June 23, 2011

Walmart discriminates against women because its male managers work really hard

In an op-ed in the NYT, UCSB historian Nelson Lichtenstein explains that the sex discrimination lawsuit against Walmart was intended to rectify the injustice that ambitious young men tend to work harder and make more sacrifices for the job than family-oriented middle-aged women:
Walmart's Authoritarian Culture 
There are tens of thousands of experienced Wal-Mart women who would like to be promoted to the first managerial rung, salaried assistant store manager. But Wal-Mart makes it impossible for many of them to take that post, because its ruthless management style structures the job itself as one that most women, and especially those with young children or a relative to care for, would find difficult to accept. 
Why? Because, for all the change that has swept over the company, at the store level there is still a fair amount of the old communal sociability. Recognizing that workers steeped in that culture make poor candidates for assistant managers, who are the front lines in enforcing labor discipline, Wal-Mart insists that almost all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away. 
For young men in a hurry, that’s an inconvenience; for middle-aged women caring for families, this corporate reassignment policy amounts to sex discrimination. True, Wal-Mart is hardly alone in demanding that rising managers sacrifice family life, but few companies make relocation such a fixed policy, and few have employment rolls even a third the size. 
The obstacles to women’s advancement do not stop there. The workweek for salaried managers is around 50 hours or more, which can surge to 80 or 90 hours a week during holiday seasons. Not unexpectedly, some managers think women with family responsibilities would balk at such demands, and it is hardly to the discredit of thousands of Wal-Mart women that they may be right. 

So, it's sex discrimination if you hire harder-working people to be managers and more of them turn out to be men? Sounds like that proposition has four votes on the Supreme Court.

It's kind of hard to argue that Walmart would have been more successful if only it had hired more women managers. What else would Walmart have done? Conquered Russia? Colonized Alpha Centauri?

One could make the argument that the point of disparate impact discrimination law is to redistribute wealth to blacks (the Slavery Tax) without hurting their feelings too much. Okay, But redistributing wealth to women who work for Walmart away from the (mostly female) customers of Walmart by making Walmart less efficient via colossal lawsuits seems vastly inefficient, except for the lawyers involved. Women who work at Walmart are quite likely to have menfolk who work at Walmart.
There used to be a remedy for this sort of managerial authoritarianism: it was called a union, which bargained over not only wages and pensions but also the kind of qualitative issues, including promotion and transfer policies, that have proved so vexing for non-unionized employees at Wal-Mart and other big retailers. 
For a time it seemed as if the class-action lawsuit might be a partial substitute.

Okay, now I'm really confused: Walmart was guilty of sex discrimination in its managerial ranks by not having a union? Since when is management unionized?

Sam Walton's theory was that a bunch of Ozark hillbillies could outmanage the city slickers by working harder and more honestly: especially by not letting Walmart managers become friends with the people they did business with.

Personally, as a former corporate type who made made some sales calls on Walmart in the early 1990s, I think Walmart's management should belong to a Corporate Types Union that would enforce rules of modern corporate niceness on Walmart managers like, yes, they will go out to lunch with suppliers and no they won't meet with suppliers only in their windowless interrogation cells.

73 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my experience, most history professors are male. There's something horribly wrong with history.

beowulf said...

Okay, now I'm really confused: Walmart was guilty of sex discrimination in its managerial ranks by not having a union? Since when is management unionized?

So far as I know, only the US Postal Service does that.

A union representing postal supervisors, managers and postmasters sent a letter to the White House late last week, the Washington Post reports, asking Mr. Obama to reconsider some recent comments he made comparing the Postal Service with UPS and FedEx.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-5250541-503544.html

Anonymous said...

If one more liberal supreme court appointment replaces a conservative vote on the court, we can kiss the fourteenth amendment good-bye. It is bad enough that Obama has stacked justice department, the courts and the federal bureaucracy with as many preferential treatment lawyers as possible, but if he obtains a majority of like minded justices on the supreme court, they will codify into law the principle protected classes have higher status before the law. It is a nightmare that has had a trial run for the last 20 years in universities and will become the law of the land if a liberal majority is obtained on the supreme court.

Obama can be George Bush in foreign affairs and his loyal followers will swallow it, but his base of support will collapse if he betrays them by dropping support for group preferences.

Anonymous said...

