7/12 On Extreme Heat, Electricity, and Radiation

Evening, happy Saturday folks. Here I'd like to jot down some general ideas on extreme heat, electricity, and radiation. 

    First, the weather has become ridiculous and unsafe for humanity, animals, and plants. We're getting our first big heatwave of the summer starting on Monday and temperatures will be in the 90s and 100s. On top of that there are lots of heat-related natural disasters happening all over the country and the world. 

    For example, in California there's been some dozens of fires all going on at the same time in different parts of the state. In other parts of the US, there are natural disasters like extreme rain and lightning storms, flooding, and the usual stifling burning heat that is downright dangerous if you are not probably hydrated. And of course I know you heard about the recent earthquakes in Venezuela and Japan.

    

    Of course, the main reason why all of this happening is cause and effect but I also believe that the Earth has always been hot and gotten hotter no matter what the circumstances. We polluted the environment by having everyone and their grandma drive cars all the time all day long, decreased regulation regarding natural resources, and we use a ton of electricity, power, and radiation. 

    For example, AI companies are now building AI datacenters and the datacenters require so much power and expend so much power and radiation to run them that they're using tons of water just to keep the datacenters cool, to keep them from overheating, and probably so they don't just start burning down. 

    Just think about the average person. They live in a home or apartment, they have tons of electronics, they own a smartphone as well as maybe some smart devices, they probably  own a desktop computer or laptop, and they definitely have a TV, or if they're old school, they might own a radio or something. Okay, so just think about that for a second. Any one or all of these things by themselves or together generate a ton of heat, electricity, power, and radiation. Yes, if you keep your smartphone in your pocket all day, yes it is generating heat, power, and radiation in your pocket, and yes, that might not be a good thing for you in the long run, but that's beside the point. 

    Rather, I want this idea to hit home, that pretty much anything and everything in the post-modern 2026 world is running on tons of heat, power, electricity, and radiation. Let me say that again for the folks in the back. Anything and everything in the post-modern 2026 world is running on tons of heat, power, electricity, and radiation. There are some people who believe you can actually feel and hear the electricity and radiation that is being used surrounding us although I'm not sure I can really feel it myself, but rather I believe that there are tools that could be used to hear and feel electricity and radiation around us, but we probably don't have the proper scientific tools and equipment to actually measure it because it hasn't been invented or created yet. 

    Now, there are people who believe that this is conspiracy thing, that the government controls the weather, and that its getting hot because they want to do population control and whatnot. There's even large groups of people online who believe that because of all this extreme overheating going on this Earth, that it changed time, that somehow time has suddenly sped up much faster than ever before on the planet.

    However, I don't really believe that is true. But apparently there are people who believe that the government has been able to control the weather since the 1940s, and perhaps even before that, if you go by that crazy logic [science fiction]. But rather than this being a government conspiracy or something like that, rather it just a fundamental fact of life in this era of humanity, its heating up. 

    Second, where am I going with this? Well, I guess I'm trying to just bring more awareness to the fact that extreme heat, overuse and overreliance on electricity, and radiation is just as much of a deadly threat to humanity [or more, now it seems like its much more of a threat] as the extreme right-wing MAGA base destroying and distorting the Constitution, or Fascism, The Ice Secret Police, or Terrorism within or without, public shootings/stabbings, or War, or Covid, Cancer, mental illness, old age and dementia. 

    I'm sorry to say it folks, but we're living in a pivotal epoch in this era of humanity, where pretty much anything and everything could possibly kill you, turn on you, inform on you, get you fired at your job, get you arrested, shit man, times are so bad that I don't really want to say this, but personally I believe this is true, that you really can't even trust anything or anyone right now in this era of humanity. From my last experience at my last gig, the reality is that if you do something wrong or make some kind of mistake even if you didn't hurt anyone or steal tons of cash, everyone will turn on you, and you won't get any help from anybody. 

    This is where I get to the more paranoid section of the blog, lol, but I stand by this, at least at this current moment in time [but I am able to change my mind and be more positive and uplifting], but yes, I believe you can't even trust people at your job, your inner circle of friends, family, shit man, you might even want to think about cooking more of your own homecooked meals because I hate to say it but, they could be putting something in your food to make it more addicting, and start to make you want to eat a lot more even though you're full. 

    Yeah, you might laugh at me when I say this or you'll say, 'he's paranoid!' like the Ozzy song, or whatever, but yeah man, I personally believe they put chemicals in the food, drugs [it goes without saying], and alcohol, to make it much more addicting and make you keep coming back for more much more often so they can keep making more sales off you. Even the extreme heat and capitalism are going together. 

