Retail Wreckage

[jbocker]

With all this doom and gloom in the retailing space, I wonder where the jobs for the lesser skilled school leavers will come from. Online certainly doesn't need the amount of workers involved and on top of this more and more of the supermarkets are forcing shoppers to the unmanned checkouts.

I WLL NOT go to a self serve queue, I will go to a human operated check out even if I have to wait in a line. I can have a conversation with a human and they pack my bags. I cant see the attraction of a crowded zone where you struggle with bags and have a machine squawking at me 'put this here, put that there' making me look like a complete idiot (I do that very easily without ANY help).
I swear if I used it and that f little thing tells me have nice day ..I will rip the top off a 4 Litre OMO sensitive cold water laundry bottle and jam it up its card shoot and flush it till its totally Googlised.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

All the stores will move to the Amazon model. Only work will be for packers and despatchers, watched every minute by cctv, strictly limited toilet breaks and minimal wages.

CCTV - such obsolete tech. This from John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline, a few weeks ago

I wasn’t prepared for how exhausting working at Amazon would be. It took my body two weeks to adjust to the agony of walking 15 miles a day and doing hundreds of squats. But as the physical stress got more manageable, the mental stress of being held to the productivity standards of a robot became an even bigger problem.

Technology has enabled employers to enforce a work pace with no room for inefficiency, squeezing every ounce of downtime out of workers’ days. The scan gun I used to do my job was also my own personal digital manager. Every single thing I did was monitored and timed. After I completed a task, the scan gun not only immediately gave me a new one but also started counting down the seconds I had left to do it.

It also alerted a manager if I had too many minutes of “Time Off Task.” At my warehouse, you were expected to be off task for only 18 minutes per shift—mine was 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.—which included using the bathroom, getting a drink of water or just walking slower than the algorithm dictated, though we did have a 30-minute unpaid lunch. It created a constant buzz of low-grade panic, and the isolation and monotony of the work left me feeling as if I were losing my mind. Imagine experiencing that month after month....

 

[jbocker]

CCTV - such obsolete tech. This from John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline, a few weeks ago

Hey they sound like the person I married, uh oh, the person I married has noticed me and coming over, I think I am about to b

 

[Smurf1976]

All the stores will move to the Amazon model. Only work will be for packers and despatchers, watched every minute by cctv, strictly limited toilet breaks and minimal wages.

Sadly I think you're right.

At least until the retailers realise that unemployed people can't afford to buy what they're selling and reducing "retail" to a minor activity means it disappears off the radar of governments.

 

[tinhat]

Listen to all the whinging and moaning. What do you people care about the younger generation? You got to keep your franking credits so shut up!

 

[basilio]

CCTV - such obsolete tech. This from John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline, a few weeks ago

That was absolutely terrifying. That degree of relentless control and extraction of work.
It would truly drive one mad - or homicidal.

I wonder what the mental health of Amazon workers is like ?

 

[qldfrog]

Listen to all the whinging and moaning. What do you people care about the younger generation? You got to keep your franking credits so shut up!

Where is the unlike button?
So it seems @tinhat is happy with self checking and online buying
Allow us oldies to worries for our kids..but true, with universal income and labour in power, we will be ok..
Just tax the rich bastards...

 

[Smurf1976]

Listen to all the whinging and moaning. What do you people care about the younger generation? You got to keep your franking credits so shut up!

I think that’s a ridiculous argument really.

It’s the oldest trick in the book and one that’s extremely well known to the unions. Divide and conquer.

Raise the lowest tax brackets to a minimum of 30% for self-funded retirees today.

Tomorrow it’s about part time workers not paying any tax so it gets raised for workers too. And so on. Seen this game with plenty of other things and that’s how it works.

That the proposed changes only affected those at the bottom, having zero impact on high income earners, was the give away as to the real intent. Putting a stop to economic mobility.

That it didn’t affect me personally is precisely why I opposed it. It targeted the wrong group completely.

More to the point of the thread, that there was a threat to jack up taxes in a very significant manner to one group will have scared anyone paying attention that they’d better prepare for tough times economically.

Add that to the likes of Amazon getting away with what they’re alleged to be doing and the loss of jobs generally and it sends a message that there’s trouble ahead, you could be next, and leads to consumers cutting non-essential spending.

