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
The Whole in Our Heads, Part One
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Cold opening from the *Adventure Thru Inner Space*:
And still I continue to shrink! What compelling force draws me into this
mysterious darkness -- can t...
18 hours ago
3 comments:
Was the farmer sickly, or was it the son?
I'm thinking it was the son. But Ms. Zacharek would know for sure.
Then shouldn't it read ...a farmer's sickly son....?
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