Man, I am not in a good place. I haven’t been paying attention, either, so I’m just going to have to slap this together until I fill out the white space. Deal, I ain’t getting paid for this.
I’m not going to lie, this first one hung me up for a bit but that’s mainly because I forgot the Raiders moved to Las Vegas last year. From Oakland to Los Angeles, back to Oakland, and now to Las Vegas. I know Sin City’s been pushing for a team for years and the support and/or money wasn’t there, and most of them in the know say it’s not a town that’ll support a team. And the Raiders are, well, let’s say not the most stable team.
Anyway, I’m babbling. Get back on track, Matt. Okay. Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib came out today on an Instagram post. While a number of players have come out after retirement, Nassib is the first active player in the NFL to be openly gay. Readers with long memories will recall the hullabaloo around former Missouri Tiger defensive end Michael Sam’s attempt to get into the NFL as the first gay player. However, while he was drafted by the Saint Louis Rams and spent time on the Dallas Cowboys practice team – and played a pre-season game against the New Orleans Saints (my team, for lack of any other) – he was cut before the regular season started. This was despite the high praises he was getting from coaches as well as his success in the SEC, but I’m drifting again.
Nassib made his announcement today as a part of Pride Month. He also pledged $100,000 to The Trevor Project, which provides suicide prevention and crisis intervention services for LGBRQ+ youths. Best I can tell, the reaction has been for the most part positive. The garbage human beings continue to be complete douchebags about this as in all things while the rest of humanity is of the opinion, “good for him” and moving on with life. Nassib is probably just the first in line and this no doubt represents the attempt by the NFL to attract a fanbase beyond the aforementioned garbage douchebags who think their money is sufficient.
A story in The Washington Post puts something that’s been a rock in the national shoe for the past couple of months. Seems that some 649,000 or so retail workers quit their jobs this past April. The general consensus from the workers seems that working a shit job for shit pay while having to put up with shit customers and shit managers aren’t, and I quote, “worth [their] life.” This basically boils down to cashiers and stockers at places like Wal-Mart who’ve collectively decided that in the era of COVID-19, finding a better-paying job is de rigueur.
This mirrors what’s been going on in the restaurant business, but best I can tell, retail giants aren’t blaming it totally on the stimulus checks most of us got last year or the unemployment. Seems the 15 million retail workers had such problems finding not only decent pay but child care when the pandemic was screaming they noticed just how crappy those jobs are. Like with restaurant workers, they used the downtime of the stimulus time to work on getting another job or changing whatever side hustle they had going into an economic pleasure.
Several states, including Mississippi, have moved to cut off those unemployment benefits ahead of the planned September cut-off in an attempt to silence all the Babbitts kicking up rough over the difficulty they’re having finding people to wait on tables for less than three dollars an hour. However, like the service industry, the retail industry’s big problem is people just aren’t applying for the jobs that are there. Over one million gigs are up for grabs, twice the number from this time last year, but no one wants them and labor experts are saying the businesses need to put more effort into making those jobs worth having.
Personally, I think this is going to be a painful lesson for the retail and services industries to learn, mostly because they’re going to fight like hell to keep from changing the paradigm. What’s on the other end, I don’t know, but unemployment rates around the country aren’t all that off from what’s usual, right around 5.8%. So maybe the common rabble has had the chance to move up like the bosses have been saying they should do.
Serves them right for not planning ahead. It is interesting, though, that the number of people who’ve quit the shit jobs matches up fairly close with how many Americans died from COVID-19 over the past year. People who get shit pay for shit work under shit bosses placating absolute shits died at higher rates than the rest of us and aren’t inclined to go back to that shit. A puzzler, for sure.
Dear Y'all 