Hundreds of Walmart Employees Say They've Been Punished For Taking Sick Days (vice.com) 255
A new report from the workers advocacy group A Better Balance alleges that Walmart consistently punishes employees for taking sick days, even if they have proper documentation from doctors. From a report: A Better Balance interviewed and surveyed more than 1,000 Walmart workers about the company's absence control program -- which awards disciplinary "points" for absences regardless of reason -- and found the retail giant to be in violation of multiple laws. "Giving a worker a disciplinary 'point' for being absent due to a disability or for taking care of themselves or a loved one with a serious medical condition is not only unfair," the report reads, "in many instances, it runs afoul of federal, state, and local laws." Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove told the Times that the allegations are false, and that the company "understand[s] that associates may have to miss work on occasion," and that they "have processes in place to assist them." The report's worker testimonials say differently. "I came down with a stomach flu and I had to call in due to vomiting and high fever and got a point cause of being sick," recalls an Illinois employee named Veronica. "I hate the fact we got to worry about getting fired cause we caught the flu."
employees or associates? (Score:4, Interesting)
There seems to be an inconsistency, on the one hand they are employees and on the other they are associates. Which is it really?
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They are employees, Wal-Mart uses the term associates to make themselves seem friendlier and that workers are a big "team"
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"Associate" is just the friendly way to refer to your employees in front of ... "
It is also demeaning for the employee to be used as a marketing gimmick.
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It was especially annoying dealing with their attitude a bit over twenty years ago at a site where there were a few employee deaths every year. They don't see employees as human. The worst would even see slavery as a good idea and it's only the legal system that holds them back.
Re:employees or associates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Colleague implies a degree of equality in status. The hourly grunts on the sales floor are not equal to anyone who calls them associates.
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In the case of Amazon, the term associate is preferred because some of their workers are contractors hired by a third party temporary agency. But I do not know if this is the case here.
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They're associated by employment.
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Calling them peasants turned out to be bad for optics, so they're still workshopping titles to see what will make the wage slaves feel empowered.
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> on the one hand they are employees and on the other they are associates. Which is it really?
Whatever definition is most beneficial to Walmart at that particular moment.
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They're "consumables."
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It is common to the point of being nearly universal in retail that hourly employees who work on the sales floor are called "associates." This is normal for any day that ends in "y."
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It is common to the point of being nearly universal in retail that hourly employees who work on the sales floor are called "associates." This is normal for any day that ends in "y."
So its just another word for employee? Where I come from an associate is more of an equal partner. Like a law firm might be "Smith and associates" where theres someone called Smith and a few other people, Smiths associates, who are more or less partners in the firm.
Re: employees or associates? (Score:3)
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Is this really new? (Score:2)
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My spidey senses tell me that this is less about getting in trouble for sick days ... more likely this is employees getting in trouble for doing a no-call-no-show and then trying to pass it off as a sick day after the fact.
Part of a problem can be employees abusing sick leave benefit and often taking sick days when they are not sick, leading to a potential excessive scrutiny for any sick days taken. That aspect is of course ignored in this article, but it is very real. Sick days are not vacation days. Companies can decide to just lump the two together and just have more vacation and few or no 'sick days', but then they will be attacked for not paying sick time in some cases where employees have used all their time off and the
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Advocacy groups say shit (Score:2, Insightful)
It means that maybe someone should investigate to see if it's true. Let us know when it's more than an agenda-driven allegation. Thanks.
having worked there its all true (Score:5, Informative)
Re:having worked there its all true (Score:5, Funny)
they will point you no matter the reason then if they dont like you they will try to add on points for no reason i rember in my entire stay there i missed 1 day and they tried to say i had 6 points. they also play favrets to people who kiss there ass vs those that do not. just me if that company can brake a labor law they do.
Thank goodness they don't have any pesky screening restrictions around spelling and grammar...
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Dammit, I just ran out of mod points!
+1 Funny
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My son worked at WalMart, was hit by a car on way home. He was not very injured, but had 1 week of rest, then 1 week of light duty. They would not honor the dr's orders, wanted the dr to call HR. (try and get an ER dr to do that). So after the week of rest (as his points ticked away) he was fired.
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FWIW, I've known a few people who worked for Walmart's IT department in Arkansas and they couldn't spell either.
