#give an option for overtime that’s NOT paid at time-and-a-half as long as that employee 1) works full time that week

[thesixthstar]

Tbh california should just pave the way for a shorter work week by requiring lunch breaks to be paid.

[caainhurst]

JUNE 1, 2021

Cities and towns are opening back up after their coronavirus-induced shutdowns. Job vacancies have surged to historic highs. Millions of Americans report that they are looking for work. Yet employers are struggling to fill available positions, leaving them with no option but to shorten their business’s hours of operation and pay overtime. Payroll growth has proved lackluster.

The familiar story about what’s happening goes like this: America is in the midst of a labor shortage. Businesses are unable to find enough workers, in no small part because of the country’s generous unemployment-insurance payments and repeated stimulus checks. This is a nightmare for growing companies, a trend that’s slowing the economic recovery, and a problem that policy must solve. Workers are “dampening what should be a stronger jobs market,” the Chamber of Commerce said, calling the situation a “very real threat” to the recovery. In response, 23 states and counting have slashed unemployment-insurance payments.

But what has rapidly become conventional wisdom is not necessarily wisdom at all. The labor shortage, so far as it exists, seems to have many complicated causes. Even if benefits are among them, policy makers should not rush in to help ensure a flood of low-wage workers for America’s businesses. As the pandemic abates and the economy strengthens, why not focus on creating good ones?

The evidence of a labor shortage comes both from hard numbers and from soft anecdotes. In terms of the hard numbers: Lots of Americans want work. Roughly 10 million Americans are looking for a job, and the unemployment rate is an uncomfortably high 6.1 percent. At the same time, lots of businesses want to hire. Employers report that they have 8.1 million positions open, the largest number in recorded history. Yet the number of Americans taking a job remains subdued: Payrolls grew by just 266,000 in April, when many economists expected a number as high as 2 million.

In terms of the softer stuff: More and more business owners are complaining, loudly, that they cannot find people to work. Restaurants are offering hiring bonuses to try to get potential workers in the door, Uber and Lyft are desperate for drivers, and Costco, McDonald’s, Sheetz, and Chipotle, along with many small businesses, have raised wages to attract employees.

The issue, many business executives and politicians claim, is that the country’s social-insurance and anti-poverty programs are providing more of a hammock than a safety net: Many workers are getting a $300-a-week bonus on top of their regular state UI payments, and are still flush from the rounds of stimulus checks sent out during the pandemic. Workers would rather stay home and collect the dole than go out and take a job, the argument goes. “Continuing these programs only worsens the workforce issues we are currently facing,” Missouri Governor Mike Parson said at a press conference, announcing a cut to the state’s UI payments. “It is time we ended these programs that have incentivized people to stay out of the workforce.”

But surveys of workers—and the simple observation of the strange and still-awful reality we find ourselves in—indicate many reasons why workers are hesitant or unable to take new gigs. The pandemic is abating, but it is not over. Many workers have preexisting medical conditions or a sick family member to worry about, meaning they cannot take a frontline, essential job. Millions of parents are still struggling with the closure of child-care centers and schools. More personal, less easily quantified impulses are at play too: After a year of immense personal and collective trauma, many people just want to take a beat before committing to a new job.

Wages are another pivotal factor. Workers used to making $21 an hour are unlikely to take jobs for $17 an hour—nor would doing so be good for the American economy. Workers used to making $17 an hour are unlikely to take a much more dangerous job for the same amount—nor would doing so be good for the American economy. And workers used to making $15 an hour, who now have a reasonable expectation that more $21-an-hour jobs will be available in a few weeks, are unlikely to take a job for $15 an hour—nor would doing so be good for the American economy.

Yet many employers are dragging their feet in raising wages to make their job offerings worth taking, given the economic climate and the risks of service work. Much of the “wage growth” evident in recent statistics is due to high-wage workers being much less likely to have lost their jobs than low-wage workers; once you account for that fact, wages have not risen much at all. This is part of what accounts for the “labor shortage.” The issue isn’t workers. It’s employers.

The country’s generous UI is likely playing a role too. In a recent survey by ZipRecruiter, job seekers reported feeling far less financial pressure to take the first job they were offered, likely because UI and stimulus checks buoyed family finances. But a large body of research has shown that UI has a more moderate effect on job-acceptance rates than one might think, because it offers only the lowest-paid workers more incentive to say no.

Moreover, UI helping drive wages up by giving workers the option of saying no to a bad job is not a bad thing. Ample UI improves what is sometimes called “job match,” because it gives job seekers the ability to wait for the right position to come along. It also has disproportionate benefits for Black and Latino workers, who have borne a disproportionate burden of both the health crisis and the economic crisis of the past year.

A more philosophical point needs to be made here, too: The job of the government is not to ensure a supply of workers at whatever wage rates businesses set. And workers’ having the power to say no is not a policy problem that the government needs to solve. For decades, though, Washington and America’s statehouses have helped rig the country’s policy infrastructure in employers’ favor.

The federal government has set the country’s wage floor below its poverty line, for instance, and has not increased the minimum wage to account for improvements in productivity and output over time. The current federal minimum is just $7.25 an hour, compared with roughly $10 an hour in Ireland and Canada, $11 in the Netherlands, $12 in France and Germany, and $12.50 in Australia and Luxembourg. Indeed, the United States has the lowest minimum wage compared with typical or average wages of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That helps explain why the United States has the highest share of low-wage work among the OECD countries. Fully one-quarter of American workers earn less than two-thirds of the median wage, compared with just 5 percent in Belgium and 12 percent in Japan.

The government has also proved complicit in the collapse of unionization and collective bargaining, making it easy for businesses to beat back organizing efforts and difficult for workers to band together to demand raises, benefits, and safe working conditions. The country has half, one-fifth, one-ninth of the collective-bargaining coverage of many of our peer countries. This has increased inequality in America, holding down wages while bolstering corporate profits.

At the same time, the government has declined to make companies compete against one another—for customers or for workers. Corporate concentration has increased, and any number of industries are dominated by just a handful of giant players. This pushes up profits and decimates wages, particularly in areas with fewer employers.

In recent decades, the government has also decided to allow the unfettered proliferation of Uber-type jobs, sacrificing the needs of low-wage workers in order to satisfy the preferences of wealthy, urban consumers and calling it all “innovation.” The central “innovation” of the gig economy is to call employees “contractors,” to avoid giving them benefits and a stable salary.

Even the American safety net exists not to eliminate poverty so much as to use poverty as a cudgel to force individuals into low-wage work. The earned-income tax credit goes only to people with earned income; food stamps and welfare benefits require a job-search effort. Over time, UI has become in some ways more and more like welfare; many states have made benefits shorter in term and stingier in size.

The government has long encouraged low-wage jobs and forced people into them. This is what we are seeing when governors rush to slash UI at the first sign of a real recovery and when policy makers describe workers’ demands as a “drag” on the economy. Uncle Sam is acting in the interests of low-wage employers, not the economy as a whole.

Perhaps the status quo is changing. The Biden administration has pushed a new New Deal designed to end poverty and provide greater economic security to the 99 percent. It is arguing that bolstered, extended UI should be kept in place for the benefit of American families. It is also promising to be the most pro-union government in decades. Part of this push must be giving workers the power to say no to employers—and putting employers in the uncomfortable position of having to compete for workers.

Maybe a labor shortage is a good thing.

[conniejoworld]

DAVE LIEBER Our test of the post office delivers sad results O K, we know the mail is late. Often very late. Now The Watchdog can prove it. I ran a mail test last week by sending letters across Dallas-Fort Worth. The results are an embarrassment. The post office is looking at what could be its worst service breakdown in its 228-year history. You know most of the reasons: Overtime was halted. Blue collection boxes were taken off the streets. Sorting machines were disconnected and decommissioned like old Navy ships taken to a scrap yard. But The Watchdog has discovered another reason for mail not getting delivered on time. You probably didn’t hear about this reason. Starting in late July, before the delivery crisis began, the U.S. Postal Service launched a surprise test for mail carriers. The test came with a name that’s just mumbo-jumbo enough to confuse you. It’s called the Expedited Street/Afternoon Sortation test. A better name would be “the Carriers Only Get 15 to 30 Minutes to Get Out the Door Test.” Its purpose, according to top officials announcing it, is “to assist in reducing the morning office time for city letter carriers by enabling them to get on the street earlier.” The goal was “to enhance customer service by providing more consistent delivery times.” But here’s what happened. The test was unprecedented because it disrupted the normal flow of mail delivery. Almost 400 branches across the nation were ordered to participate, but I’m told that many other branches ended up testing some aspect of it. Inside the post office, it was nicknamed “Grab what’s there and go.” Carriers had 30 minutes (in some cases only 15) to finish prepping their mail for delivery, checking their vehicle, grabbing their scanner and keys and departing. Whatever mail was not sorted before that new grab-and-go deadline was left behind. There was always tomorrow to deliver the rest. Maybe. Within days, mail got backed up almost everywhere. With the elimination of overtime, no one was getting paid to finish the daily delivery. Undelivered mail was stored inside or left on loading docks. USPS’ own delivery standards were ignored. Among the late arrivals: medicines, income checks, bills. (Cue the dying baby chicks.) “The mail being processed was drastically delayed,” said Kimetra Lewis, president of the Dallas chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers. The stress among her carriers was palpable. “The carriers were calling me on a regular basis” to complain, she said. “Nearly every office was implementing their own version of the test,” she said. “This test was totally different from ones in the past,” says Yared Wonde, president of the Dallas branch of the American Postal Workers Union. “This one is, if the mail is not cleared by 9 a.m., leave it on the floor for the next day.” You may have noticed my sources for this information are two local union presidents. That’s because for the first time in 15 years covering USPS, their media representatives are not allowed to talk to me. “We are not currently providing any interviews,” usually helpful spokesman Albert Ruiz told me. He didn’t give a reason, but I found it in a USPS directive that could have been titled “Our Bunker Mentality.” ‘Consistent message’ Vice.com first reported contents of the order: “The Postal Service continuously strives to project a positive image, protect its brand, and present a unified message to the customers and communities it serves,” the memo begins. “It is imperative that one person speaks on behalf of the Postal Service to deliver an appropriate, accurate and consistent message to the media.” And that one person is new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whose fast retreat from enacting his supposed reforms included everything but waving a white flag. After a people’s revolt led to bipartisan criticism from lawmakers, DeJoy issued a statement that he was pulling back. In one of the biggest retreats since Gen. Robert E. Lee fled the Battle of Gettysburg, DeJoy, who has donated more than $1 million to President Donald Trump’s campaign funds, promised to halt drastic actions that he and his minions had pushed in his first weeks on the job. In a forced change of heart, DeJoy vowed to maintain post office hours, leave mail sorting machines and blue collection boxes alone, keep facilities open and restore overtime. DeJoy vowed in his published statement: “To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded.” That sounds counter to Trump’s motives. He has said that he initially opposed more funding for troubled USPS and hoped to avoid “universal mail-in voting” in his reelection bid. Yes, the postal service has massive short-term and long-term problems. But is now the right time to break the vast system into dysfunctional pieces? Ellis Burgoyne, who ran the Texas region as Southwest vice president 15 years ago before his promotion to USPS’ chief information officer, is now retired in Irving. He told me, “Holding mail a day to process was always a no-no. ... Total elimination of overtime and intentionally leaving first-class mail behind was never an option. We never had that, and I worked there for 35 years.” Sorting machines Why would you remove and dismantle working sorting machines in the midst of all these other changes unless you wanted to bog down the system, maybe even make it harder for mail-in election ballots to reach their destination before deadlines? Aside from the people in the processing plants, mechanical sorters are the heart of mail delivery. Wonde of the postal workers union estimates that between Dallas’ Main Post Office near Interstate 30 and the North Texas Processing and Distribution Center in Coppell, a dozen sorting machines have been removed in recent weeks. “They didn’t give any specific reason for that,” he said. “I officially requested how many machines were removed and how many were decommissioned.” He hasn’t heard back. Wonde said workers tried to put one of the machines back in operation at the Dallas plant, but they were missing important parts. My test I mentioned my test. Until a few years ago, a first-class letter mailed within North Texas, from and to a local address and dropped off before 5 p.m., usually arrived the next day. Now USPS service standards allow for a letter mailed locally to arrive in two days instead of one. How’s that working? I took addresses for 50 Dallas Morning News employees who live in Dallas-Fort Worth. On Monday night, I mailed 50 envelopes to them from my city post office. I also emailed my lucky 50 to let them know they’d been drafted into my experiment. Under USPS standards, all letters should have arrived in two days — by Thursday’s mail. But more than half didn’t. Only 21 arrived on time — or 42%. That’s a failing grade. Five more arrived one day late on Friday. As of Saturday morning, as I complete this, I’ve yet to hear back about 24 others, or 48%. Admittedly, this is no scientific survey. But with half of the sent letters failing to meet the goal, it’s an indicator. (The Watchdog wants to check again during early voting.) Burgoyne, the retired former USPS vice president for Texas, added that when he was in management, “Election and political mail, including ballots, had the highest priority.” (We’ll see if that tradition holds.) Lewis of the letter carriers’ union says she worries about the cost of this mess to USPS’ reputation: “We don’t know if our customers lost confidence in us. It’s frightening.” If you desire a mail-in absentee ballot, contact your county elections office for information. You can also request one online. Requests for mail ballots must be made before Oct. 23. Make sure you fill out your ballot and send it back as soon as possible. To qualify, you must be 65 or older, disabled or out of your home county on Election Day. The last day to register to vote is Oct. 5. Twitter: @DaveLieber

[asofterfan]

Winter Winds

Chapter 5: Come With Me Now

Previous ~ Next

Summary: Remy blinks, and suddenly Toby has managed to weave himself into their life. And they’re not sure that’s a good thing.

Warnings: Remy’s unhealthy drinking habits

Remy groaned as their phone buzzed next to their ear. They half-heartedly shoved it off the bed, hearing it land with a soft ‘thud’. However the buzzing continued. Sighing in annoyance, they pushed themselves up onto one arm, reaching over to retrieve their phone and unlock it to see a long string of messages waiting for them.

DocOct: Remy

DocOct: Remyyyyy

DocOct: Sleepyhead

DocOct: Do you want a dog?

DocOct: Remy do you want a dog?

DocOct: I have a dog if you want a dog

The final message was an image of Toby, most of his body and face hidden by the large smiling husky he held in his arms, a slight blur around the animal as the dog wiggled happily.

Remy raised an eyebrow, hoping that Toby could sense it.

Sleepyhead: What about me gave you the impression that I should be in charge of any living thing ever?

DocOct: …

DocOct: touche

Snorting, Remy sat up, resigned to starting the day. Looking at the time, they saw it was only a half hour before their alarm was set to go off at noon. They had an appointment at one, so at least that gave them a little time to get ready slowly and get some caffeine in them. Their phone was buzzing again, but coffee first.

Forty-five minutes later, as Remy was walking out of a Starbucks ready to down their second cup since waking up, they suddenly remembered the messages waiting for them. Taking a long sip of coffee, they unlocked their phone to see what else October had sent them.

DocOct: I just want Hermione to be adopted by someone I know

DocOct: so I can see her all the time

DocOct: my boss wont let me take her

DocOct: apparently I’ve “reached the maximum number of animals allotted per employee” :(

DocOct: also I don’t have a yard

DocOct: did you fall back asleep?

Remy shook their head as they typed out a reply.

Sleepyhead: I have a job you know

DocOct: you could still be asleep

DocOct: I literally met you when you were asleep at work

Sleepyhead: you come into MY HOUSE

The bell chimed above them as they entered the shop, Ali glancing up from the front desk and grinning, “Hey, look who’s on time today! If you can manage to do that one more time we’ll have to use two hands to count it.”

“Ha, ha,” Remy drawled, rolling their eyes, “Be grateful I grace you with my presence at all.”

“You’re literally paid to be here.”

“Not enough, I’m not,” Remy winked, and Ali laughed, shaking her head good naturedly.

“Go get ready for your appointment, asshole.”

Tossing their jacket and bag onto the chair in their station, Remy’s phone buzzed again, and they texted absentmindedly as they set up their supplies for the next appointment.

The day passed the same as always. Remy tattooed a watercolor owl on a young woman's shoulder, Brett and Rafa argued in the background over hot sauce brands, Ali harped on Remy to update their portfolio, and Cass got roped into picking up their lunch order. The only thing different was that when Remy’s phone buzzed on their table from time to time, Remy actually responded whenever they had a chance throughout the day.

This fact did not escape Cass’ attention, the petite woman peeking over the dividing wall and between their stations near the end of the night as Remy’s phone vibrated again.

“Someone’s popular today,” she hummed with a devious look in her eye.

“Bitch, I’m popular everyday,” Remy raised an eyebrow at her in a challenge, which she gladly took up.

She skipped out of her cubicle and came to stand at the front of Remy’s station, “Oh come on, you never get this many texts, and you definitely never respond so timely. I once texted you to ask if you could cover a shift and you texted me back two weeks later.”

Remy frowned, “Hey, you gotta earn my attention hon,” they waved their hand dismissively, “I got places to be, things to do. No time for chitchat.”

“You’ve got time for someone,” Cass glanced pointedly at Remy’s phone, “Somebody finally tame the shrew?”

“Ew, don’t use Shakespeare to insult me.”

“I’m not insulting you!”

“And I’m not two seconds from keying your car,” Remy smirked, “See? Saying things is easy.”

Cass rolled her eyes, moving to walk back into her station, “Are you nicer to your penpal, or are they just a masochist?”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll wise up soon,” Remy hums with a smile, turning back to their computer. The conversation ends, and both artists return to their work, but Remy is a little slower in responding to their phone for the rest of the day.

~

Eventually, night falls. The shop is closed up and Remy’s coworkers go for a drink that Remy declines to join in on. As the group disappears around the corner, Remy leans against the wall next to the shop, sighing and pulling out a cigarette. They don’t really know what they want to do. Cityscape doesn’t appeal the way it normally does, but the idea of returning to their apartment makes them pull out a second cigarette moments after finishing the first.

They’re debating just wandering the city without a destination when their phone buzzes in their pocket.

DocOct: This bar is so weird

DocOct: Like SO WEIRD

DocOct: It’s terrible

DocOct: Come join me

The next text is an address.

Remy exhales the smoke in their mouth slowly, considering their options. Their fingers tap anxiously against the phone, and Cass’ words ring in their head. They’re not dumb. They know this isn’t going to end well.