    Keep in mind, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I'm not into that kind of wrong-headed thinking, but I can sort of understand why people could feel like the Covid vaccine was a hoax. If the vaccine was a hoax, why did so many elderly customers from my market job die from Covid just because they refused to take the vaccine? A good portion of elderly customers dropped dead from Covid after refusing to get the vaccine. That place was depressing and sad!   

    Third, my point with this post is just to bring awareness, but also you should ensure you stay grounded because things aren't what they seem and things are not normal folks. None of this is normal. When I was in high school during the 2008 financial crisis and we were going through the Iraq War after 9/11, as crazy as those times were, those were normal times. These years, these post-Covid Trump years are not normal. 

    I just can't state that enough right now, none of this is normal. We got a lunatic running the United States and almost every day, every 12 hours something he or his Cabinet did is reported in online news, and almost every single one or many things he did is a scandal worthy enough of impeachment but because the news is on a short cycle, almost all the bad things Trump and the MAGA Republicans do gets reported, dismissed, and somehow swept under the rug, and 12 hours later, it or something like it happens again, and they get away again and again. Make it make sense, folks. This ain't normal.

    In conclusion, you might not agree with me, you might even be a right-wing nationalistic almost fascist type of person and you voted for Trump, however, I believe that its good to get information from various sources and from a variety of different sources and types of sources and even types of people. 

    You might find this entire post boring and unimaginative because you're a young person who likes to party, drink, do drugs, and play video games, that's fine too. I hope this content reaches a wide variety of people. Remember folks, I'm just a 40 year old black guy with a high school diploma. 

    If this stuff doesn't interest you at all then you just haven't enough experience in life. If you're a kid and somehow this post got to you, remember, you're young now but at some point you're going to get big, and you're going to have to take the rap for this stuff, and mommy and daddy aren't going to be there forever, so you better start learning to understand this stuff at a young age, probably even younger than when I did because I learned about life through the school of hard knocks and it wasn't pretty, fun, or pleasant. Remember folks, when you [or they/them] fuck up, its reeducation through labor. And that's every country, every state, every city, every village.  

    Lastly, if you weren't aware yet, what you don't know can hurt you. That being said, no need to panic, worry, or be paranoid about anything at all, but just keep in mind, that there's something strange going on during all this heat and destruction. 

    I would've liked to have become a teacher in this lifetime because I believe kids are naturals at knowing things like the truth, and that even when bad kids seem to act out against teachers and whatnot, that sometimes they are not completely in the wrong, rather it is just that they out of all the 'normie' kids, have somehow picked up on the fact that the teacher could be bullshitting them, and they're calling it out. If you're someone who's kept that sense of childlike wonder and intellect and call people out when they BS you other people will notice and you will stand out. But that's a whole other post.  

    Concluding, in other news, Lindsay Graham died. He had a good reputation until his good friend John McCain died, then he become a MAGA Trump sycophant, so he ended up sort of disgracing himself after what otherwise could be seen as a pretty decent right-wing leadership position in US government. Watch this space. 

Juneteenth 2024: Honoring Freedom's Triumph and Embracing Unity in Today's Narrative

On Juneteenth 2024, amidst the commemoration of historic strides towards freedom and unity, the air resonates with both celebration and profound reflection.

     How's it going out there? Everything going alright? Hello world. 

     First, I'd like to talk about work. There's been a lot of buzz at my grocery store job because recently there was a beating. It was captured on our store cameras, which somehow was handed over to the news, which is actually a big no-no inside our company. Apparently, there's an agreement sheet employees have to sign stating that if ever there arises any incidences in the store, we are not to talk to the media about it. An older employee, manager of the online department, an adult male, 50 years old, stopped a shoplifter earlier that day, a black lady, and she left without being able to steal her items. 

     However, later that day, she came back with two 'friends,' who accosted our employee from behind while he was working. He was beat up, and they even beat him with the garbage can. He seemed fine, as he was at work the next day, he didn't have too many bruises, but he was deeply rattled by the experience. When the news came to our store to ask to interview him, his answer was, 'no comment,' smart man, as he knows we're not supposed to talk to the media about whatever incidents might occur. 

     However, that's not all there is to the story. There seems to be more. On top of a customers being now scared to shop at our store [I actually had a few customers tell me they will be avoiding our store for a while, probably resulting in a small loss of business], I believe there is still fallout left to be had regarding this beating video incident. Management has become very tight lipped about it, and I believe shits rolling downhill in terms of some shit that might be about to go down. Managers are tight-lipped right now to the point where they appear rude and uncaring and mean to both employees and customers, which means that probably somebody is going to get in a lot of trouble; like perhaps a writeup, or suspension, something of that sort. Why? Because we as employees and managers aren't allowed to share video, talk about, or share any information regarding incidents that occur in the store. So the question is who did it and why? 