In my experience, most history professors are male. There's something horribly wrong with history.

Curiously, now that you mention it, all my history teachers were female.

SPImmortal said...

Actually the vote was a unanimous 9-0 to drop the Walmart class action lawsuit.

Where the justices split 5-4 was in whether such a broad class action lawsuit was valid to begin with.

Anonymous said...

"all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away."

Now, this is what I thought. All big chain stores and big box stores like Staples work this way. It is a hell of a barrier that separates the men from the women, for sure. Rarely do I hear of a woman taking one of these promotions..personally I'd be grateful that it draws a bright line, do you want this kind of success, or not? Choose.

I wonder if any of the chains promote to manager from local talent, and how stable it is. Certainly the smaller convenience stores work that way - ?

Black Death said...

I don't know if it's still true, but it used to be a policy in the military for officers newly promoted up from the ranks to be transferred to another unit so that they would not be supervising their former mates. Guess that wasn't discriminatory.

The Misspeller in Chief said...

Correction: Nelson Lichtenstein

I couldn't find him until under Norman at UCSB.

Feel free to delete this message.

Anonymous said...

I've seen this attitude among women lawyers. Somehow it's discrimination if men who don't take maternity leaves or work shorter hours in order to take kids to soccer practice make partner faster.

Anonymous said...

Come on Steve. Get with the program. America is such a rich country that it can afford to give women a more equitable slice of the pie.

Until China overtakes us, that is. Then we might have to work harder, but until then we should all relax.

DCThrowback said...

@Black Death

Spot on. At the NCO level, newly promoted E-5s are often re-assigned to units down the street or PCS (permanently change station) for the same exact reasons.

soren said...

I saw on drudge that white babies are a minority now. That's great timing since today is the 8th anniversary of the Grutter v Bolling decision where O'Connor said that affirmative action wouldn't be needed in 25 years... or 17 years from now...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20110623/D9O1HG5G0.html

Dutch Boy said...

I am not sympathetic to feminist claims but the Walmart business model has to be the worst, most socially-destructive in the history of capitalism. It combines in one big, greasy ball: poorly-paid workers, Gestapo-syle management, sweatshop-produced merchandise and an immensely wealthy absentee ownership.Almost makes me wish the ladies had won.

Anonymous said...

I see most basketball players are black.

Discrimination against whites.

I see most hockey players are white.

Discrimination against blacks.

I see most truck drivers are male.

Discrimination against females.

I see most dental hygenists are females.

Discrimination against males.

I see most Palyboy playmates are very beautiful.

Discrimination against unattractive females.

Discrimination, like beauty, seems to be in the eyes of the beholder.

Fred said...

"So far as I know, only the US Postal Service does that."

It's actually not uncommon in the public sector (school principals in NYC have a union, for example), but Steve's right that it wouldn't apply to Walmart managers.

Anonymous said...

Since when does a union tell a company who to promote and move around in the managerial ranks? Why do so many members of the media establishment get their panties twisted over a company they never patronize anyway? It's not like this is Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdale's. Oh, that's probably why.

Anonymous said...

be honest Steve, you're just mad that
somewhere, somehow, a black person is getting away with something.

Anonymous said...

Lichtenstein is a full professor with an endowed chair, director for the Center for The Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, has authored or edited at least 7 books, got a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and won various awards for his scholarship. Now, whether or not his scholarship is of dubious intellectual value is besides the point--clearly Professor Lichtenstein worked too hard, thus denying some poor female graduate student with a kid an opportunity to succeed in academia and become a tenured professor at a UC with an endowed chair and director of an institute.

It is absurdity of the highest order for a successful academic to call out Walmart's corporate culture. Everything he says about Walmart holds true for academics...you're expected to work 50+ hours in grad school, through a postdoc, and as a professor. Sometimes, yes, during grant writing season, finals grading season or what have you, you might have to work 80 or 90 hour weeks. You're expected to move around a lot. First you have to move for graduate school. Then possibly a post doc or two or three. Then for your first academic position. Then, depending on whether you get tenure, you might have to move again. It is a very nomadic lifestyle until you finally reach the pinacle of tenure and get to write ridiculous op eds for the NYT.