Sleepyhead: Weird bars are the best ;P be there in 10

But they don’t want to go home, either.

~~~~

“What the FUCK Octagon?”

Snapping his head up from where he was leaning against the bartop in boredom, Toby’s face split into a wide grin, “Remy! You’re here!”

“Yeah and I can already tell it was a mistake!” They put their hands on their hips, eyes narrowed, “What the fuck is this place? Why is there weird anime being projected on the wall? Why are there cosplayers? Where the fuck am I??”

Toby laughed heartily, “It’s a popup bar for some anime I can’t pronounce that came out a while ago.”

“Do you watch said anime?”

“Nah.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Well~,” He drew the word out as he smirked, “I’m here, because one of my coworkers and I are playing “popup bingo” and this gets me one square closer to winning a wholesale bulk box of lint rollers-”

“There is so much to unpack there-”

“-but you,” he twirled his finger as he pointed at Remy, not allowing them to detract the situation, “are here because you wanted to see me~.”

That had Remy’s thoughts screeching to a halt.

“That is just, just blatantly untrue!!” Remy stuttered out, pouting dramatically, “I came because you said the word ‘bar’ and alcohol is a thing I enjoy.”

“You could have gone to any bar, though,” damn him and that stupid pretty smile, “but you came to this one because it’s where I said I was.”

FuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK

Remy relaxed their shoulders, bringing one hand to rest on the bar and tilting their head to the side, very consciously putting on their best “cool and casual” air.

“I came for the trainwreck,” they smiled innocently, “I haven’t found a reason to stay though.”

They made an exaggerated show of turning around and slowly walking away. Finally Toby sighed loudly.

“Fiiiiine I’ll buy the first round.”

Remy spun back around on their heel, grinning victoriously, “A man after my own heart.”

“Damn straight.”

“Just for that you’re buying me two drinks.”

Toby laughed, not looking particularly perturbed at the situation, “Two drinks but one of them is a beer.”

“Deal,” Remy slid into the seat next to Toby at the bar.

~~~~

“I need to move to a different shop.”

“Like HELL you are,” Remy wasn’t sure how Ali even heard the statement he had muttered under his breath, but she came rushing in from the staff break room, glaring at the taller punk, “You aren’t going anywhere until you get through your current scheduled appointments! You made a blood oath!”

“What? When??”

“Remember that time you were so tired you accidentally stapled your hand instead of the client forms?”

“That’s not a blood oath!”

“You bled for the shop, the pact is sealed.”

“Uh…..” Toby raised his hand slowly from where he stood just inside the front door, drawing the attention of the two tattoo artists, “I can come back later? Patton said your shift ended at seven on Wednesdays...”

“Goddammit Patton,” Remy cursed, “he should know better than to give my schedule out to stalkers.”

“He does.”

“He ships it.”

“And besides” he pointedly ignored Cass’ comment, “my shifts not over ye-”

“Oh yes it is,” Ali chimed in.

Remy whipped his head to look at his boss in betrayal, “Excuse me? Two seconds ago you were talking about how you owned my ass or something so I could never leave.”

“You can’t stop working here,” she clarified, “but you can leave when your shift is over. Which it is.”

“But I’m still doing stuff!” Remy gestured to the sketchbook in front of him.

Ali crossed her arms stubbornly, “You’ve done your work for the day, and you’ve already got overtime this week. Go have fun with your fan boy.”

Rolling his eyes, Remy stood and roughly shoved his things into his bag, “You know, you’re my boss. You don’t have to make dumb excuses when you’re sick of me.”

“Remy-” Ali called after him, but he was already heading out the door.

“Sorry, I’m off the clock, see you tomorrow~,” he sang as he slipped out of the shop.

He heard the bell chime a second time and footsteps jog to catch up with him, “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” Toby said quietly, remorse heavy in his voice.

Part of him wanted to snap at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to prattle about how if Toby really didn’t want to cause trouble then he should get lost, how he’d been nothing but trouble since day one, how of course there was going to be trouble when he kept showing up and Remy still didn’t know why.

But…

The words died on his tongue. A different part of him whispered that he didn’t really mind Toby’s brand of trouble.

So instead, Remy grinned and bumped his hip against Toby, “~I knew you were trouble when you walked in~”

He barked out a laugh, “So shame on me~.”

Remy rolling his eyes, shaking his head fondly as Toby chuckled. After about a block Toby spoke up, “Sooooo,” he drawled, “Where are we going?”

“What’s with all this ‘we’ business? I am a Goddamn island, hon.”

“Well call me Castaway,” Toby purred, sliding closer to Remy’s side.

“Prepare to starve, bitch.”

“WILSONNNNNNN-”

“Jesus Christ, shutthefuckup!” Remy shoved Toby’s shoulder, cutting off his dramatic wail. Remy ran a hand over his face, trying to look exasperated even as he struggled to hide his smile, “If I let you come with me will you stop making movie references?”

“For now,” he smirked mischievously.

Remy rolled his eyes, “That’s the best I’m gonna get, isn’t it?”

“Yup,” Toby’s mouth popped around the end of the word and Remy snorted.

“There’s a club that just opened near River West,” he shoved his hands in his pockets was he walked, “I’ve been planning to check it out, see if it’s worth adding to my nightlife rotation. No reason not to do so tonight I guess.”

The shorter punk grinned enthusiastically, “Cool! Sounds fun!”

“I’m sure it does.”

“Oh! I just remembered, I have to tell you about this rabbit that we got in today-”

The two walked through the city together, crossing the bridge to the west side of downtown as Toby rambled about his day and the animals they received and the ones given to new homes. Remy hummed in response, smoked a cigarette, offered his priceless sass- for free, nonetheless- so by the time they reached the club Remy felt entitled to a little good karma.

What they got, though, was a plain brick building with a single neon sign and a few groups of drunk teens loitering outside.

“Well,” Remy pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head, “I will admit, this is not a promising start.”

“The… the sign just says “Club”,” Toby commented, pointing to the one word neon sign.

“That’s…” it took a moment for Remy to think of a word, “....succinct.”

“You filtered through a lot of worse words before landing on that one, didn’t you.”

“Shut up and let’s go inside.”

The security barely spared them a glance as they made their way in. Remy squinted at the dim lighting, the flashing lights around the dance floor too dull to really illuminate anything. Meanwhile Toby crinkled his nose as he felt his shoes stick to the floor a little, “You said this place just opened, right? How are their floors already so gross?”

“What the hell is this music?”

“It’s freezing in here, did they bother insulating the building at all?”

Remy made a face of disgust, “I need a drink, STAT.”

“Or maybe we could just go somewhere else?” Toby suggested as they made their way over to the bar.

“Not without some alcohol in my veins we’re not,” he pouted as he pushed his way to the front, ordering a tequila shot as Toby stood behind him. “I’m off work, that means I get to finally have some fun,” he paid for his shot quickly, turning back to face the other punk.

Toby shook his head fondly, “You need a hobby.”

“I have a hobby!”

“Drinking isn’t a hobby.”

“No, it’s a game and I’m winning.”

“That’s called alcoholism. Also you still need a hobby.”

Remy smirked sharply, “You can get your own hobby if you have such a problem with mine,” he stared Toby in the eye as he downed the shot, pointedly ignoring the chaser.

Toby held his hands up in a peacemaking gesture, “I don’t have a problem with it,” he raised an eyebrow, “I just think you could stand to get out more. Get a change of scenery,” he grinned mischievously, “If nothing else it would make my hobby or tagging along with you more interesting.”

“I knew you had ulterior motives,” Remy shook his head, laughing lightly. Looking around, he scrunched his nose as he took in the mass of people dancing overly risque in the center of the room, “Ugh. How are they dancing to this trash? Moreso, how are they still keeping up the weird sexy shit? How is this bizzare techno-country garbage not an instant mood killer? Allosexuals make no sense.”

“Hey, I’m confused too. I admire their tenacity though?” he replied uncertainly.

“I don’t. I am judging very harshly.”

“That’s your default though. It’s like you have resting judgy face except it’s not just your face.”

“Damn straight,” Remy flagged down the bartender and ordered a beer, “This is not the kind of club you experience sober.”

Snorting, Toby leaned against the bar next to him. Once his drink arrived, they both stayed by the bar, neither wanting to venture out onto the floor. Remy sipped on his drink, and after a few minutes Toby took out his phone and began tapping on the screen nonchalantly. When the first beer was finished, Remy wasted no time ordering another. Turning to October, Remy shook his head and tsked, “You are at a club surrounded by beautiful people,” he gestured mostly to himself, “and you’re on your phone? Honestly, you look like a baby boomer meme right now.” Toby’s only response was to turn and stick his tongue out, Remy giggling as he took his beer from the bartender, “Seriously girl, what’s got your attention so fixed? You sexting over there?”

That made Toby pause, his fingers hovering over the screen as he turned to look at Remy with a deadpan expression, “You literally could not be more wrong about what is happening here.”

Remy raised an eyebrow suspiciously as he took a long drink. Toby rolled his eyes as he turned back to his phone, but his lips were twitching towards a smile. The night was young, so Remy felt fine chugging his beer in an attempt to speed things along.

However, that plan was soon foiled. As he neared the bottom of the bottle, Toby gasped loudly, Remy choking a bit on his drink in surprise. He was still coughing and sputtering as Toby smacked at his arm to get his attention.

“Dude, holy shit there’s a pikachu like two blocks away we gotta go!!”

“Excuse me??”

Toby ignored his bewilderment, instead grabbing his wrist and tugging him towards the exit. Once they reached the door, Toby released him in favor of sprinting down the street. Later, Remy would question what happened next, unable to find any logical reason for why he did what he did.

He ran after him.

Darting down the street, his long legs caught up quickly, allowing him to jog a few feet behind Toby as he raced down the sidewalk. After a couple blocks, he skidded to a stop, Remy nearly running into him as he quickly started tapping at his phone. Panting lightly, Remy glanced over his shoulder.

Pokemon Go was open on the screen, a pikachu standing in an image of the dark street in front of them. Toby muttered softly to himself, “Do not run away, do not run away, do NOT run away…” as he tossed a pokeball at the creature.

Remy’s eyebrows were practically in his hairline, “You have GOT to be kidding me.”

“Shhhhh!! I need to focus!” Toby hissed, tossing various items at the pikachu after it escaped the pokeball a second time. Finally, after a few minutes, the pikachu was sucked into the pokeball and stayed there, tiny stars erupting on the screen at the success.

“YES!!” Toby threw his hands in the air in excitement, “Holy shit! I’ve wanted a pikachu for forever! I have to text Talyn, this is awesome!”

“....what year is this?” Remy stated in amazement, “Pokemon Go is still a thing? What? I feel like I’m hallucinating, like was there something in my drink?”

Toby blinked at him in surprise before grinning widely, “Others may have abandoned their quest, but I never will! It’s not enough to want to be the very best, you gotta work for it.”

Remy snorted, shaking his head in disbelief, “You’re a nerd. Like, such a nerd. I don’t even know what to do with this information. I’m going back to the club where people make sense.”

“Oh come on,” Toby skipped in front of him to block his path as he tried to walk away, “that club sucked and you know it.”

“I know no such thing,” Remy crossed his arms and pouting, his face clearly illustrating that he did in fact know such a thing.

“The music sucked and the drinks were subpar and overpriced. I’m pretty sure most of the people there were underage and didn’t even need fake IDs to get in. And you can try to deny it, but you would have left within half an hour even if I hadn’t run off. Your standards are too high.”

Fuck. He had Remy there. “You’re…. Not wrong….” Remy grumbled.

“Here, hold on...” Toby looked down at his phone, tapping a few times before stating, “there's a bar I've been wanting to check out for a while that’s about half a mile away. We can go there instead!”

Remy frowned, “Can’t we go somewhere closer?”

“This place has really good reviews, and I heard they do fun cocktails. It’s not that far. Pleeeeeease?” Toby pleaded, hands clasped together as he bat his eyelashes up at the taller punk.

Rolling his eyes, Remy shoved him away lightly, “Alright, okay, we can go to your dumb bar.”

“Yes!” Toby threw his hands up in success, “We’ll be there in no time, half a mile isn’t that far. And it’s such a nice night!” He gestured to the cool air around them, not too hot or too cold, with clear skies above them. Remy hummed in agreement, as they began walking.

At first they walked in casual silence, Toby occasionally glancing at his phone while Remy lit a cigarette. But, by the end of that one single cigarette, Remy’s boredom and restlessness hit.

The tattoo artist groaned, hunching over in exaggerated exhaustion, “Ugh, we’ve been walking for forever-”

Toby rolled his eyes, “It’s been less than ten minutes-”

“-and we’ve passed like four bars already!”

“-well, we’re going to a specific one, so-”

“What exactly is this place anyway?” Remy leaned over to look at Toby’s phone, but he pulled the device to his chest to hide the screen.

“You’ll see when we get there!”

Remy narrowed his eyes in suspicion. The two stared at each other, each daring the other to make a move. After a moment of consideration, Remy nodded to himself. Then he lunged for the phone. Toby shrieked in surprise, twisting as Remy’s arms flailed around him, batting at his hands and stumbling as Remy leaned his weight on him. Desperately, he tried to scramble away, holding the phone out at arms length, but it was useless against the taller punk. Remy stretched his arm out, snatching Toby’s phone from his hand and quickly skipping away, leaving Toby to regain his balance.

Looking down at the screen Toby had tried so hard to hide, Remy gasped dramatically, whipping his head around to send Toby a look of betrayal, “You were just making us walk so you could hatch a pokemon egg??”

Toby held his hands up in a peacemaking gesture, “We only need to go a little farther! And I mean, I was planning on taking us to a bar afterwards, so I didn’t really lie-”

“Yes you did!! You tricked me! Into exercising!!*” Remy clutched his chest with a wounded expression on his face, and Toby snorted as he suddenly remembered that Remy was a theater kid. “Don’t laugh! You dragged me through the city-”

“It was less than half a mile! We’re literally still in the same neighborhood!”

“-and now I’m half-sober! I am half-sober and awake, October! Those are my two least favorite things!”

Seeing that Remy was distracted by his own monologue, Toby darted forward and snatched his phone back, “Alright drama queen, tell you what. Let me finish hatching this egg- which will take like three minutes, maybe- and I’ll buy the next round,” he grinned lopsidedly, “as an apology for deceiving you.”

Remy didn’t think he sounded sorry at all, flipping his hair over his shoulder as he considered the offer. After a moment, he crossed his arms and huffed, “Fine.”

Almost immediately Toby’s grin was replaced with a look of something between surprise and amazement, “Wait, for real?”

Remy raised an eyebrow, “You promised me alcohol, no backing out now. But I swear if that bitch hatches into a rattata you’re paying for my drinks for the rest of the night.”

Toby let out a bark or laughter, “You know what? That’s fair,” he turned and began walking again, Remy swiftly falling into step beside him.

“So…” Remy drawled with a smirk, “What team are you? And I swear to God if you say ‘Instinct’-” Toby laughed, shoving his shoulder as they continued down the street.

~~~

“You’re not allowed to be weird until I’ve finished caffeinating,” Remy stated before Toby could even say hello.

Snorting, Toby slid into the seat across from Remy at the Starbucks he had found him at, “I’m not falling for that, I know you’re never done caffeinating.”

“Worth a shot,” Remy sighed, hiding his grin behind his coffee cup. Glancing over, he frowned slightly at the dark bruises on under Toby’s eyes, more prominent than they usually were, and that was saying something, “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“I’m getting some right now~”

“First of all, no. Second of all, I woke up to more messages than usual this morning and also you look like shit.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re goddamn welcome.”

Toby rolled his eyes, “I’m fine. Just insomnia,” he took a long sip of his coffee before continuing, “I’ve dealt with it for forever, some nights are just worse than others.”

“That sucks.”

He shrugged, “Eh, it is what it is, but enough about that! You didn’t answer my texts this morning!” From there, Toby continued his usual shenanigans- asking Remy about his plans for the day, how his night had been, lamenting the dogs being picked up later in the day because “obviously I’m happy they’re going to good homes but I’m going to miss themmmmm”. He leaned forward to put his head in his hand, sighing about how he needed to finish his book and become famous so he could buy a bigger house and adopt every animal. As he did, Remy couldn’t help find his eyes drawn to the tattoo on his left arm.

He had seen it countless times by this point, the rough text still clearly legible as “28:06:42:12”. Sighing to himself, he set his coffee on the table to interrupt Toby’s rambling, “Okay, it’s been driving me crazy. What are the numbers on your arm?”

Toby immediately gasped dramatically, clutching his hands to his chest, “Do NOT tell me you’ve never seen Donnie Darko!!”

Remy raised an eyebrow, “I don’t think I have to at this point.”

“Dude! It’s an amazing sci-fi, crime, mystery, scary type movie!”

“You just listed a lot of genres-”

“It’s my favorite Halloween movie. It’s a cult classic!”

“I have a policy that I don’t get involved in cults I didn’t start.”

“I’m pretty sure the Cult of Sleep is just a coma.”

“That’s the goal at least.”

Toby rolled his eyes, smirking, “While your attempts at changing the subject are valiant, it is in vain,” pulling out his phone, he started typing furiously, “Especially since, as luck would have it, I was planning on going to a midnight showing of Donnie Darko next week. And now…” he stretched the word out, clicking a few more buttons on his phone, before grinning widely, “you’re coming with me!”

Remy blinked in surprise, but sure enough, Toby turned his phone towards him, the words “Thank you for your purchase!” on the screen above information on time and place of the movie.

“....What?”

“It’ll be fun!” Toby slips his phone back into his pocket before clapping his hands in excitement, “It’s so trippy! But like, they’re screening the director’s cut, which is SO much better than the theatrical version, because like certain things will actually make SENSE like why would they cut out- I don’t want to spoil anything but like it was dumb how they-”

“Woahwoahwoah, hold up, gurl,” Remy put his hands up to halt Toby’s lecture, blinking at him in astonishment, “What? I mean you- what if I had plans that night?”

“You never have plans,” Toby raised an eyebrow, “you literally spend every night either at a club, at a bar, or at home.”

“Yeah, I PLAN those things!” Remy insisted, “And did you honestly just buy my ticket? In THIS economy? I can think of a million better ways to spend twelve dollars.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t you bat your eyelashes at me!” curse Toby for making him smile. Bastard. “Besides, you know if that’s after I have work then you’ll have to hang out with me sober, right?”

“Yeah, and?”

“Me. Sober.”

“Remy you’re sober right now!”

“......”

“REMY.”

“Okay, alright, fine I’ll go to the stupid movie!”

“The AMAZING movie.”

“You’re gonna regret this~” Remy sang as he stood, grabbing his bag to make his way out of the shop.

Toby just shook his head, calling after him, “I’ll text you the details!”

~~~~

“What…. did I just watch?”

“RIGHT??”

“No, seriously, what just happened?? Did he actually travel through time? So none of that actually happened?”

“It happened AND it didn’t happen!”

“WHAT?!”

Toby laughed as the two of them exited the theater, Remy holding their head in their hands as they tried to comprehend what they had just watched, “You said it was trippy but DAMN son!”

“But you loved it, right? Tell me you loved it,” Toby pleaded.

“....Well now I don’t want to.”

“Remyyyyyyyy.”

Snorting, Remy shook their head, “Okay, fine, I…. maybe enjoyed it just a bit.”

