🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (18 tweets)
Taylorism never ended, it just stood by until the demand arose again. https://t.co/MIdbwU6ZvB
The "best" cashiers had been promoted to front-end shift lead at some point. She would shit on the performance of the bag-boys behind their back.We were all autistic or physically handicapped.Metrics made employees compete w/ each other & drove bad experiences for "guests".
I say "bag-boy" because they never had women do the carts. It was weird to me, as my ex-wife was one in Connecticut and she was really good at it.I was fast at bagging, but I would sweat a lot (and I also did shopping carts, so I'd already be over-heated). It was uncomfortable.
I later learned that the shift-lead was the one who set schedules and had a say in who stayed and who left.I didn't get hours for twos week after I told her it was a fire hazard to put the shopping carts in front of the main door when the other one was locked.I love metrics.
Sometimes I would go there and she'd be the only cashier. I would bag my own groceries light. I had to carry them up flights of stairs and my arms were starting to not work back then.I packed well because I grew up watching my mom struggle with grocery bags.
I still remember the look on her face when I asked her to not toss things down the belt when she hit me with a can once.That kind of bullshit is why I think a lot about replacing systems like that w/ self-service shopping carts.https://t.co/RY6ZNUTEG5
At times I was only person who could keep up with the fastest one as bagger cuz I could path plan every item on the belt as they went thru, and spent all my time as a cart-pusher thinking about real world sorting / bin packing optimization problems.
That year I learned about people being petty, that misandry exists, and how important it is for some to maintain their ego.I shouldn't have said anything when the can hit my hand, she wouldn't have felt like I had embarrassed her and attacked her status in front of a customer.
It was also the year I learned about Goodhart’s Law.Why was I reading Goodhart's law as a cart-pusher?https://t.co/HEg41j8uOT
I wanted to understand how broken systems that hurt people and drive employee churn were still functioning as intended. https://t.co/QjOAXlp42G
Walking around a grocery center's parking lot, pretending i'm an algorithm. Recreating 'Harold Garfinkel’s tutorial cases' as a form of self-ethnomethodology. Musing on actual salesman traveling around like ants; what it might imply about social cognition.https://t.co/8Lv8V3W51p
That company is still growing.https://t.co/jWFO0K0WzX
I believe that companies grow bigger when they feel like they have a threat.Most of the people I know back where I use to live are choosing to go to a local Dollar General than drive 60 miles to Price Chopper. It all boils down to gas money.https://t.co/CEUD7v0EvB
Dollar General is becoming the rural area store of choice because, as far as I can tell, no one else gives a fuck about the poor people in the woods. Very few are trying to crack that market because it is ridiculously hard to turn a profit. https://t.co/idDSbhYpuv
These companies don't seem to have a larger strategy. They blindly follow management fads learned in MBA programs & leverage monopolies + moat building to keep customers.Would be shame if someone were to come along & undermine your entire business model. https://t.co/JYHp0yr2IM