     So now, it's been a week later, possibly upper management will find out who went into the backroom, got the camera footage, and released it to the public news, and at some point someone will probably be punished for it. Why shouldn't they be punished? Think about it, we don't really know the reason why whoever did this released the video to the public news. They 'said [according to the news],' that they wanted the video out there because they want people to recognize the perpetrators in the video and hopefully they can be charged and/or punished legally. But I have to ask myself this question, did they release the video to the public news for cash money? So now I can see why certain managers in particular are angry, tight lipped, and/or confused on the job right now. There's a shit storm brewing! 

     Lastly on this issue, I'm not a big fan of upper management at my work, because they're major assholes that probably do deserve a good beating here and there because they low-ball hardworking people and pay them lower than they deserve, but my question to whatever management that released the store camera video of the beating to the public news, did you really think you would outsmart upper management? Only time will tell. 

     So, the store has become more hardcore. I've said this at other times throughout the years right here on this blog, especially during the plague journal covid years, but I think now it is at its worst point. It was almost to the breaking point during the covid years but somehow nothing major really happened, it's a blessing, as those were difficult years with lots of irate customers that sometimes wanted to get physical. 

     Well, now our old lady security guard doesn't work at night. Now, at night we have beefy armed security guards that are bigger than me [I'm 6 ft, 240  pounds], so the store is being much more closely guarded and secured by armed security. It has helped a lot but now I have that creeping unsuspecting feeling that the store has become like some sort of 'Big Brother is Watching You Zone,' which is totally not what I wanted, but it does seem to have made the job easier because I don't have to confront shoplifters as much, because armed security is already on it. 

     In addition, the store has had a Big Brother Watching You vibe for as long as I can remember, because upper management has a camera up above every cashier as they're working, 24/7, recording, but now it's got this added aggressive element, which, again, makes the job easier, but it is not the most comfortable vibe to work or shop. I think this is how most stores have become in America. Not really the kinds of places I would want to shop, especially if you're black, because most of the time, security guards in retail environments think blacks and hispanics are the most common perps, and in these businesses they're the ones who usually get caught stealing red-handed.

     Also, I wasn't really going to go here but because its Juneteenth, I saw Charlemane Tha God [a radio personalty] on Bill Maher last night and he said something that I think resonates with black America. He said if you're black in America you have to work five times as hard as a white person to get the same success. I think this quote speaks volumes to black people and people of color in general, not just black people. I think about my struggles and contradictions. Most of the newer staff at my work are young and dumb and they complain about the work most of the time they are there. One guy keeps complaining about doing carts all the time. I replied and told him that I pushed carts for years before I became a main-time cashier. And they reply back with a whip saying, "I'm not going to stay here as long as you did, you worked too hard for them," which you know, is a pretty dumb rebuttal, but hey, what can you do? I know for sure who has it in them to be a hard worker and who is a whiner and complainer and isn't helping the work staff on that fabled night shift I'm working on. 

     However, I think the quote says volumes. I would say as a black person in California, from out of the state, I worked five times harder than most white people I've known in my entire life, not just the ones from California, but also the ones from my home state of Wisconsin. Now, just because I know I worked five times harder than them doesn't mean that I think I'm better than them, it just means that I struggled more and persevered more. Is it because of my race? Yes, to a large degree, but that's how it is in America. Immigrants and people of color have to work harder than white people to compete in the same arena and get the same kind of success, that's just the reality. If you don't acknowledge this reality, you aren't living in America. But this doesn't mean that black people will work five times harder, not every black person will do that, some will barely work hard, and fall behind in the economic spectrum, or have to rely on a rich girlfriend or wife to support them. I think Biden's executive order allowing immigrants to become citizens via wives/husbands family was a big win for Juneteenth day. I know most immigrants that come here are usually hispanic but I think right now Biden needs to appeal to working class people of color to make sure he secures the votes to win this election. 

     Lastly, there's lots of reading, guitar, piano, ai art, political news, good meals, and good jazz and opera going around in my life but there's a feeling that the social culture is and has been collapsing. I find that the people I know or used to know are kind of lazy, dumb, and they all want to get rich quick. Nobody wants to work hard the traditional way, working a regular job and clocking in hours, like a moral conservative. 

     Instead, they've turned to these schemes and get out of jail tricks that they think will save their bacon so they don't have to work a 9 to 5 under a boss. One friend thinks inheriting stuff is the key, one friend to become a real estate guy, one friend to work multiple jobs and pay our friend rent, one guy to be an armed ATM security guard, one guy wants to become a full-time paid bassist but has no original songs and a weak voice. These guys are planning to break open pandora's box and hopefully it will save their bacon inshallah. 