“Yes!” Toby threw a fist in the air victoriously, “I told you it’d be fun! And hey, I had fun too, even though you’re sober.”

He grinned jokingly, and Remy laughed along nervously, nodding in agreement and deciding not to mention that they had a flask of tequila in their bag that they had been sneaking gulps from ever since they got off work. It was the only way they could think of to calm the anxious energy that waxed and waned in them throughout the night.

Remy stretched as they made their way outside and Toby checked his phone, “Hey, you wanna grab a drink or something? You don’t have work tomorrow, right?”

“Um…” Rey glanced to the side. They really could use another drink, but… “Sorry bud, but I think home is calling. Gotta get to bed so I can stare at the ceiling and reevaluate the concept of time,” they smiled lightly, trying to hide the way their stomach was churning.

It must have worked, cause Toby just chuckled, nodding in understanding, “I feel that. Go get some rest and contemplate existence,” he joked, “Brace yourself for when I make you come over so we can watch it again and discuss theories at length,” he winked playfully, which did nothing to settle Remy’s stomach, an uncomfortable familiarity to the situation.

“I’m always bracing myself when you’re involved.”

“Touche.”

~~~~~~~~~

It became familiar. Remy stopped being surprised when Toby showed up at the end of her shift, or at Starbucks when she was getting coffee, or texted her in the middle of the night. He went clubbing or bar hopping with her, and invited her to movie events at the independent theater downtown. She stopped being surprised, but she didn’t stop feeling a sense of dread. Toby approved of Virgil’s concept, he sent an email full of keysmashes when Remy showed him the final line art, and his tattoo appointment loomed closer.

Every time they hung out, even as Remy laughed and smiled, genuinely having fun with the strange client, she still felt a strange pain in her chest. Each night when she finally headed home, refusing to step foot near Toby’s apartment or let him anywhere near hers, she felt like she had dust in her eyes.

She waited for him to get sick of her shit, for him to ask for something she couldn’t give, for him to stop showing up. But he never did, always looking at her so she could practically see the stars in his eyes, acting like he didn’t need anything else. Remy knew it was temporary, though.

When Remy was with Toby, she couldn’t decided if she felt less lonely or more.

[hub-pub-bub]

Wage theft is when your boss doesn’t pay you what you’ve already earned. When I learned that Massachusetts had “blue laws,” that my bosses weren’t obeying them, and had shorted me around three thousand dollars, it was wage theft. 

This was the law: retail employees were to be paid at a “premium” rate on Sundays and holidays, time-and-a-half, the same as overtime. But none of the booksellers where I worked had ever been paid it. And while not being paid overtime is a textbook example of wage theft, when I tell people, they are happy to qualify it for me with a “Well…” or an “Okay, but…” I don’t know where this instinct comes from. Maybe it’s because “wage theft” makes it sound premeditated, more like a crime. (But it was a crime!) Or maybe it’s because I worked at an independent bookstore, and indie bookstores are beloved pillars of the community. (What would that mean about the community?) Maybe it’s because it doesn’t makes sense that an independent bookstore would do something like this. Everyone knows indiebookstores are thriving! (Which is true—it’s the people who work in them who are struggling.)

I found out when I was trying to see if I could afford to take a sick day. I felt like I was coming down with something, but taking a day off meant losing a not-insubstantial chunk of my monthly take-home pay ($11.50 an hour). Since there were sick hours adding up in a box labeled “time-off accrual” on my pay stubs—and surely they had to amount to something—I went to mass.gov to check the law. But they amounted to literally nothing, as it turned out: Massachusetts businesses only have to provide paid sick leave if they have more than eleven employees, and we had ten. My “sick days” meant I couldn’t be fired for staying home sick (as long as I wasn’t sick more than five days per year).

But I learned something else. There were links to related pages and I clicked the one about “blue laws,” which I didn’t know we had in Massachusetts.

Later that day I emailed the bookstore’s owners. Is there a reason our bookstore is exempt from blue laws, I asked, or was this an oversight?

They responded the same night. They’d heard that other area bookstores had to pay the premium rate, they said, because their booksellers were unionized, but that otherwise there was some exemption. They said they would investigate, that they’d talk to their lawyer and get back to me.

After that the story gets so routine you could probably write it yourself. When I followed up a few days later, they said their lawyer was on vacation but that they’d update payroll and we’d receive the premium pay on Sundays and holidays from then on. When some of the other booksellers and I contacted the Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division, they only sent a form letter saying the matter was too small for them to investigate personally, but we were welcome to pursue legal action (on our own time and at our own expense). I found some free legal clinics on wage theft, but only once-a-month and while I was scheduled to work. Ten days after the first email, I followed up again; “still the same conflicting intel,” they said, “but when we told our lawyer that we started paying 1.5 for sundays and holidays, the matter dropped. (lawyers are expensive!) let me know if it’s not reflected in your check.” A coworker who already planned to quit asked the owners specifically about back pay–which I hadn’t had the courage to do—and they told her no, they weren’t going to pay it, and they said it in writing.

I ended up speaking to a lawyer, who offered to represent me on a contingency fee basis: I wouldn’t have to pay if we lost, and the bookstore would be responsible for my legal fees if I won. But he recommended I not move forward until I got a new job. It isn’t legal to retaliate against an employee for bringing a case, he told me, but, you know, it also isn’t legal to ignore blue laws.

I said thank you, I’ll consider my options.

One day in November one of the owners called me into the office at the bookstore. She gave me $500 in cash and $500 in store credit, about a third of what I was owed. I spent the store credit on gifts for the holidays and I looked for a new job. I ignored a follow-up call from the lawyer and tried not to wallow in the humiliation. I was not successful. Even now it feels like admitting something shameful: I was fooled, maybe, or I’m some kind of miser. A few people asked me, what if they can’t afford to pay back pay and they go out of business? You hear it more than once and it’s easy to forget it’s not a ransom, that you didn’t pluck the number out of nowhere. 

It’s hard to compare independent bookstores to other kinds of retail stores. Bookstores sell a cultural product and booksellers insist that bookstores can’t be compared to other retail stores because they sell a cultural product. And bookstores don’t exploit their employees more than other retail. But what grates is when bookstores market themselves as more than stores, as community hubs.

“Independent bookstores act as community anchors,” the American Booksellers Association declares, at the bottom of every page on their site; “they serve a unique role in promoting the open exchange of ideas, enriching the cultural life of communities, and creating economically vibrant neighborhoods.”

This same lofty idealism justifies why booksellers don’t need to be paid a living wage, like employees of nonprofits or teachers: because bookstores are so vital for the community, the assumption goes, the job should be reward enough itself. The work is so important that maybe booksellers should make personal sacrifices, working well below the value of their labor.

I spoke to around twenty booksellers while I was writing this, and I was struck by how many are willing to make trade-offs. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been. “Independent booksellers consistently describe their work as more than just a way to make a living, and more than just a means of escaping the constraints that come from working for somebody else,” writes Laura Miller, in her 2006 book, Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption; “These booksellers see themselves as bettering society by making books available.” Plenty of the booksellers I spoke to saw bookselling as a calling. Because of course they do! If they weren’t willing to make sacrifices, they couldn’t still be booksellers. And how else could bookstores get away with paying them—they, who generally have to have a college degree; who have to spend a lot of unpaid time reading across all genres and topics; who have to have at least a little knowledge about everything, from the ancient Greeks to Dog Man 7: Brawl of the Wild; who, at at least one store, famously have to correctly answer quiz questions before being hired—so little, while so successfully preserving an image as a (generally progressive) force for social good?

And it is so little. A bookseller in Southern California with eight years of experience still earns less than $20 per hour; “I can’t think of another industry where you could work for eight years and still be making that little,” he said. A different Southern California bookseller/assistant events manager earns $17.50. A bookseller/assistant events manager in the Boston area is earning $14. A former bookseller in Northern California was making $14.25, a quarter above the minimum wage. A part time bookseller in Chicago makes $13, the city’s minimum wage. A former bookseller in Minnesota was salaried after two years at $30,000 while a bookseller and events manager in Tennessee started at $25,000, six years ago, and now makes $31,500.

I started at $11 per hour and ended around eighteen months later at $11.50, and as far as I know, none of the booksellers at that store even earned $15. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Boston is $2400 per month, which I could cover if I worked 50 hours a week, didn’t pay taxes, and didn’t need money for food, utilities, medical care, or literally anything else.

The booksellers I spoke to reported quite a range of benefits—in one year, for example, a Bay Area bookseller accrued three weeks of vacation time, and in the same time period a Pennsylvania bookseller got three days. But some booksellers told me that their benefits were mostly on paper. Not being fired for calling in sick or going on vacation doesn’t make it financially viable, after all. A Minnesota bookseller told me she has ten paid vacation days per year, but the store has so few employees that taking time off means she’d have to make up the missed hours working overtime. A bookstore in California offered a health insurance program, but gave employees a fifty-cent raise if they didn’t enroll.

It’s not so bleak for everyone. Unionized stores generally fight for better benefits and act as safeguards against labor law violations; I talked to a handful of booksellers whose stores had some kind of profit sharing, which can make a big difference.

But… I don’t know. There’s a bookstore owned by people who, all evidence suggests, really give a fuck and want to do right by their booksellers. They pay at least $15 per hour, and I heard one of the owners say on a podcast how much is required of booksellers; “If you’re a college graduate, and you’ve spent all this time reading, in addition to going to college—yeah, you deserve $15 an hour. Period.” But when his interlocutor mentioned a bookstore that had profit sharing, the owner was quick to say it wouldn’t work at his store. (And it wouldn’t, yet—the store is young and not yet profitable.*) But “It’s also a matter of loyalty,” he said, and explained that he couldn’t envision employees staying longer than a year. “I would love to find a bookseller who I know would be around long enough. Right now it just hardly seems even worth doing all the work. No one would qualify, because they won’t stick around long enough.”

Tell me, what are they going to stick around for? The bookstore owner said all of his employees are part-time—they’re either in grad school or working other part-time jobs. Are they supposed to stick around for a part-time job that pays $15 per hour?

What is there to be loyal to?

IndieBound—an ABA project—has a section on its website dedicated to answering Why Support Independents? One answer is that “Local businesses create higher-paying jobs for our neighbors.” But you can also find a page at the ABA website on “The Growing Debate Over Minimum Wage,” warning that “a minimum wage increase that is too drastic could result in reduced staff hours, lost jobs, or, worse, a store going out of business.” There’s also an “Indie Fact Sheet” to print out and give to local politicians; “Many indies pay more than the current minimum wage already for senior and full-time staff,” it says; “They do this because offering superior customer service is one of their competitive advantages—it is what separates them from their chain and remote, online retailing competitors. This also helps indies retain and attract good employees.”

See? Many bookstores pay their booksellers more than the minimum wage! It’s not their problem that that same minimum wage isn’t enough to cover a one-bedroom in any state in the country. It’s not their problem that inflation has eroded the value of the minimum wage. It’s not their problem that low wages are an affront to basic dignity or that higher minimum wages save lives. They’re just fiercely committed to their neighbors and their communities.

The ABA is happy to help its member stores fight even modest wage increases. “If the minimum wage is raised,” the Indie Fact Sheet continues, “it inevitably means indies will have to increase the wages of senior and full-time staff, in addition to increasing the wages of any minimum-wage workers. This increases the ripple effect. A seemingly ‘insignificant’ wage increase can have a dramatic effect on the bottom line, sending a profitable store into the red.”

There’s no mention of the dramatic effect an increase in the minimum wage could have on employees.

At Winter Institute–an annual ABA conference for independent booksellers–there’s a town hall where members can share their concerns. According to the ABA’s coverage of the event, an independent bookstore owner went to the mic to speak about the minimum wage. “I’m very happy the staff is getting a pay bump,” she said, “but that’s a huge adjustment to make every 12 months and once you get a handle on it, then it’s going up again. I feel like this seems to be going countrywide and that is something that is extra important to our nonexistent margins.”

Why this framing? Why not ask how other stores are handling the adjustment? Why not pay employees a living wage now so as not to have to change business model every year? Why does a bookstore owner feel comfortable getting up and saying this in front of an audience of booksellers?

If your local indie bookstore skirts labor laws or advocates against them, at the expense of its employees, can you still be sanctimonious for shopping there? Is your local indie bookstore thriving if its employees skip doctor’s appointments they can’t afford? If your local indie bookstore’s trade group doesn’t have resources for booksellers on paid sick leave, health insurance, or wage theft–in an industry famous for its tiny margins–is it an industry you’d recommend joining?

“We find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being believers in social and economic justice while struggling to pay our employees a salary they can survive on,” writes Elayna Trucker on shopping local and running a bookstore; “We urge our customers to Shop Local but make hardly enough to do so ourselves. It is an unintentional hypocrisy, one that has gone largely ignored and unaddressed. So where does all that leave us? Rather awkwardly clutching our money, it seems… All of this brings up the most awkward question of all: does a business that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage deserve to be in business?”

I am so glad I don’t have to come up with an answer. I have no idea. I haven’t the faintest idea at all.

In the end it was a tweet. I left the bookstore after the holidays and started a new job in January. In February, after a night of shitty sleep, I tweeted, “I have been spending hours lying awake at night doing nothing but feeling this intense shame like a stone in my chest about experiencing wage theft at my last job and I am sincerely just hoping that tweeting about it is enough to make it stop so let’s see if it works.”

A day or two later I got an email. “It’s filtered back to me that the $1000 we gave you to settle the Sunday pay issue,” they said, “didn’t resolve it.” They said some things about how they hadn’t known until I told them. They cut me a check for the back pay that same day.

I didn’t delete the tweet. I don’t know if any of my coworkers got back pay.

A little later, I read an article about the student-run Harvard Shop in Cambridge. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office found that the store owed almost $50,000 in back pay to their employees and $5,600 in fines for violating blue laws. “In this case, we unknowingly did make a mistake in how we were paying our students for Sunday and holiday pay,” the store’s manager said.

I only saw the article because the union I joined at my new job shared it on Twitter.

In Seasonal Associate, Heike Geissler’s barely-fictionalized account of her time working at an Amazon fulfillment center, she writes: “What you and I can’t do, because you and I don’t want to, is to think your employer into a better employer, and to compare these conditions to even worse, less favorable conditions, so as to say: It’s not all that bad. It could be worse. It used to be worse. We don’t do that. You and I want the best and we’re not asking too much.”  

I loved bookselling. I loved it for the same reasons everyone does: the community of readers and booksellers, the joy when someone came back into the store and says I recommended the perfect read, the pride when authors reach out directly to say how much my work meant to them. The free books, the discounts, the advance copies, all of it. And I do believe that bookstores can be forces for social good, insofar as bookscan be forces for social good, which I think they can. It is self-evidently better to get your books from a local store than from Amazon, and for precisely the reasons the IndieBound website gives.

But it’s not enough to Not Be Amazon, and framing bookstores as moral exemplars regardless of how they treat their employees isn’t to the benefit of booksellers. Bookstores “thrive” by hiding how much their booksellers struggle. “Any thriving I do personally is in spite of my store,” one of the booksellers I spoke to said. Working at a bookstore is not as bad as working at an Amazon warehouse; I didn’t walk dozens of miles per day and my bathroom breaks weren’t monitored. But are we willing to let that be the baseline?

*clarification added after publication

[nosy-talk]

Shady secrets McDonald’s doesn’t want you to know

For a company that specializes in food, folks, and fun, it’s pretty amazing how shady McDonald’s actually is. You might think it’s no big deal to walk in, order a burger, get it in two minutes, and then leave. But apparently such a thing can only be accomplished by bending (or outright breaking) every rule in the book. Some genuine sociopathy from the people in charge helps too, as you’re about to find out.

They once got (and still might get) their nuggets from lethally abused chickens

Obviously, to enjoy meat of any kind, some animal had to sacrifice its life. But it’s always refreshing to know the animal lived peacefully and died in its slumber. But, according to summer 2015 footage released by activist group Mercy For Animals, McDonald’s cares not one iota for that, working with farms that openly, brazenly, and possibly gleefully abuse their chickens before murdering them into almost-food. The farm that Mercy For Animals targeted, T&S Farm, was recorded beating chickens to death with spiked clubs, with the occasional curb-stomping for variety’s sake. The workers knew full well what they were doing, with one outright asking the cameraman, “you don’t work for PETA, do you?” like a kid caught with his hand in an extremely bloody cookie jar.

Since the video, McDonald’s has disavowed the chicken-killing farm, giving the usual PR responses to assuage as many disgusted customers as humanly possible. But not even the slickest press release can answer three burning questions: how long has this happened, why did it take this video for a major company to realize bludgeoning food to death for fun is evil, and since it’s been a year already, are they secretly working with that farm again?

They won’t pay workers overtime for working major holidays

For a long time, McDonald’s understood what Thanksgiving and Christmas meant, and so they allowed their workers to enjoy both the holiday and all the turkey they can stomach. But money cares not for our arcane traditions and emotions, and so in 2012 McDonald’s started opening on the holidays. This was always a thing company-owned stores did, but now they were “urging” (or, really, forcing) franchisees to do the same. Apparently, doing so rakes in thousands per restaurant, which is all that matters anymore. And yes, if you’ve hit McDonald’s either of these days, you’re officially part of the problem. Commence feeling bad…now.

That’s pretty sucky of them, but at least franchise owners can pay holiday overtime. Workers at the company-owned stores, unfortunately, are fresh out of luck—McD’s flat-out refuses to pay them extra for working on a day that, as far as many are concerned, should only be worked by those who deal in emergencies. (No, Big Mac withdrawal doesn’t count.) They hide under the excuse that, because workers volunteer to work those days, they’re not entitled to overtime pay. Because when you’re dirt-broke, struggling to raise a family, and living from minimum-wage paycheck to minimum-wage paycheck, you definitely have the option of not volunteering to get paid for something.

Like so many other thieving rich folk, McDonald’s has apparently devolved into filthy, leeching tax cheats. According to the wonderfully titled Golden Dodges: How McDonald’s Avoids Paying Its Fair Share of Tax, between 2009 and 2013, McDonald’s avoided paying over $1.8 billion in taxes. The company used a series of barely legal (and something not even that) loopholes and cleverly shifting profits from whatever country they earned them in, to low-tax havens in countries they didn’t. This seems to especially be true overseas, where McDonald’s is looking at charges that they stole a billion euros ($1.1 billion American) from the European Union by sending their profits through Luxembourg, a country barely big enough to physically store all that money. Australia claims McDonald’s did the same thing there, sending their profits through Singapore and magically pocketing about a half billion in would-be taxes.

Even Brazil has a McBone to pick with the company, claiming they regularly bribe tax officials for minor favors like, oh, ignoring all laws so suddenly the company pays fewer taxes with no issues. But hey, they might have to charge ten extra cents per box of nuggets if they can’t deprive the world’s schools and hospitals of much-needed funding, and we can’t have that.

For some reason, enough people hit McDonald’s with their health in mind for the company to make mad bank selling food meant to trim your waistline on the cheap. That sounds great, except that it’s wrong in every conceivable way. The chicken kale Caesar salad, for example, clocks in at a cool 730 calories, 53 grams of fat, and 1,400 milligrams of sodium—numbers that absolutely should not be attached to a bunch of leaves. For comparison’s sake, a Double Big Mac has 680 calories and 1,340 mgs of sodium, meaning they’re touting a healthy salad that’s unhealthier than their unhealthiest hunk of cow. But don’t worry, you can skip the dressing, eat a plain dry salad, and save 200 calories, so now it’s only unhealthier than a single Big Mac. Small victories are still victories.