It's not that they're not intelligent, it's just that some people suck at spelling.
Okay, well the spelling in the other post was bad but isn't' that what compilers are for?
Those sick days are for the terminally ill (Score:2)
It says so right above the non-compete clause
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That's a pre-existing condition!
Perfect opportunity for abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
There was an article a couple days ago about how white-collar employees in the US are afraid of using their vacation time...this seems like a good bookend to that. The bottom line is that there are very few nice, generous employers anymore. I work for one that actually treats us pretty well; we have on-your-honor sick days and reasonable amounts of vacation. However, stores like this are necessary to show once in a while that employers will take advantage of you at any turn, and some of them are quite bad.
You see stuff like this a lot in low-margin, low-paying employers with what they consider a disposable workforce. I'm sure Amazon is guilty of this with their warehouse workers, delivery drivers, etc. I guarantee that with steady jobs getting scarcer every day, and a constant narrative depicting business owners as superhuman infallible beings, nothing is going to get better. People are going to be happy to have any kind of job that gives them a steady paycheck, and that's even more true for those at the low end of the skills curve.
When I see stuff like this, it makes me wish labor unions were more powerful like they once were. Unions would never have backed down on something like this, and union members were happier because of it. All those coal miners and manufacturing workers voting last November should realize that they would have been much better off had they been represented by a strong union. Working families used to be able to survive on one income, and now that's very difficult for most people to do. I'm still hoping the pendulum swings back the other direction before things get bad enough to have another revolution or civil war on our hands in the US.
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"The bottom line is that there are very few nice, generous employers anymore"
The margins for doing business in many retail spaces have been going down for quite some time.
I'm certainly no expert in employee relations. I worked in IT for telemarketing company for several years. Draconian rules much like this were put in place there because employees regularly abused the system due to alcohol/drug addictions, poor decisions, and the stress of the job. Basically, lots of people couldn't bear to come in t
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I actually wonder how the assumption came to being that there were ever more than a few. I mean, you go back only 100 or so years and you're smack in the middle of the industrial revolution where the 40-hour work week didn't exist yet. It's debatable whether it really exists today...
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I wonder how the assumption came into being that this was generosity rather than the self-interest of an actual capitalist in maintaining the productivity of their workforce so that they can reap the profits.
Oppressing the proles is inefficient.
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Working families used to be able to survive on one income, and now that's very difficult for most people to do.
A lot of that is driven by inflation caused by dual-income families. Once a certain number of people had that extra income, their spending was kept in check by raising prices.
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>I'm sure Amazon is guilty of this with their warehouse workers, delivery drivers, etc.
Here's an older article written by someone who went in to see the environment at an Amazon fulfillment center and talked with other workers. I can't imagine it's gotten better since.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor
Some of it is just f-d right up:
""You look way too happy," an Amalgamated supervisor says to me. He has appeared next to me as I work, and in t
That's a whopping 0.07% of employees (Score:2)
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Nevermind, I see it's hundreds of employees out of just 1,000 surveyed. I suck.
Or maybe you don't suck. From the "A Better Balance" report: "Based on our conversation with Walmart employees as well as survey results of over 1,000 current and former Walmart workers who have struggled due to Walmart’s absence control program..."
I would expect a survey of workers "who have struggled due to Walmart's absence control program" to turn up a lot of complaints.
Wal-Mart Shareholder Conference Today (Score:3)
"absence control program" (Score:2)
The fact that they have an official "absence control program" tells you just about all you need to know.
really bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Penalizing workers for staying home when they're sick is a really bad idea. Because, naturally, people will come to work sick rather than risk a penalty, potentially spreading the illness to other workers and to customers. This seldom ends well, either for the parties involved or for the company.
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Penalizing workers for staying home when they're sick is a really bad idea. Because, naturally, people will come to work sick rather than risk a penalty, potentially spreading the illness to other workers and to customers. This seldom ends well, either for the parties involved or for the company.
Assuming people are actually sick. Here in Norway I've had several not-that-close acquaintances admit/reveal that they use sick leave kinda like a quota, they keep enough for actually being sick but if the rolling window is about to expire they get "sick" and use it more or less as an extra day off. Or at least their threshold for being sick becomes very, very low. And it annoys some other friends of mine that either have too much of a moral spine or are in management positions because they know some people
Re:really bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
In counterpoint, I realize this is only another data point, and doesn't necessarily mean anything, but a few years ago in a different company, we had a guy in the department who was actually physically coughing up blood (as personally witnessed) but refused to leave his cube because (as we all knew) downsizing was on the horizon and he didn't want to be seen as a slacker.