This isn't an exception. Any competitive field this turns out to be the case. Want to be an attorney? Expect to work long hours and if you want to juggle a family, tough. You still need to put in your 80 hour week. Want to be a physician? Expect to work ridiculous hours (which is why I know a number of female medical students who were all asked during interviews if they intended on having families any time soon). Moving up the corporate food chain is the same deal.

Of course, we've grown soft with government jobs making people think that hard work is important to having a cushy, successful career. And since government at some level employs about 1/3rd of the populace (I believe that was the recent figure I saw), well it isn't surprising that middle aged moms think they can get something for nothing.

I expect then that come the next faculty hire in Lichtenstein's department I can submit a CV with no qualifications and tell them in my personal statement that I don't expect to have to actually work and they'll hire me at UCSB and give me an office with an ocean view.

Anonymous said...

"So, it's sex discrimination if you hire harder-working people to be managers and more of them turn out to be men? Sounds like that proposition has four votes on the Supreme Court."

No, all nine justices agreed to throw out the class action certification. It's just that four of them used Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) instead of 23(a)(2).

stari_momak said...

While I agree with the Supreme Court decision, two things give me pause.

1) Walmart, if seems to me, has been one of the great aids in the destruction of American manufacturing capabilities. It essentially mainlines cheap Chinese goods into our body politic. Likewise there is something so low brow about the place that it seems to me to be a blight. John Nash -- heck, even before Nash with Hume and implicitly Hobbes -- taught us that the 'market is not always right'. It's capacity for not just creative destruction but destructive destruction is well known. On the one hand it's great to see a bunch of old line, Christian Americans totally dominate retailing, but on the other hand we get this:

www.peopleofwalmart.com

2) It seems to me that there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube as far as feminism goes, but that the Nordic countries and Franch have had some success in raising birthrates among their indigenous populations through generous maternal (and paternal) leave policies, encouraging flexible work hours, getting away from super long working hours (which in my brief experience in corporate management, where at least 25% devoted to preventing your fellow managers from screwing up your work/projects while you weren't around).

Kudzu Bob said...

all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away

WalMart is far from the only large corporation to engage in such a practice, which serves to loosen community bonds, making Americans strangers to one another.

Like Big Government, Big Business does everything it can to weaken Middle America, such as promoting feminism, immigration, and globalism.

If we do not destroy this two-headed monster, it will surely destroy us.

josh said...

Its not just a question of working harder,its also doing what you like and doing what you're good at. Its absurd to think there are lots of women who excel at the game of quant-type work WM managers do.(Which women can even be conceivably up for this type of work? Well educated,affluent white women from good families--in other words,America's princess class,who can do anything they want. Yeah,theyre going to devote their prime fun years to slogging thru Walmart printouts 60 hours a week???)So now we're at the point where we admit that yea,men are smarter,more ambitious and better at a lot of high-pay jobs,but screw you,we're gonna put women there anyway. Maria Shriver comes to mind here.She jumped on board the Dear Leader's braindead plan to force feed more women into engineering schools. So we can achieve the "True Equality",which has so far evaded us. My female friends were aghast at my complete lack of sympathy for (that vicious c*nt)Maria when Ahnuld Gate went down. Not to mention complete lack of surprise. Well,the bambino was a surprise,but the rest of it,nope.

Anonymous said...

Hey, if were're going to start recognizing the "special burdens" that married women face, I have the perfect solution: Revive the old extra pay for married workers with children policy.

Anonymous said...

Oh my, computer industry favors geeky people obsessed with gadgets.

Oh my, math departments favor single men who are crazy about numbers.

Oh my, war photo journalism favors men with big cameras and fast legs.

Oh my, the legal profession favors people with ruthless personalities and gift for gab.

Oh my, fashion industry favors gay men obsessed with design and stuff.

Anonymous said...

US discriminates against goyim because Jews are smarter and work harder.

Anonymous said...

I'll bet the three Jewish justices on the court decided against Walmart. Don't they see the irony of 3 Jews out of 9 in a nation where Jews are only 2% of the population?

And what about half of top 100 pundits being Jewish?

Anonymous said...

"Sam Walton's theory was that a bunch of Ozark hillbillies could outmanage the city slickers by working harder and more honestly"

But Walmart really got off the ground when Walton realized there are 100s of millions of Chinese willing to work hard and cheap.

Anonymous said...

