A Poster for Doug Champeau

I enjoyed Target cashier Doug Champeau's thoughts on the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit in today's Star Tribune. He has a perspective I don't hear from enough. Plus, he's able to acknowledge both Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed with its portrayal of low-wage, exploitive work and his coworker who keeps her hours just low enough to make sure her government-funded income supports aren't cut. Both things are true.

I most appreciated his ending section, however:

There’s a motivational poster near the break room featuring the retail giant’s trademark dog and this aphorism: “Work can be fun or not fun — Choose Fun.” Every time I see this, I imagine it pinned up in the Roman slave galley where Ben Hur is rowing furiously to the beat of the drum and the lash of the whip. Only his hate kept him alive.

This is for Doug:


(As always, click to enlarge for full enjoyment.)

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Champeau is a recurrent commenter in the Strib's pages. Some of his past op-eds:

• The working grunt feels your pain — about the Wisconsin union-busting protests in 2011.
• High-fat subsidies feed health costs — suggestions to change what foods can be purchased with SNAP benefits, based on his observations of food stamp use.
• And so we bleed (but at least there's money in it) — about working-poor people selling plasma to make ends meet.
• The view from behind the cash register — as far as I can tell, his first piece, and it's pretty much what it sounds like from the title.