So how do you best keep carrots?
I like them but will sometime get a bag, eat a few and then not eat more, and then a couple of days latter when I want some they have gone bad.
regardless if I keep'em in the cubboard or the freezer.
Yeah, it's true, there is a difference. And since people are paid to clean up, I suppose that there's nothing wrong with leaving a bag behind.
I just feel like some people make a real point of making a mess, because they know that someone has to clean up after them. When I worked my first job as a waitress, the customers who were the worst (and who tipped the worst) were the ones who would let their kids open up every packet of sugar and spill the grains everywhere. Yeah, I HAD to clean it up, but that didn't mean that they HAD to make such a big mess.
It's because of this that I always stack my dishes for waitresses. And I wipe up my mess. And I tip like crazy. Technology will have to advance a LOT before service jobs are usurped by robots. My leaving a bigger mess behind isn't doing anyone any favors.
I do pay someone to clean my own house. It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to pay for her 4 hours of cleaning. And she is not sufficiently skilled to get a job that is "better" for society. I save time and earn more money, doing something I prefer over cleaning.
I also think there is a difference between throwing trash on public streets and leaving trash behind you at the place of business that sold it to you.
This is wonderful news about the hospitals, but what do you do if your medical bills have gone beyond the hospital and are now in the possession of a collectin agency? No dice, right? Or is there some way to negotiate that as well?
I agree with the commenter who described the clean-up jobs as an example of the broken window fallacy. The net gain is greater if we don't create the mess in the first place, and the labor that would have gone into maintenance is diverted to the production of new goods.
As I see it, the issue with self-service is whether we, as consumers, are willing to pay more to have someone do things for us that we could do ourselves (or do without). Older folks might remember when gas stations had attendants who not only pumped your gas but also cleaned your windshield and checked your oil. Self-service stations were able to sell gas at a lower price because they didn't have to pay these attendants' wages. And as consumers we chose to go with them rather than continue to pay more for the old-fashioned service. In fact, there was so little demand for the old-fashioned service that it has almost completely disappeared.
Do you hire someone to clean your house or do it yourself? Mow your own lawn? Same principle.
In Oregon, they have a law against pumping your own gas, so they still have attendants. This is a case of government interference in the marketplace. Suppose there were laws forbidding you to clean your own house or mow your own lawn, in order to protect the jobs of people who do these things. Would that be a good thing? I don't think so.
Do-it-yourself is a key strategy of frugality. I see no reason why it shouldn't be practiced in the business world just as it is at home. If bagging my own groceries or using a self-service checkout can save me some money, I'm all for it.
On the other hand, there are lots of things where I don't have the necessary expertise, competence, or interest in doing them myself. And some things, like proofreading or editing, seem to require, by their very nature, that another person does them. So there's always going to be a market for other people to sell their services to me.
Andrea - Thanks for taking a thoughtful 2nd look at this family.
It is unfathomable to me just why this man's experiment causes so many people to spit venom. He's not telling other people how to live, but showing them what can be done by example. And if he effects even minor, environmentally positive changes amongst his readers, then any damage from publishing is likely offset by the changes he has inspired.
And while I don't think it's a publicity stunt, I couldn't care less if it was. Maybe some good will come of it. Who is he harming? His family is happy and healthy.
For some unknown reason, lots of people take his experiment as a personal attack, but I'm thankful that there are people like him who are willing to withstand all the negativity in order to try to do something positive.
I'm with you on littering: It's an evil and disgusting thing. It makes the city less attractive, less pleasant, and less safe. I don't litter, and I often pick up litter that I see.
Maybe throwing away trash was a poor example of the general issue of businesses trying to get customers to do the work for free. I picked it because of my vivid recallection of that bus driver from my 6th grade field trip, but maybe I should have gone with self-service checkouts or the so-called customer service provided by telephone robots--something everyone hates. Because I think the issue applies to all the work that customers do for free: If it's essential to the sale, and if the customers won't do it for free, then the employer needs to hire someone to do it.
I should also make clear--I certainly expect no gratitude from the workers in the theaters who pick up my empty popcorn bag. But if the theater owners managed to train another 20 or 30 percent of their patrons to take everything to the trash cans, how long do you think it be before they decided that they could get by with paying one fewer employee to keep things clean? Based on my experience, I'd guess less than a week.
