Retail Hell Underground

Purina Beneful Dog Food Being Sued After Custys Report Thousands of Dogs Got Sick and Some Died: Purina Denies The Claims

 

From Daily Mail:

Beneful dog food has caused the illness and possibly the death of thousands of dogs, a new class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month, claims.

The lawsuit contends the dog food, a Nestlé Purina PetCare Co. product, has dangerous toxins, including propylene glycol and mycotoxins.

Nastle Purina officials say the lawsuit is 'without merit' and based on 'social media-driven misinformation.' Purina Beneful is still being sold on store shelves

The lawsuit was first filed by Frank Lucido in a US District Court in California. 

Lucido says three of his family dogs became ill after eating exclusively Beneful for a period of time. 

Dozer, an 8-year-old English Bulldog, suffered internal bleeding in his stomach and lesions in his liver and died, he says.

According to the suit, Lucido's two other dogs also became ill after eating Beneful. 

He said he fed them only Beneful for less than a month.

The lawsuit says thousands of dogs have suffered internal bleeding, liver and kidney failure, vomiting and other symptoms.

This class action suit concerns 'kibble' dry food, which includes 'Purina Beneful Health Weight'; 'Purina Beneful Original'; 'Purina Beneful Incredibites,' and 'Purina Beneful Healthy Growth for Puppies', 'Purina Beneful Healthy Smile', 'Purina Beneful Health Fiesta', 'Purina Beneful Healthy Raidance', and 'Purina Beneful Playful Life' varieties

The lawsuit lists stomach and related internal bleeding, liver malfunction or failure, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, weight loss, seizures, bloat and kidney failure as symptoms consistently reported by dog-owners feeding their dogs Beneful.

Lucido claims these illnesses, and similar illnesses of other dogs that have become sick and/or died after eating Beneful, were caused by toxic substances found in the food.

'We received hundreds of complaints,' said attorney James Young, of lawfirm Morgan & Morgan out of Tampa, Florida - one of the lawyers filing the suit.

 'Nationally, there have been thousands of complaints about dogs who have eaten this dog food by Purina Beneful and suffered very serious side effects, including death.'

'The issues are pretty similar across the board,' he said, 'liver and kidney problems, which results in diarrhea, bloody stool, vomiting, and secondary harm.'

Specifically, the suit claims that automotive antifreeze component propylene glycol is a primary ingredient in Beneful's dog food.

The lawsuit is asking that Nestlé Purina Petcare Company pay actual, statutory and punitive damages to all those filed under the class action suit -- as well as forfeit any profits earned from the sale of the product in question. 

The St. Louis Business Journal talked to Nestlé Purina PetCare. 

'We believe the lawsuit is without merit, and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against it,' Keith Schopp, vice president of corporate public relations, said.

'Like other pet foods, Beneful is occasionally the subject of social media-driven misinformation.'

'We have a very comprehensive quality assurance program to ensure the quality of our products.'

Beneful has been the target of two other class action lawsuits, both of which, Schopp said, were quickly dismissed.

via  daily mail

 

 

 

Emotional Labor Being Forced on Low-wage Retail and Customer Service Workers

 

From MSNBC:

A Starbucks barista’s job is more than just serving coffee. She also needs to be polite, even friendly, to the customers. If she does her job correctly, then maybe the customer will walk away feeling like the barista was actually happy to serve him—that it was not only her job, but a genuine pleasure. In many jobs, that sort of projected enthusiasm may just be a way of earning some additional tips on top of the employee’s base pay. But in other lines of work—including the occupations which fuel America’s growing low-wage service sector—proper emotional responses are mandatory.

The sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild coined the term “emotional labor” in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, where she described it as ”management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display … sold for a wage.” The term can apply to work in a variety of professions, from escorts to doctors, but it is most often used in reference to the sort of attitude management which occurs in low-wage service sector jobs. Josh Eidelson and Timothy Noah recently discussed two prominent examples in articles for The Nation and The New Republic.

In The Nation, Eidelson highlights Starbucks’ famous “come together” cups as a perfect example of emotional labor. When the CEO of Starbucks required that DC area employees write “come together” on every paper Starbucks cup served until the fiscal cliff negotiations were over, writes Eidelson, he was forcing those workers to “act out a part—from speaking from a company script, to smiling despite verbal abuse or physical pain, to urging that Congress embrace a deal that could imperil their retirement.”