Globalism, of which Walmart is a huge contributor and practitioner, discriminates against middle-class/working-class American whites because it favors the labor of Chinese and Mexicans who are willing to work harder and longer hrs for less.

Anonymous said...

If we do not destroy this two-headed monster, it will surely destroy us.

A little late in the day for this, don't you think?

-Osvaldo M.

helene edwards said...

So far as I know, only the US Postal Service does that.

Welcome to the party, sir, it's quite common for management to be unionized. Take the California Teachers' Association, for example. Its professional staff have their own federally certified union. I believe the same is true of the California Highway Patrol, the prison guards, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true in, e.g., the Forest Service. Doesn't mean it'll ever happen in private industry, but you get the idea.

Anonymous said...

Frankly, females are too prevalent in the workplace already. Most managers are dippy-headed gals, positively hostile to the kind of hard-working, hard-charging, plain-speaking men referred to in this post.

At work, one repeatedly finds that there are basically two kinds of workplaces:

1. A workplace with a female culture, with a very small percentage of male employees on the margins (emasculated and despised) or very high up in the hierarchy (resentfully respected); or

2. A workplace with a male culture, with a noticeable percentage of a few jolly, right-headed women playing ball.

Not both.

Kudzu Bob said...

A little late in the day for this, don't you think?

The same remark could just as easily been directed at Soviet dissidents just a few years before the USSR fell apart.

Indeed, recently there has been a change in the wind, a most distinct change. That you cannot, or choose not, to perceive it is of little consequence.

Anonymous said...

The (bizarre) war against Wal-Mart is a central planners vs. free-marketers battle. Any and every aspect of Wal-Mart's success is attacked by the central planners' media via any avenue available, no matter how tenuous.

dearieme said...

oi, Steve, here's something that might be right up your street, by one of the few social scientists who seems to be an intelligent chap.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n13/david-runciman/swing-for-the-fences

Anonymous said...

Affirmitive action for females has damaged this country far more than affirmitive action for blacks.

Anonymous said...

"Globalism, of which Walmart is a huge contributor and practitioner, discriminates against middle-class/working-class American whites because it favors the labor of Chinese and Mexicans who are willing to work harder and longer hrs for less."

Walmart sells the exact same products everybody else sells. It just so happens that a lot of lower end manufactured goods including toys, home appliances, and clothing tend to be made in China.

What else would you have them do?

Anonymous said...

--especially by not letting Walmart managers become friends with the people they did business with.

This is so important and so misunderstood. "Save the mom and pop store!" shout the friends of mom and pop. The rest of us, though, the outsiders, those too rich, those too poor, those of the wrong ethnic group, whomever, all get different prices and service from mom and pop than mom and pop's friends. Walmart charges me the same price they charge the policeman's wife and hs football quarterback's dad.

Anonymous said...

What do you call the Mexican secret police?

Gestaco.

Anonymous said...

What do you call the homosexual secret police?

GayGB.

Anonymous said...

What do you call the black secret police?

Eff-be-I!!!

airtommy said...

Dutch Boy said...

I am not sympathetic to feminist claims but the Walmart business model has to be the worst, most socially-destructive in the history of capitalism. It combines in one big, greasy ball: poorly-paid workers, Gestapo-syle management, sweatshop-produced merchandise and an immensely wealthy absentee ownership. Almost makes me wish the ladies had won.


I agree with every word!

Luke Lea said...

@stari-momak: "Walmart, if seems to me, has been one of the great aids in the destruction of American manufacturing capabilities. It essentially mainlines cheap Chinese goods into our body politic."

I think it was GATT, which removed tariffs on manufactured goods imported from low-wage countries overseas, that destroyed American manufacturing. It we slapped a ten or twenty percent surcharge on Chinese manufactured goods Walmart would be more likely to buy American.

Anonymous said...

Indeed, recently there has been a change in the wind, a most distinct change. That you cannot, or choose not, to perceive it is of little consequence.

Not the guy you're replying to, but humor me:

What change?

ben tillman said...

Now, whether or not his scholarship is of dubious intellectual value is besides the point--clearly Professor Lichtenstein worked too hard, thus denying some poor female graduate student with a kid an opportunity to succeed in academia and become a tenured professor at a UC with an endowed chair and director of an institute.