I think a lot of what WiseBread is about is looking at our prejudices and cultural training to see how things really are and could be - and you've demonstrated it, by saying your previous opinions and how they've shifted. Thank you for looking into what Colin Beavin's reactions are to those who had those prior thoughts, too!
Both under the Jobs section and the Gigs section. And don't limit yourself to your own city - in fact, I found this blogging job through a job posting on the New York craigslist.
I think the Guest has a point, even if it sounded a little harsh - there are lots of herbal "cures" that really don't do anything. I've found that my tea appears to decrease the lenght of a cold, but then again, I can't PROVE it because I have no way of knowing how long a cold would necessarily be WITHOUT the tea.
I'd prefer to pick up after myself. When I lived in China, people littered like crazy, because the government employed people to sweep the streets regularly.
This resulted in an amazing display of irresponsibility. People would throw glass bottles out of buses. Children would buy candy, dropping the wrappers after them as they went. Even though the street sweepers went through regularly, the streets were still filthy and coated in tiny bits of shattered glass.
I know that's not liable to happen here, but I have this need to leave very little behind when I'm in public.
Wow. Having worked in a theater before, I can tell you that gratitude is the farthest thing from a cleaner's mind when they find a bunch of people's leftover bags and cups lying on the ground. I had enough spilled soda to mop up. Really, take your bag with you.
Dont use this as an excuse not to pick up your crap. I have worked in those service jobs and let me tell you, they will still hire people to clean, even if the place is relitively clean (dont be pigs and leave your sh** everywhere).
I will add my input to your discussion. I have been sick since June with yeast infection have felt TERRIBLE. I have been through 3 rounds of Diflucan and 1 Round of Nystatin. None of which did a thing. However just two days ago I start the dubious garlic approach and I will list what has gone away in two days that did not go away with traditional meds. Closed sinuses, clogged chest, splitting headaches, poor bowels just to name the most obvious in my case. In addition with all natural and unsweetend yogurt and I am doing so much better that my MD has asked me to come in on his dime!
This really is ridiculous to me. Lately, I've been changing our family's lifestyle a bit, because I really do think it's important to save for the environment. As a matter of fact, just the other day I cussed out my husband for throwing out his garbage out the car window. Now his car just fills up with garbage instead :) But I mean....if they don't use toilet paper, how smelly are they to be around? Or do they use newspaper or what? Of course that would leave ink streaks! They could hve just purchased recycled toilet paper couldn't they?
It's important to distinguish between work that's worth doing and work that's not.
In the case of work that businesses are pushing off on their customers, the work is clearly worth doing (or their customers wouldn't do it--after all, they're not getting paid). Whether employers pay someone to do that work or let their customers do it largely depends on custom and tradition, modified by a constant back-and-forth between the businesses trying to push work off on their customers and the customers voting with their purchases, choosing one business over another after taking all the factors (price, service, location, quality, etc.) into account.
Make-work--work that's not worth doing, that is only being done because someone is being paid and needs to look busy--is a terrible, soul-destroying thing. There's not much that's worse than having to look busy when you've got nothing to do. It does the worker no good, the business no good, and society no good.
Even worse than make-work is anti-work (if I can coin a term)--destroying perfectly good stuff in order to create work for someone. It not only benefits no one, it does actual harm.
My post is really only about the first sort: work that's worth doing, and the interplay between customer and business in deciding who does it.
Oh, and to refer back specifically to movie theaters, let me just say that movie theaters have many fewer employees than they did 30 or 40 years ago. It's mostly structural efficiencies (one concession stand for a dozen screens) and partially technological (modern projection equipment doesn't need to be constantly attended by a skilled projectionist), but a good bit of it is the well-trained customers who do the job of tidying up the theater.
"When I leave my empty popcorn bag on the floor of a movie theater, I figure I'm helping save someone's job."
Sorry, this is a ridiculous statement. The staff at a movie theater have *lots* of other stuff to do, and leaving your personal trash on the floor simply makes more work for them to do in the same amount of time.
Hi there, I use a few minutes here and there to enter competitions. I have won quite a few things now although nothing major (I always hope for the best!). Once I have finished with the prize - if it is a book or DVD say - I sell it on Amazon and make a couple of pounds (I am in the UK). I have won quite a few beauty product type prizes which have meant I haven't had to buy stuff for a while!