     But again, nobody is staying consistent, working hard, building up, living clean and spiritually, having good energy with people they meet even on a bad day, and working their way up anymore. Now, people think they can get rich quick and that they don't need to pay their dues. It's deeply saddening and troubling. Because, in a sense, I see that most of the young and even older people around me are delusional. But hey, what can you do, its retail, right? I'm working the next nine days straight starting tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck, God Speed. 

*Have a safe Juneteenth everybody, also summer covid is a thing, lots of people are getting sick*

Lebensmitteleinzelhandel

Gute Abend, 

Here I thought I'd share a post about what it's been like working the retail grocery store, this far in the game, two years into covid, after working there for nine years. Buckle up, here we go. 

Okay, so let's start with the good. After busting my ass working hard for nine years, on the ninth year I finally got promoted to full-time status as a full-time cashier. I no longer have to push carts, take out trash, do carryouts, or open the gate for the truck driver. My pay went up slightly but it's really not all that and a bag of chips by any means. 

Now for the bad, get ready for chapter and verse. 

For starters, my management has become more aggressive and intense towards me. One of my managers has formed an active dislike for me and yells at me across the front end to shut up, and threatens me that she will talk to my store director unless I actually do shut up. So that's a new one. The other managers let me do my thing most of the time, one of them actually puts me in charge and he goes on about doing his own thing the entire night. 

Second, my overall eight hour work days have become much more intense. We lost a lot of employees. The ones that get hired quit once they see how hard the work is. Not many of the young bagger kids want to be promoted to cashier because they know dealing with the customers is tricky and difficult especially in combination with dealing with the sales managers, front end manager, co-director, and store director. Consequently, I end up doing a lot more work. 

Most of my shift now includes running seven self-checkout machines by myself for eight hours, usually from three-thirty pm to twelve am, five to six days per week. I get two ten minute breaks and one thirty minute break. The machines are glitchy but I've already figured out some ways to speed up the machines manually if things get too busy. When you're helping one person, another person needs help on another machine, then another, ad infinitum, per eight hours. 

So there's the machine I have to deal with, as well as the customers themselves, as well as the money and cash handling. I've done the work piece meal here and there over the years but I was only part-time and wasn't working many hours. In comparison, I used to work about 28-35 hours per week for many years, and now I'm working 42-48 hours a week, sometimes six days a week. I never thought I would become a shopkeeper. The joke is that I've become petite bourgeois. 

Third, more good. I get to meet many new and different people each day. My money addition and subtraction skills are instant. I can read people now. My customer service skills and dealing with the public has improved. My paychecks are larger. My job has stayed the same but the same old has surprisingly become better. I got a snare drum, cymbal, and two guitars from customers. And not only that, but the other day, a neighbor, who's a customer gave me a ride to guitar center.

There's always two sides to the coin. Retail is very intense and unforgiving, but me, being the person I am, surprisingly I've made it work all these years and I've been at the company since 2013. In 2023 it will be ten years and I'll get a small pension out of it. 

Lastly, there's one critical element that we're missing. Can you be happy doing something like this for employment? 

For me, yes you can. Because, using the free time I have between shifts, I've been able to become a better musician [I now can sing, play bass, piano, and drums], and I've even become an intellectual [I've read the western canon, philosophy, history, and learned languages]. 

But it's still a tough job. In fact, the first five years were brutal and I had to do a lot of life learning to get past those first five years. But now, I'm older, tougher, but yet fundamentally still the nice guy with the gift of gab. 

In terms of covid the stores are doing much better but I'm still wearing a mask for personal safety.

Happy holidays!

image ai generated 

Siegfried comes to save Los Angeles

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

It's been a long time. Hello world. 

I've been okay. C'est la vie, as the French say. There's a lot going on in today's rapidly changing world. A lot of it is terrifying, especially for a 33 year old American male, but really, for anybody, the times they are a-change-in. 

We just came out of a terrible presidency by one of the worst people on the planet and Americans are still supporting him even to this day like he's God's gift to woman. America is becoming more and more totalitarian in every way, shape, and form, and believe me folks, its not just republicans who are Attila the Hun fans, it's democrats too. My work has cameras locked onto every cashier and in every aisle to make sure nobody steals anything. Sound familiar? 

On top of that there's record inflation, soaring gas prices, we can't afford rent, we can't afford groceries, our kids are continuously getting gunned down by madmen in schools, we can't afford children we already have, the climate has gone to the dogs, and the white people have decided to ban abortions but secretly allow their women to get abortion pills and stuff like that. Don't forget climate change. 