It is absurdity of the highest order for a successful academic to call out Walmart's corporate culture. Everything he says about Walmart holds true for academics...


What an outstanding comment!

Anonymous said...

I always thought that Wal Mart shifted from American made products to predominantly Chinese once Sam Walton died? In an effort to squeeze out costs, did they start the China trend, or only follow it? From a business perspective it's perfectly "rational", but many times it is counter to a founders original vision for their company.

NOTA said...

As best I can tell, Wal-Mart seeks the lowest priced suppliers, and then, famously, drives a brutally hard bargain with them. If we don't want the low-cost suppliers to be Chinese factories, that's not a decision to expect Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, or any other for-profit business to make. That's a public policy sort of decision, rather like deciding what labor standards should apply within the US, or what medicines should be available over the counter.

It's reasonable to expect a big company to obey the law, and very smart to make it expensive and painful for them to violate it. It's even reasonable to expect them to go a bit further in terms of basic decency from time to time. But large-scale public policy needs to be made by elected officials at the behest of voters.

ben tillman said...

Welcome to the party, sir, it's quite common for management to be unionized. Take the California Teachers' Association, for example. Its professional staff have their own federally certified union. I believe the same is true of the California Highway Patrol, the prison guards, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true in, e.g., the Forest Service.

They're not management. In those fields, we -- the people -- are the management. And, boy, do we need to get organized!

Mr. Anon said...

"Dutch Boy said...

I am not sympathetic to feminist claims but the Walmart business model has to be the worst, most socially-destructive in the history of capitalism. It combines in one big, greasy ball: poorly-paid workers, Gestapo-syle management, sweatshop-produced merchandise and an immensely wealthy absentee ownership.Almost makes me wish the ladies had won."

I agree. Although a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would have been bad, it's hard for me not to think that anything bad that happens to Walmart is good for America. Walmart is like the snake-cult in Conan the Barbarian - an insidious purveyor of cultural doom.

Anonymous said...

OT: the travails of multiculturalism

German immigrants in Switzerland cause cultural backlash

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15143982,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-cul-2090-rdf

Kudzu Bob said...

Not the guy you're replying to, but humor me:

What change?

If you're too lazy to come up with a pseudonym, then I can’t be bothered to humor you.

airtommy said...

for all the change that has swept over the company, at the store level there is still a fair amount of the old communal sociability. Recognizing that workers steeped in that culture make poor candidates for assistant managers, who are the front lines in enforcing labor discipline, Wal-Mart insists that almost all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away.

This is an eerie simulation of the Soviet strategy of decapitating a town or region by replacing its local leadership with imported leaders who had no ethnic ties to the locals (and thus were less likely to treat them humanely).

Anonymous said...

"If you're too lazy to come up with a pseudonym, then I can’t be bothered to humor you."

u mad, bro?

dc adapter said...

"Frankly, females are too prevalent in the workplace already. Most managers are dippy-headed gals, positively hostile to the kind of hard-working, hard-charging, plain-speaking men referred to in this post."

So you're willing to contribute to the welfare slush-fund to keep women a minimum in workplace? Sometimes this blog really gets surreal.

There are down sides to having a mostly male environment--I've been there and it ain't usually pretty. There are downsides to having mostly female which I need not elaborate, and you are not without a "point." But short of establishing said welfare slush (which I'm sure you don't want to contribute to), or the sort of selective aborticide practiced in India and China, this is the configuration society will deal with from now on and we will evolve with it accordingly. Even the "traditional" wife/mother doesn't get a meal ticket for the full 80 yrs. No man wants to support a woman all her life; even Daddy Warbucks made sure Little Orphan Annie earned her keep, starring in those comic strips all those years.
Get over it. You sound ridiculous. This "lawsuit" fallout is part of the instability and chaos of transition. We've been through it before as a society. There was more change between 1800 and 1890 during which time American and European society went from only 2% of persons engaged in "information" occupations, to over 70% thus engaged. Today it's over 90%. Ancient crafts and industries fell by the wayside. Andrew Carnegie's family left Scotland in the 1840s because the weaving trade collapsed. Men have been lamenting the loss of their "powers" for longer than that. No matter what, that seems to happen.
The litigiousness is turning around. You can always counter-sue the poc racists and the feminists, and I would like to see more of that done, because any laws needed to ensure "equality" are already in place and most people try to observe them--or else. Ineqalities based on gender or race are mostly in the minds of the accusers these days.btw, in east Africa women in their own workplace areas--the domestic one-- have a term for men who hang around too much. It's "wet I'd eat those words.
leaf." Not so much getting in the way, as just hard to sweep up.