For the breakfast crowd, McDonald’s oatmeal has got you covered, and hornswoggled. Thanks to “fun” additives like cream, “natural flavor,” and sugar, the McOatmeal clocks in at 290 calories, with 32 sugar grams. You would literally do better with candy for breakfast—a regular-size Snickers bar, for example, only has 280 calories and 30 grams of sugar. Plus, Snickers doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. You can trust a Snickers bar, unlike anything Ronald McDonald touts as good for your abs.

They’ll sue anyone with the gall to run a business with ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ in its name

Once you get greedy enough, any threat to even a dime of your profit must be fought tooth-and-nail, even if it means losing more money to lawyers than you ever would’ve to the “competition.” It’s the principle that counts. In this case, we have McDonald’s going after literally any small business that uses “Mc” or “Mac,” because that’s their thing, and they don’t customers getting confused by seeing it anywhere else. The customer is apparently both always right, and the dumbest people on the planet.

Sometimes, they sue fast food joints, like McJoy in the Philippines or Mac Dooglas in Colombia (which was destroying McDonald’s bottom line with three whole restaurants in a tiny village no one outside the tiny village had even heard of.) But other times they just get petty, like when they sued a coffee shop called McCoffee—which had that name for 17 years—until they finally agreed to change their name and stop leeching tens of dollars from poor little McDonald’s. Though probably the stupidest case was when they went after a hot dog stand called McAllan. Like, a single hot dog stand, which is a product McDonald’s doesn’t even serve. That’s like Budweiser suing some kid’s lemonade stand. They lost that case, after the judge returned with a verdict of “really?” But usually, McDonald’s wins hands-down, valiantly beating back the evil little guy with the almighty power of Unlimited Wealth.

McDonald’s would rather use self-serve kiosks than pay employees a higher wage

Does McDonald’s food actually taste good? Who cares? It’s cheap! One of the primary ways that McDonald’s pulls that off is by paying the majority of its employees the least that it’s legally allowed to do so. In most places, that’s right at, or close to, the federal standard of just $7.25 an hour, an amount economic experts prefer to as “a complete tease.”

However, many cities and states have recently opted to raise their local minimum wages, in the hopes that workers can finally afford more than a closet inside a studio apartment. In Arizona and Colorado, it’s set to rise to $12 an hour, Washington’s will soon be $13.50 per hour, and Los Angeles workers will get a minimum of 15 bucks an hour. These states that have the audacity to pay workers a living wage could severely cut into McDonald’s bottom line, so the company has responded by threatening to replace its employees with robots: specifically, self-service kiosks. Robots work for free! At least, until the Uprising.

Here’s how it works: Customers come into a McDonald’s, enter their order on a touchscreen, the company CEO buys another 500-foot yacht and vacations in Bermuda. RoboClerk then sends the order to the kitchen, where an actual human (for now) puts the food together. Yes, they do have to pay somebody for that job (for now), but it does mean McDonald’s no longer has to staff a person at the counter—a great savings to the company, even at minimum wage.

They’ll roll these kiosks out nationally and internationally, if they prove to be efficient and cost-effective in test runs. What a golden time the future will be, when a screen instead of a human will ask “do you want fries with that?”

Their burgers don’t decompose

Burgers taste best when they’re hot and freshly prepared, but if you order those things at Mickey D’s and for some reason can’t get to them for a while, like say, a few months, don’t worry about it, they’re still “fine.” Or at least, they look fine. Eerily, McDonald’s small hamburgers don’t seem to rot at a regular pace. Or much at all, really.

In 2008, a health blogger named Karen Hanrahan posted a photo of a McDonald’s hamburger … that she’d bought in 1996 and saved, just to see what would happen. What happened is that, after twelve years, it looked the same as it looked in 1996, and it also looked the same as a brand-new McDonald’s hamburger.

Hanrahan argued that the immortality of the burger must be due to the vast array of preservatives in the burger, which rendered it “chemical food” that lacked any sort of natural nutrition. But according to food scientist J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, writing for Serious Eats, regular McDonald’s hamburgers don’t decompose normally because they don’t — and can’t — dry out. A typical McBurger is a non-perishable food on the level of dried beans, saltines, and other pantry staples. Paranoid of the apocalypse? Building a fallout shelter? Install a McDonald’s. Wasteland be damned, you’ll never starve.

How is this possible, though? Simple — there’s nothing to dry. A small McDonald’s hamburger is thin but flat, making for a high surface area-to-volume ratio. Then, it’s cooked until well-done on a hot grill, sucking out all the tasty, delicious, mortal moisture. No moisture means no bacteria—decaying agents—can propagate. Ever. And thus, the food lasts forever. Basically, you’re eating a mummy.

The company receives hundreds of millions in government cheese

The 2015 launch of all-day breakfast at McDonald’s led to two things: the meaningless of time, with regards to breakfast being a morning thing, and increased sales at McDonald’s nationwide. During the last quarter of that year, the company raked in a whopping $6.22 billion, attributable largely to the novelty of being served an English muffin with eggs on it just in time for Jeopardy!

That being said, it’s much easier for a company to rake in the profits if they’re getting free money from the government so it can play with its menu and experiment with late-evening hash browns. And they do — between 2003 and 2013, McDonald’s got subsidies from 42 state and city governments totaling nearly $4 million. McDonald’s even got a piece of the big federal “bailout” package in 2008 and 2009: a $203 million piece to be exact. McDonald’s: Too big to fail, and as long as government fatcats get literally fat off of midnight snack McGriddles, it never, ever will.

There’s a whole herd of cattle in that one burger

McDonald’s store signs claim “billions and billions served,” which means the number of burgers sold as much as it does the customers who have eaten those burgers. To serve that many burgers, McDonald’s has to slaughter and prepare an incredibly high volume of cattle in incredibly large and sophisticated meat-processing facilities. McDonald’s calls this burger creation the “blending process,” and it somehow gets more appetizing when you learn the step-by-step process.

In a nutshell, just so, so many cows are slaughtered. Their meat gets mixed together, and then formed into patties, but it’s done so haphazardly that a single beef patty may contain the meat of up to 100 different cows. A Bessie is a Bessie is a Bessie, apparently. But hey, even if you eat nothing but McDonald’s burgers, you’re still eating a wide variety of food from all over the globe.

The truth behind the “hot coffee” lawsuit

It’s the case most associated with “frivolous lawsuits” or an overly litigious society: the woman who successfully sued McDonald’s after she went and spilled a cup of their coffee on herself. The reality of the case, however, is quite complex, and, frankly, horrifying.

In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck went through a McDonald’s drive-through and pulled up on the lid to put in some cream—which, you know, cools it down—and wound up dumping it all over her sweatpants-covered lower half. But coffee, especially McDonald’s coffee, is hot: Even with clothes on, the brown stuff caused third-degree burns on over 16 percent of Liebeck’s body, including her thighs and genitals, burning the skin away completely in some places. During her eight-day hospitalization Liebeck underwent painful skin graft surgery.

Liebeck sued McDonald’s, initially wanting just $20,000 to cover medical costs and lost income during her recovery. That’s not so bad, but as we’ve made perfectly clear thus far, McDonald’s is both cheap and petty. The company offered $800 (roughly 800 cups of McDonald’s coffee), which was so insulting, Liebeck’s lawyers took them to court. Ultimately, she was awarded about $3 million by a jury who did find her partially responsible, because she pulled up on the lid too hard, but McDonald’s mostly responsible, for serving coffee way too hot for human consumption and/or handling.

Among the information that came out in the trial: McDonald’s required its restaurants to serve coffee at around 185 degrees, which is way hotter than what Mr. Coffee produces. In fact, a thermodynamics expert testified a liquid that temperature can burn through human skin in as little as two seconds. Even more shocking: In the decade before the Liebeck case, McDonald’s had received more than 700 complaints from people who had burned themselves on the coffee—and yet the company still refused to lower the temperature. They could’ve lost no money, then could’ve lost just 20 K, then lost 3 million, all because they were stubborn. Food, folks, and fantastic stupidity.

The weird history of Ronald McDonald

It is seemingly impossible to escape the lure of McDonald’s. Much like Jason Voorhees, run as hard as you want, but everywhere you turn, there it is, staring at you with its golden arches. Resistance is futile. At the center of the McDonald’s universe, holding it all together for generations, is the cherry-red smile of the infamous Ronald McDonald. While the mere mention of McDonald’s invokes images of pure Americana, Ronald’s white face-paint, carrot-top hair and peering smile masks a more oddball history. Grab your fries, kids.

Ronald was a replacement

Let the truth be told: Ronald started life as a scab.

In the Washington, D.C., area, Bozo the Clown, a children’s TV character that was franchised locally and played by different performers in different markets, was used to help promote the local McDonald’s franchise, owned by Oscar Goldstein and John Gibson. When Bozo went off the air in the D.C. marketplace, “Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger-Happy Clown” appeared faster than The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air could recast Aunt Viv. One second, Bozo was there, then Ronald burst upon the scene. Gullible children were none the wiser, and they continued to gobble burgers.

Clad in a yellow jumpsuit and striped shirt, early Ronald wore a paper cup for a nose and a tray for a hat while a complete McDonald’s meal hung from his belt buckle. Today, the Fashion Police would be blasting sirens, but the 1960s were a more colorful and accepting time. At least for clowns.

While Bozo faded into the past as a warmly-regarded nostalgia act, Ronald began to build his empire upon the foundation his predecessor had left behind. After just three local D.C. commercials, the clown was plucked from obscurity to star in national commercials. A star was born, but poor Bozo would never be publicly credited as Ronald’s forefather. Pie to the face for you, Bozo!

His creator was ignored for decades!

While credited by McDonald’s as the first performer to portray Ronald McDonald, the fast food kings have been less than forthcoming with the role famous television weatherman Willard Scott had in creating Ronald. They never told you the truth, Ronald. He is your father.

In his 1982 book Joy of Living, Scott wrote that the owners of the local Washington, D.C., McDonald’s franchise hired him to come up with the burger-boosting replacement for Bozo the Clown. A local radio personality at the time, Scott took center stage in a trio of McDonald’s commercials as the clown, including one ensuring the flower power generation was indeed aware of Stranger Danger.

Ray Kroc, responsible for the franchise’s expansion nationally and beyond, sensed potential, promoting Ronald to national mascot. Scott, however, was cast aside, and the role was recast. Much as Kroc left the McDonald brothers in the dust, Ronald abandoned Scott, who was uncredited for the role he originated, without as much as an Extra Value Meal to show for it.

Scott famously had a decades-long run as an NBC weatherman, but even he couldn’t forecast that after he went public with his claims, McDonald’s would remain silent, beyond a brief acknowledgement Scott was the first to portray Ronald. Brrrr. Talk about a cold front. Even more insulting, the official credit for Ronald’s creation went to Oscar Goldstein, one of the franchise owners that tapped Scott to create Ronald to begin with.

Scott’s role would continue to be ignored until March 2000, when NBC’s Today Show aired a tribute to Scott that featured Henry Gonzalez, at the time President of McDonald’s Northeast Division, finally thanking Scott for his role in creating Ronald. Scott would retire from television in 2015, but had he received royalties for siring Ronald, certainly he’d have been long gone, lounging on some giant tropical island and basking in all his creative glory.

His best friend was evil

Everyone loves Grimace. He’s Ronald’s best friend, that jovial blob who popularized purple decades before Prince was singing about rain. However, it’s been a deep-harbored secret that Grimace was not always as fun-loving — he used to be straight-up evil.

Evil Grimace, as he was originally coined, debuted as a four-armed thief out to steal milkshakes and sodas, only to be thwarted by Ronald, who tricked him into leaving all of the stolen goods behind by pretending to be a mailman delivering a fake invitation for a McDonald’s beauty contest. Yes, this is how they sold burgers in the ’70s. Groovy, man.

While Grimace may have been the scourge of McDonaldland when he debuted back in 1971, his reign of terror did not last long. After a few appearances, he was retconned into the dim-witted, happy right-hand man for Ronald we know today. They even cut off two of his arms.

Exactly how this happened in-universe has never been revealed. Was Evil Grimace apprehended and reprogrammed, A Clockwork Orange-style? McDonald’s isn’t talking, but it’s possible. Such treatment might kill a mere mortal, for as we know, nothing can kill the Grimace.

He lived in a psychedelic nightmare

Everyone needs a place to hang their hat, right? Spokesclowns are no different, and in trippy days of the 1970s, his home, McDonaldland, was revealed. Featuring anthropomorphic characters designed to espouse the enrichment of the world through fast food, McDonaldland was complete sensory overload to children, with bright, colorful characters that looked as if they escaped Disney purgatory. Even better, you didn’t need to go on vacation to see them — they were broadcast right to you, originally in a memorable series of commercials, before evolving into VHS adventures that McDonald’s used to enrapture guests at children’s birthday parties, along with some of the trippiest playgrounds of all time.

Presided over by Mayor McCheese, a politician who remains so beloved he was actually endorsed in the 2016 Presidential Election, McDonaldland was a fantastic fever dream, filled with apple pie trees and thick shake volcanoes — the magical place where Ronald and Grimace foiled the sinister plots of Hamburglar and others who sought to swipe McDonald’s meals for themselves. These colossal battles of good vs. evil deftly balanced delivering moral lessons to kids while also accomplishing their true task: They Live-style subliminal advertising that McDonald’s is yummy and awesome and kids should ask for it all the time. Indoctrinating the young is the key to repeat business. Ask the WWE.

Like Atlantis before it, McDonaldland was lost to time and the ever-changing whims of corporate America. Modern campaigns put the gang out to pasture. Still, future civilizations may one day come across the ruins of McDonaldland and assume we worshiped at the altar of a crazy clown in a yellow jumpsuit. Stranger things, indeed.

He was sued by H.R. Pufnstuf

When the McDonaldland ad campaign was launched, the colorful characters starring in madcap adventures certainly delighted thousands of children, but there was one family it didn’t delight — The Kroffts. Brothers Sid and Marty Krofft ruled over their own magical puppet kingdom, and were at the height of their popularity at the time. They were the kings of the psychedelic ’70s Saturday morning genre, so it was hardly a surprise when they were approached by McDonald’s ad agency Needham, Harper and Steers and asked to sprinkle some of that unbridled creativity over Ronald’s head. The two sides came to terms, but the agency soon yanked those plans.

So imagine The Kroffts’ surprise when McDonaldland debuted and Mayor McCheese bore a striking resemblance to their own top creation, H.R. Pufnstuf. To make matters worse, the Krofft brothers later learned some of their former employees had also worked on the campaign, and the Ice Capades later declined to renew the usage of Kroft characters, in favor of the McDonaldland copycats. Faster than you can say Freddy the Flute, a lawsuit was launched from the Land of the Lost, with all parties soon sitting before a magical jury that was to decree whether The Kroffts’ copyrights had been infringed.

The jury agreed with the Kroffts, but only awarded $50,000 in damages. Both sides flew like Birdie the Early Bird to an appeals court — The Kroffts, to get more of that Fry Guy cash, while McDonald’s, like Captain Crook, wanted to escape scot-free. Testimony indicated that representatives of Needham had toured Krofft HQ even after they had opted not to go with the family, leaving McDonald’s in quite the bind, legally. In the end, it was decided that The Kroffts were indeed owed some of that McDough, to the tune of $1,044,000. On top of that, McDonaldland commercials were shuttered. The Hamburglar did not escape this time, folks.

Moral of the story, kids? Who’s your friend when things get rough? Lawyers, that’s who.

McDonald’s tried to put a real-life Ronald McDonald out of business

McDonald’s is extremely protective and litigious over their brand. Just open any business that features a “Mc” and watch McLawyers descend upon you for a McBeating. So, it probably came as no surprise when McDonald’s attempted to legally smack down Fairbury, Illinois, eatery McDonald’s Family Restaurant over the use of the McDonald’s name.

What was unique was that the owner and proprietor was one Ronald McDonald. No kidding. Ronald McDonald opened his 240-seat eatery in 1956. When corporate McDonalds became aware of this establishment, it began firing off legal letters and phone calls, warning the McDonald family that they were trading on McDonald’s good name. In response, the family slightly changed the title, removing the possessive “s” from their name.

Not good enough for McDonald’s: it then descended upon Fairbury and opened its own outlet, seeking to plant a flag and become the dominant local McDonald’s. It was McDavid vs. McGoliath, for the hearts and stomachs of fair Fairbury.

The battle lasted three years, and, despite their corporate might, McDonald’s found itself unable to uproot Ronald. They finally tapped out, shutting down their location. This led Ronald to snark, “Most of our customers tried it once and never went back. They say they don’t miss it and they are glad we won out.” A McDonald’s spokesperson gave it their best spin, noting, “Closings rarely happen, because we are normally very good at site evaluation.” Hey, Mike Tyson was great at knocking people out, too, but then he met Buster Douglas.

Victorious, Ronald even kicked a little dirt on his clownish cousin post-victory, adding the possessive “s” right back to the name of his own eatery, where it has remained to this very day. Fairbury remains McNugget-free for two decades and counting.

The Hamburglar is real

Debuting in 1971, the Hamburglar joined the Ronald’s rogue’s gallery, attempting, over and over, to commit grand theft burger and hoard McDonaldland’s finest all for himself, but falling short every time. He’s received a few makeovers over the years, going from red-headed stepchild to his most recent incarnation, where he came to life and swapped his trademark bush hat for a Twitter-trending fedora, until dropping off the radar again. Or did he?

In April 2016, international headlines were made when a mysterious hat-wearing suspect broke into a Five Guys restaurant in the Washington, D.C., area and promptly cooked himself a meal. Despite calls to the public for help in identifying this hardened criminal, authorities were unable to apprehend this menace to society. Officer Big Mac, asleep on the job. Robble robble!

The McMarketing may have gotten out of hand

Ronald and McDonaldland were specifically designed to market McDonald’s to children, and in that regard, it did gangbuster business, not only in keeping registers ringing across the country, but in getting the characters out of the restaurants and into the hands of children as tangible playthings. There were action figures, plush dolls, McWrist Wallets, novelty records, McDonaldland playsets, VHS tapes, and playgrounds, some of which as dangerous as they were colorful.

In the late-’80s and early-���90s, that weirdness spread to the world of videogames. There was 1993’s McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure for the Sega Genesis, where Ronald fights off pirates en route to tracking down a treasure map so they could return home via an intergalactic rainbow. Or, 1992’s multi-platform MC Kids, where our heroes chase down Ronald’s magic bag after it was stolen by the Hamburglar. Does Felix the Cat know about this?

All of this madness pales in comparison to the insanity of 1988’s Japanese Famicom-only title Donald Land, where Ronald has to rescue all of his kidnapped friends from an evil clown named Gumon, fighting his own brainwashed friends and evil animals along the way. How did corporate approve this?

The licensing of Ronald across the board was all over the place, to be sure, but hey, it doesn’t matter what we think. He’s enshrined in the National Museum of American History — at least in doll form — forever, and we’re not. So there.

He’s a failed actor

While he’s starred in countless commercials and home videos designed to build upon McDonald’s propaganda, Ronald is also a failed film actor, with just one lone credit to his name. Box office bomb Mac & Me was released in 1988 as an attempt to cash-in on the hot alien craze that followed the release of Spielberg classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. One can almost smell Hollywood deal-making in the air as the film unspools, taking the E.T. plot point that used Reese’s Pieces to forge a bond between E.T. and Elliot, only attempting to Xerox that strategy to the umpteenth degree, throwing in any and all product placement the producers could force-feed the audience.

None of these attempts are more traumatizing than an entire sequence that takes place at a mythical McDonald’s, where local children have congregated outside to break-dance. Ronald himself is there as the master of ceremonies for a children’s birthday party that our hero, Eric, attends, secretly bringing his alien pal Mac along for the ride. With Mac safely hidden inside the skin of a teddy bear, this fever dream of a sequence leads to a huge dance number, because, well, it’s the ’80s.

Ronald was heavily involved in promoting the film, but, in the end, it’s become a forgotten relic of the era, sucking the life out of viewers and Ronald’s cinematic dreams alike. The Flashdance reboot will have to wait. Until that day, Ronald will have to settle for motivational speaking gigs.

There have been calls for his retirement

Ronald has been around for generations, a welcoming face to wave families in the door before they scarf down their McNuggets. In recent years, however, his once rock-solid show of support has slipped. As Aaron Eckhart famously said in The Dark Knight, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” To some, Ronald has become the sneaky villain, tricking generations into making terrible choices, like that last shot at closing time.