The rest of us who were in close proximity went to management and threatened to all go home sick if *he* didn't. They finally escorted him out of the building.
And then a few weeks later we were all outsourced, but oh well...
One of the things I can say about that company is that I never coughed up blood while I was there.
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Maybe you should have worked on that fiction a bit more before publication.
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Ok wait. I'm not defending him, just observing from my own experience that there is a certain type of slacker, let's call him "wally", who will put a significant amount of energy and creativity into finding new ways to game the system. It isn't laziness, it's .. let's say, aggressive slacking. I don't know how prevalent it is, but I've personally observed this.
I was talking to my daughter last night why the take-and-bake pizza took 45 minutes to pick up from the store. I called ahead, and what they made
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I've learned that with fast food it's best to have a very simple order and to check it before you leave (eg. frequently no tomato in ham cheese and tomato). Also avoid the low turnover items, especially ones where it's not obvious when they are undercooked.
Exaggerated anecdotes about w
Common Problem it seems (Score:5, Informative)
My work started doing this recently. Not all that happy about it. To make matters worse, the implemented it retroactively 2 years before the program actually existed, so I'm already half way through the program. They call it "Non-disciplinary", however if you advance into the program too far you can be let go, which sounds pretty disciplinary to me. I believe I effectively do not have any sick days anymore, I'll just go to work sick from now on, unless I get hit by a bus or something, at which point work will probably be the least of my worries.
I expect it is a bargaining ploy to the Union. i.e. "You wanna get rid of it? How about those pensions?"
Though Walmart doesn't even have that I suppose.
Walmart doesn't have a Union (Score:2)
Re:Common Problem it seems (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, this is what you Americans get when you support barely restrained capitalism.
There is no way an employer would get away with this in Europe and Ocenania.
I'm always astonished with how bad things are in America for the basics of life, like health care and employment. You should embrace a little more socialism.
Re:Common Problem it seems (Score:5, Funny)
Well, this is what you Americans get when you support barely restrained capitalism.
You should embrace a little more socialism.
Socialism would get in the way of poor Americans becoming rich.
Re:Common Problem it seems (Score:5, Informative)
If you have any face to face interaction with management at all, let the sneeze be your weapon. Make sure that whenever you get sick, they get sick.
Not just Walmart (Score:5, Informative)
I honestly thought this was more normal. I'm not saying it's right. However, I've worked at a software company that had a points-based attendance policy and they actually denied me a raise one year because I called off for illness a few times. It was the worst kind of phone support job and I was a lot younger but I didn't think this was unusual. I definitely thought it was unethical, though. Also stupid, as it encouraged sick people to come in and get everyone else sick, which happened all the time.
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Sounds like they need to hire some telephone sanitizers.
Who assigns these points? (Score:2)
And non-US workers wonder why... (Score:5, Insightful)
And non-US workers wonder why US works don't use vacation and sick days when they have them...
Companies that get caught doing this need to made an example of. Major fines. The fines can't be small enough for a business to chalk it up to the 'cost of doing business' because that's what they do already.
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It's not illegal. How are you going to fine a business for doing something that isn't illegal?
Legislate.
Once had a manager call a meeting (Score:3)
Every call center I ever worked in had sick people non-stop. Everybody was always sick because nobody could stay home when they got sick.
This is just how it is when you work in low pay industries in a bad economy. If you want it to stop you're gonna have to pass laws, but I'm guessing most people don't want it to stop. They might be uncomfortable with the idea of sick people forced to work or be homeless but they're much more uncomfortable with paying 5% more for stuff. Especially when they're getting paid less and less just like everybody else...
Walmart's even got a phrase for it: Save Money, Live Better. You're not destroying worker solidarity and driving working families into an endless cycle of poverty. You're Saving Money, Living Better.
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"I'm guessing most people don't want it to stop"
It goes to show you that most businessmen aren't actually capitalists. A capitalist should be working to maximize their profits, but instead these guys are getting distracted by minimizing the profits of others.