Covid isn't going away, and rather, is evolving faster than we can create vaccines for. The workforce doesn't quite know it yet, but they've been decimated by long covid and we don't know the full extent of the long term symptoms but one of them is being tired all the time and continuous brain fog. These victims can't even read a book, I'm afraid, they wouldn't have the attention span. On top of that, other countries are taking more control over the world and America has become a lesser. Trump made our country weak and Biden couldn't fix it. And now we're stuck. Interesting times. 

Companies are becoming less and less employee focused, even Union shops, and rather, instead, they've become more like sweat shops. Ironically, more like China. This has been happening since the American early days of the robber barons. 

Welcome to America, we're the gestapo now, and we support Atilla the Hun, and my name is Siegfried, I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

But seriously, what can one do with a mess like this one? 

There's nothing you really can do except vote Democrat for the Mid Terms. They're the lesser of the two evils, they at least attempt to do the right thing, although they're no angels either.

Part of the problem is that everybody is living in a separate world in this moment of time. Nobody reads the same news, nobody watches the same tv shows, nobody plays the same video games, nobody reads the same books, nobody can agree on anything, and most people aren't smart enough to take news, facts, and information and think for themselves, rather they believe what they hear and just naturally assume that's the way it is, that it is truth, that everything they see and hear is a fact. What happened to thinking for yourselves? 

I told my friends I take the bus in LA. They said, "Be careful! There's criminals on the bus who will rob you."

I said, "What criminals? Where? Did somebody rob you on the bus?"

They said, "No, but I just heard about it on the news."

Are they all really that scared? 

That's beside the point.

What we really need is a remote coalition government that isn't controlled by government, republicans, democrats, libertarians, socialists, communists, or our parents. We all need to come together to vote Democrat, a New Great Society, but only the true believers in the good are allowed in. Are you one of us? 

The end of the beginning. More work to be done tomorrow! 

Spring Break 2022!

Hello, good readers of the ofigueroamusicblog. It's been a pretty long time since I've updated, so here I am, ready to share more information on what it's like working at the job still under covid conditions and more. 

First, the working conditions have improved since I've last posted. There was going to be a possible strike but the company ended up giving in to most but not all of the demands from the union. We've also since added more staff to the front end. And inspiringly, I got promoted to cashier position after many years of toiling in the vineyards. 

However, this doesn't mean that the working conditions are optimal. We're still working under covid conditions, there are still a few covid cases every now and then, and most of the customers aren't wearing masks while they get extremely close to our bodies and faces. Covid has been extremely brutal for workers in the retail industry. In addition, now that the weather has become a lot hotter, the masks have become really hot again, but again, I can't take it off, unless I want to risk the wrath of possible covid exposures. 

I've mostly been chilling by myself and occasionally with a few friends. It's funny because, two years later, still under covid, I find myself only really going out to dinners with family and friends. It's my favorite social occasion. I've since left a lot of my many much more casual friends/acquaintances, to focus more on doing my own thing, which involves a lot of reading, guitar, and studying languages, mostly Spanish. 

I started the morning by reading Machiavelli's Mandrake, a comedy play about a young man who tricks an old scholar fool into letting him fuck his beautiful young wife. Talk about uncomfortable reading. In a way you could say c'est la vie but if it was your wife or your girlfriend what would you do? What if you never find out like our old scholar dude? It's certainly a funny story. Maybe the ends do justify the means, because in the end the wife wants to do it again with the young man, and even befriends him and gives him a room at her and her husband's estate. Talk about the ends justifying the means. 

I also found time to read Seneca's Agamemnon tragedy and start reading The Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity, a deep thinker for ya, anthropology and sociology.

Lastly, I even found time to jam with my friend Jason who plays the alto saxophone. You can find our most recent live recording here.

Although work has been the norm throughout and around all this activity, I'll be able to rest easy knowing that I'll be getting the better contract raises, and although I'll get less hours as a result of getting paid more, in that process I'll actually get the same and/or more money for less hours of work. Not too shabby! I found 100 rupees! 

Although I haven't gone anywhere in a few years and things have stayed relatively the same I feel like I'm on a grand spring break adventure for the moment. 

If you're looking for a reading adventure look no further than the beginning of my covid plague journal where I write about the beginning of the pandemic and the working conditions at the gig. There are many posts in the plague journal now after these two covid years. Read all about it here.

Let there be peace and love in the universe as well as within your life. 

This Is Your Life on Retail: March 2022

Hello world.

 

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I've been busy dealing with the vicissitudes of life. Here I'd like to continue my dialogues about what retail work has been like at this current juncture, amidst the pandemic still going on, corrupt corporate policy and abuse, and the war in Ukraine. 

First off, a general rundown on the gig. The daily grind as a cashier at a multimillion dollar company has become much more difficult. There's not much staff to help you with, well, anything. Management is always absent from the front end so most of the time you're on your own. 

