Monday, July 13, 2009

Quote for the Day

In the late 1800s a sickly farmer's son named Frank W. Woolworth opened the first "five-and-dime"; later, foreshadowing a future that workers around the world now seem doomed to live out, he quipped, "We must have cheap labor or we cannot sell cheap goods. When a clerk gets so good she can earn better wages elsewhere, let her go." The understanding is that she'll have somewhere else to go, where her skills and talents are wanted or needed, considered something worth paying for. But increasingly in our current work climate, more skills only make a worker more expensive and possibly more demanding, not more desirable.
--Stephanie Zacharek

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was the farmer sickly, or was it the son?

Steve said...

I'm thinking it was the son. But Ms. Zacharek would know for sure.

Anonymous said...

Then shouldn't it read ...a farmer's sickly son....?