Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Ross Mason,
I offer to suggest the fear and trepidation to breastfeed is one of the major problems. It should come from parents that it is normal and natural to breastfeed. I proffer that those with that attitude are more likely to not have problems with “the latch” and other issues.
Woah. That’s extremely patronising. You’re talking about something that, with the best will in the world, might be emotionally and physically traumatic for a new mother. And may simply just not work. Attributing that to an attitude problem on mum’s part is precisely the kind of pressure people have been talking about.
I have no doubt that babies in the past may have died because they failed to breast-feed properly. We ought to be glad there are alternatives now.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Do you guys feel anything about the connection between JB HiFi’s prices and the amount they pay their staff? I know at least one PAS reader who actively boycotts JBH precisely because of their problematic pay and conditions.
JB contends it actually pays more to junior staff than The Warehouse, Harvey Norman and Noel Leeming, which pay minimum wage. So opting to shop at other chains doesn't seem a very wise thing to do either.
We know about JB because 100 of its staff were represented by a Unite campaign, but I suspect that to make an informed choice we'd need to know a lot more about conditions, allowances and commissions.
TradeLeaks has this on JB commissions:
Salespeople earn 10% of the GP of the total sale. If a discontinued product is sold, the salesperson gets 2-3% of the total sale of that product.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to andin,
I knew there were ipod dockable DAC's
But over $1000 at retail in NZ. Ouchies.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Incidentally, the video was filmed at what used to be ControlData's Sydney office. Back in those days, ControlData was as big as IBM, HP and what is now Unisys. It never fully recovered from Seymour Cray jumping ship and going it alone
I will alert the editors at NZ On Screen to this awesome little bit of background.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
What may well have changed is, for better and worse, we live in a culture where people are more sophisticated (and adversarial) in their relationships with media and the old model of the handful of outlets serving as “gatekeepers” is breaking down. Or something.
And also, that there is now a model for corrections and fact-checking, that grew up in the wild and is now available for adoption by enlightened media organisations.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Danielle,
the thought of being solely under a midwife’s care, and that midwife not being risk-averse enough, gives me… pause? (Translation: terrors.) I feel a bit guilty about that.
And I'm sure you know you shouldn't, at all ...
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Why do so many women drivers tailgate? Um, what?
Far out. Might he not, in a sane moment, look at that sentence and wonder about himself?
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to BenWilson,
I expect he doesn’t even know that he was 8 shades of awesome, and they were fucking lucky to have him working there.
I've never given a tip such as yours in that setting, but I have had very good individual service from a young guy at JB HiFi and, as ever, I made sure he got the sale when I went back. I'm a bit shocked at how small his bonus will have been.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to izogi,
in a largely polarised TV media world, I suspect TVNZ publishing errors (and thereby encouraging more people to report them) would also create lots of new TV3 opportunities to lead its own nightly news with stories about how useless TVNZ is. It’d probably also look bad at the Qantas Media Awardsat least in producers’ eyes.
I suspect you're quite close to the mark here. That's very much the TV news mindset.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Ross Mason,
OK. I’ll fess up. I paid Don’s bill 2 weeks ago. T
Good on you.