they made a ‘fruit (derogatory)’ joke once
some of the time it’s this, some of the time it’s shit like “six in-depth paragraphs about problematic opinions on Steven Universe followed by an offhand mention of the time they faked their own illness and death in order to pose as their own fictional partner and crowdfund medical and funeral expenses”
Autistic (not person with autism, not aspie), 26 ,bi, genderfluid,afab.
Pronouns; they/them/theirs
Fandoms; Good Omens, the untamed, Naruto, the Witcher
This blog is part fandom, part disabililty rights, part random crap
