this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Right. Sure. I agree with you. But you're totally missing the point of what I was saying.
If the cashier/life guard/security personal left for a few minutes or maybe longer the company that person works for didn't "loose" money because they weren't at their station.
Being productive 100% isn't possible and anything less than 100% isn't a loss.
Companies aren't paying people for works performed but for works completed. The life guard being there at all constitutes them being at work. Just because they left and watched the eclipse for 10 minutes or went to the bathroom or took a personal call isn't a loss!
Which is why the only thing that matters is what work was completed not how much work they did in the time it took to complete.
We need to change the way business interpret what constitutes paid labor.
If a cashier abandons their post, a nonzero amount of people will leave without purchase instead of waiting an unknown time for them to return.
If a commercial pilot takes a detour to see the eclipse better they can cause huge ripple effects on other flights causing significant costs.
If a security guard skips out on their post for a bit the business can be robbed or otherwise liable for issues during the lapse.
If a lifeguard leaves their post unrelieved or isn't fully paying attention and someone gets injured or dies that's a serious financial liability (at least in the USA)
Even if there's no one in the store because everyone is outside looking at the eclipse?
Every single person is looking at the eclipse? I traveled during the eclipse and the majority of people around us didn't care to go outside during the peak.
Its easy to think that everyone cares about what we do.
The commenter ive replied to was stressing that not even a single dollar was lost, and believing not a single person in the entire eclipse area was trying to make a transaction during this time is silly.
Ok so you're simultaneously assuming 0% of customers are looking at the eclipse and 100% of the cashiers want to go out and look at it?
It feels like you're just making up scenarios here. Seems more likely similar proportions of both cashiers and customers would be out looking at it.
Now take for example a grocery store. Did the eclipse mean that people are going to eat less? Like because there were fewer cashiers, they suddenly decided they aren't going to buy food this week? I'm pretty sure demand for food (or any other good) disappeared because the eclipse. So what's the actual economic cost? Some businesses would have been less busy for about 20 minutes but then more busy later on.
Thinking that a 20 minute pause in production is going to significantly impact demand is what seems silly to me. But then all of this supply side economics style of thinking is silly to me.
I'm not assuming anything, I've been responding to your whole argument of:
There clearly are a whole section of jobs where being on call, available, or present at specific continous times is vital to their "productivity" or value.
You just want to pretend everyone works a 9-5 office desk job and can work at their own pace.
Right again, I agree that's a liability. If the employee was negligent in their duties, that is definitely an issue.
Are you implying that every employee must be 100% productive with no deviation?
More importantly, you're making a lot of "if" statements. Which doesn't contradict the point that I'm making. So I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is you are arguing against?
But I will again reiterate exactly what I'm trying to say. The article is implying that there was a loss of productivity when employees went out to look at the eclipse constituting some sort of financial loss.
I am stating that there was absolutely no financial loss whatsoever because employees don't need to be 100% productive at all times as long as the work or project is completed adequately.
I'll use your airline pilot example. If the pilot deviates from his flight plan and a disaster incurs that pilot was negligent. Which is somewhat of a false equivalency. A better example would be if the pilot left to go, use the bathroom or talk to a passenger on the plane leaving his co-pilot in charge of flying the plane. There was no loss in productivity the work of flying the plane will still be completed. Therefore, the pilot should still be paid his regular amount of compensation. The airline didn't lose any money because he wasn't in the pilot seat.
So this assumes there is someone available to cover and not watch the eclipse? How can the copilot abandon their post to watch the eclipse as well?
Are you intentionally being obtuse? You know exactly what I mean.