There's no baggers to help you bag the large orders that come down your line nonstop for eight hours straight. 

The union has finished up its voting for the strike authorization vote but it remains to be seen if there really will be a strike. I was skeptical about the vote to strike authorization because it seems that most of the public has given up on retail workers at this point. We need your support still and our fight isn't over even at this stage of the pandemic.  

At the beginning retail workers were heroes. The customers supported us as much as nurses even because of the pandemic. But now, the customers show us a lot more of the contempt hidden in their hearts for the unskilled labor. It's very easy to hate unskilled labor. Nowadays, there's always a yelling going back and forth throughout the day between cashiers and customers. Something about a dollar off most of the time that could be easily resolved but management will only agree to things if they just want people to go away so they don't have to deal with it. 

The union asked the company for $5, $1 extra per year for five years. Even that alone won't be enough for the workers to live on in California. The company said no, so they've been reduced to going down to $3, $1 per year for three years. That's an even worse proposal. But if they could get it, it would still be a victory for the workers and a victory is a victory, no matter how small.  

I'm not surprised by any of this. In fact, most of the stuff I mentioned here has already been mentioned in a lot of my other blogs about retail during the pandemic. 

And yet covid is still happening there and now the customers don't have to wear facemasks. Today at work, I had to work at the only cashier station that didn't have a plastic shield shielding me from customers and their maskless faces. Thanks a lot you corporate guys.

As Loki says in the show, "trust my rage." 

For those who are interested, compare this post about working conditions today with about a year ago, you can read it here.

Thank you for the support. 

The song we sing, did you know, we're listening. 

Dehumanizer [Retail Grocery]

Good early morning to you all. I've been on a bit of a hiatus in terms of writing but I'm ready to jump back into the saddle again. Here I'll go into some more details about what the retail grocery experience has been like lately, on the second month of 2022, with covid still rampaging throughout the lands. 

If you want to read about what it was like at work during the worst of times, make sure to read this post here. That was the worst of it. But things aren't perfect the way things are now either. 

A lot has changed in the world of retail grocery in the beginning of 2022. The place is being run less like a business-employee-bosses-customers routine and more of a sweatshop. Our union is fighting to get us employees a better contract. It remains to be seen if it will really be that much better, but it is guaranteed that our wages will get a slight boost. Modest progress. Slow hand clap.  

The departments and the front end department is being run by skeletal crews. Most of the time overtime is being rejected and refused and a lot of hours across the board have been cut severely, despite the fact that the store needs more help and needs more boots on the grounds to get the job done. 

Because of the fact that the departments are more and more being run with fewer and fewer people, the building has taken on the image of more of a sweatshop style environment. You have be very fast paced and not make too many mistakes. It's almost like Amazon or something now. Management demands it.

In the morning, the front end gets three people to work with until 10 am, and later at the evenings, say 8 pm or later, its being run in the same fashion. This has created a sweatshop environment where one employee is forced to take care of tens of dozens of customers singlehandedly, oftentimes with no baggers, so not only are they ringing up the orders, they're greeting the customers, cash handling, as well as bagging the items-whew! 

As if that wasn't enough, upper management seems to have taken up the stiff upper lip direction of managing workers. They're rude, they're pushy, they don't respond when you say hello, how are you, they're pushing employees to do more work during their eight hour shifts but insist on no overtime, they're in support of cutting hours, they don't give much leeway in terms of calling out sick for colds or covid, the list goes on and on. In a way, in short, I want to say that they've engendered a work environment where they try to dehumanize the employees, and sadly, from what I see from my coworkers, they've succeeded sometimes. 

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel isn't there? Of course. Although this industry seems to have been dehumanized and turned into a sweatshop by upper management and their meandering response to the pandemic, for me, the job has only become better. 

You see, I've become simpatico with lots of customers and while I've walked the Earth I've engendered reciprocity, made friends, and influenced people. Its not even about the money. Its about making friends and influencing people. Hard lesson. But well earned and deserved. 

Covid cases are down at the store but there's always at least a good six to seven cases on the board. Meaning there aren't too many new ones but there are still a few infections still getting into the store. Got to be safe and be careful. 

Customers have become especially unruly and offensive with ignoring the mask mandate and being pushy, aggressive, and rude. 

A long time customer is donating to me a Fender Stratocaster. Even if it really was the worst of times, it doesn't get any better than that. The satire here is that we're living during a modern plague, and its still the best years of our lives. 

queue Dehumanizer by Black Sabbath

zombie apocalypse virus christmas 2021

Happy holidays, 

The holidays are here again in what I would call Covid 2.0. But I specifically was inspired to write this blog this early afternoon to describe what the working conditions have been like working grocery retail during the holidays at this current point in the pandemic. The pandemic has been going on for two years but for a lot of us, especially those of us working in retail, it seems a lot longer, stretching us workers to the point of exhaustion. Some things have gotten better for retail workers but many things have also gone south as well. Let me explain. 