“This clown is no friend to our children or their health,” proclaimed Corporate Accountability International, who called for Ronald’s unceremonious retirement in 2010, bemoaning him as the key ingredient in the secret sauce of obesity. To some, Ronald, not irresponsible parenting, was the root cause of a fast food nation brimming with health issues.

While McDonald’s did blink, in some regard, adding healthier fare on their menu, and introducing a slightly more grown-up hipster Ronald, in the end, the Southwest Salad and dialing down the kid-friendliness did little to change a nation’s craving for a late night Big Mac. Pass the diabetes.

Creepy clowns almost did him in

Every Superman has his kryptonite. In 2016, it appears that Ronald McDonald’s was discovered: creepy clowns. For inexplicable reasons, a plethora of creepy clowns descended upon planet Earth, popping up in major metropolitan cities and quiet towns alike.

Although there was no evidence that Ronald was culpable in this rising army of sinister clowns, he still shouldered some of the blame, since, for the first time, McDonald’s decided it was going to distance itself. Admitting it was “mindful of the current climate around clown sightings in communities,” the company opted to downplay Ronald’s appearances in the company’s many community and charity events. Although innocent, he was a persecuted clown.

Eventually, the sightings diminished, yet Ronald remains relegated to the shadows, his commercial run apparently far behind him. Until the tides change, one envisions him quietly waiting for the day when he gets to hold court while championing Big Macs yet again. Until then, tears of a clown. An innocent clown. Or was he?

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How A Long Day Can Turn Into An Expensive Bill – Whiteboard Wednesday

Hiring an AV company for your event isn’t all fun and games, especially when AV labor comes into the equation. Truth is when you’re going through the process of finding an AV company, labor isn’t something that pops into mind. Well, at least not immediately. Sure, you know you’ll need all that equipment, and screens, and speakers, the works! But have you considered these things need to be operated by someone?

That’s the thing with AV labor. When you’re hiring, you’re not just hiring for equipment, you’re hiring for talent! And if you fail on carefully planning your event, the bill for the labor involved can easily turn into a huge expense. Today’s White Wednesday will tackle how a long day can turn into an expensive bill. Join Will Curran as he walks you through the best tips on how to schedule your event so that the AV labor doesn’t turn out to be more than you signed up for!

Are you planning an event? Check out our free Event Planning Checklist and be on your way to planning your best event yet!

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  Video Transcription – How A Long Day Can Turn Into An Expensive Bill

What’s going on, Endless fans? Will Curran from Endless Events back here again for another Whiteboard Wednesday, and today we’re talking about how a long day can turn into an expensive bill, especially an expensive AV labor bill. We really wanted to talk about this, because there’s a couple of rules that we get clarification and a lot of questions, and you know what? Figured it could use its own video as well.

All About AV Labor & Scheduling

We want to talk about when it comes to labor, is everything usually revolves around a day. A day is about 10 hours of work. A half day, half of that: five hours of work. Obviously, this depends on company to company. Sometimes you’ll hear a full day being eight hours, sometimes it’ll be four hours. When I talk about some of these rules, these are the ways that Endless has it set up. Every company’s going to be totally different in how it charges and how it follows these rules. But what we’ve found across the entire world, is that most companies follow these rules pretty straightforwardly, and usually when it comes down to it, the best companies usually all have about the same rules because they want to protect their employees in the same way.

Something to keep in mind as you go through this: these are just a couple of rules when you’re planning out your event and planning out your schedule. So keep in mind when you’re planning out your schedule in where you put breaks and things like that; this can majorly affect the AV company across the entire board.

The Beginning – Keep It Simple

The way to keep in mind as you’re thinking about it, is actually let’s plan on having this day start about eight, or about seven a.m., actually. Instead of eight a.m., we’ll have it start around seven a.m. The reason why is just to keep this really simple with numbers. After about five hours, you end up at about noon when it comes down to it.

Break Talk

The reason why I have it set up this way starting at seven a.m. and ending about noon for lunch is that after about five hours of work, most AV labor and most technicians and engineers are going to need a break. There’s sometimes a little smaller breaks, 15 minutes break, placed inside there for them to go grab their coffee, but usually what’s called … We’ll call it the lunch break … is that after about five hours, they’re going to need a lunch break or a meal break.

What If This Is In The Middle Of My Event?

This is why you want to set up your schedule to match this as best possible. When it comes down to it, after five hours you’re going to need a break. The break has to happen in either of two ways. First is that there’s called a walk away break, or what we’ll say is a one hour walk away lunch. This means for a solid hour, they need the ability to leave site, go grab lunch, relax, do whatever they want to do for that hour. You can’t dictate where they go. They can’t tell them to work on schedules. They have to be able to get a clean breakaway for an hour.

My best recommendation is to try scheduling a one hour break in the middle for them to get food, take a break, essentially.

The other option is a lot of companies will also do what’s called a 30-minute lunch provided break. So what this means is that they get 30 minutes to break. However, food has to be provided for them. So basically the idea is that you’re saving some time, that extra 30 minutes. Instead of them having to go find food, get their lunch, set up, whatever it is, it’s only 30 minutes.

But in this case, I’m going to do this being an hour break. Again, it gives the ability for you to extend into work a little bit later in the day which we’ll get to in just a little bit.

So again, two options when it comes to these meal breaks: one hour walk away, or a 30 minute provided lunch. Everybody with me so far? After five hours, give them that break.

More Break Talk (& Food!)

Then let’s say they come back, and they’re ready to get work done again. Well, then you get another five hours’ worth of work before you’re going to need another meal break. So again, after every five hours, feed ’em. Pretty simple, right? We want to feed people; we all have to eat at some point.

After about five hours, boom! You’re going to want to do another break as well. However, to illustrate this in the best way possible, I’m going to show you what happens a lot of times. Let’s say the general session starts at eight a.m., but seven a.m. is … From eight a.m. is a rehearsal, then you have a general session all day long and then let’s say we give ’em a lunch break because our general session’s not going to be in action during that time. Then we go back to doing general sessions. And it’s like a long day; we have a lot of meetings. But we then are going to have a late night gala dinner. There’s a party, whatever it may be. So we’re going to need ’em to stay past six p.m., which again is five hours after this.

OT, OT…

Well, then not only in addition to needing another meal break, but you also run into what is usually the dreaded overtime. And everyone wants to avoid this as much as possible, so this is how we’re going to recommend that you avoid this. For our company, we do it that after 10 hours, anything from 10 hours to 12 hours basically in that next section, is what’s called overtime. Overtime is one and a half times rate. Let’s say this normal person’s working for $50 an hour. Well at this point, when they’re working for these two hours from six p.m. to eight p.m., it’s in overtime, so they’re getting paid $75 an hour. You can see how this can get really expensive very, very fast.

How Endless Does AV Labor

At our company, we do it after 12 hours of straight work. Anything 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours…God forbid it goes any longer … it goes into what’s called double time. And this is the progression, right? You get the kind of happy work, and people like to say, “Why wouldn’t people want this? They just want overtime.” To be honest, if you talk to most engineers, they do not want to go to overtime and double time, because this means it’s a really long day of work. It means they’re … really, it’s getting into late nights. You’re talking about working till nine p.m., 10 p.m., oh my gosh, after they’ve been here since seven a.m. No one really wants to work double time.

You’ll Be Able To Tell

So you’re going from this kind of happy work, happy work … Well, then things start to get a little fuzzy when you get to this over time, and the warning signs should be blinking. At this point, if you don’t have this scheduled, and this is starting to happen, hopefully, your AV company will warn you and say, “Hey, just so you know, we’re about to go into overtime. We don’t want to do that.” They’ll hopefully warn you, but absolutely the thing you want to avoid is double time. That is just the worst, and that can be extremely dangerous because you’re then paying double the rate. You’ve gone from paying $50 an hour to paying $100 an hour. You can see how this can start to increase your bills and everything like that.

Schedule it Right!

When you’re planning out your schedule, you want to make sure that you’re giving these breaks along the way, but also that you don’t plan for these really long days. To be honest, just try to always plan around the engineer working for 10 hours total, with a one hour break. So, from 11 a.m. to six p.m., just be done. That’s a pretty simple way to avoid it.

However, some cases, we either have a long gala dinner or let’s say, for example, you need them to stay late for rehearsals, that’s when it makes sense … just plan for it when it comes. Again, all these rules kind of slightly differ between companies. So make sure that you’re talking to your AV company about what these rules are before you sign the quote, and that you understand them, because in the case you do have to take it as an emergency, avoid it. Right?

Beware Of The Short Turnaround

Another labor rule we get a lot of questions about is that what happens if let’s say, for example, you did all of this, and then you pushed and worked until let’s say 11 p.m. This double time went to 11 p.m., and you’re working till 11 p.m. Well, then you want to avoid something called a tight turnaround. And what this has to do, is let’s fast forward and whooop! Go to tomorrow. Let’s say this was the first day, but the next day, you have an early morning breakfast with the CEO, that starts at six a.m., so you need all the engineers there at five a.m. Short turnaround is what happens whenever the engineers have to finish one, a work session or work shift, and in less than eight hours between when they end work and when they start work, it’s called a short turnaround.

What To Do?

What this means is always when you’re planning your schedule, plan for when the engineers finish their work, you have at least eight hours between when they start their next shift. The reason why you want to avoid this is when you get into the eternal horrible day of flames and extremely high costs. The reason why is anything that happens then that next day can lead to pretty much double time all day long. Again, these rules slightly depend on the company, but what I’ve seen is that the next day it starts, they immediately start on overtime.

The Overtime Rollercoaster Of AV Labor

What that means is anything that day is going to be already in overtime. If you end up doing this again, where you go into overtime, it’s overtime of overtime. So you’re going 1.5 costs, times 1.5 costs. Then God forbid, you go to the double time, and it’s 1.5 costs times two times costs. You can see how this day could be extremely expensive. And the most common way that we see this happen is when you have a long gala dinner, and then you have to be out of the venue and everything has to be torn down the next morning, early morning, because you have to be out by noon, for example. You want to manufacture your schedule so then that way again, you cause a nice big eight-hour break between the two days.

Up And Running!

What’s nice, is that I find with most AV companies, if, for example, the guys end at 11 p.m., and then the next day would obviously be seven a.m. would be the start time. They don’t factor in things like driving, but that’s something to keep in mind with your AV engineers; a lot of them are not going to be at the hotel right across the street. Sometimes they’ll be … for example, having to drive an hour to go get home. Obviously, that’s the engineer’s choice in where they live and things like that, but that’s something to keep in mind. We want everyone to get a full eight hours of sleep, but if you keep in mind factoring drive time and everything like that, it can lead to really horrible times where you’re driving for an hour to get home. You only sleep for five hours because you have to be up in the morning and then be there on time.

Avoidance

Some ways that I’ve seen avoiding short turnarounds, and some more forgiveness around it, is that if you know you have to do a short turnaround for some reason, providing hotels on site, so then that way, hey yeah, you’re going to be in short turnaround, but maybe we can avoid the short turnaround since we’re providing on-site to eliminate drive time and travel time and everything like that. We’ve seen that help as well.

The Recap On AV Labor

Again, just to recap, five-hour chunks. Make sure you get meal breaks. Make sure … Otherwise, you’re going to get into meal break. There are some penalties related to meal breaks, which are related sometimes to overtime where if you don’t give a meal break, things can be forced into overtime earlier, that sort of stuff. But after 10 hours, avoid overtime. After 12 hours-ish, avoid the double time and then make sure you give a nice eight-hour break in between your different days and shifts because then you can get into this horrible day of flames, which I’ll call short turnaround all day.

Conclusion

I hope you found this helpful. If you did, I would love for you to subscribe down below. If you really loved it, give it a thumbs up. However, if you didn’t like it, give us a thumbs down. And down in the comments, let us know how we can make this event better. Also, we want to hear from you: what sort of topics do you want us to cover? Leave a comment down below and let us know what sort of topics you want us to cover, what sort of scenarios you’ve seen.

The prompt that I have for you today is what’s an example of an event where you had one of these rules broken, and how did it affect your event? Did you have any clever ways for ways that you avoided it? Do you have any tips for other planners for how you schedule out your schedules to avoid things like meal break penalties and overtime and everything like that? What’s your take no AV labor in general? We’d love to hear it down in the comments below!

That’s going to do it for this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in, and we can’t wait to see you next week. I’ll catch you later, Endless fans!

Resources:

The Epic Guide To Event AV Labor

What Do All The AV Labor Positions Do – Whiteboard Wednesday

Learn About Event Safety and Cybersecurity, Event Labor Costing, and More

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from Endless Events https://helloendless.com/av-labor/

[monstersarealwayshungryrpg-blog]

Name: Lucienne Kane Age: 32 Gender: Cisgender Female  Sexuality: Lesbian  Occupation: Madame / Owner of L’Empire Rouge Affiliation: The Emperor Faceclaim: Katie McGrath Status: Closed

The Story

They call you The Empress, you are their queen. Some say you are too nurturing, but ever since you were little, you’ve always dreamed of being a mother. Faith has played a cruel trick on you and has given you health but made your pursuit of motherhood impossible. The doctors don’t know why, but they have diagnosed you infertile. You are the gentle and warm counterpart that sits upon the throne, but your kindness and tend nature is not to be taken for vulnerability or naivety. You are a powerful business owner that relies on your clever intellect and intuition to expand your empire.

Connections:

The Emperor -- An arranged marriage that you hoped would turn into true love. It did for you and for a moment it did for them until you learned about your inability to give them an heir. Your love for your partner remains strong but it's starting to twist the more you learn of their indiscretions.

The Magician -- The golden child you never had. You saw the potential in them when they showed up at L’Empire Rouge, putting your reputation on the line when you handed them a job. They have never disappointed you and you know they have what it takes to rise to the occasion.

The Lovers -- Your most highly sought after and best employee. You thought of them as a younger sister but you were wrong to assume they ever cared for you the way you cared for them. You know of the affair they lead behind your back.

Biography

The Past:

It seemed only fitting that Lucienne DuPont grow up to live in a castle, because from the moment she was born, she was her father’s princess. Her mother had been ill fit for the pressures of motherhood and had left with a generous divorce settlement which she then used to get as far away from Lucienne as possible. But that was okay, because her father more than made up for it. While he was often away on business, leaving her in the hands of devoted nannies, he spoiled her with both gifts and attention upon his returns, ensuring that she kept to her studies as well as the games, dance recitals and music lessons of girlhood entertainment so that she knew how to use brain as well as beauty.

Lucienne was a child sharp of both features and wits, their sharpness balancing her soft and gentle heart. She excelled in school and drew the attention of many a pretty girl, boy or anyone in between. She even took home stray cats or birds that had fallen from their nests (much to the housekeeper’s chagrin). She played with dolls and science kits alike, refusing to be boxed in by ideas of what a little girl was ‘supposed’ to like. Lucienne wanted to be all things, and her father ensured she knew that was not only achievable for her, but expected of her.

It was one day in high school when she was sent to the nurses’ office with cramps in her stomach so painful they made her collapse to the floor wailing. Painkillers and sedatives, too many trips to the hospital and an eventual emergency operation left her unable to have children. The opportunity was gone before she even got the chance to grow up, and the chance of the family she had dreamed about creating in the absence of her own mother was lost forever. Her father would hold her hand and bring her gifts while she did her homework in the hospital. School was her only focus for a while.

After graduation, nothing but the finest University in Paris would do, and she went on to study business at École Normale Superieure Paris. Her intent was to take over her father’s company someday, but he had different ideas. Oh, it wasn’t that he didn’t want her to be successful. He had bred her for it, nurtured her and shown her how important the balance was between tenderness and prowess, but he had his own business deals too, and one of them had resulted in her marriage.

The Present:

She had a choice in what she became. Her father, powerful as he was, wouldn’t have dared to break the heart of his only pride and joy, the last remnant of her mother he had left, but he made it clear to her as if he were negotiating a contract the benefits of the match he’d agreed. The Kanes were the most powerful family in Paris, and so she would become even more powerful than their wealth would allow. She would never want for anything. And anyway, the eldest Kane child could use a bit of your tender heartedness, her father had added with a smile, lightly squeezing her hand.

And so Lucienne walked down the aisle with duty and intent. She would be no waif or wallflower, but utilise the brains and expertise she’d crafted for herself to not only make the best of her situation, but to make it something of her own design. She was the wife of one of the richest heirs in the country and could set her sights on any business project she wished. Something drew her to L’Empire Rouge, to the enticing souls that found their way there, some victims looking for a new start, some merely talented entertainers looking for a way to fill their pockets. A routine examination had brought to light that she couldn’t have children of her own, so she would be the mother these people needed.

But that wasn’t the only allure.

L’Empire Rouge, like many of the Kane family prospects, was a front for her spouse’s real business: The Arcane Ring. Over the years, Lucienne has sought to prove that she is not just a pawn in the game. She is a queen. She is an empress. And god forbid anyone try to make her into anything different. Nurturing, but strong, the softer half of the pair that ruled over The Arcane Ring, she brings balance and understanding to their empire. Sometimes, she knows, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The Personality:

She is the lioness, the wolf-mother, protective and observant. She guards her business and her staffers as if they are the family she can no longer bear. Play by the rules, and you will see great reward, but break them without just cause, and see yourself ostracised. The philosophy applies to patrons and staff alike, but if a worker says they do not wish to be touched, Lucienne will be the first to tell those who flout the request that they can keep their hands to themselves or lose them. Consent and safety are her utmost concerns. They are not optional, they are a requirement. But as long as they are adhered to, then any other boundaries can freely be pushed. What they do is an art form, and she will neither be ashamed of it or allow her staff to be ashamed of it.

They might say she is too soft. She gives to charity, she makes sure all her staff are adequately paid and protected, she even offers them friendship and motherhood, ensures there is food available on the company tab for their late nights at the club. She will wash away the tears on their faces and their skinned knees when someone hurts them and send the one who did the hurting to the proverbial shopping block. She expects loyalty and perhaps even affection in return, hurt if this is denied her, but she has to do her best not to show it. If you take her as too soft and if you take advantage, she ensures that you pay the price. Her affection and protection is on offer until you betray it, or until you hurt one of her people.

Her mind works overtime, a constant ticking and whirring of future plans or the means by which they can make their current plans better, whether it be new branding on their drinks menus or a new brand of desire that is on offer. Power is part of her life, and running a successful business not only gives her a life and an income outside of her marriage, but it gives her the pleasure of challenging herself. She won’t tolerate being pushed aside like a useless damsel. She won’t tolerate being talked down to. Lucienne firmly believes that you can be tough and nurturing at the same time.

