You get it..but you don't really get it!

[Nattydread]

I want to comment on what I see as a complacent attitude of the American consumer today. Why do we fall for the now common ?you get it ..but you don?t really get it? tactic by American businesses today. What am I talking about?

Lets look at the current situation of the cell phone services ?you pay $30 to $40 a month??You get it?. But if you use the phone between 9:am and 5 m you pay extra??You don?t really get it?

Lets look at the cable company. Remember when getting cable meant you got programming that was pretty much commercial free?.for $40- $50 a month ?You get it? But now if want commercial free programming you have to pay more for HBO or buy the movie??you don?t really get it?.

Lets look at DirecTV NFL games package. You pay $250 a year to get all games??YOU GET IT?. But if you live in a town where the team is not selling out its seats you are blocked out with everybody ..even after paying your $250?.?you don?t really get it?.


With the cable companies its getting to where most people will pay $50 a month just to watch commercials. What happen here? When it was free I saw less commercials? How did we let this happen?

Now we see many ?message boards? charging fees so you can read and post a message? Who the hell are the people supporting that?

Lets look at the gas company? Before deregulation we had a single company. after deregulation (where I live) we have multiple companies each charging a LOW rate on top of the old company base rate. The end result..I pay more! And what?s worse..everybody getting paid gets on TV and talk about how much better off the consumer is.

Lets look at auto fuel. Several years ago the price shot up precipitously over a period. Lets say before this increase the average price was $1.50 per gallon. When it reached over $2 per gallon we started screaming. But did it go back to $1.50? No, it maintained a base around $1.70 occasionally spiking up when there is a major traveling holiday. So in a sense we have been duped into ignoring this permanent increase and only reacting to the outrageous spikes!

I remembered a time when the consumer was more conscious of punishing corporations when they got out of line. Now it seems we have become complacent. Remember when online services tried to charge for usage by the minute. In came AOL with a flat rate idea and the rest was history. Now it just seems that we don?t have real competition but rather a bunch of colluding corporate giants.

I can understand a 18 to 25 year old liking these ?dumb ass? reality TV shows. But now I?m learning that.. whoa?adults are getting into them too! So now we are getting these low budget crap in droves! Who are these people?

I?m just venting here?and if your response is the standard..you don?t have to buy the service?stuff that up you A#S! I have to heat my house and I have to buy gas!

I'm not anti business/establishment, after all they keep the country financially healthy.

The point is it just seem the consumer is grown too compliant.

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[Billybob]

I can't say enough good things about your post, Nattydread, so I'll just say I completely agree.

I really think these things are SO common in this country today (more than elseware in the world), that people forget about them. And not only that, but people actually believe it's a sign of PROGRESS.

Not only that, but thanks to the federal government's love of deregulation, these things will get WORSE before they get better.
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[Yonivore]

Yeah, I agree too.

But, in response, I don't have a cell phone and I pay $7.58 for basic cable.

The Amish don't participate in any of it.

People should speak with thr wallets and quite demanding that businesses be "fair," whatever they may be. ?Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.? - - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

?We will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them.? - - President George W. Bush
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[Billybob]

I think the problem is, people DON'T have as much of a choice anymore. Small businesses can't really compete with big mega-conglomerates like Walmart. As more and more of the money in this country is horded by fewer and fewer people (or corporations), the rest of us have to suffer.
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[Realist]

A few examples of how WalMart treats its employees:

One of the class representatives in the New York lawsuit, Maria Gamble of Suffolk County, New York, claims that while she worked at Wal-Mart as a customer service manager, Wal-Mart supervisors locked her in the store with her co-employees after the store closed when all employees were "off-the-clock." Ms. Gamble described her experiences at Wal-Mart:
"When I worked at Wal-Mart, we were routinely expected to work at times when we were not paid. The worst part of this was we were locked-in to the store at night. Every week, I worked at l one shift that went from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. or 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. When the store closed at the end of my shift, the manager or the person closing the store would lock the exterior doors but the hourly employees like me would have to remain in the store and restock merchandise and count out the cash registers, even though we had already clocked off and were not getting paid. The tasks we had to do after the store closed always took at l an hour-and-a-half, and often two hours. The doors weren't unlocked until the work was completed. There were other ways in which I wasn't paid for time I was working, as well, such as mandatory attendance at unpaid meetings, and times I had to work through lunch and breaks."
www.lieffcabraser.com/wal...awsuit.htm


KANSAS CITY, Mo. After finishing her 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift, Verette Richardson clocked out and was heading to her car when a Wal-Mart manager ordered her to turn around and straighten up the store's apparel department.

Eager not to get on her boss's bad side, she said, she spent the next hour working unpaid, tidying racks of slacks and blouses and picking up hangers and clothes that had fallen to the floor. Other times after clocking out, she was ordered to round up shopping carts in the parking lot.

Some days, as soon as she walked in a manager told her to rush to a cash register and start ringing up purchases, without clocking in. Sometimes, she said, she worked for three hours before clocking in.

"They wanted us to do a lot of work for no pay," said Ms. Richardson, who worked from 1995 to 2000 at a Wal-Mart in south Kansas City. "A company that makes billions of dollars doesn't have to do that."

But she and 40 other current and former Wal-Mart workers interviewed over the last four months say Wal-Mart has done just that, forcing or pressuring employees to work hours that were not recorded or paid. Federal and state laws bar employers from making hourly employees work unpaid hours. Wal-Mart's policies forbid such work. But many current and former workers and managers said an intense focus on cost cutting had created an unofficial policy that encouraged managers to request or require off-the-clock work and avoid paying overtime.

Accusations like these are at the heart of a wide-ranging legal battle between Wal-Mart and employees or former employees in 28 states. In class-action and individual lawsuits, workers assert that these practices have helped Wal-Mart undersell the competition, push up profits and become the world's largest retailer.
threehegemons.tripod.com/.../id57.html


Walmart: Gender discrimination suit could change company forever

It's the world's largest retailer and this country's largest private employer. And Wal-Mart tops another category as well: It faces more lawsuits than any other company in the United States -- some 5,000 in 2000, according to USA Today. Brad Seligman has only one suit against Wal-Mart, but it is by far the most significant. If he's successful, he could dramatically change the company that Sam Walton built. In fact, that's the plan.
Brad Seligman is one of the attorneys spearheading a lawsuit against America's largest private employer, charging it with discrimination against its female workers. Wal-Mart never bargained for this.
www.retailworker.org/disp...le200.html


Wal-Mart Ordered to Recognize and Bargain with UFCW

Wal-Mart, which repeatedly has stated it will not bargain with any union and has taken steps to prevent workers from gaining a voice at work in its stores across North America, was ordered to recognize and bargain with the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Three years ago, meat cutters at a Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, Texas, voted 7?3 for solidarity on the job with UFCW Local 540. A month later, Wal-Mart announced it was eliminating fresh-cut meat and reassigned all the Local 540 meat cutters to different jobs that did not employ thr special skills.

On June 10, a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ordered Wal-Mart, the nation?s largest employer, to recognize Local 540 as the bargaining representative for the meat cutters to restore thr meat-cutting duties and to engage in collective bargaining with Local 540, including bargaining over the impact of the company?s elimination of meat-cutting and its change to case-ready meat.

?This is a historic decision?the first bargaining order issued against Wal-Mart in the United States,? says UFCW Executive Vice President Mike Leonard. ?It is a victory for all Wal-Mart workers who are fighting for a voice at work.?
www.aflcio.org/aboutunion...192003.cfm
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[Nattydread]

Thanks for seng that. this is a trend I've observed throughout Republican and Democratic leadership. I hesitated to make this post because I fear I was the only one who saw this.