"they're much more uncomfortable with paying 5% more for stuff. Especially when they're getting paid less and less just like everybody else... "
They'd be making more if they maintained the productivity of their workforce. Someone who doesn't believe in
How many points do you get (Score:2)
...for puking on a customer?
Sick days vs FMLA? (Score:2)
If you have FMLA, there is more protection. Some of these examples sound like sickly people or people with kids that inevitably get sick and need care. Neither are not necessarily FMLA cases. Anyone stop to consider some of those workers who frequently call in and are habitually tardy, the points are adding up, and when they call in it pushes them over the threshold? Shit my wife's employer dings more employees for "patterns of behavior" (subjective, because they feel like fucking with you) than objecti
This story matches up nicely with the other one (Score:2)
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/02/185219/walmart-is-turning-its-employees-into-delivery-drivers-to-compete-with-amazon
I commented on the one linked here about how unlikely it would be that Walmart's attempt to force employees to use their own vehicles to deliver its merchandise would in fact be "voluntary".
This is exactly how it will be.
Doctors notes == invasion of privacy. (Score:2)
The real problem is employers who treat their employees like children. "Bring a note from the doctor." Kind of like when you were a kid and if you missed school you had to "bring a note from your parents."
Mine thought it was stupid, and gave me a blanket note at the beginning of the year saying that if I was absent it was with their permission. Trust. Instill it, then build on it.
Look at the potential for personal information leakage from a doctor's note. They just look up the doctor, and if it's a specia
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The real problem is employers who treat their employees like children. "Bring a note from the doctor." Kind of like when you were a kid and if you missed school you had to "bring a note from your parents."
Well, given you behave like one, it kind of makes sense.
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There is absolutely NO legal requirement to provide a doctor's note to an employer for an absence. It's my private business, my time, same as on days off and non-working hours. You're continuing to show you're a fool who
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If you actually look at it, the system in nature is called "survival of the least-inadequate."
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You're not fooling anyone with this "Company X" malarkey. We can all see it's the USA.
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How is unproven allegations about the sick day policy of a retailer "news for nerds"?
There is no IT angle here I can discern.
Why is this on Slashdot? Unless, of course, they're moving full steam ahead with their "All Social Justice Warrior, all the time" format.
To unsocialized neck-beards like you? Doesn't matter. To members of the Human Race? It's "Stuff That Matters".
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In that case... odd how Slashdot doesn't seem to have had any coverage of the rampant civil rights violations going on at Evergreen College in Washington...
That's regional. Plus, Evergreen State has ALWAYS been wack-a-doodle.
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To pay their way to being a professional nerd or at times when there are few technical jobs around a lot of nerds work in retail.
It's actually a bit of a worry that I had to tell you that. Are you really paying so little attention to what is going on around you?
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If you put your password between the HTML tags, Slashdot won't eat it.
Example: <title>hunter2</title>
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I'm only seeing asterisks. Maybe because I still have mod points, but posting should sort that.
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A good lesson for all the kids out there. Learn proper grammar.
If WalMart introduces grammar screening for their "associates", they're going to alienate a lot of their labor pool. Actually that goes for a lot of places - Proper grammar seems to be a rarity. Not everyone talks as goodly as you and I.
Re:As someone that's never taken a sick day from w (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody gets sick sooner or later. Some people are fortunate enough to be on the tail end of the curve when it comes to luck, being one of them doesn't make you morally better.
Of course you might be one of those people who come to work and spread your germs around to the coworkers and customers. That doesn't make you morally better either; it makes you worse.
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This is why many businesses just did away with sick days and gave employees free days instead of vacation, adding 5 days to their vacation time.
Now you can use those days for whatever you want.
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It's massive stupidity though. For one, I find many conditions will clear on their own in a day or two. I don't need a doctor to tell me that. So, I can be sick for 24 hours in the comfort of home or I can go wait for hours on end at urgent care and share whatever I have with the waiting room while they give me what they have and cough a co-pay (along with that lung) just because some asshole stuffed into a suit wants to treat everyone like children.
Even in school, a parent's note is good enough.
