When you're in Alaska, it's the lower 49.

Also, Philly is a pit and nobody should ever go there.

I'm not a fan of letting people valet my car but since I've started being a valet parker this kind of behaviour really does get annoying. When it's a place that requires valet parking we really have to do it, our job's on the line if we let too many get by. The normal reasoning behind it is that the parking lot is owned and used by another company (in my case a law firm) and they get very picky about who can park their cars in there. As a result, they want us to do all the parking and hold us as liable for anything that goes wrong. Hence why my manager flipped out when I let someone do it themselves.

Besides, not all valet parkers are complete idiots... I autox and spend all my free time working on cars!

I have done "that job." During my college years I did a summer full-time at K-mart, and held a part-time gig at the busiest Wendy's on earth (seriously- UF Gainesville campus, Reitz Union building, main floor. We had the plaque to prove it.) The pay sucks, and the work is tedious, tiresome and unrewarding. But the key point is that within a retail or foodservice environment, there just aren't a lot of opoprtunities for basic human rights violations, there's not a great danger of being maimed or killed, and they tended not to chain us to the floor and beat us with whips. Additionally, there's not really any skilled labor going on here- no apprenticing system, no transfer of skills honed over a lifetime of craft. In other words, no real need for the basic, traditional functions of a labor union.

Unfortunately, that's just how life is sometimes. Some jobs just suck more than others, and we happen to live in a society where people are more or less free to seek out whatever available employment suits their skills and abilities, and to improve themselves by education and vocational training so that they can explore other employment venues.

I can't think of many valid excuses why a person who is unhappy with their job at Ralph's would be unable to attend evening / weekend courses at their local community college or vo-tech and learn welding, auto repair, HVAC, medical / dental assisting, court reporting, drafting, paralegal, accounting, pharmacy tech, whatever. We're talking about a 1 to 2 year commitment and a couple thousand dollars, tops.

Unions used to be necessary. Companies abused the workers. Now it looks to an outsider like me that unions are abusing the companies. The average laborer costs GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc. $70-$80 bucks an hour in wages, benefits, etc. That is insane. Unions - and a lack of creativity- have ruined the domestic car market.

Not all unions are bad. But damn, the UAW and some others are out of control.