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Today, corporations have weighed the costs of high turnover against the costs of making the experience of work less miserable, and, because workers and customers are both kind of stuck with them, they choose bad service, terrible work conditions, and high turnover. It’s not because it’s some law of…

In the free-market theory of economics, everything is naturally drawn to a mutually beneficial equilibrium as if by gravity. Workers unhappy with their pay or working conditions will find a new job. Customers unhappy with their cell phone provider’s pricing or customer service will switch to anothe…

The entrance to the nearby BART stop is crowded with a dozen homeless people, so many that it’s actually hard to get down the stairs. None of them bothers asking me for money, because, as I’ve been fascinated to discover, my McDonald’s uniform is like an invisibility cloak when it comes to panhandl…

As usual, I spend my last couple minutes of lunch killing time by the smoothie machine. The system won’t clock me back in until I’ve had my full thirty minutes, but I always try to be back and ready to clock in a couple of minutes early, because I will get yelled at for being one minute late. I wis…

You clock in by scanning your fingerprint, and, as at Amazon, the system won’t let you clock in before the exact time on your schedule. So for a few minutes, the small area between the fry bin and the smoothie machine is crowded with several people about to start their shifts. Behind them, someone …