On a side n
Re:Not defending Walmart but... (Score:5, Insightful)
They exist to remove the incentive of you going to work and spreading your germs, among other things. But sick days is also a form of insurance, in which risk is pooled over the entire workforce. Statistically your compensation might end up a wash either way if you just look at the expected value but if you look at the statistical spread there is no comparison, particularly for low-paid workers who don't earn enough to put aside savings. If you're making $100,000 a year, a week without pay is nothing. If you're making $15,080 a year, it could mean losing your apartment or sending your kids to school without food.
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If you earn 15k a year, having children is a horribly irresponsible decision that should be deferred until you can actually afford to provide for their needs. That doesn't mean "never" it means "not yet".
Yeah, because no one has ever gotten pregnant on accident or lost their job after already having children ...
Re: Not defending Walmart but... (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't always happen in that order: make $15K/year, then have kids.
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Because the type of employees most companies want like them. If you don't offer sick days, you're stuck with the leftovers that they companies who did offer sick days passed on.
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How are you providing value by being sick?
By staying away and not getting other employees sick, you are saving the company money.
It's also a benefit that retains better employees.
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Sick days exist because of people like you.
Re:Points? (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at Stream International (outsourcing call center) about 10 years ago and you got 8 points. At 0 points they fired you. You lost points for being late, leaving early - stuff like that.
1 point per sick day - unless you had a doctors note, but 10 bucks an hour you didn't have health insurance so typically you worked sick, and you only visited the doctor if you were on deaths door.
Even after they had a tuberculosis outbreak (no I'm not kidding - the CDC got involved and required everyone to be screened) they didn't abandon this system.
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> Even after they had a tuberculosis outbreak (no I'm not kidding - the CDC got involved and required everyone to be screened) they didn't abandon this system.
Sounds to me like that's some labor lawyer's class action lawsuit wet dream....
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That exposes the utter foolishness of a blanket policy like this. It encourages people to come in with communicable illnesses and they get passed around and productivity drops rapidly. Sure, there are people who abuse sick time, but there are patterns that emerge. This is a case where they could learn from Dr. Demming. Take action to investigate a level of frequencies that are significant outliers. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons, and in that event I suspect a bit of compassion will pay dividends. In
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Great. You're and entrepreneur. So add the cost of being sick into the price of providing your service. Just like employees consider paid time off when negotiating compensation. Boo hoo, the entrepreneurial risk-taker bemoans the downside of risk.
Re:Points? (Score:4, Informative)
If your business is earning a profit you do.
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If you have employees and you aren't paid when you're sick, it's your own fault.
Surely you're not claiming Walmart doesn't make any money if the CEO is home sick?
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Your arguments are worth nothing if you won't put your name to them.
Your arguments are worth nothing if they fail to use some sort of basic reasoning. (hint: Not putting a name to something in of itself doesn't affect the quality or lack thereof of an argument.)
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Just because the article doesn't mention one doesn't mean there isn't one. Unless you've got a copy of the employment contract, why not assume the complaint is valid?
Re:Points? (Score:5, Informative)
Being fired isn't a penalty? Because the article mentions being fired for having too many points.
But hey, since you want more details, here's how Wal-Mart's point system works (or worked about a year ago when I was dating a woman who worked for them):
If you call in at least an hour in advance...
working less than half a shift is a 1 point.
working less than a full shift but more than half is 1/2 point.
If you don't call in at least an hour in advance, being absent is 4 points.
For the first 6 months, employees are fired if they gain 4 points.
After 6 months, they're fired at 9 points in any 6 month rolling period.
Even before you reach the 4/9 point limit, however, they can assign you "coaching", which is basically a disciplinary writeup by another name. It stays in your record and can be used to justify reducing your hours, denying raises, denying promotions, etc.
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So, your driver's licence, birth certificate and credit cards all say "holophrastic".
Didn't think so.
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Why the fuck would you buy food from Walmart, unless it comes in a can or factory packaging?
Why the fuck would you eat anything that Wal-mart sells, no matter what packaging it comes in? That should be an immediate disqualifier, even if you're in some other store. You know, "That looks good, but they sell it at Wal-mart, so it must not actually be food."
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Peasants desperate for a job are lined around the corner, we actually need to make the job oppressive enough that we can use, dispose, and rotate them. That's not sarcasm, that's the literally the optimized, max-margin reaction for a glut.
And it gets worse each time we trade thousands for a couple dozen "floor models" and one robotechnician.
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Letting sick people heal stifles innovation.