In Lucienne’s mind, the idea that women are pressured by society to be the house-wife or the business-woman, The Madonna or The Whore to be abhorrent. In her eyes, a woman should do exactly what she wishes. Whether it is her body that she uses to enthral, or her mind, or her words, that is their choice, but those who enter into her midst no matter what their gender are her family and she will protect them. One thing she can’t stomach is to see a child suffering, and she frequently donates to local shelters and services. Certainly, there are beneficial tax write offs and a benefit to their public image, but she could choose any charity to donate to. She chooses the ones that focus on children and women, and she would help children who are in need regardless, even with an act so simple as providing a hot meal or dropping some Euros into an empty hand as she walks past them on the streets.

[rayshafazand]

Restaurant Payroll 101: Everything You Need to Know

You can’t run a restaurant without employees, which means that processing payroll is an essential task for restaurant owners, operators, and managers. However, calculating, distributing, and double-checking restaurant payroll for your employees is complex, and any errors and non-compliance with government mandates can result in costly fines or taxes for your business.

Payroll is one of the most challenging and heavily regulated responsibilities for a restaurant and complying with regulations while accurately completing payroll on time requires dedicated resources. For restaurant owners and operators, the first step in understanding your payroll is to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts, regulations, and responsibilities.

Payroll for restaurant employees

Payroll is the process through which a business calculates and distributes wages to employees. For the restaurant industry in particular, there are industry-specific laws about scheduling and tipped employees that need to be taken into consideration. Federal laws govern everything from employment tax to how to report total tip income earned.

In addition to the federal government’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which sets regulations about minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards, states and municipalities may have additional laws. When you have restaurants in multiple states and cities, the difficulties of managing your payroll are multiplied. For the most accurate, detailed advice on payroll regulations and taxes applicable to you in your locale, consider consulting an accountant, using payroll software or following the guidance of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

As a restaurant owner or operator, there are two common options for running payroll:

You may be able to process your payroll yourself, which may save you money on paper. However, manual in-house payroll is extremely time consuming, and you may make costly errors when navigating the complex world of payroll.

If you have the option to outsource your payroll, using an accountant or payroll software can ensure you comply with regulations and your employees are paid correctly, on time.

Calculating your restaurant payroll depends on accurate data about employee hours worked and schedules. With an integration between tools like your restaurant accounting software and your payroll provider, automatic systems that create labor accrual journal entries can help streamline the time-consuming process.

How to create a payment schedule for your restaurant

How often you run payroll is up to you and your business. Businesses are free to choose their own payment cycle, but in the restaurant industry, the most common timeframe is paying employees every two weeks, but paying staff more frequently is a good strategy for employee retention. Tipped employees, like servers or bartenders may receive their base wage every two weeks, but they also frequently take home tips at the end of a shift (especially if they are in cash).

In the restaurant industry, most positions are paid on an hourly basis, except for front of house and kitchen management. This means that most paychecks may fluctuate slightly from pay period to pay period. However, by using tools such as restaurant scheduling software, you can ensure your labor expenses are as streamlined as possible by automating some of the scheduling process to match your labor cost goals.

Who qualifies as a tipped employee?

According to the United States Department of Labor, under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), “tipped employees are those who customarily and regularly receive more than $30 per month in tips.”

However, regulations around tipped employees can vary widely by state, making compliance more complex for multi-state restaurant businesses. For example, in Colorado, tipped employees are defined by the same FLSA standards, but their basic combined cash and tip minimum wage rate is $12.00. In states like Massachusetts, however, $20 in monthly tips qualifies as a tipped employee, and the tip minimum wage is $12.75.

What percentage of sales should payroll be?

Other than food cost, your restaurant labor cost is one of the biggest expenses for your restaurant. Rather than trying to compare a fixed dollar number between restaurants, most restaurants track labor cost as a percentage of sales using the following formula:

Total Labor Cost ÷ Total Sales = Labor cost as a percentage of total sales

The ideal labor cost percentage can vary widely with your particular restaurant’s business model. The common benchmark for most restaurants is a labor cost percentage between 25%-35% of sales, but this may range depending on your industry segment:

25%: quick service restaurants with faster customer transactions and less specialized labor

25-30%: fast casual dining, although this varies with different menu and service systems

30-35%: fine dining with in-house food production and time-intensive service components

Tracking your restaurant payroll percentage can give you insight into your expenses in real time, allowing you to make changes as needed. With reports tracking labor costs, like a daily profit & loss statement from your restaurant financial reporting software, you are able to make data-driven decisions in the moment to keep your costs within your forecasted budget.

Calculating earnings and deductions for your staff

Because of the strict regulations around payroll, you need to make sure that you spend time and resources properly calculating and distributing payroll to your employees. Calculations for tipped wages, overtime, withholding, and deductions are all based on gross pay for your employees and governed by federal, state, and local regulations.

In addition, you will need to track your own deductions that you can take as an employer. For example, as an employer, you may be able to deduct the cost of providing meals to employees at your restaurant as the cost of food or as a separate expense.

Rules and regulations around tipped employees

As mentioned above, although the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets the federal rules around thresholds like minimum wage and overtime pay for businesses, every state and locality may also have a separate set of laws and regulations on top of the federal guidance.

For example, as of January 1, 2020, 21 states had a higher (but varied) minimum wage than the federal level, and on top of that, 44 localities had a higher minimum wage than the state in which they are located. Especially for multi-location restaurants, keeping track of minimum wages and regulations can be a time-consuming and complicated process.

Your restaurant business needs to prove you are following minimum wage laws through calculating employee tips as a part of their hourly wage, through applying a server tip credit.

In addition to federal guidelines like the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) Tip Credit, mandating the credit (if any) that can be taken varies by state, with some states enacting further regulations.

To learn more about how minimum wages range for tipped employees by state, check the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division resource on minimum wages for tipped employees. In addition, the Economic Policy Institute logs historical minimum and subminimum wages by state with its minimum wage tracker and tipped minimum wage tracker.

In addition to tipped minimum wage regulations, some states are now enacting what is called fair or predictive scheduling legislation, a type of labor requirement that regulates scheduling, overtime, and payment practices. Local mandates may include requirements about predictable pay, regular scheduling, or employee breaks.

Tax issues you need to understand

Your restaurant business must pay a payroll tax when you compensate employees, based on the wages you are disbursing. They are usually calculated as a percentage of the salaries that you pay your staff. These taxes are used to finance social insurance programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. The largest of these social insurance taxes are the two federal payroll taxes, which show up as FICA and MEDFICA on your employees’ pay stubs. The first is a 12.4% tax to fund Social Security, and the second is a 2.9% tax to fund Medicare, for a combined rate of 15.3%. Half of payroll taxes (7.65%) are remitted directly by employers, while the other half (7.65%) are taken out of workers’ paychecks.

In addition to ensuring you are documenting your staffs’ minimum wage correctly, both employees and employers need to calculate and report tips accurately because tips are taxable income. As an employer, setting up tip-tracking systems like daily tip reports in your restaurant management software can help ensure your payroll and tip reporting is accurate.

How long should you maintain payroll records?

A general guideline in the restaurant industry is that restaurants maintain their payroll records for three years. However, special circumstances like a missed return, a fraudulent return, or misreported income may mean that you should keep your records for six or more years. A tax specialist or accountant should be able to help you decide what storage and record keeping system is best for your business.  Payroll sofware maintains these records for you.

Conclusion

Payroll is a constantly recurring task for your restaurant. It is critical to process restaurant payroll accurately and on time, both for your employees and for your status as a business. Whether you keep it in house or outsource to payroll software, understanding the basics of payroll allows you to make the best decision for your staff and management team. To learn more about restaurant labor costs, read the e-book, Guide to Restaurant Labor Regulations and Wages.

If you’d like to learn more about optimizing your labor costs and tracking data for payroll processing, schedule a Restaurant365 demo.

The post Restaurant Payroll 101: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Restaurant365.

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[waynebomberger]

How A Long Day Can Turn Into An Expensive Bill – Whiteboard Wednesday

Hiring an AV company for your event isn’t all fun and games, especially when AV labor comes into the equation. Truth is when you’re going through the process of finding an AV company, labor isn’t something that pops into mind. Well, at least not immediately. Sure, you know you’ll need all that equipment, and screens, and speakers, the works! But have you considered these things need to be operated by someone?

That’s the thing with AV labor. When you’re hiring, you’re not just hiring for equipment, you’re hiring for talent! And if you fail on carefully planning your event, the bill for the labor involved can easily turn into a huge expense. Today’s White Wednesday will tackle how a long day can turn into an expensive bill. Join Will Curran as he walks you through the best tips on how to schedule your event so that the AV labor doesn’t turn out to be more than you signed up for!

Are you planning an event? Check out our free Event Planning Checklist and be on your way to planning your best event yet!

  Video Transcription – How A Long Day Can Turn Into An Expensive Bill

What’s going on, Endless fans? Will Curran from Endless Events back here again for another Whiteboard Wednesday, and today we’re talking about how a long day can turn into an expensive bill, especially an expensive AV labor bill. We really wanted to talk about this, because there’s a couple of rules that we get clarification and a lot of questions, and you know what? Figured it could use its own video as well.

All About AV Labor & Scheduling

We want to talk about when it comes to labor, is everything usually revolves around a day. A day is about 10 hours of work. A half day, half of that: five hours of work. Obviously, this depends on company to company. Sometimes you’ll hear a full day being eight hours, sometimes it’ll be four hours. When I talk about some of these rules, these are the ways that Endless has it set up. Every company’s going to be totally different in how it charges and how it follows these rules. But what we’ve found across the entire world, is that most companies follow these rules pretty straightforwardly, and usually when it comes down to it, the best companies usually all have about the same rules because they want to protect their employees in the same way.

Something to keep in mind as you go through this: these are just a couple of rules when you’re planning out your event and planning out your schedule. So keep in mind when you’re planning out your schedule in where you put breaks and things like that; this can majorly affect the AV company across the entire board.

The Beginning – Keep It Simple

The way to keep in mind as you’re thinking about it, is actually let’s plan on having this day start about eight, or about seven a.m., actually. Instead of eight a.m., we’ll have it start around seven a.m. The reason why is just to keep this really simple with numbers. After about five hours, you end up at about noon when it comes down to it.

Break Talk

The reason why I have it set up this way starting at seven a.m. and ending about noon for lunch is that after about five hours of work, most AV labor and most technicians and engineers are going to need a break. There’s sometimes a little smaller breaks, 15 minutes break, placed inside there for them to go grab their coffee, but usually what’s called … We’ll call it the lunch break … is that after about five hours, they’re going to need a lunch break or a meal break.

What If This Is In The Middle Of My Event?

This is why you want to set up your schedule to match this as best possible. When it comes down to it, after five hours you’re going to need a break. The break has to happen in either of two ways. First is that there’s called a walk away break, or what we’ll say is a one hour walk away lunch. This means for a solid hour, they need the ability to leave site, go grab lunch, relax, do whatever they want to do for that hour. You can’t dictate where they go. They can’t tell them to work on schedules. They have to be able to get a clean breakaway for an hour.

My best recommendation is to try scheduling a one hour break in the middle for them to get food, take a break, essentially.

The other option is a lot of companies will also do what’s called a 30-minute lunch provided break. So what this means is that they get 30 minutes to break. However, food has to be provided for them. So basically the idea is that you’re saving some time, that extra 30 minutes. Instead of them having to go find food, get their lunch, set up, whatever it is, it’s only 30 minutes.

But in this case, I’m going to do this being an hour break. Again, it gives the ability for you to extend into work a little bit later in the day which we’ll get to in just a little bit.

So again, two options when it comes to these meal breaks: one hour walk away, or a 30 minute provided lunch. Everybody with me so far? After five hours, give them that break.

More Break Talk (& Food!)

Then let’s say they come back, and they’re ready to get work done again. Well, then you get another five hours’ worth of work before you’re going to need another meal break. So again, after every five hours, feed ’em. Pretty simple, right? We want to feed people; we all have to eat at some point.

After about five hours, boom! You’re going to want to do another break as well. However, to illustrate this in the best way possible, I’m going to show you what happens a lot of times. Let’s say the general session starts at eight a.m., but seven a.m. is … From eight a.m. is a rehearsal, then you have a general session all day long and then let’s say we give ’em a lunch break because our general session’s not going to be in action during that time. Then we go back to doing general sessions. And it’s like a long day; we have a lot of meetings. But we then are going to have a late night gala dinner. There’s a party, whatever it may be. So we’re going to need ’em to stay past six p.m., which again is five hours after this.

OT, OT…

Well, then not only in addition to needing another meal break, but you also run into what is usually the dreaded overtime. And everyone wants to avoid this as much as possible, so this is how we’re going to recommend that you avoid this. For our company, we do it that after 10 hours, anything from 10 hours to 12 hours basically in that next section, is what’s called overtime. Overtime is one and a half times rate. Let’s say this normal person’s working for $50 an hour. Well at this point, when they’re working for these two hours from six p.m. to eight p.m., it’s in overtime, so they’re getting paid $75 an hour. You can see how this can get really expensive very, very fast.

How Endless Does AV Labor

At our company, we do it after 12 hours of straight work. Anything 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours…God forbid it goes any longer … it goes into what’s called double time. And this is the progression, right? You get the kind of happy work, and people like to say, “Why wouldn’t people want this? They just want overtime.” To be honest, if you talk to most engineers, they do not want to go to overtime and double time, because this means it’s a really long day of work. It means they’re … really, it’s getting into late nights. You’re talking about working till nine p.m., 10 p.m., oh my gosh, after they’ve been here since seven a.m. No one really wants to work double time.

You’ll Be Able To Tell

So you’re going from this kind of happy work, happy work … Well, then things start to get a little fuzzy when you get to this over time, and the warning signs should be blinking. At this point, if you don’t have this scheduled, and this is starting to happen, hopefully, your AV company will warn you and say, “Hey, just so you know, we’re about to go into overtime. We don’t want to do that.” They’ll hopefully warn you, but absolutely the thing you want to avoid is double time. That is just the worst, and that can be extremely dangerous because you’re then paying double the rate. You’ve gone from paying $50 an hour to paying $100 an hour. You can see how this can start to increase your bills and everything like that.

Schedule it Right!

When you’re planning out your schedule, you want to make sure that you’re giving these breaks along the way, but also that you don’t plan for these really long days. To be honest, just try to always plan around the engineer working for 10 hours total, with a one hour break. So, from 11 a.m. to six p.m., just be done. That’s a pretty simple way to avoid it.

However, some cases, we either have a long gala dinner or let’s say, for example, you need them to stay late for rehearsals, that’s when it makes sense … just plan for it when it comes. Again, all these rules kind of slightly differ between companies. So make sure that you’re talking to your AV company about what these rules are before you sign the quote, and that you understand them, because in the case you do have to take it as an emergency, avoid it. Right?

Beware Of The Short Turnaround

Another labor rule we get a lot of questions about is that what happens if let’s say, for example, you did all of this, and then you pushed and worked until let’s say 11 p.m. This double time went to 11 p.m., and you’re working till 11 p.m. Well, then you want to avoid something called a tight turnaround. And what this has to do, is let’s fast forward and whooop! Go to tomorrow. Let’s say this was the first day, but the next day, you have an early morning breakfast with the CEO, that starts at six a.m., so you need all the engineers there at five a.m. Short turnaround is what happens whenever the engineers have to finish one, a work session or work shift, and in less than eight hours between when they end work and when they start work, it’s called a short turnaround.

What To Do?

What this means is always when you’re planning your schedule, plan for when the engineers finish their work, you have at least eight hours between when they start their next shift. The reason why you want to avoid this is when you get into the eternal horrible day of flames and extremely high costs. The reason why is anything that happens then that next day can lead to pretty much double time all day long. Again, these rules slightly depend on the company, but what I’ve seen is that the next day it starts, they immediately start on overtime.

The Overtime Rollercoaster Of AV Labor

What that means is anything that day is going to be already in overtime. If you end up doing this again, where you go into overtime, it’s overtime of overtime. So you’re going 1.5 costs, times 1.5 costs. Then God forbid, you go to the double time, and it’s 1.5 costs times two times costs. You can see how this day could be extremely expensive. And the most common way that we see this happen is when you have a long gala dinner, and then you have to be out of the venue and everything has to be torn down the next morning, early morning, because you have to be out by noon, for example. You want to manufacture your schedule so then that way again, you cause a nice big eight-hour break between the two days.

Up And Running!

What’s nice, is that I find with most AV companies, if, for example, the guys end at 11 p.m., and then the next day would obviously be seven a.m. would be the start time. They don’t factor in things like driving, but that’s something to keep in mind with your AV engineers; a lot of them are not going to be at the hotel right across the street. Sometimes they’ll be … for example, having to drive an hour to go get home. Obviously, that’s the engineer’s choice in where they live and things like that, but that’s something to keep in mind. We want everyone to get a full eight hours of sleep, but if you keep in mind factoring drive time and everything like that, it can lead to really horrible times where you’re driving for an hour to get home. You only sleep for five hours because you have to be up in the morning and then be there on time.

Avoidance

Some ways that I’ve seen avoiding short turnarounds, and some more forgiveness around it, is that if you know you have to do a short turnaround for some reason, providing hotels on site, so then that way, hey yeah, you’re going to be in short turnaround, but maybe we can avoid the short turnaround since we’re providing on-site to eliminate drive time and travel time and everything like that. We’ve seen that help as well.

The Recap On AV Labor

Again, just to recap, five-hour chunks. Make sure you get meal breaks. Make sure … Otherwise, you’re going to get into meal break. There are some penalties related to meal breaks, which are related sometimes to overtime where if you don’t give a meal break, things can be forced into overtime earlier, that sort of stuff. But after 10 hours, avoid overtime. After 12 hours-ish, avoid the double time and then make sure you give a nice eight-hour break in between your different days and shifts because then you can get into this horrible day of flames, which I’ll call short turnaround all day.

Conclusion

I hope you found this helpful. If you did, I would love for you to subscribe down below. If you really loved it, give it a thumbs up. However, if you didn’t like it, give us a thumbs down. And down in the comments, let us know how we can make this event better. Also, we want to hear from you: what sort of topics do you want us to cover? Leave a comment down below and let us know what sort of topics you want us to cover, what sort of scenarios you’ve seen.

The prompt that I have for you today is what’s an example of an event where you had one of these rules broken, and how did it affect your event? Did you have any clever ways for ways that you avoided it? Do you have any tips for other planners for how you schedule out your schedules to avoid things like meal break penalties and overtime and everything like that? What’s your take no AV labor in general? We’d love to hear it down in the comments below!