Truth said...

Hey Bro, that's just Bob. He's mean as a hungry snake all of the time.

Svigor said...

Affirmitive action for females has damaged this country far more than affirmitive action for blacks.

But the former would have been impossible without the latter. So "AA" for blacks is responsible for both.

JSM said...

"Well,the bambino was a surprise,but the rest of it,nope."

Ah, come on. Ahnuld was once the number on box office draw. That he should lower himself to boinking a fat, ugly mestiza was a gobsmacking surprise.

JSM said...

David said it.

The most miserable departments I ever worked in were managed by 30-something, single, barren women.

(And I'm a woman.)

When my first baby was born, I wanted to work part-time, to be with my baby. A coworker wanted to be my job-sharing partner, so we made this proposal: My partner would work 3 weekdays and I would work two. Also, I would work Saturdays at straight time, relieving the overtime burden on the other women coworkers, who hated it. We would each take half benefits and half vacation time (at different times so as not to leave the department unduly understaffed). We recommended a new grad in our field we knew and liked, who was currently looking for a position, to be hired to fill out the roster.

Good deal, right? We job-sharing partners get the part time we want, the department saves money on overtime, while fully meeting patient needs. Win-win, right?

My single, barren lady-manager's immediate response? No.

"May we ask why not? Perhaps we can modify our proposal to better fit department needs."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because if I were to give you girls this, then EVERYONE will be bugging me to change their schedule."

So, we went upstairs. The V.P., a very kind man, had made a point to speak to me while pregnant, "Congratulations! Children make life worth living!"

When we told HIM our proposal and our boss's reaction, he made a phone call.
We got our job-sharing.
The other employees were happy. The lady boss, however, was snotty to me from then on.

Anonymous said...

"This is an eerie simulation of the Soviet strategy of decapitating a town or region by replacing its local leadership with imported leaders who had no ethnic ties to the locals (and thus were less likely to treat them humanely)."

Wal-Mart management, Stalin - same thing, right?

Kudzu Bob said...

This is an eerie simulation of the Soviet strategy of decapitating a town or region by replacing its local leadership with imported leaders who had no ethnic ties to the locals (and thus were less likely to treat them humanely).

Exactly right. A friend from Beijing who participated in the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square tells me that the PLA troops who fired on the students were brought in from remote parts of China—she used the term “rednecks” to describe them—who did not even speak Standard Chinese.

jody said...

lichtenstein may be a hypocrite with regards to how professional academia functions in a fashion similar to how private for profit business functions. richard lapchick is a another example.

but the real hypocrites are the law firms with no africans who now routinely get to sue other businesses for having no africans. or mestizos. or muslims. or gays. or fill in the blank with whatever group.

almost nobody talks about this but it's truly a WTF situation.

Anonymous said...

I am trying to think of every-day professions in which I have never seen a male. I come up with several:

- Casino cocktail waitron.
- Labor and Delivery nurse
- Housekeeper in a major hotel
- Dental hygienist

The first 2 I kinda understand, but #3 is physically demanding work, and #4 is decent-paying, relatively easy grunt work.

Anonymous said...

"There are down sides to having a mostly male environment--I've been there and it ain't usually pretty."

This is positively insane.

For millennia many many workplaces were all male and got their frikin' jobs done with less drag and BS than they do now with chicks in there.

We made it thousands of years without the chicks, during which time, they were doing what? evolving to do men's work? LOL

Competent women need to busy themselves breeding another generation of competent people. You can have the dumb ones to clean the office toilets. In that sense they do improve the work environment.

David Davenport said...

... It combines in one big, greasy ball: poorly-paid workers, Gestapo-syle management, sweatshop-produced merchandise and an immensely wealthy absentee ownership....


Oh, the expensive, frou-frou mall stores where you shop, or aspire to shop, aren't like that?

Anonymous said...

>So you're willing to contribute to the welfare slush-fund to keep women a minimum in workplace?<

Women are not at a minimum in the workplace, my friend.

