Up until this job, the solitaire games <i>were</i> deleted by my employers. Most allowed fairly unfettered internet access, but the bank did not allow any email.

HOW DOES SHE DO IT?

OK, Black Friday. An observation made this morning on so-called holiday weekends. The wife and I both are in retail, and we both worked Thanksgiving, and again today. (sure I work in the home and my life is a dreamy fantasy, but anyway)
If you have a professional job or even most sort of average to good jobs, you spend this weekend traveling and eating and shopping. But what about the army of low-paid types who march into work at the grocery store or Wal-mart so other people can throw their money away on plastic junky toys for their spoiled kids? Just an observation on class: there are a lot of people who don't get a chance to relax this weekend. Us? We shll make up for it Saturday, with travel, shopping and eating in abundance.

North of the 49th, retail staff are paid a spiff for working holidays. For instance, employees scheduled to work on statutory holidays collect 2.5 times their regular hourly wage. What are the rules down there, Gary?

Dunno, Gordo, about holiday pay, but I make the same low wage whenever I work (har!). I think the harder part is today, with insane hordes of shoppers hitting walmart and such.

You couldn't pay me enough to work retail on one of these crazy days. Uh uh.

You couldn't pay me enough to work retail any day. Dealing with people like me all day? No way.

Again with the no hat tip... no more tea and crumpets for you!

I thought that tea drinking ladies reference screamed Flea. Who else?

But what is the etiquette of an emailed link? it differs from the linking to a post. Sometimes the act is one that is discrete, a mechanism for an unspoken reason to raise the point without informing of the source. I need to know. I have trod on toes either way and cannot trust myself in this matter (as with so many others).

I agree these etiquette waters are tricky to navigate and it is all to easy to founder on the shoals of impropriety. I tend to hat tip anything sent to me by email. If the tipster has a blog I generally link it as a link, and whatever traffic might with it accrue, is always welcome. For those without a web presence the question is trickier as it is not always clear to what extent they wish to tip with anonymity. Again, those with a blog or website have made their own decision as to whether to be on-line under their own name or under a pseudonym. For those peculiar off-line folks, and especially those who work in the military or academia or who have the mixed blessing of being related to me or knowing me in meatspace, I contrive a pseudonym by which I may credit them while leaving their privacy unmolested.

The privacy question is a complicated one. I tend to assume anything I send to anyone is "for attribution" unless otherwise specified. That said, I almost always ask someone if they mind my reproducing, say, a quote from an email sent to me personally. Lest any misunderstanding result from a heated exchange with, for example, a stroppy marketing representative, I have added a disclaimer to my sidebar explaining that any mail sent to the Flea may be published.

I admit I have made all this up as I have gone along these last several years. We could do with a Modern Manners for the blogosphere.

Excellently put and a lesson to us all.

I'm guessing some type of phased-in income splitting will come during the next campaign.

Trappists make good cheese. There's a lot of it though here in Hungary. I go to the hypermarket hoping for a sliver of cheddar and instead find twenty different varieties of Trappist. Re: NYT and deficits, it is an open secret that conservatives like to run up deficits, is it not? In other news, I am in the running for Best Culture Blog at the CBAs. I encourage anyone here who wants to to vote for me. I've posted the link as my web page. Many thanks to those who have already voted for me in the first round. Also, Arthur is in the running for Best Tech Blog.

I have never worked retail persay, however I did work IN a store as a stock boy whilst in grade 9 plus I have been a busboy, bartender (boy) and DJ (boy)dealing wit the eating and drinking folk of Ontario. I appreciate that we up here in Siberada pay workers 2.5 times pay for holiday work, but I honestly think it is true that the "working class retail" person is unfairly set upon by allowing the miserly besuited overlords to open the stores on said days. A stat holiday should be for everyone except essential services. WHo needs to shop on Christmas. Who could not make due by planning for one single day of a month being unable to buy underwear or beer. Power to the people!

Thanks for the link. In a semi-related vein I should note that while The Firm is very forward-thinking on the whole non-work-related use of the web it is downright draconian when certain regulations get violated. So while you <i>can</i> surf Lavalife after 7pm, you <i>cannot</i> send a broadcast e-mail (i.e. to the entire Firm or significant chunks of) at any time unless prior authorization is received.

We lock down the Firm-wide mailing lists so that they cannot be employed by regular users, and there are definite cases where people have been frog-marched out the door for having had the good (or bad) fortune to have sent non-business e-mail to a locked group at the precise moment it was unlocked for some other authorised mass-mailing purpose.

I have not yet made it past the bullet with the tea drinking ladies (and links to other unlikely activities undertaken by 20 something babes). I am please to say a good twenty minutes of my afternoon has gone, never to be seen again. Thank you Alan, and you too Flea. I will now read the rest of the, no doubt more edifying if less exciting, bullets.

I miss the quietness that was Ontario on a Sunday when the Retail Holidays Act was in force. You could go look at cars without being hassled by salespeople. You could go practise your driving in the mall parking lot. You could wander downtown and enjoy the quiet. I certainly don't need to go shopping every day, yet I find myself doing it because I don't have to plan for the stores being closed. I never did buy the line of crap that people spend more when they can shop every day. They still buy the same amount of stuff/junk/claptrap, they just spread the spending over a seven day week instead of six.

I miss the silence. The quiet streets, the having to walk across town to a different than normal friend's neighborhood to get a loaf of bread for mom. The bike rides where you wouldn't get creamed by anyone even if you were weaving from lane to lane downtown at 2 pm.

As a complete aside, the days after 9/11 when the aircraft were banned from the skies, the lack of added unnatural co2 and moisture in the atmosphere resulted in measureable temperature changes in the atmosphere, less cloud cover and better sleeping. Well, maybe not for everyone.. but still. It was the last time the streets seemed quiet.. well, that and the day of he blackout a few years back. THAT was cool.

Oh my. I hadn't actually looked at teabirds till now.

oh my..

oh my.......

thank you alan.

Screw that. I bought an avocado last Sunday.

Guacamole!

I LOVED the blackout. The city was truly dark for the first time in generations. It was quiet outside. I got to watch a transformer explode when the city overloaded it. I wasn't so keen on soldiers walking the streets, though. THAT weirded me out to no end.

Soldiers? Gord were you on crack that day? haw haw!