That’s the issue really. Anyone with their eyes open can see that the situation isn’t good, there’s a real chance of it getting substantially worse, so they’re paying down debt and building up savings as a priority. End result = not many people in the shops.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

WHAT IS ‘ENTERING ADMINISTRATION?

Administrators are experts who take over companies that are broke. Their job is to salvage something out of the mess.

What they do is get together everyone who is owed money and try to agree on a plan. The plan usually involves cutting costs by closing stores and trying to sell off the remaining business. Sometimes a buyer can be found and sometimes it can’t.

A company that goes broke usually has a lot of debts. The big advantage an administrator has is once a company is in administration not all debts are equal. Some people will get their full money, others will not.

Staff payments are the highest level of debts, so they get paid first. Then bank loans get paid off. Suppliers are usually at the back of the list, and when administrators take over, tradies and other people who supplied things might find their best option is to agree to get a few cents back for every dollar they were owed.

 

[Smurf1976]

I think that’s a ridiculous argument really.

My apologies for the "tone" of that comment.

Whilst I don't agree with the point I was responding to, I could have expressed it a bit more politely than that I think.

My apologies to tinhat.

 

[qldfrog]

My apologies for the "tone" of that comment.

Whilst I don't agree with the point I was responding to, I could have expressed it a bit more politely than that I think.

My apologies to tinhat.

Good on you @Smurf1976
In that specific instance , I believe you had enough to be angry but we all have to be better
"Listen to all the whinging and moaning." What do you people care about the younger generation? You got to keep your franking credits so shut up!
None the less..I understand @tinhat might have had a bad day or personal issues..who has not...

I hope @tinhat , who BTW can have pretty sensible arguments and reasoning especially on mining stocks will do the same.

 

[qldfrog]

To go back to the thread, I always avoid self checkout just to give a job to usually a youngster and have a bit of chat..we are human, I dread the amazon model

 

[SirRumpole]

I will try to go to a human , but most of the convenience stores have two humans to 10 self service , so it's getting harder.

 

[macca]

I will try to go to a human , but most of the convenience stores have two humans to 10 self service , so it's getting harder.

And if I wish to pay in cash then it can a wait to access the cash self serve machine.

Since people woke up to the rip off loyalty cards it would seem they intend to gather data by insisting people use CCs

In the meantime, Aldi continues to provide checkout ops and cash or card, getting busier all the time around here, so much so they are building a new one twice the size of their rented building

 

[Smurf1976]

"Listen to all the whinging and moaning." What do you people care about the younger generation? You got to keep your franking credits so shut up!

The underlying issue I see there is that one by one, opportunities for the ordinary person to improve their circumstances financially are being eroded or even outright abolished.

Less than one generation ago having any degree from a proper university was a virtual guarantee of earning an above average income. These days however having what I'll call a non-elite degree, so something that isn't medicine and so on, is akin to someone in 1970 having completed grade 10 with decent marks. It's the base standard these days and nothing particularly special. If your aim is to use education to open the door to wealth then the standard required in 2020 is vastly higher than it was even one generation ago and reality is we can't all be doctors etc.

At the other end of the scale, manual labour has also been devalued. Looking at basic manual or service type jobs, they pay barely more now than they did 15 years ago which after living costs is a reduction in real terms.

Penalty rates are another one to the extent they've been wound back. Choosing to work when others won't no longer offers the opportunities it used to in some industries.

Overtime is another one. There wouldn't be too many in 2020 ever asked to do a double shift since the employer would be too scared of ending up being sued for something. Simply putting in seriously long hours in a job that paid hourly wages, just saying yes every single time the boss wanted you to work more hours, was an option at one time but it largely isn't today.

Bank interest was another thing that was available to anyone able to spend less than they earned and with no special financial knowledge required. Save some money, go into your bank branch and ask about term deposits or call accounts and you'd be signed up and earning a decent return on the spot, no prior financial or investment knowledge required. With interest rates being what they are, that option has been reduced to the point of being impractical indeed it barely offers any income at all.

Second jobs are another one. The online world has opened up more opportunities and the likes of Uber mean that anyone with a reasonably modern car can be a taxi driver. Problem is, in doing so they've wiped out pretty much all profit that was to be had from those things such that taxi driving is no longer a means to earn a decent income for many people. It was never a glamorous job, but at least it used to pay enough that someone could make a living doing it but not these days.