The main problem we face as retail workers right now is that upper management, lower management, and customers have been giving us a lot of problems with hardly any solutions. For starters, upper management and lower management still have the same high expectations of all the employees as they have always had. The problem? It's just not feasible anymore. 

We can't keep providing the same consistent high performance or level of service because we don't have the personnel to do it or even the time during the shift. We simply don't have enough workers. There you go, if you're reading this management, know that I am right, and that you are wrong, and that your quality of service will never go back to what it once was, say three or more years ago. We simply don't have the staff to provide excellent customer service anymore. There I said it. The truth. 

Second, the customers have become much more unruly, irate, and refuse to wear masks for whatever reasons they want to yell out. Most of them are Trump types, science deniers, vaccine haters, republicans, or just simply think they're too good to wear a mask when they come into our stores. It's become a serious issue because a lot of times management won't confront these people outright. Instead, what we get is a message on the intercom throughout the store, "Please respect the people around you, please wear a mask...please." Most of the time that strategy doesn't pan out. Go figure. 

Hours are good if you're available and have seniority at the company or store that you work at. So in terms of hours and getting paid, we're doing okay, but not great. For a while, in the beginning of the pandemic we were all getting $20 per hour but it only lasted for about five months before pay resumed as normal. Honestly, we're still putting ourselves in harms way in terms of the pandemic, with this new Omicron variant, and our union has been unable to secure more hazard pay. Unfortunately. 

Which puts things in perspective because now we see many new jobs, mostly old jobs that need more workers, and they're paying their new employees $20 per hour plus great benefits. So it goes. 

The great irony about all of this is that my company is a multi million dollar company and my store is a million dollar store. They can afford to pay their employees $20 per hour, have on site security enforcing the mask mandate, to hire more employees so we aren't forced constantly to work with a skeletal crew everyday, and we can afford to give more hours to employees that need them. It isn't all bad, however, some of our customers are great people and have even helped me out in various ways. 

For example, this one customer who owns a guitar store has fixed two of my guitars for free. [hear the guitar here-https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/607302963652309] How about that? 

All this being said, life is what you make it. Although the job has become more stressful during this holiday season, it's still great to know that life is moving forward as normal as possible, even with the pandemic still raging inside and outside of the store every single day. 

the world keeps spinning round and round 

Thanksgiving Covid 2.0

Whew! Wow! We made it past Thanksgiving! 

Retail work at the grocery job during Thanksgiving Covid 2.0 was intense. Out of all my years at the company since 2013, this was the hardest Thanksgiving that I've ever worked since I started working retail back in 2009 back home. What made it so different from every other year? Not enough staff, not enough baggers, management constantly mismanaging employee breaks, no social distancing, no limit or cap on number of customers or any of the items they buy. In short, it was a circus show. But that's okay, that's life, that's work. But is it though? Is it something we, as workers have to become accustomed to? 

Covid has unquestionably made an eternal impact upon the world of retail grocery. It cannot go back to the way it was before-albeit still poorly mismanaged by upper and lower management, but Covid has unveiled something much more menacing-the dark heart of human nature in the workplace. I can always take time to look at what's truly there but hidden, the dark side of human nature.  

As bad as Covid in the workplace has been for us at my store, what has arguably become much worse is the attitude and mentality of customers, and lower and upper management. I've increasingly seen over these some ten years that they are the ones hurting the employees the most. 

Now that Covid has been raging for two years, the customers at my store have become more unruly than ever. This might be the height of American retail ignorance, the worst I've ever seen. They aren't willing to listen or take other considerations, instead their go to is to become aggressive and/or start yelling like a child when they don't get what they want. 

On the opposite spectrum lower and upper management have become so cold to employees to the point where it's become obvious that they don't give a shit about what's going on, what's really going on behind the scenes. They aren't ignorant, rather they're negligent, unforgiving, and just generally don't care. 

I work for the Local Union 770 and I can tell you this much, our union doesn't do much to help the morale of the average UFCW worker. These employees are left to fend for themselves, fighting for scraps of whatever little hours they can get per week. The sad irony is that in the past these jobs used to count for something because they were reliable and were supported by a much stronger more influential union. What we have today is a shell of that stable job and strong influential union. However, I must admit that I'm pro labor union and pro employees despite what may be written here. 

