money that’s not worth making

I found a gig on Craiglist for a “mystery shopper” assignment, one of those deals where you visit a local business, complete some transaction, and report on how it went. I wasn’t 100% convinced I was comfortable with it, but that soon changed once I got the store list: Wal★Mart and one of those check-cashing outfits.

Hmm, I won’t set foot in a Wal★Mart, and certainly not to act as a spy for their less than stellar employee policies. And those check cashing joints give me the creeps: they take advantage of people who can ill afford it, and I don’t want to be part of that.

It was never so clear what these companies — the mystery shopper outfits — are about: they enable absentee owners to keep an eye on things without having to actually be in the store. The whole customer experience is boiled down to some reports on how fast things move, how accurate, and in some cases how patient (one of the later assignments is to try to get the employee to lose their cool: how uncomfortable would that be?). Some holding company in a distant state or country is hiring these companies and making decisions based on those reports.

You would never see a locally-owned and operated business using these services, as the owners are there. You can assume that the money paid to an outside consultant is money that doesn’t go to training or raises or any incentives to make the experience better: it’s really about finding the lowest cost per transaction, with a certain standard of quality. One more dehumanizing aspect of capitalism, perhaps?

Not for me. I’d rather dig ditches.

value




crossing

Originally uploaded by thespeak.

This was made with a wooden box, a piece of thin plastic coated with an emulsion of gelatin and magic pixie dust (heck, I don’t know how they make color film), and a few seconds of time, maybe 30 . . . oh, and the experience and expertise of the guy who carried it all to that spot.

Expensive? Not really. Valuable? I’d say so.

adsense, if there is any

Just checked AdSense and it looks like my recent increase in traffic (daily volume has doubled since July) means my daily ad revenue has tripled+ — from 15¢ to 50¢. At $15 and change per month, it’s not even covering bandwidth costs, but perhaps it does encourage me to try boiling some stuff that worksâ„¢ into readable prose. At this rate I may see a check by 2009.

could this be any easier?

Talking Points Memo | How The Obama Camp Should Respond:

Just as John McCain bought his ad time for right after Obama’s speech last night, they should get their own for right after Palin.

And here’s the ad: A one-minute spot featuring Hillary Clinton herself, talking to the camera and laying into Palin on the issues, her complete lack of qualifications, and the temerity of the McCain campaign to think they could get away with this. Then she urges anyone watching who might have supported her to get out there and support Barack Obama.

Then it closes simply with Obama walking on to the set to shake Hillary’s hand: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message.”

That could be what we call a “crusher.”

the triumph of hope over experience?

What do you call nostalgia for a past that never existed? In 1984, they simply swept the unwanted bits into the memory hole and didn’t replace them.

TBogg » Losing my religion :

Not wishing to see Rod [Dreher] make a fool of himself, which is like asking him to not pray or breathe, reader JPL sums up Dreher’s entire life in just a few acid-etched paragraphs:.

Rod, you’re the living embodiment of the old phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute.” Look, regardless of this woman’s qualities, many of which do truly seem to be fine, she isn’t the President. And, before Cheney, VP’s didn’t get to do a hell of a lot. It’s still McCain at the top of the ticket, and everything that was wrong with him before remains wrong with him now. More war, more tax cuts, more support for the rich and powerful, more torture, more unilateral international relations, more Bush. He’ll just have an attractive woman near him who shares your values, and who, given his treatment of women in the past, he will completely ignore. Your best hope is that he drops dead, leaving her in charge. And then you’ll discover that all those nifty Alaskan values don’t get you very far in the rough and tumble of global politics..


(It’s worth noting, I lived in Alaska for years, and though I hate stereotyping, most Alaskans were the most short-sighted, backward people I’ve ever lived among. And I’ve lived in 8 countries.).

But there you are, bursting with eagerness to pull that lever for the Republicans again. And two years in, when things have gotten even worse, you’ll do just what you did with Bush…just what you did with Catholicism. After singing their praises endlessly, you’ll turn on them, with surly descriptions of how they fooled you, and how could you have known?.

Except that millions of people did know. They don’t fool you…you keep fooling yourself. You’re so desperate for the world to be the way you think it should be, the world you’ll feel safe in, that you just can’t accept that it isn’t now, and it’s never going to be that world again. Hell, I doubt it ever was, except in your own fevered fantasies. But you’ll blame it on someone else, switch teams again, and wait for the next wunderkind to show up and promise a blissful return to traditional Christian values and a bucolic life on the farm..

It’s a good thing you’re happily married. As a single man, it would be hard to imagine how any even vaguely clever gold-digger wouldn’t take you for all you’re worth in a few months. I think you should consider renaming your genre from Crunchy Con to Gushingly Gullible..

If it didn’t mean the continued ruin of our nation, and the future of my children, it would be almost endearing. As it is, it just seems sad how traditional Conservatives will keep selling this country right down the gutter for the smallest possibility that their values will once again dominate the public discourse.

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a stigmata…

Did he miss anything? I don’t think so.