Two Unrelated Follow-Ups

In my sprawling post about wage theft a few weeks ago, I mentioned an upcoming Supreme Court case where Amazon warehouse workers were asking to be paid for the time they're required to stand in lines, waiting to be searched for stolen items. Well, the Court has ruled on the case, and I'm sorry to say they found that it's okay to not pay workers for almost 2.5 hours a week.

The logic of the unanimous (!) decision, written by Clarence Thomas, is lacking. He takes to the dictionary to define terms in the federal labor law: integral and indispensable. The fact that the workers cannot refuse to spend almost 2.5 hours of their time on this non-integral and dispensable activity doesn't seem to have anything to do with whether they should be paid for it.

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My second follow-up is more fun. Back in late September, I wrote about signs that people put up in their work spaces as a means for them to carve out a bit of mental space, especially if they deal with the public or internal clients frequently. (Kind of like the Not Always Right website, come to think of it.)

I asked at the time for other examples, and a couple of commenters responded. But yesterday I saw a redrawn version of one of the classics I remember from my summer-job days:


I guess this one isn't exactly on the topic of worker-public or worker-client interaction, related to complaints and deadlines, but it's one that circulated among workers and was posted over desks back in the day.

Aside from the fact that it's in color, this one has several additional panels that didn't exist when I used to see it: There were no beta testers or business consultants. Documentation and support weren't mentioned. I don't remember billing or operations, either, and the marketing part seems not quite as I recall...

Wait a minute, I have this magical thing called Google. Perhaps I should look it up!

And voila, the art exactly as I remember it:



From a site called businessballs.com, with other examples over the decades from various sectors.