Meanwhile, in The New Republic, Timothy Noah observes that the sandwich shop chain Pret A Manger aggressively monitors its employees’ displays of enthusiasm. If any worker at any particular store seems insufficiently pleased to see their customers, he and all of his coworkers could suffer the consequences. Pret CEO Clive Schlee even monitors whether his employees are making enough affectionate physical contact with each other.

“In other workplaces, touching a co-worker may get you fired,” writes Noah, “but at Pret you have to worry about not touching co-workers enough.”

There’s no sure way to measure the level of emotional labor being required of the American workforce, but it does appear to be a growing trend as employers become better at extracting additional productivity from low-wage service workers. In fact, some of those jobs—I’m thinking here of Walmart greeters—seem to consist of nothing but emotional labor.

Such a trend might seem rather benign, given how much we’ve come to value customer service from clerks and restaurant workers. But should a person’s livelihood really hinge on her ability to pretend that she loves her job? It may be slightly uncomfortable to be served coffee by someone who clearly hates working long hours for a minimum wage, but it’s unclear that the best way to deal with that discomfort is through escalating worker coercion—especially when employee rudeness or visible unhappiness helps to make their low wages and poor working conditions visible.

A 1993 report by the academics Blake E. Ashforth and Ronald H. Humphrey argued that “emotional labor stimul

via www.msnbc.com

 

 

How To Make Your Workers Hate You: Lesson One

 

From: Kryss

Just before I started at one place, they had had gone way over the goal for a company wide "clearance contest" and everyone who worked there was to get a $1500 bonus.

Fast-forward a few years, after we’d been bought out by an American company, and, once again, we’d done well enough to earn a big bonus.

So the managers all got big bonuses, and corporate jackets, and corporate hats; their wives all got corporate jackets and hats too, and us workers got the cheapest 3-for1 pizza they could find.

Which they brought in for one of the three shifts they had working that day. Which we had to eat in the managers’ office area. Standing up. And most of us got sick off it.

How To Make Your Workers Hate You: Lesson One.

Cargill, you suck.

--Kryss

 

 

Time Warner Custy Complains About Faulty Equipment and They Change Her Name To C*** on Her Bill

 

From Daily Mail:

Time Warner Cable has become synonymous with less-than-stellar customer service - and changing a subscriber’s name to a sexist slur is not likely to improve the company’s public image.

Esperanza Martinez, from Orange County, California, was surprised to receive a note from the cable provider Monday trying to convince her not to cancel her service - a request she did not make in the first place.

But she was even more surprised to discover that the missive pleading with her to stay with Time Warner was addressed to 'C*** Martinez.'

The offensive sexual profanity was also included in the introduction, 'Dear C*** Martinez.'

Without a hint of irony, the note then went on to say that Time Warner 'has been working on improvements to deliver better experience every day.'

Ms Martinez told the technology blog Ars Technica that she never asked to disconnect her service and was not sure why the letter was sent to her house.

When she finally got on the phone with Time Warner, she learned that the name change was made on February 12 - the same day she had a live chat with a customer service representative about a problem with her cable box.

But Ms Martinez insisted that she was no rude during the online conversation with the Time Warner staffer.

‘I was not upset even when they could not resolve my issue and had to send a technician out,’ she told the blog. ‘I have no idea why a TWC employee would do this and risk losing their job.'

Time Warner has admitted to the mishap, claiming that an employee at a third-party vendor has replaced Ms Martinez's first name with the profanity in the cable provider’s computer system.

Officials at TWC stated that the company has since severed ties with the vendor in question, and they are now reviewing their procedures to make sure this does not happen again.

Ms Martinez on Thursday received an apology from Time Warner, along with a free year of Internet and cable service.

The embarrassing incident comes at a particularly inopportune time for Time Warner, which is currently in the process of merging with Comcast - the same cable company that made headlines over the past two months for lashing out at their customers.

Less than two week ago, a Comcast subscriber in Illinois got a letter from the cable provider, in which her name was changed from ‘Mary’ to 'Super B**** Bauer' after the woman fought to have the Hallmark Channel added back to her package. 

 

In late January, Lisa and Ricardo Brown received a bill from the cable giant that was addressed to 'A**hole Brown' after they had an unpleasant exchange with a customer service representative and decided to cancel their service.