Going back to this Thanksgiving week. This has been one of the most brutal holiday work experiences in my lifetime. During the first year of Covid it wasn't this bad. Which goes to our original question, how did things deteriorate to this level? The easy quick answer is antipathy, utter lack of care from management, which begs the question, will work become a lesser entity within our lives as Covid progresses through its many stages and mutations? Will work not even matter at some point? Will money become a much more valuable commodity because less people will be working and/or quit working these types of jobs? In the end if everybody stops caring about work, will the quality of work and jobs in the different fields naturally deteriorate to a low base level? 

The value of work and labor is up for grabs. When you see the working conditions at my store you will very easily be able to understand why most of the staff have quit, why they can't get people to stay at the store and continue to work for very long, in essence why they can't pay someone enough to even care about anything that goes on there. They can't pay them enough to even care. 

Which makes it very easy to see why record numbers of Americans quit their jobs in October. In addition, even office workers are getting fed up because under Covid conditions they're expected to be on the clock 24/7, even installing apps on their phones so that their upper management can keep tabs on them and force them to keep undergoing training modules. 

Is this the future of labor in America? If so, America has ultimately failed its citizens and my entire generation. It's no wonder that Americans have become fools, getting wasted on alcohol, drugs, wild parties, hazing, fast cars and fast women, growing fat off the bourgeois comforts of America, not caring about their jobs or quality of work, only to realize that the abyss is staring at them in the morning as they head off to work or clock in at home. 

Retail vs Corona Halloween Bash Style

Buenos dias! 

It's 5 am on an October day in California. The pandemic still rages on and on. The fight against covid has been arduous and never ending, yet we still persevere in the sector of work retail. Why? Because we have to. Because to persevere means to get the job done and do it well. Here I'd like to go into the inner details of what retail work at the grocery store has been like at this current stage of the pandemic. 

a) So the work itself has become more intense and faster paced. There are more customers going out and shopping for their own groceries now that the vaccines are out and people feel a lot more comfortable about being back out in public. Our staff has dwindled in the last couple months, due to young people quitting and older people retiring. And on top of that our staff we do have is limited to part time hours (20-25) a week because management doesn't want to give them the extra hours. Leading us full time workers to have to work that much harder. The lines build up and when I turn around to see who's also cashiering alongside me, there's oftentimes only one or two people. 

b) Some of the staff are still getting sick with covid here and there. It goes unreported at our store because of confidentiality and all that. But isn't that something that we, as workers, deserve to know? Instead, oftentimes, the affected person takes a few days off randomly and then suddenly they're back perhaps 3 or 4 days later. When asked about if they had covid, they often say, "I had a cold." Again, most of these covid infections go unreported but it's at least partially known because the infected person is known to be sick and known to be out for a few days. Obvious troll is obvious. 

c) The actual work day itself has become more normalized and streamlined for me in particular because my work schedule was shifted from all night shifts to all morning shifts. Getting up in the morning was always my nemesis but now that I'm used to it I've realized that waking up in the morning and working throughout the early day is actually better for my body. "Oh, that sweet circadian rhythm." 

d) At the store we still deal with a lot of anti-maskers who refuse to wear a facemask inside our store. At this point we sort of just have to accept it and move on. Our store doesn't have security throughout the day and only sometimes at night. It's just not worth it to confront these people as oftentimes, they are aggressive Trump types that cannot listen to reason due to their pea-sized brains. Upper management sometimes tries to get involved but even they themselves are scared of these people. Trump types love to use intimidation and oftentimes it works.

e) The cleaning situation at the store is for the most part pretty good. As workers, we strive to make sure the place doesn't look or smell like a pigsty. The cleaning is more important in the departments (produce, deli, meat, etc) but even on the front end we oftentimes spend a lot of time washing down the registers. Squeaky clean!

f) Lastly, the morale of the retail work world has always been extraordinarily low. Right now in October there's a small movement of workers trying to rise up, fight the man, and demand better wages and benefits. It's called Striketober, but will it really amount to anything? The biggest workers strike was the teachers strike back in 2018, and that went well, right?

Well, the retail world is full of people who just don't want to be there or are stuck there because of whatever reasons. Right now, morale is at a historic low. The workers are hurting badly: they're not getting the hours they want (either number of hours or the time they want), their pay isn't increasing for years and years, and on top of that the company took away our $20/hour increased pay, which only lastly 5 months. Its no wonder these people are down in the dumps. 

With companies like this life is very stressful. Most of these people have children and have to provide for themselves as well as their families. These are mostly hard working Hispanic people and occasional young white, middle eastern, and Asian employees. The fight against covid while working retail has never been harder. And the scary thing is that for most of these workers, their struggle is invisible to the public. Sometimes the stress there can be overbearing and frightening, a scanner darkly during Halloween. 

The public is still much in love with nurses, cops, and fire fighters fighting the pandemic than with the people who are providing them food to cook for their families. That is the reality. It was never going to be easy.

Keep the faith.