That’s going to do it for this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in, and we can’t wait to see you next week. I’ll catch you later, Endless fans!

Resources:

The Epic Guide To Event AV Labor

What Do All The AV Labor Positions Do – Whiteboard Wednesday

Learn About Event Safety and Cybersecurity, Event Labor Costing, and More

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from Endless Events http://bit.ly/2UMWT3W

[essaywriting011-blog]

BHR 4350, Collective Bargaining 2

New Post has been published on https://essays-writing.us/bhr-4350-collective-bargaining-2/

BHR 4350, Collective Bargaining 2

Unit Lesson

  It is understood that a labor union is an organization that acts as a filter between its members and the organization in which the members are employed. It has also been identified that the main purpose of labor unions is to give employees the opportunity and power to negotiate for better working conditions, decent wages, and other benefits through collective bargaining. Now that the foundation of collective bargaining has been laid, it is now time to look a little further into some of the issues that employees bargain for.

  Whether working in a union or non-union environment, what would be one of your major concerns with employment? When addressing this question, many of you would probably state “compensation/wages” would be the main topic of interest. Sure, there are other perks that you would look for; however, most would not consider employment or would consider leaving current employer for better wages.

  According to the textbook, “wages and benefits represent the heart of the collective bargaining process. Guarantee of a certain standard of living and a reasonable return for their productive efforts is the major concern for most union members” (Carrell & Heavrin, 2013, p. 278). This second part of this statement can be said to be true for non-union workers as well. Although there are similarities among non-union and union environments, there are differences in how wages and benefits are determined and implemented.

  Non-Union Environment: Most non-union employees do not have the opportunity to negotiate their wages. Most of these organizations have a set pay rate or pay range for all positions. Many organizations conduct job analysis and job evaluations to determine appropriate pay rates. When offered a job, some may try to negotiate on the front end with the hiring manager and/or human resources a certain pay rate. Sometimes, the employee does succeed and the organization may meet the applicant half-way or offer a little more to display true interest in the applicant. However, there are some organizations that will not budge and the applicant would be forced to accept or decline the offer. Even if the applicant does accept the offer, there may be limits on how often raises are given or if they are given at all. Based on experience, sometimes the applicant will accept the job and continue to look at organizations that offer better wages and benefits. Unlike union environments, wages can also differ tremendously among individuals who have the same job title and perform the same duties. This can have a major impact on the organization.

  Union Environment: Wages within union environments are negotiated. Pay rates/ranges, along with pay raises, are determined and outlined within the collective bargaining agreement. The pay rates/ranges are set for each job covered under the agreement. Many organizations will conduct job evaluations, wage surveys, and other methods when making wage decisions. Management must look at all internal and external factors that can impact wages and the ability for the organization to continue to make profit and be successful. Management must realize the organization is only as successful as the employees; however, sales, production costs, and overhead costs are only a few things that must be considered when determining an

UNIT V STUDY GUIDE Compensation and Benefits

      BHR 4350, Collective Bargaining 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title

agreeable pay rate/range and the future of wage increases. Management must also look at competitors when make such determinations. It is important for the organization to offer competitive wages in efforts to retain quality workers. This can be difficult to determine at times, especially when many organizations have so many different job titles for similar positions. Not knowing the other benefits offered can also impact a true comparison. Company location can also have a positive or negative impact on wage comparison. As you can see, although initial process may seem simple, it can be very difficult.

  Even when wage determinations have been set, there are other things that impact wages that the union will negotiate. Negotiated wages can take many forms including changes in base hourly rates, COLAs, two-tier pay systems, lump-sum payments, profit-sharing plans, wage differentials, overtime, holiday pay, and flextime. Other items to note in wage determinations include the following:

   Cost of living allowance can be a way the organization determine wage increases.  Two-tier: Current union employees keep their pay rate; however, newly hired employees receive reduce pay rates agreed upon by the union.   Lump-sum payments: Bonuses are a form of lump-sum payments that some organizations offer their employees.  Profit-sharing: Employees can gain a portion of the profits received by the organization as a bonus/incentive.  Wage differentials: Employees working different shifts may receive higher wages. (Example: Many manufacturing/warehousing organizations operate 24-hours, 7 days a week. Many of these organizations offer wage/shift differentials for those employees who work evening and night shifts.)  Overtime: Fair Labor Standard Act set guidelines for overtime pay. The organization must abide by these guidelines. Many employees are willing to work overtime because they realize they will be compensated accordingly.  Holiday Pay: This is negotiated because many employees either want the day off or want to receive higher pay for working on a federal holiday.  Flextime: It has become very popular. Many organizations try to work with employees’ start time as long as it does not have a negative impact on production.

  Although all of these are important factors, management must always ensure the organization will be able to afford all agreed upon terms. The organization must be able to stay in business and prosper. Keep in mind that in order to do this, management must conduct job analysis, job evaluations, and define job descriptions. If these measures are not done properly, improper wage rates could be agreed upon and lead the organization down the road of failure. The other major factor that is linked with compensation/wages is employee benefits. Even for those working in non-union environments, benefits are at the top of the list when making a decision about accepting a job or staying with an organization. Benefits, for some, are more important than wages. Consider the following scenario: John had been seeking new employment. His current company offered great wages; however, they did not offer decent medical benefits. When John got married and became a father, his view of compensation and benefits shifted. Whereas compensation/wages were a primary concern as a single man; now that he is a family man, he had to consider more than himself. John was forced to seek other employment and wanted to make certain the organizations researched offered medical benefits and retirement options. Based on this scenario, it is obvious that benefits can be just as important as compensation/wages.

  Within many collective bargaining agreements, benefits offered to employees are defined. According to the textbook, the four most expensive types of benefits in agreements include: income maintenance, medical care, pay for time not worked, and premium pay (Carrell & Heavrin, 2013). Of these four, today, health care is the main issue. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed and many individuals are not able to afford the expensive cost. There was a time when the employer paid 100% of the employees’ health coverage; however, now due to the increase in premiums, this cost is covered by both the employee and the employer. Retirement can be considered almost as important as health insurance for most employees. Many employees would like to know they have some sort of income to rely on once they reach retirement age. These two demands are generally a hot topic among unions and management during negotiations. Some other benefits that are important include: vacation time, sick time/personal time off, paid holidays, severance pay, and reporting pay—this is when an

      BHR 4350, Collective Bargaining 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title

employee is called into work on their day off or after the employee has already worked his/her shift and is asked to come back in.

  After reading Chapter 7 and Chapter 8, you will have gained more detailed information that relates to compensation/wages and employee benefits that will be beneficial in union and non-union environments.

    Reference

  Carrell, M. R. & Heavrin, C. (2013). Labor relations and collective bargaining: Private and public sectors (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

[billssefton]

intervening with a bullying coworker, my colleague runs a snack shop from her desk, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. How can I intervene with a bullying coworker?

I work in a small organization where everyone knows each other. Just down the hall from me is a shy, somewhat awkward colleague who works in a different area from me. He is very sweet and does his job well, from what I can tell. Let’s call him “Clark.”

Clark’s boss reminds me of the popular boys in high school — confident, bro-ish, and generally relaxed. Let’s call him “Brad.” Brad frequently makes little jokes at Clark’s expense, sometimes at staff meetings in front of everyone. Clark tries to shrug it off as if it were friendly teasing, but I find it really inappropriate. Yesterday, after a conversation with Clark, Brad poked his head in my office to say something sarcastic about how nice it must be to be situated near Clark, which he certainly would have heard, being in such close proximity. I said (sincerely!), “I love being neighbors with Clark!” Brad then tried to play it off as if he had been sincere, too.

I really want to say something to Brad about his treatment of Clark, but it’s awkward because, while he is not my supervisor, he is certainly higher than me on the office hierarchy. I would go to HR, but we don’t have a dedicated HR department. We have been instructed to bring any HR issues we may have … to Brad. Is there any way I can have a conversation about this? Or perhaps intervene more vehemently when Brad says something unkind?

Brad sounds like an ass. A few options for you:

* Look visibly shocked in the moment — let Brad see on your face that you’re repelled by his comment. “Wow” can work similarly. * Call it out: “That sounded really mean! I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way.” * Feign confusion: “What do you mean by that?” (This can be a good way to deal with bigoted “jokes” too; the idea is that you pretend not to get it, so the other person has to spell out exactly what a jerk they’re being.) * Continue making a point of saying nice things about Clark, like you did last time. Brad is assuming you’ll agree with his take on Clark; make it clear that you don’t.

If you know Brad well and have good rapport with him, you could also say, “What’s up with the way you talk about Clark? It seems so unkind, and that’s not like you.” (You can say that even if it is like him. People often want to live up to other people’s images of them.)

Also, you might help Clark simply by going out of your way to be friendly to him. Say hi to him in the morning, ask how his weekend was, and so forth. Sometimes you can counteract the crappiness of a Brad by directing genuine warmth toward his target.

2. My coworker is running a snack shop from our work area

For two weeks, my employer ran a fundraising challenge where we were split into teams and whatever team raised the most money for a charity won a catered lunch. Most teams raised money via raffles or by selling stuff. The woman who sits near me, with an empty cubicle in between us, bought tons of soda and junk food from Costco and sold it during the challenge, with the proceeds going to the charity. She kept the merchandise in the empty cubicle between us.

It’s been two weeks since the challenge ended. Money was sent to charity, and the winners received their lunch. However, this employee keeps selling soda and junk food on the down-low. The prices are about half of the vending machines so she stays busy. This is lot of traffic in and out of my area. Since the fundraising is over, I am assuming the profits are going straight to her, and my patience for the regular disturbances are wearing thin. My area has become a de facto snack bar. Besides, there’s a “cliquey” factor as the woman selling this stuff and her friends discuss who should be “invited” to buy from the “snack shop.” Their department manager is tasked with running two departments at the moment and totally oblivious at the moment to this. Am I wrong to be annoyed by this and should I report it to management?

No, that sounds annoying.

If she’s at all approachable, can you try saying something to her? It doesn’t have to be a big thing — just something like, “Hey, I know you’re trying to sell off all that Costco stuff. It’s getting pretty disruptive to have people coming over here to buy things so frequently — any chance you can move it somewhere else or otherwise minimize how often it’s drawing people over here?”

But if she’s known to be defensive or your sense it that she won’t be receptive to this, or if you try it and it doesn’t work, then whether to go over her head depends on how distracting the flow of snack buyers is. Is it messing with your ability to focus on work, or is it more just annoying? If it’s affecting your ability to focus, then yes, you could say something discreetly to her manager, framing it in terms of the disruption it’s causing in your space.

(Or you could start a competing snack bar selling higher-quality snacks, and take advantage of the steady flow of customers already in your space. I hope you decide on this option.)

3. Can I mention that this hiring process seems awfully long?

I’ve been in contact with a former employer about a new position they wanted to hire me for. After some HR processes they needed to go through, I was told about a month ago that they were going ahead with their plan to offer me the position and that the “new process” takes longer. I reached out two weeks later to check in on the status and see if there was anything else they needed from me and was told to hold tight as they were still waiting for the offer letter to be approved. Today I got an email from my fomer/soon-to-be grandboss saying it is still in process and as soon as he gets the approved offer letter he will contact me.

I don’t doubt the job offer, and having previously worked there know that this is not reflective of the non-hiring aspects of the organization, but this is a little ridiculous – isn’t it? I am not even sure how to respond to the email because I’m feeling a little frustrated by how long this is taking. Is it appropriate to give feedback on my hiring experience, and if so, when? (The job and pay and benefits are more than I could ever hope to make by applying elsewhere, and I’m currently in a job I can’t wait to quit.)

It’s something you can mention after you’re already working there and some time has gone by, if you see that it’s now typical for them. But you’re not really in a position to push them to move faster now, unless you get another another offer you need to respond to or something else comes up that will create timeline constraints on your side. “I’m really eager to leave my current job” isn’t really enough in this context.

That said, because you used to work there, you have a little more leeway than if you didn’t. It’s possible that you could say something like, “Would it be possible for us to finalize the offer by next week? I’m being asked to commit to some longer-term projects here and am uneasy about saying yes or no while my discussions with you are still up in the air.” (I wouldn’t recommend that if you didn’t have a previous work relationship with them though.)

4. How can you work without a contract?

My question is more of a general one that I keep asking myself when I read your blog: How is it legal/possible to work without a contract?

I am European, so the very idea that you would go to work without things like working hours, pay, overtime compensation, rules for sick leave, paid leave, notice periods, etc. being written down in a contract is baffling (and somewhat anxiety inducing). How can anyone be sure they ever get treated fairly? Couldn’t companies just do a 180 and suddenly cut your benefits, paid leave, change the rules for sick leave, etc.? I am just utterly fascinated by this because it’s so culturally different that I genuinely have trouble computing the concept. Isn’t that an incredibly stressful way to live? Can you ask for a contract even if no one else has one?

It’s actually pretty common for the stuff you named to be written down. It’s just in an offer letter or an employee manual (or in the case of overtime pay, in a law) rather than in a contract. Since it’s not in a binding contract, an employer can change it at some point in the future (but not retroactively), but changing it is normally a very big deal that doesn’t happen often. In theory, yes, a company could suddenly announce that they’re cutting all those things — at which point you would need to decide if you still wanted the job under those new conditions. (And again, this can’t happen retroactively, so you’d have a chance to say “no thanks, I’m out of here” before the changes went into effect; you wouldn’t just suddenly learn that you earned a different wage last week than what you thought you were being paid.) But in practice, employers don’t typically change those things willy-nilly; if they did, they’d lose their good employees and have trouble attracting new ones. That’s not to say it never happens, but it’s not the norm.

And no, you can’t usually ask for a contract in most jobs, unless you’re very senior or seriously in demand. They’re just not a common part of the employment landscape here (at least not in most fields).

5. Talking about a work gap to my new colleagues

After finishing grad school, I had a two-and-a-half-month internship, then had about a six-month gap of applying for jobs before I was finally hired. I really like my job, but am now wondering — how do I talk about that gap with my new colleagues? I’m not ashamed of it — I know that sometimes job searches just take a while, and I worked really hard to send out lots of applications and make sure I was able to pay rent during that period. But now, how do I talk to colleagues about this gap? Is it weird that I don’t have a better answer to “so, what have you been doing since you graduated?” Am I overthinking things? Is this not a big deal?

You’re overthinking it a little! You don’t need to give people a detailed accounting of how you spent your time during that period. It’s fine to just say, “I interned for a PR firm and job searched.” People aren’t likely to demand to know exactly when the internship ended or how long your job search was (although if anyone asks, there’s nothing wrong with your answers to those questions). People know job searches take time, especially right after school. It’s not likely to strike anyone as strange or even especially remarkable!

You may also like:

my coworkers are snarky and air frustrations in front of the whole staff

what to say when your boss is rude to a coworker in front of you

my junior coworker won’t stop complaining about how hungry she is in meetings

intervening with a bullying coworker, my colleague runs a snack shop from her desk, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

from Ask a Manager http://www.askamanager.org/2018/04/intervening-with-a-bullying-coworker-my-colleague-runs-a-snack-shop-from-her-desk-and-more.html

[cortneydowse2-blog]

A Step-by-step Approach To Property A Thread Optic Network.

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[talabib]

Practical Advice On Time Management For The Modern Working Mother

In modern Western societies, most of us have more than we have ever had before: well-paid jobs, social welfare and a wealth of consumer goods. On the surface, we should all be quite happy – but, of course, so many of us just aren’t.

A great deal of stress and misery in modern life comes from our inability to find enough time to both develop our career and enjoy our personal life. Most of us feel like we have to give up one of these essential goals, and concentrate solely on the other.

This is not true. We don’t have to give up our job, nor spend every waking moment slaving away at it – we can do both.

Interruptions make our workdays seem longer and longer.

How much do you work? Most of us think we toil at work for far too long, and our work/life balance seems heavily skewed towards work. This is especially true of working mothers: the more time they spend at work, the less time they have to spend with their families. But is this true?

According to the 2013 American Time Use Survey, the average mother with a full-time job works 35 hours per week. Mothers who earn over $100,000 USD work even more – up to 44 hours per week.

This does seem like a lot, but let’s take a closer look. A week has 168 hours. If we sleep eight hours each night and work 44 hours each week, we’ve still got 68 hours per week that aren’t spent at work. So why do we all think we’re workaholics?

It comes down to interruptions: those small, unexpected events that break up our working day can actually make it feel longer. In order to measure her working week, one woman tried to keep her days as routine as possible to get an accurate measure of her time management. But it just wasn’t feasible.

Constant interruptions when she least expected them kept her from working at a regular pace. Snow days prevented her from going to work, as did days when her children’s kindergarten was closed and family events, from a christening to an airport pickup.

Interruptions like these make us constantly feel like we’re behind schedule and always needing to catch up on work. But we shouldn’t have to feel this way! We will look how people, particularly working mothers, can arrange their lives in order to get the most out of their days, weeks and years.

Make the most of flexibility wherever you can get it.

Working mothers all know the feeling of guilt. Whether we feel like we’re neglecting our families or our career responsibilities, we end up putting a huge amount of pressure on ourselves to fulfill other people’s needs.

This pressure doesn’t have to be there at all. As we’ve seen, there’s enough time in the week to commit to work and enjoy free time. It’s just a case of planning time to ensure you make the most of both.

The first step is to find your opportunities for flexibility in your work. Today, 97 percent of full-time employees are afforded some sort of flexibility, and it’s important that you make the most of it. Remember those interruptions we learned about early? Well, it’s the flexibility of your job that will help you cope with them.

This flexibility goes in both directions: it allows you to leave work earlier in family emergencies, but it also allows you to work from home, so that when the kids are in bed you’re able to catch up on what didn’t get done during the day.

There are several approaches to increasing flexibility in your job. If you work long hours and want to find more time to spend with your family, you could start working split shifts.

This would mean working early morning hours before the kids wake up, then spending quality time with them over breakfast, after which you can return to work. Or you might leave work early to visit your kids’ activities in the afternoon, but then work another “shift” from home once they have gone to sleep.