Our society is Africanizing. There, men lay about while women do much of the work. Not a good trend.

Why is welfare necessary to take care of women? No man had to be Daddy Warbucks in the old days to take care of a normal woman.

Women should take advantage of any legal economic opportunity. I'm saying society's incentives are currently screwed-up - and one indicator of it is the over-prevalence (easily above 80%) of women in managerial positions in most modern offices.

Anonymous said...

Exactly right. A friend from Beijing who participated in the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square tells me that the PLA troops who fired on the students were brought in from remote parts of China—she used the term “rednecks” to describe them—who did not even speak Standard Chinese.

I believe that abortive Soviet coup (which led, in effect to the collapse of the USSR) relied on the use of local Moscow troops to take over in Moscow. Didnt work.

Although it has to be said the Russians sent to supress the Baltic demonstartions in the same period didnt seem very enthusiastic either.

Unknown said...

Wal-Mart management, Stalin - same thing, right?

No, but it's a difference of degree. The underlying theory is the same.

Kylie said...

"Ahnuld was once the number on box office draw. That he should lower himself to boinking a fat, ugly mestiza was a gobsmacking surprise."

Not to me. What you and I preceive as "fat", he probably thought of as "voluptuous". And just on the face of it, I doubt Maria ever made him feel like the number one box office draw the way Mamacita did. She seems not only homely but homey.

I've always found Schwarzenegger repulsive but I can see where people thought he was (and still is) well-built. Good-looking men often seem to be less preoccupied with good looks in their sex partners than their plainer counterparts.

David Davenport said...

Again:

... It combines in one big, greasy ball: poorly-paid workers, Gestapo-syle management, sweatshop-produced merchandise and an immensely wealthy absentee ownership....

Steve, you should have pointed out that goy-run WalMart has long been a favorite hate object of the American left and of labor unions wanting to unionize WallyWorld.

"Gestapo-syle" -- very stale, cliched phrase especially favored by ...

Anonymous said...

"Our society is Africanizing. There, men lay about while women do much of the work. Not a good trend. "

The men hang out and drink all day and when they get bored they start an insurrection/civil war to keep themselves busy.

I don't know. Could be worse. I'm sure War Nerd would dig it.

Dutch Boy said...

David Davenport said:

Steve, you should have pointed out that goy-run WalMart has long been a favorite hate object of the American left and of labor unions wanting to unionize WallyWorld.

Sorry Dave, the Wal-Mart business model was developed by a Jew (David Glass, CEO 1988-2000).

David Davenport said...

Do you mean this David Glass? Was he one of those "Gestapo style" managers?

From Wikipedia:

Career with Wal-Mart

Glass joined the company in 1976. In his position as Executive Vice President of Finance for Wal-Mart Stores, he administered the overall financial and accounting responsibilities of the company prior to his appointment as Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer. He served in that role until 1984 when he was named President and Wal-Mart’s Chief Operating Officer. In 1988 he was named Wal-Mart’s Chief Executive Officer, stepping down from the position in January 2000. Glass was active in the company’s growth from 123 stores in 1976 to its more than 4,000 nationally and internationally in 2005.

Glass was named Retailer of the Year by members of the retail industry in 1986 and 1991 and was inducted into the Retail Hall of Fame in August, 2000. Glass has been a member of the Board of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. since 1977.

In 1992, NBC news series Dateline interviewed Glass during an investigation into Wal-Mart's "Made in America" and "Bring It Home to the USA" marketing campaigns.[2] The show aired footage of children working in factories in Bangladesh making clothes destined for Wal-Mart, as well as footage of Wal-Mart stores with "Made in America" signs hung over imported goods. When asked about children in Asia working in sweatshop conditions, Glass' reply was "You and I might, perhaps, define children differently,"[3] and then said that since Asians are quite short, one can't always tell how old they were.[4] Glass was shown photographs of one factory that burned down with the children still locked inside. He responded, "Yeah...there are tragic things that happen all over the world."[5] Glass stormed out of the interview, which was terminated immediately by Wal-Mart. ...

Dutch Boy said...

David Davenport said...
Do you mean this David Glass? Was he one of those "Gestapo style" managers


Yep, he's the one.

Anonymous said...

Reading his bio, David Glass was a Missouri farmboy. Are youre sure Dutchboy?