I have often thought the same thing especially at ball games. At a ball game or other event where a lot of people have been crowded into a small space it seems to make more sense to get the people out quickly than holding up the process by filling up trash cans at the exit. Trash cans at those kind of places seem to get filled up quickly and become useless after a short period of time.
I've also been in jobs where productivity was discouraged. In one job I had I was expected to count incoming donations for a non-profit organization but if I counted fast enough I would have nothing to do later in the day yet if I counted too slow I was called down for not being productive so I learned how to count just fast enough and create "double-checking" procedures to stretch it out just right.
I also had a summer job at a scout camp where I would teach campers merit badge classes. If my class was small and we got finished with the subject material I had to make up projects to keep them occupied.
I'm sure in a lot of production environments you see a lot of this. No employee was to reveal that their is 'free time" and will learn how to work the system and sadly a lot of employers will not respect employees when they suggest new ideas for the company because that is not their job. The good companies however will respect and cultivate that.
Maybe the "clean up crew" can be given chances to do new things related to better customer service, store organization, etc.
I remember one job I had where I made some suggestions regarding marketing but instead they hired a consulting firm where they paid them for that one project what I would have made over three years and most of the things they did were things I had suggested.
Now I have my own company and while I a allows looking to reduce the amount of "busy work" We are on the constant look out of innovative ways to help our clients.
This is commonly called the broken window fallacy and it goes like this:
"If someone throws a stone into a shop window, the owner needs to repair it. This puts people to work and increases total output. Since this creates jobs, would we be better off breaking lots of windows and repairing them? Most folks would say this would be nonsense, since although it would employ labor, there would be no net benefit to society." continued
So how do you best keep carrots?
I like them but will sometime get a bag, eat a few and then not eat more, and then a couple of days latter when I want some they have gone bad.
regardless if I keep'em in the cubboard or the freezer.
So how do I best keep carrots?
Yeah, it's true, there is a difference. And since people are paid to clean up, I suppose that there's nothing wrong with leaving a bag behind.
I just feel like some people make a real point of making a mess, because they know that someone has to clean up after them. When I worked my first job as a waitress, the customers who were the worst (and who tipped the worst) were the ones who would let their kids open up every packet of sugar and spill the grains everywhere. Yeah, I HAD to clean it up, but that didn't mean that they HAD to make such a big mess.
It's because of this that I always stack my dishes for waitresses. And I wipe up my mess. And I tip like crazy. Technology will have to advance a LOT before service jobs are usurped by robots. My leaving a bigger mess behind isn't doing anyone any favors.
Am I reading too much into this?
I do pay someone to clean my own house. It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to pay for her 4 hours of cleaning. And she is not sufficiently skilled to get a job that is "better" for society. I save time and earn more money, doing something I prefer over cleaning.
I also think there is a difference between throwing trash on public streets and leaving trash behind you at the place of business that sold it to you.
This is wonderful news about the hospitals, but what do you do if your medical bills have gone beyond the hospital and are now in the possession of a collectin agency? No dice, right? Or is there some way to negotiate that as well?
This is lame I was bored doing any of it. While this did take some time it was useless time wasted.
I agree with the commenter who described the clean-up jobs as an example of the broken window fallacy. The net gain is greater if we don't create the mess in the first place, and the labor that would have gone into maintenance is diverted to the production of new goods.
As I see it, the issue with self-service is whether we, as consumers, are willing to pay more to have someone do things for us that we could do ourselves (or do without). Older folks might remember when gas stations had attendants who not only pumped your gas but also cleaned your windshield and checked your oil. Self-service stations were able to sell gas at a lower price because they didn't have to pay these attendants' wages. And as consumers we chose to go with them rather than continue to pay more for the old-fashioned service. In fact, there was so little demand for the old-fashioned service that it has almost completely disappeared.
Do you hire someone to clean your house or do it yourself? Mow your own lawn? Same principle.
In Oregon, they have a law against pumping your own gas, so they still have attendants. This is a case of government interference in the marketplace. Suppose there were laws forbidding you to clean your own house or mow your own lawn, in order to protect the jobs of people who do these things. Would that be a good thing? I don't think so.