Another idea is to work remotely from home or somewhere else at least one or two days a week. While many of us worry that working from home will cause our private and professional lives to mix in an unpleasant way, this isn’t necessarily the case. A study by IBM and BYO found that people who are able to work from home could work a whopping 57 hours per week before experiencing work-life conflicts – and that was only among a quarter of participants!

Play with your work schedule to make it as efficient as possible.

The first step to enjoying free time is preventing yourself from working too much. Of course, you could limit your overtime hours by clocking off everyday at the same time, but if this means you stop working before completing certain tasks, you might begin to feel quite inefficient.

Your best option is to start the day with your toughest task. According to a study by Johnson & Johnson, a person’s energy level peaks at 8:00 a.m. So, save your gossiping with colleagues for lunch and spend the morning working on the most difficult item on your agenda – the one that is most urgent, and requires the most effort.

You can also maximize your efficiency by managing your meetings – they don’t have to be a pointless waste of your time! There are a couple of ways to go about this. First, look through your calendar and find the meetings for which your presence probably isn’t required. By choosing not to attend these kinds of meetings, you'll have gained an hour or so to work on something productively.

For the meetings you do have to attend, try and shorten them whenever possible. Say you’ve got two 60-minute meetings coming up. Why not shorten them to 45 minutes each? This isn’t a huge cut, but it will save you half an hour overall. It all adds up!

Finally, to ensure you have enough time for yourself, plan things to do in your free time. Schedule something in the evening at least once a week that will get you out of the office early, or at least on time. Why not sign up for that guitar lesson starting in the early evening? You’ll also boost your motivation levels at work if you’ve got something to look forward to.

Reflect and plan ahead of time to keep your work fulfilling.

The tips provided early are easy and practical ways to improve your time management at work. There are two more techniques that will help you cut down stress in your job, but these require a little more thinking.

One strategy to streamline your week is to plan it before it even begins. According to a 2013 survey by Accountemps, Tuesday is the most productive day of the week with Monday lagging behind at only 26 percent productivity! Why is this?

Well, people tend to have a lot of meetings on Monday, and they also spend the day sorting through what needs to be done, as well as what wasn’t done the week before.

To avoid this “Monday trap,” plan your week at the end of the previous one. On Friday afternoon, just before you leave for the weekend, make a plan about what you are going to do in the week ahead. This will take some pressure off your Monday schedule.

The final way to become more productive at work is simply to try and love what you do. We all know that we perform better when we enjoy what we’re doing. So, why not try and work on as many enjoyable things as possible?

One woman leading a career in science, for instance, found that she was lacking drive at work. She realized that it was because her time was being taken up by administrative tasks, rather than the scientific research that she loved to do. So, she planned her weeks more consciously to ensure she could spend some hours in the lab again. Soon enough, her motivation returned.

So far, we’ve discovered strategies for excelling in our careers while finding time for ourselves. Lets  focus on how you can bring new energy to your family life too.

Make sure your family time is quality time.

Planning is key to an efficient and flexible work life. But what about when it comes to your home life?  Ultimately, your approach should be quite similar.

Spending quality time with your family requires some planning and the same motivation as your work life does. But remember: being around your family and being with your family are two different things.

Think through your weekday evenings and plan a shared activity with your family. No, watching TV together doesn’t count! If the sun is shining, why not take your kids to the playground and visit the ice cream truck afterwards? In the winter, it might be nice to take a weekly trip to the library and find some new books together.

Being active together is a great opportunity to spend quality time, and exercise is a proven mood booster. Why not take your kids to the pool once a week or go for a bike ride around the neighbourhood?

A classic way to enjoy family time is through sharing a meal together – but it doesn’t always have to be a sit-down dinner.

A study by the UCLA found that only 17 percent of families have dinner together every night. About 60 percent have dinner semi-regularly, but these dinners tended to be fragmented. Instead, why not try sharing breakfast together, or coming home to enjoy a family lunch.

Another family activity that we often dismiss is taking your kids to work. If you think it’d be too boring for them, think again! We often forget that, for kids, even the simplest activities around our work life (like riding an elevator or seeing a conference room) can be an adventure. Why not take them with you on special occasions?

This also gives you an educational opportunity to share your passions, and discuss matters of success and challenge. Once you start taking greater efforts to enjoy family time, it’s also important to consider how you could spend more romantic time with your partner.

Working mothers can and should make time for their romantic life.

When working  mother were asked what they would do with more free time, most women answered they’d like to spend more adults-only time with their husbands or partners. Between juggling the demands of work and family, our love lives inevitably get neglected. But it needn’t be this way!

The key to finding time for romantic moments in your busy schedule is making it a priority and being creative with timing.

Remember those dates you had at the beginning of your relationship? Believe it or not, it’s still possible to have those dates again – it just takes a little bit of planning. A date doesn’t have to be at night; in fact, what could be nicer than taking a break in your busy schedule to have a romantic lunch with your partner in the city?

An important thing to remember is that administrative time with your partner, in which you plan childcare, groceries and so on, should be scheduled separately from romantic time.

As strange as it sounds, some couples like to think that going shopping or cleaning together counts as romantic time. While it might be fun to do things as a team, romantic time works best when you can just concentrate on each other and nothing else.

Finally, seize opportunities and savor moments as they come – you don’t have to have each moment carefully planned. No one is too busy for a five-minute morning cuddle in bed, or a kiss with your partner before you take off to work in the morning.

Let go of perfectionism and start seeking support.

There’s nothing worse than finishing work and coming home to a house full of pending chores. There’s no point in using time management to create free time for yourself if you just fill it up with housework. In times like these, it’s important to just let go.

Remember, you’re not participating in some game show that gives you extra points for empty clothes hampers or supremely well-adjusted children. So, how can you begin to let go of your perfectionism?

Well, one mother decided she would let her daughter wear whatever she wanted to school, letting go of the mandatory morning fight about matching clothes. Her daughter is still alive and happy, even though sometimes her shirt doesn’t match her skirt. For her part, the woman found she had less to stress about each morning.

Another important step is learning to accept help. Nobody can do everything by themselves, and there’s no shame in getting some assistance when you can. It lets you focus on what you do best.

If your financial budget allows for it, you can get help cleaning the house, the garden or have groceries delivered to save time. Kids can also participate in housework and learn to take responsibility by doing so.

Childcare is a good way to save yourself time, but plan it wisely. Did you know it’s often easier and more time-effective to have someone come to your house for childcare, such as a nanny, rather than investing in daycare?

Of course, it’s important not to skimp on childcare. Not only is it vital that your child spends time in an environment where they feel safe and encouraged, your career will also benefit from it. According to economist Sylvia Hewlett, women who take at least three years for parental leave lose 37 percent of their earning power over the remaining decades of their careers. So, finding childcare that you feel comfortable with, even if it costs a little more, is worth it in the end.

Personal space and time can be built with some simple methods and by changing your daily habits.

So you’ve made time for work, for your family and for your partner. Now it’s time to make time for yourself. If you still think it’s not possible, here’s a little experiment for you to try: get addicted to a TV show.

Think about it, when you are totally absorbed in House of Cards, free time almost magically seems to appear out of nowhere. You might find that you have half an hour after work and before dinner where you can squeeze in an episode. In fact, you’ll start to find free hours whenever you can.

Now that you’ve worked out how to find these free hours, why not start using them for something more rewarding? Studies show that TV is fun, but only ranks near the middle on scales of human enjoyment. It is better than commuting or getting your car repaired, but it is less fun than socializing or having sex.

Reading scores a little higher on the enjoyment scale, but what’s even more fun is getting creative in your leisure time. Creative leisure time can include picking fresh fruit, garden work in general, going to the opera or knitting.

Finally, remember that you’re allowed to take a personal day off from time to time. Larry Kanarek, who managed the McKinsey office in Washington, D.C., observed that everybody who was quitting because of exhaustion and burnout had free vacation time that they had not yet used.

So why take the risk? Use your vacation days before you get tired of working, and put yourself first. After all, it’s only by taking care of yourself that you can continue being all the women you want to be: professional, partner, mother and individual.

As working mothers, we want to do it all: build a career, raise a family and find personal time. But doing so requires some balancing and organizing, as well as letting go of your perfectionist demands. This will leave you feeling happier, fulfilled and able to appreciate the small, beautiful moments in life as they come.

[hub-pub-bub]

Skyhorse Publishing workers took to the streets in a Labor Day Parade. (COURTESY OF TERRY BUCK)

For 16 years, no New York publishing house has voted to unionize — but that streak could end next week.

On Nov. 30, employees at Skyhorse Publishing will cast ballots to decide whether to become dues-paying members of United Auto Workers Local 2110.

The last East Coast publishing company to go union was The New Press, which voted to join Local 2110 in 2001, according to Terry Buck, a copy editor at Skyhorse.

The only other unionized publisher in New York is HarperCollins, also part of Local 2110, Buck said.

DNAinfo, Gothamist shut down by owner after union vote

Skyhorse, launched in 2006, has been hailed as the fastest-growing small publisher in America by Publisher’s Weekly.

Ten years after Tony Lyons started the company, Skyhorse posted revenue of more than $43 million, the magazine reported in 2016.

Rachel Stark (l.), Margaret Grumeretz (c.) and Tori Cashman (r.), are organizers of the Skyhorse Publishing union. (Courtesy of Terry Buck)

Lyons, the CEO, president and majority shareholder, said then that Skyhorse was “the focus of my life” and he was in it for the long term.

The roughly 60 Skyhorse employees who will cast votes Thursday hope that stays true even if they do join UAW Local 2110.

The confidence of the pro-union group within Skyhorse took a blow earlier this month when digital journalists who worked for popular websites DNAinfo and Gothamist lost their jobs after voting to join Writers Guild of America, East.

The billionaire owner of both sites, Joe Ricketts, shut down his entire operation rather than allow a union into the company’s New York shop. That decision left 115 journalists without jobs at a time of great upheaval within the industry at a whole.

Rickett’s extreme reaction rattled many — in part because of the fear Skyhorse owner Lyons would react the same way.

Rachel Stark is an organizer of the Skyhorse Publishing union. (Courtesy of Terry Buck)

“We definitely took notice of that. And actually, that was a concern even before we heard about DNAinfo and Gothamist. But we’ve seen enough financial data to know that even in 2017, which has been a tough year, the money is still there,” Buck, 26, said.

“I don’t think management has a financial incentive to go with the nuclear option. I think they can afford what we’re asking for, I don’t think our demands are unreasonable,” he added.

Lyons said his employees have been a large part of his company's success.

Skyhorse “has maintained competitive wages and benefits” for staff and recognizes the value of diversity, he added.

“Skyhorse is pleased that our employees will soon have the chance to vote in a secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB on whether or not they wish to be represented by a union,” Lyons said in an email.

Terry Buck is one of the organizers of the Skyhorse Publishing union. (Courtesy of Terry Buck)

Buck and other members of the Skyhorse Publishing Workers Union — the bargaining unit — are hoping for better health benefits. The company doubled worker premiums without warning over the summer, Buck said, going from $36 a month to $74.

Wages are too low, the employees say, even for an industry known to pay pittance salaries.

“At Skyhorse, the starting salary is a flat $30,000,” said Buck.

The bargaining unit wants more overtime and lighter workloads. While Skyhorse pays overtime, it must be approved in advance, Buck said, and many employees wind up working for free after hours and on weekends to keep up with projects. The company also recently cut five paid days off from the allotment give to employees, he said.

In addition, the bargaining unit — following the template created by New Press employees when they organized in 2001 — want Skyhorse to set and meet diversity hiring goals.

Tony Lyons, the CEO, president (c.) of Skyhorse said the company was "the focus of my life.” (Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Trace Amounts)

The company is diverse on the junior level, but predominantly white and male at the top, Buck said.

The battle to bring in UAW Local 2110 started in July and hasn’t been easy, he said.

“It’s been going on long enough for the office to become polarized. Those who are for it are really for it, and those against it are very against it,” said Buck.

Although Skyhorse employees announced their intention to hold a union election in June, it’s taken months to set the Nov. 30 date. Both sides contested the eligibility of various workers.

The NLRB ultimately rejected several supervisors that management had wanted included in the bargaining unit to vote. The board approved a half-dozen employees in the company’s Vermont office. “It’s going to be close,” Buck said of the vote. “I think we will prevail — I’m optimistic. But it’s going to be tough. Pitching 2% union dues to people who live paycheck to paycheck isn’t easy.”

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[myattorneyusa]

House Passes "Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017" - Analysis and Discussion

INTRODUCTION

On May 2, 2017, the United States House of Representatives passed the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017 on a mostly party-line vote of 229-197 [PDF version]. The legislation, if ultimately signed into law, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to allow private-sector employers to give their employees the option to opt for compensatory time off in lieu of payments for working overtime where overtime compensation rules would otherwise apply. Public-sector employees already benefit from these rules that this legislation would extend to private-sector employees. Please note that the proposed legislation is not immigration-related, and it makes no distinctions between similarly situated citizen and non-citizen employees. You may read a PDF of the legislation here [PDF version].

OVERVIEW OF THE LEGISLATION

The proposed legislation would modify 29 U.S.C. 207.

Under certain circumstances, an employee would be able to receive compensatory time off in lieu of the overtime monetary compensation that is currently mandatory. This compensatory time off would be afforded “at a rate not less than one and one-half hours for each hour of employment for which overtime compensation is required…”

Employers would only be able to offer the alternative of compensatory time off under the provision if it is in accord with the provisions of any collective bargaining agreement in effect between the employer and the relevant labor organization (where applicable). If there is no applicable collective bargaining agreement, an agreement for compensatory time off would have to be reached between the employer and the employee before the performance of the work and this agreement would then have to have been affirmed by a “written or otherwise verifiable record maintained in accordance with section 11( c).” Crucially, the written agreement would have to establish that the employer offered and the employee chose to receive compensatory time in lieu of monetary overtime compensation, and that the employee entered into the agreement knowingly and voluntarily … and not as a condition of employment. In short, the legislation would prohibit employers from requiring employees to opt for compensatory time in lieu of overtime monetary compensation.

Not every employee would be eligible for the choice provided under the legislation. An eligible employee would have to have accrued “at least 1,000 hours of work for the … employer during a period of continuous employment with the employer in the 12-month period before the date of the agreement or receipt of compensatory time off.”

The legislation would also place additional limitations and stipulations on compensatory time accrued in accord with the new 29 U.S.C. 207. First, an employee would not be able to accrue more than 160 hours of compensatory time under the rule. Second, no later than January 31 of each year, employers would be required to provide monetary compensation for any compensatory time accrued under the rule that was unused prior to December 31 of the preceding year. Alternatively, an employer would be permitted to designate and communicate in advance to its employees a 12-month period other than the calendar year (the same rules would apply).

Interestingly, although the rule allows for employees to accrue up to 160 hours of compensatory time, employers would be permitted, with at least 30 days notice, to provide monetary compensation for an employee's unused compensatory time in excess of 80 hours.

An employer would have to pay a terminated employee for any unused compensatory time the employee had accrued at the time of the termination.

When paying an employee for unused compensatory time, the employer would be required to pay the higher of either the regular rate earned by the employee when the compensatory time was accrued or the regular rate at the time the employee received payment of the compensation. Such payments would be considered unpaid overtime compensation.

The proposed legislation allows an employer to withdraw from a compensatory time agreement upon giving 30 days advance notice to employees, unless an applicable collective bargaining agreement specifically stipulated otherwise.

Employees would be permitted to withdraw from compensatory time agreements at any time. Significantly, an employee would also be permitted to, at any time, request monetary compensation for all unused compensatory time. Employers would be required to make such payment within 30 days of the request.

The proposed legislation would explicitly prohibit employers that provide compensatory time from “directly or indirectly” intimidating, threatening, coercing, or attempting to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any employee into opting for compensatory time or using compensatory time already accrued.

The proposed legislation addressed the employee's right to use and the employer's corresponding power to limit the use of accrued compensatory time. An employee would be entitled to use compensatory time already accrued “within a reasonable period after making [a] request if the use of compensatory time does not unduly disrupt the operations of the employer.” This would mean that an employee would not necessarily be able to use accrued compensatory time at any time, but rather only within a “reasonable period” after making a request and only if it would not “unduly disrupt the operations of the employer.” It is important to note, however, that the employer would be liable for the monetary compensation of any unused compensatory time either within 30 days of request by the employee or no later than January 30 of the next calendar year.

An employer that violates the rules prohibiting intimidation would “be liable to the employee affected in the amount of the rate of compensation for each hour of compensatory time accrued by the employee and in an additional amount as liquidated damages reduced by the amount of such rate of compensation for each hour of compensatory time used by such employee.”

FUTURE OF THE LEGISLATION

Upon the passage of the House bill, the White House released a statement supporting the legislation [link]. The White House Statement took the position that the legislation “would help American workers balance the competing demands of family and work by giving them flexibility to earn paid time off.” The White House also noted that it would “extend to private-sector workers a choice that public-sector employees have long enjoyed.” The White House addressed concerns that the legislation would allow employers to coerce employees into taking compensatory time in lieu of overtime monetary compensation by noting the protections included in the legislation. For these reasons, the White House stated that if the legislation were to reach President Trump's desk in its current form, “his advisors would recommend that he sign the bill into law.”

Nevertheless, despite House passage and support from the Trump Administration, the legislation faces an uncertain future. House Democrats were nearly uniformly opposed due in large part to concerns that the legislation would shift the power balance between employers and employees too far in the direction of employers. If Senate Democrats are similarly opposed, the legislation may face a 60-vote hurdle in the upper chamber. Josh Eidelson of Bloomberg Politics noted that similar legislation passed the House as recently as 2013 only to stall out in the Senate.[1] It appears that the legislation will once again have very uncertain prospects if the Republicans take it up in earnest.

For my part, I consider the legislation to be well crafted in extending to private-sector employees the flexibility to choose how they are compensated for their work that many public-sector employees already enjoy. The legislation is worthy of consideration by the Senate, and its detractors should offer amendments for strengthening employee protections in the proposal if that is their concern.

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Eidelson, Josh. “Republicans Try Again to Let Bosses Offer Comp for Overtime.” Bloomberg.com. May 2, 2017.

Lawyer website: http://myattorneyusa.com