Which brings me back to the franking credits and so on. Investing in shares and property is one of the few things the average person still has access to which has the potential to significantly improve their circumstances financially. That someone wants to end it ought surprise nobody but it's one of the few things left.

Against that backdrop and with rising essential living costs it's no wonder that consumers aren't spending on anything they don't actually need and we're seeing all these shops close.

 

[Smurf1976]

To go back to the thread, I always avoid self checkout just to give a job to usually a youngster and have a bit of chat..we are human, I dread the amazon model

I normally shop at Foodland which doesn't have these self-serve checkouts or at least my local one doesn't.

The Amazon model in particular sounds like something that shouldn't be encouraged.

 

[SirRumpole]

The underlying issue I see there is that one by one, opportunities for the ordinary person to improve their circumstances financially are being eroded or even outright abolished.

Maybe we should add increasing red tape, ohs regs, compliance charges and heavy taxation on small businesses that makes it extremely difficult to start up your own business, especially if it employs people.

 

[moXJO]

We ran too long without a recession. Everything needs to reset, government charges included. We have hit a ceiling on what's realistically affordable in this country.

I was currently buying some industrial machinery. It's $12000 if I buy it here. It's $3000 for the exact same machine from overseas. Delivery and taxes will probably add $1500.

 

[Zaxon]

Personally, I find Amazon to be a benefit. In the last week, I've specced and built a computer from scratch. In the past, that was always done by ordering the individual parts online from a range of different bricks-and-mortar computer stores. For this build, my plan was the same, but when I price compared, I found Amazon to be similar or better in price. So this computer build has come 100% from Amazon AU and Amazon US.

Firstly, most of the parts I bought on Amazon are from brick-and-mortar stores anyway. And in many cases where the "3rd party" sent the item themselves, I was able to google their address and see a lovely computer store somewhere, and definitely one I didn't know about and would have never bought from without the benefit of Amazon.

Secondly, some of these computer stores have rather hash sounding return policies:
1) You receive a faulty product from them
2) You pay for the postage back to them out of own own pocket
3) They "test" it. They have 100% discretion over whether they deem it faulty or not. If not, they'll charge you a 20% restocking fee. Really?

With Amazon, if a product is faulty (which I get to determine), I can ship it back and have my postage costs covered, and be guaranteed a refund. It's a much "safer", more customer focused experience.

 

[Smurf1976]

We ran too long without a recession. Everything needs to reset, government charges included. We have hit a ceiling on what's realistically affordable in this country.

I think a big part of the problem is that a huge chunk of consumers’ income is now committed to “fixed” costs, mostly either government or quasi-government in nature.

Consider someone who’s an employee on fairly normal wages:

Income tax, GST on most purchses, business taxation built into the price of everything you buy, registration and licenses just so that you can own and drive a car, fuel excise on top of that, stamp duty on various things, council rates and so on.

All those are either not optional at all, or can be avoided only by not having a car etc and between them government’s taking a huge chunk of the average worker’s earnings.

Then there’s the unavoidable expenses such as utilities, public transport fares and so on with most of those having gone down the track of charging more rather than reducing costs.

Don’t even mention land prices.

End result is that business costs are uncompetitive and consumers have stuff all left for discretionary spending after they’ve paid the long list of taxes and other essential costs.

The only solution I can see requires a broad reset. Throw out most of the ideological stuff, focus on real efficiency instead of theoretical stuff, and end the practice of taking with one hand and simultaneously giving to the exact same people with the other.

A big mistake which has been made over the past 30 years is to equate moving something off the government’s books with small government.

If you take something that’s done by a team of say 500 workers actually doing the physical work and outsource it to a contractor at what ends up being triple the price then that’s an increase in the size of government not a decrease. You might have 500 fewer workers on the books but the tax which needs to be collected has gone up not down if the overall cost is higher.

I’ve seen that exact scenario by the way when I worked in the PS as such. Things outsourced at higher cost but it was driven by ideology to cut staff numbers not to save money. The end result is higher taxes which then become a burden on real private enterprises, those actually creating wealth, as distinct from those which are merely privately owned government departments in practice.

I don’t advocate abolishing the PS or anything that drastic but I do advocate actual efficiency and cost reductions not silly ideology which says that spending $1 million a year to get a single tradesman on $80K off the books is a good idea. It’s not a good use of resources and sadly it’s not a hypothetical example.