Do-it-yourself is a key strategy of frugality. I see no reason why it shouldn't be practiced in the business world just as it is at home. If bagging my own groceries or using a self-service checkout can save me some money, I'm all for it.
On the other hand, there are lots of things where I don't have the necessary expertise, competence, or interest in doing them myself. And some things, like proofreading or editing, seem to require, by their very nature, that another person does them. So there's always going to be a market for other people to sell their services to me.
Andrea - Thanks for taking a thoughtful 2nd look at this family.
It is unfathomable to me just why this man's experiment causes so many people to spit venom. He's not telling other people how to live, but showing them what can be done by example. And if he effects even minor, environmentally positive changes amongst his readers, then any damage from publishing is likely offset by the changes he has inspired.
And while I don't think it's a publicity stunt, I couldn't care less if it was. Maybe some good will come of it. Who is he harming? His family is happy and healthy.
For some unknown reason, lots of people take his experiment as a personal attack, but I'm thankful that there are people like him who are willing to withstand all the negativity in order to try to do something positive.
I'm with you on littering: It's an evil and disgusting thing. It makes the city less attractive, less pleasant, and less safe. I don't litter, and I often pick up litter that I see.
Maybe throwing away trash was a poor example of the general issue of businesses trying to get customers to do the work for free. I picked it because of my vivid recallection of that bus driver from my 6th grade field trip, but maybe I should have gone with self-service checkouts or the so-called customer service provided by telephone robots--something everyone hates. Because I think the issue applies to all the work that customers do for free: If it's essential to the sale, and if the customers won't do it for free, then the employer needs to hire someone to do it.
I should also make clear--I certainly expect no gratitude from the workers in the theaters who pick up my empty popcorn bag. But if the theater owners managed to train another 20 or 30 percent of their patrons to take everything to the trash cans, how long do you think it be before they decided that they could get by with paying one fewer employee to keep things clean? Based on my experience, I'd guess less than a week.
I think a lot of what WiseBread is about is looking at our prejudices and cultural training to see how things really are and could be - and you've demonstrated it, by saying your previous opinions and how they've shifted. Thank you for looking into what Colin Beavin's reactions are to those who had those prior thoughts, too!
Both under the Jobs section and the Gigs section. And don't limit yourself to your own city - in fact, I found this blogging job through a job posting on the New York craigslist.
I've also found many other freelance gigs on CL.
I think the Guest has a point, even if it sounded a little harsh - there are lots of herbal "cures" that really don't do anything. I've found that my tea appears to decrease the lenght of a cold, but then again, I can't PROVE it because I have no way of knowing how long a cold would necessarily be WITHOUT the tea.
It does have antibacterial and antifungal qualities, though. http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2004/Projects/J1310.pdf
I'd prefer to pick up after myself. When I lived in China, people littered like crazy, because the government employed people to sweep the streets regularly.
This resulted in an amazing display of irresponsibility. People would throw glass bottles out of buses. Children would buy candy, dropping the wrappers after them as they went. Even though the street sweepers went through regularly, the streets were still filthy and coated in tiny bits of shattered glass.
I know that's not liable to happen here, but I have this need to leave very little behind when I'm in public.
Wow. Having worked in a theater before, I can tell you that gratitude is the farthest thing from a cleaner's mind when they find a bunch of people's leftover bags and cups lying on the ground. I had enough spilled soda to mop up. Really, take your bag with you.
Water, sweetheart. Water and cloth washcloths. And maybe soap. It's not that difficult. Not that I would do it, because I hate doing laundry.
Now that is what's important! Some people are feeling much better... I'm so happy to hear that you are on the up-and-up!
Dont use this as an excuse not to pick up your crap. I have worked in those service jobs and let me tell you, they will still hire people to clean, even if the place is relitively clean (dont be pigs and leave your sh** everywhere).
I will add my input to your discussion. I have been sick since June with yeast infection have felt TERRIBLE. I have been through 3 rounds of Diflucan and 1 Round of Nystatin. None of which did a thing. However just two days ago I start the dubious garlic approach and I will list what has gone away in two days that did not go away with traditional meds. Closed sinuses, clogged chest, splitting headaches, poor bowels just to name the most obvious in my case. In addition with all natural and unsweetend yogurt and I am doing so much better that my MD has asked me to come in on his dime!
