Romanian folk costume has remained relatively unchanged and continues to be worn for festival occasions. The basic model for women consists of an embroidered blouse and skirt, belt, head scarf, and often a vest or jacket. As in many cultures, embroidery is placed at “vulnerable” areas of the body: the neck, cuffs, and hem, but also at the shoulders and sleeves as a symbol of strength. This example of a full festival costume is striking in the variation of blue tones and abundant embroidery. The coordination of the various components is symbolic of the pride and care given to folk traditions in Romanian culture.
See, what the race-to-the-bottom people forget is one simple fact:
The average cost to replace a minimum-wage retail employee, according to a study by the Center for American Progress, is $3,328. And that’s a lowball. Basically, any time somebody quits or is fired, it costs the company money. A lot of money. New employees are also less productive (because it takes people longer to do things they are less familiar with). Employee churn is very expensive.
The Wal-Mart (and Amazon) model is to consider employees as expendable robots. They completely dismiss the costs of hiring, onboarding, training, reduced productivity during the training period, etc, because “these people are cheap.”
Costco treats employees as “appreciating assets” – that is to say, employees become more valuable over time. Therefore, it is better and more productive to only replace employees who aren’t doing their jobs.
Let’s take a warehouse worker in a large facility. A new worker will waste time remembering which aisle it is, may take a longer route there, etc. Somebody who has been there a year has it down cold. They’ll pick the item far quicker than the new person. This improves productivity, which improves profits.
But for some reason a lot of companies don’t seem to grasp this.
All they see is the paycheck, when the actual figure they should be looking at is the profit a worker produces. That is to say, the difference between productivity and pay. Raising pay causes people to stick around and become more productive, which actually increases the profit in the long term.
We need to stop thinking so short term.
Oh my god. Costco employees get paid better than starting teachers in my school district.
(Which is not to say they should be paid less. We should be paid more.)
Good job Costco. I’ll definitely be taking my business there in the future.
True! I often (actually, almost always) shopped at Costco when I lived in Ottawa. The employees were significantly nicer, more helpful and efficient than in any other chain grocery store. They would smile and joke with each other and the clients. There were no what I call “retail robots” – stressed out, tired people with glazed eyes who just wanted to be left alone and go home. I once made a remark about it to the cashier. She said “we get a decent pay and we are treated well, best retail job I’ve ever had”. IT IS POSSIBLE.
So my mom works at a church. Actually, she works somewhere that is located in a church, but close enough for government work. It’s not important. Anyway, they had an artist gallery, because sometimes churches do that; it’s a whole “supporting local artists” thing, and it’s pretty standard.
What is very not standard is the artist they happened to host this week.
Susan B. Hale is a musician and painter in the Upstate NY region. (For people wondering where that is: it’s all the not-NYC part. There’s actually an entire state attached to the city, like a big, slightly-racist wart. I’m getting off track.)
Susan’s art is fairly standard, lovely oil-on-canvas Impressionist stuff. Mostly flowers –
– some pretty landscapes –
– some weird abstract shit –
Pretty stuff. If I had anything resembling disposable income, I’d wanna buy some of this stuff, because it’s gorgeous.
You know what else she paints, sometimes?
BIG FUCKING DINOSAURS
BIG FUCKING DINOSAURS FROLICKING WITH FLOWERS
BIG FUCKING DINOSAURS NOSHING ON HUMAN SKULLS IN A BLACK VOID-LIKE HELLSCAPE
BIG FUCKING DINOSAURS ON BIG FUCKING CANVASES PLAYING HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH DEAD FLOATING LADIES BY PICTURESQUE PONDS HOW ARE YOU NOT DELIGHTED BY THIS
Obviously, my immediate reaction was to seek this woman out and find her all of the money. But while I did absolutely spend two hours looking up who she was and then emailing her, she doesn’t appear to have an Etsy – or any online store at all. She has virtually no digital presence, and not much of a reputation offline either.
And this is tragic.
Because let’s be real: this woman should be a fucking internet star. She paints lovely scenes of tranquility and fills them with T-Rexes for no apparent reason, other than that she thinks they’re rad. There’s an alternate reality in which she’s a Tumblr legend, and I want to live in that reality.
So here’s the thing. I know I’m not a Big Tumblr Person. I have virtually no clout in things like this, and the odds of anyone seeing this post are kinda limited. But I also want this woman to be so inundated with requests for awesome dino paintings that she has no choice but to open up an online store. I want my home and those of everyone I know to be filled with humungous, lush oils of morbid hilarious dinosaur beauty, like if Monet spent a glorious weekend binging all of Jurassic Park while also on a cocaine bender.
Reblog this. Email her telling her how great you think she is and how much you wish she had an amazon site or whatever. Consider supporting her, if you have some money and love dinosaurs. Boost the shit out of this, because even if she doesn’t get a single dime, her artwork makes me smile and I want to at least share the happy with others, and maybe bounce some of it back to her.
I am not sorry for the length of this post. You got pretty flowers and fucking dinosand you are welcome for it.
Steel Phoenix Studios 