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0 pointssidlls6y ago0 comments

What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?

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13 comments · 5 top-level

pietrovismara6y ago· 2 in thread

In the end who cares, everyone would have been way happier without resorting to big brothery solutions and solving anyway he problem. But no, we gotta chase that additional profit at the cost of any other metric!

megablast6y ago

I mean, the business cares how much profits they make. If it was cost effective, it is easier to justify moving it to other stores.

pietrovismara6y ago

That's my point. Businesses care only about profit, even when its clearly detrimental to everyone else. There's no consideration for happiness or quality of life and no ethic if you only chase profit. For how much we've been pushed to believe this is perfecly normal, to me it's insane.

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banannaise6y ago· 2 in thread

Or does this simply show a cultural problem among upper-management types, where they exclusively use the stick over the carrot because it makes them feel powerful, important, and morally superior?

izacus6y ago

It's it just the management types? Plenty of users here in HN defend abusive practices like these just to save some money.

ranagol6y ago

Agree on this...

jschwartzi6y ago· 2 in thread

I bet the bigger problem was that the raise went into operating costs, whereas investment in surveillance goes into capital costs. The corporation doesn't get to list any money it pays out to employees on its balance sheet, but that Orwellian surveillance system is capital and counts as an asset the corporation can leverage for a higher valuation.

It's all part of how Capitalism reduces humans to a drain on the system in favor of material.

lonelappde6y ago

Capital depreciates. It's an expense.

jschwartzi6y ago

But it still shows up on the balance sheet, so it doesn't look like you're bleeding money the same way an operating expense like a raise does.

throwaway555546y ago· 2 in thread

> What was the cost difference?

Doesn't matter. I bet it adversely affected someone's bonus and that was why it was scrapped.

xamuel6y ago

What if instead of an extra $3/hr, the differential pay were an extra $10,000/hr? Obviously then the cost difference would matter. So, there must be a cutoff somewhere. Is the cutoff more than $3 or less than $3? We don't have enough information to know, nor do we have enough information to know whether upper management were just being comic book villains or whether their decision was based on crunching the numbers.

wolco6y ago

Might be the type of cost.

Outsourced = expense Salary increase = fixed cost can only write-off %.

It's probably the other managers who don't have the issue not wanting to increase their wages. Or explaining why the worst employees were paid more etc.

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Loughla6y ago

I only had one quarter to measure. We were on track to show a massive reduction, just under the cost of the raises. Had we stuck to it for two quarters or even a year, the trend was that we would've broken even around month 8, and showed a positive return after one year.

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