I'd love to freelance, but never know where to find jobs. Any suggestions?
This really is ridiculous to me. Lately, I've been changing our family's lifestyle a bit, because I really do think it's important to save for the environment. As a matter of fact, just the other day I cussed out my husband for throwing out his garbage out the car window. Now his car just fills up with garbage instead :) But I mean....if they don't use toilet paper, how smelly are they to be around? Or do they use newspaper or what? Of course that would leave ink streaks! They could hve just purchased recycled toilet paper couldn't they?
It's important to distinguish between work that's worth doing and work that's not.
In the case of work that businesses are pushing off on their customers, the work is clearly worth doing (or their customers wouldn't do it--after all, they're not getting paid). Whether employers pay someone to do that work or let their customers do it largely depends on custom and tradition, modified by a constant back-and-forth between the businesses trying to push work off on their customers and the customers voting with their purchases, choosing one business over another after taking all the factors (price, service, location, quality, etc.) into account.
Make-work--work that's not worth doing, that is only being done because someone is being paid and needs to look busy--is a terrible, soul-destroying thing. There's not much that's worse than having to look busy when you've got nothing to do. It does the worker no good, the business no good, and society no good.
Even worse than make-work is anti-work (if I can coin a term)--destroying perfectly good stuff in order to create work for someone. It not only benefits no one, it does actual harm.
My post is really only about the first sort: work that's worth doing, and the interplay between customer and business in deciding who does it.
Oh, and to refer back specifically to movie theaters, let me just say that movie theaters have many fewer employees than they did 30 or 40 years ago. It's mostly structural efficiencies (one concession stand for a dozen screens) and partially technological (modern projection equipment doesn't need to be constantly attended by a skilled projectionist), but a good bit of it is the well-trained customers who do the job of tidying up the theater.
Thanks for the ideas everyone.
"When I leave my empty popcorn bag on the floor of a movie theater, I figure I'm helping save someone's job."
Sorry, this is a ridiculous statement. The staff at a movie theater have *lots* of other stuff to do, and leaving your personal trash on the floor simply makes more work for them to do in the same amount of time.
To say nothing of the arrogance involved.
Hi there, I use a few minutes here and there to enter competitions. I have won quite a few things now although nothing major (I always hope for the best!). Once I have finished with the prize - if it is a book or DVD say - I sell it on Amazon and make a couple of pounds (I am in the UK). I have won quite a few beauty product type prizes which have meant I haven't had to buy stuff for a while!
I have often thought the same thing especially at ball games. At a ball game or other event where a lot of people have been crowded into a small space it seems to make more sense to get the people out quickly than holding up the process by filling up trash cans at the exit. Trash cans at those kind of places seem to get filled up quickly and become useless after a short period of time.
I've also been in jobs where productivity was discouraged. In one job I had I was expected to count incoming donations for a non-profit organization but if I counted fast enough I would have nothing to do later in the day yet if I counted too slow I was called down for not being productive so I learned how to count just fast enough and create "double-checking" procedures to stretch it out just right.
I also had a summer job at a scout camp where I would teach campers merit badge classes. If my class was small and we got finished with the subject material I had to make up projects to keep them occupied.
I'm sure in a lot of production environments you see a lot of this. No employee was to reveal that their is 'free time" and will learn how to work the system and sadly a lot of employers will not respect employees when they suggest new ideas for the company because that is not their job. The good companies however will respect and cultivate that.
Maybe the "clean up crew" can be given chances to do new things related to better customer service, store organization, etc.
I remember one job I had where I made some suggestions regarding marketing but instead they hired a consulting firm where they paid them for that one project what I would have made over three years and most of the things they did were things I had suggested.
Now I have my own company and while I a allows looking to reduce the amount of "busy work" We are on the constant look out of innovative ways to help our clients.
This is commonly called the broken window fallacy and it goes like this:
"If someone throws a stone into a shop window, the owner needs to repair it. This puts people to work and increases total output. Since this creates jobs, would we be better off breaking lots of windows and repairing them? Most folks would say this would be nonsense, since although it would employ labor, there would be no net benefit to society."
continued