 

 via daily mail

 

 

Luxury Watch Company Breitling Accused of Firing Longtime Top Salesman Because He's Gay

 

From Daily Mail:

A former salesman for luxury watch manufacturer Breitling claims he was fired because he was gay and did not fit the company's 'male stereotype'.

Frederick Cargian, 53, is suing the company following his dismissal from the firm in December 2013 after 23 years' service with the firm. 

Mr Cargian, who was based in Manhattan, claims Breitling discriminated against him due to his sexuality, despite being the company's leading salesman.

In documents lodged at Manhattan Federal Court, Mr Cargian claims that before his dismissal, the company had handed over part of his sales territory to a former lacrosse star whose father was an American footballer.

Mr Cargian said the discrimination began in October 2010 when Thierry Prissert was appointed president of Breitling's US operation.

Before Mr Prissert joined the company, Mr Cargian said he had helped increase US sales at the watch manufacturer  from $2 million to more than $100 million. 

According to the court documents: 'Prissert, by his actions, made it clear that he expected stereotypical male behaviour. 

'He gave preference to stereotypical straight men with sports backgrounds. 

'Prissert would regularly engage in sports talk with male reps in the office, but never included the plaintiff or the female reps. Prissert invited all of the male reps to his New York apartment, but did not invite the plaintiff or any of the female reps. 

'Because the plaintiff is gay, he was treated with the same disdain as were the female staff members.'

Mr Cargian's legal team claims that in June 2013, the company flew all of the experienced male sales reps to an event held in association with Bentley in Crewe, England. The lawsuit claims that Mr Cargian and all of the female sales staff were excluded from the 'prestigious marketing event'. 

The document also claims that Mr Cargian was forced to share a room with a married, female member of staff during the company's annual trip to their headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

Mr Prissert told The Independent that the allegations and lawsuit were 'without merit', and that Breitling took US equal opportunities laws 'very seriously'. He described the central allegation as 'false'.  

via daily mail

 

 

Walmart Caves To Peer Pressure: 500,000 Worker Getting a Raise

 

 

From Huff Po:

WASHINGTON -- In a move that could alter the minimum wage debate and improve the image of the world's largest retailer, Walmart announced it will raise the baseline wage of its current store employees to $10 per hour, bringing pay hikes to an estimated 500,000 workers.

The company said in an announcement on Thursday that it would raise its wage floor to $9 in April, followed by a second boost to $10 by next February.

The decision follows similar moves by other major retailers such as Gap and IKEA, but the sheer size of Walmart sets the company apart. The Arkansas-based retailer is the largest private-sector employer in the U.S., with an estimated 1.4 million employees, and it is largely seen as a trend-setter in the retail industry.

On a quarterly earnings call aligned with the announcement, Doug McMillon, the company's CEO, said raising wages would be good for both employees and customers.

"Overall, these are strategic investments in our people to reignite the sense of ownership they have in our stores," McMillon said. "As a result, we firmly believe that our customers will benefit from a better store experience, which can drive higher sales and returns for our shareholders over time."

According to a Walmart spokesman, the new wage floors will apply to current employees. New hires next year will be earning at least $9, but will be bumped up to at least $10 per hour after roughly six months of training.

Walmart has long been saddled with a reputation as a low-wage employer, and its battles with labor unions -- in particular the United Food and Commercial Workers union -- stretch back decades. In recent years, labor groups have organized high-profile worker strikes to coincide with the company's Black Friday shopping events, pillorying the retailer over its pay practices.

The across-the-board pay hikes should help rehabilitate that image. They will probably also help Walmart improve customer service in its stores. Over the past two years, bare shelves in Walmart supercenters have become a common sight. A report from a research firm last year traced the troubles in part to a lack of investment in the company's labor.

The pay hikes could also help lawmakers in Congress pushing to raise the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 per hour since 2009. Democrats have proposed hiking the wage floor to $10.10 per hour and tying it to an inflation index, but Republicans in both chambers have blocked the measure from moving forward.

The proposal is extremely popular among Americans in general, polling with broad approval that crosses party lines. The decision by Walmart could make Republicans look even more out-of-touch.

With Congress gridlocked, many states have moved ahead with raises to their own minimum wages, with a slate of ballot measures passing in the November elections. For the first time ever, a majority of states now have a higher minimum wage than the federal level.

via www.huffingtonpost.com