And what I fear is the younger generation has began to see this as normal. If this happens, the few people who may have a problem with it may not matter to the Corporate giants.

The Eagles (with Glen Frey) played a concert in my area several months ago. Remember them? This was there.."we are back from the dead".. farewell tour..AGAIN.

But I decided not to go because at $170 a pop for tickets..that was too much! And I was bng considered a tight-wad for refusing to go! And these were not kids, they were my peers? How did these older folks become so compliant?

I must ask other people with kids...do you get questions from your 18 year old like..."Dad can you give me $500 to take a date to a see a concert"?

Very soon you won't be able to watch a ball game on TV unless you pay for it..sepeartely from what you pay for your cable package. And your going to watch even more commercial for all the money you spent.

I no longer watch most of the network news..because I cannot stand the mountain of commercials I have to sit through in a half hour period..its just plain ridiculous!

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[Yonivore]

Something we agree on Realist. Honestly.

The consumer is to blame for the power held by corporate America. Period.

I we didn't buy it, they wouldn't sell it. ?Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.? - - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

?We will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them.? - - President George W. Bush
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[Realist]

These are the same consumers that need to have a warning on the dessicant pack in thr new camcorder that reads, "DO NOT EAT". I don't know about you, but the last time I bought a piece of electronic equipment, I wasn't counting on finding a snack in the package too.

As high and mighty as we Americans think we are, we can be pretty f'ing stupid. Hence our self-induced enslavement to corporate greed. As cultures evolve, they tend to get more sophisticated. Our's seems to be heading in the other direction. When toasters have to carry warnings not to use them in the shower, it is time to prune some defective branches from the human genetic tree. As a friend of mine once said, "Product safety is contrary to Darwinism." I've really begun to appreciate that more and more.
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[Yonivore]

Well, I'm sincerely glad we agree on something. ?Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.? - - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

?We will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them.? - - President George W. Bush
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[Realist]

Corporate America through thr Ad agencies, have made "Keeping up with the Jones'" a way of life. The same people that cave at the sightest amount of peer pressure, are the raw meat that the Madison Avenue pitchmasters drool over. You know the type of people I am referring to. The guy down the street who has to have the latest fully loaded Lincoln Navigator because his nghbor got the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Meanwhile, the family eats mac and cheese four nights week so they can look good in the new land yacht. Can't forget about the kids ther. Wouldn't want little Johnny or Sally not having the sharpest outfit on the first day of school. God forbid they aren't the envy of every other kid. And of course they have to have thr own cell phones, in fourth grade!

This is why the younger generation has come to see this as normal. Materialism means popularity. Popularity means acceptance. Acceptance means influence. Influence means money to support the materialism. It is a vicious cycle. Parents have no one to blame but themselves.

If I wanted money to take a date out, I didn't dare ask my father for it. I knew what the response would be. That's why I had a job from the time I was twelve. But I guess thinking like that is obsolete now.

Three little words can break the materialism cycle. "Just Say No!" More parents should try it. Edited by: Realist at: 9/22/03 10:49 pm

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[lawdy miss claudy]

realist, i agree with you 100%. not only are we heading for "stupidville" with those silly warnings on appliances like toasters, it is because everyone is looking for a fast buck through lawsuits of every kind. I am sure the toaster company is bng sued by some idiot who actually tried to toast something in the shower. Sounds crazy I know, but I'll be that's what preceded the whole thing. Like the person who was suing McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on themselves. I worked for an attorney years ago and he wouldn't have lowered himself into taking such a case. He had too much pride in the profession. In those days, attorneys were banned from advertising. You didn't see lawyer after lawyer on TV asking people to sue for every little thing. As for $$ and baseball - don't you think the players are just a little overpaid? I am a Yankee fan from way back to the days of Mickey Mantle but I wouldn't pay the price they are asking to go to a game. Oh well - if that is progress, you can have it.
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