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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • The side effect of DEI was, in many cases, a push toward combating nepotism, cronyism, and arbitrary hiring practices in favor of hiring based on merit.

    That was not a side effect, that was the intent. I worked on DEI initiatives. Nepotism, managers higher their friends instead of the most qualified candidate was part of those conversations, they were raised by the employees we talked to. All those things are forms of bias.

    The DEI framework wasn’t necessarily required to accomplish that.

    Intentionally addressing bias isn’t necessary to combat people who have a bias against those who are not their friends or family?

    By calling the entire project “DEI”, diversity, equity, and inclusion, the debate became about the meaning and implications of those words instead of focusing on the actual institutional problems we should be addressing.

    That’s literally what you’re doing though. You are claiming the problem is how we named it, and arguing if we had only referred to it as something else, it would not have been a problem.

    It’s easy to complain about the efforts trying to address a problem, it’s harder to actually put forth that effort.

    Also, if a political group wants to demonize something, it doesn’t matter what you name it, they will demonize it. You had states legalizing Civil Unions instead of Marriages for same-sex couples: they STILL demonized the relationships. People like you were saying “the name Marriage is the problem, just call it something else”. We clearly see now that the name was never the problem.



  • because you’re hiring the best-qualified employees rather than your cousin, brother, sister, or some guy who happens to look like you

    That was the whole point of DEI. Data showed that diverse companies were more profitable. Addressing bias (like nepotism), especially unconscious bias (“I trust this guy more ~because he looks like me~”) was a primary initiative in DEI. The other was to encourage people who don’t normally speak up (either because they never get hired or because the environment is less psychologically safe for people like them) to do so and challenge group think. It was never meant to be”lower the bar”, but it was meant to force critical thinking around what the bar is.



  • I’m sorry, but you must be a new Aldi shopper

    It was the first time I had shopped at an Aldi in like a decade. A friend buys my kid these snacks she loves, that are only at Aldi, so I went to check it out. The quarter thing was one of several PITAs I experienced.

    It’s always 20–30% cheaper at Aldi than other stores in my area

    That wasn’t my experience. There’s a Smart & Final nearby that has most of the basics at similar or lower cost, especially if you go with store brand. While I was at Aldi I was doing price comparisons against the other stores I go to (using their apps, knowing the price in app is usually higher) and found many items were more expensive at Aldi. Frozen fish was one thing I remember being higher at Aldi. It seems like they drop prices on some items but get you on other items, which is what a lot of grocery stores do.

    I recall, Aldi does actually pay its workers well

    I’d believe that but that’s because there are maybe 3 employees in the entire store. One at checkout, and two running around handling everything else. I figured that’s why the shelves were not arranged well, there’s no one with the time to clean things up after shoppers make a mess. This was a fairly large Aldi too, almost as big as the S&F in my neighborhood. The difference is at the S&F they open up more checkouts when things get busy.


  • Won’t this just encourage people to use self-checkout as it will make using an employed checkout lane more expensive?

    I don’t think many people know how harmful self-checkout is to their neighbors employed the store. I made a comment to a Costco employee about how I was glad they added the hand scanners to self-checkout, and their response was to educate me that self-checkout isn’t good for the employees because it means fewer jobs. I’m was so self-absorbed in my own day-to-day life that I did not even think about the impact it had on Costco employees. I didn’t even think about the fact that here I am talking about this pain point of self-checkout (having to use the stationary scanner) and relief about having a better option (the hand scanner) when the best option is already there (employees handling the checkout). The real solution is to just open up more jobs, hire more employees to do the scanning and bagging. I stopped using self-checkout after that.

    I went to Aldi recently. You have to put a quarter in to get a shopping cart (I haven’t carried around quarters in ages). The shelves often get into a state of disarray. The line for the 1 employee doing checkout is massive, but self-checkout is also a huge pain in the ass. Continuously cutting jobs to increase profits is a race to the bottom, and yet people who can barely afford groceries think they couldn’t live without a discount chain like Aldi. We are saving pennies by giving up our time doing our own checkout, when we could be getting paid to check people out, providing them some convenience and doing so with greater efficiency instead. I’ll add that many items at Aldi’s are actually more expensive than at other grocery stores, if you’re not paying attention you could end up paying more than a place with more employed checkout lanes.


  • “It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission, in the same way that someone’s opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn’t.”

    The part being unsaid here is “that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH Mullvad’s values or mission” (pardon the double negative)

    That’s what I have issue with. They’re saying Daniel’s own personal purpose/mission (the donation being an expression of that) is compatible with their mission, or at minimum does not conflict.

    What does “freedom of speech” have to do with expression of Mullvad employees? Mullvad isn’t a government. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. If Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose is incompatible with Mullvad’s, severing their relationship with him would be appropriate and not a violation of his freedom of speech. Of course, this goes back to, it’s not incompatible.

    The “tolerance” bit, Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose as expressed by his donation is inherently inhumanely intolerant. Again, Mullvad is indirectly stating that intolerance is not incompatible with their mission/purpose, which makes the “tolerance” bit a contradiction. They might as well have people working for them that believe you have zero right to privacy.