Retail Clerks Research Articles

Availability and Characteristics of Hemp-Derived Psychoactive Cannabis Products: A Pilot Study in Cleveland, Ohio

Background: Hemp-derived psychoactive cannabis products (HDPCPs), such as delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), emerged onto the market as an alternative to cannabis following the 2018 US Farm Bill which legalized hemp. Research on HDPCPs remains limited. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the availability, placement, and consumption modality of HDPCPs as well as to identify potential defining characteristics of consumers. Methods: Between October 2022 and January 2023, researchers visited a random sample of 82 tobacco retailers in Cleveland, Ohio, to evaluate the availability of HDPCPs marketed as delta THC (eg, delta-8 or delta-10). Information was captured on where the HDPCPs were placed (eg, behind the counter, on the counter, by candy, or elsewhere) as well as the consumption modality (eg, edible or inhaled). Among retailers who stocked these products, clerks were asked who typically buys these products and how often they are purchased. Results: Over two-fifths (41.5%) of retailers carried HDPCPs. Most retailers (97.1%) carried delta THC products behind the counter and carried products as inhaled (82.4%), edible (70.6%). More than half of retailers (55.9%) carried both inhaled and edible forms of HDPCP. Retail clerks reported on a range of ages of consumers from younger to older or “everyone.” Conclusion: Hemp-derived psychoactive cannabis products are prevalent in this pilot study sample. These findings necessitate additional research to better quantify the population health impact of these products to determine if regulatory action may be necessary to protect public health.

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush edited by G. Pascal Zachary

<i>The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush</i> edited by G. Pascal Zachary

The Memoirs of Wendell W. Young III: A Life in Philadelphia Labor and Politics

The Memoirs of Wendell W. Young III: A Life in Philadelphia Labor and Politics

Fake It to Make It? Emotional Labor Reduces the Racial Disparity in Service Performance Judgments

Service providers who are Black tend to be evaluated less favorably than those who are White, hindering opportunities for advancement. We propose that the Black-White racial disparity in service performance evaluations is due to occupational-racial stereotype incongruence for interpersonal warmth and that more emotional labor is necessary from Blacks to reduce this incongruence. A pilot study manipulating employee race and occupation confirmed warmth and person-occupation fit judgments are lower for an otherwise equal Black than White service provider. We then demonstrate the racial disparity in service performance is due to interpersonal warmth differences in an experimental study with participants evaluating videos of retail clerks (Study 1) and a multisource field study of grocery clerks with supervisor-rated judgments (Study 2). Furthermore, White service providers are rated highly regardless of emotional labor, but performing more emotional labor (i.e., amplifying positive expressions) is necessary for Black providers to increase warmth judgments and reduce the racial disparity. In other words, Black providers are held to a higher standard where they must “fake it to make it” in service roles. We discuss implications for stereotype fit and expectation states theory, emotional labor, and service management.

The Truth About Authenticity

The Truth About Authenticity

The US Union Label: the Allure of Consumer Solidarity, and a Minefield of Challenges

8 | International Union Rights | 23/4 FOCUS | CERTIFICATION AND LABELLING The US Union Label: the Allure of Consumer Solidarity, and a Minefield of Challenges The union label has a long history unique to the US labour movement, full of creative expressions of working-class solidarity from both rank-and-file shoppers and from unions looking for ways to marshal potential consumer energies. But the label has always been rife with pitfalls, into which unions have all too often plunged. Its birth is tainted: the union label was born in San Francisco in the 1870s, when racist cigar workers placed a literally white label on their cigars to indicate that their product was made by white, not Chinese workers--who they sought to push out of the industry (and the country) altogether. That ‘white’ label quickly morphed into the ‘union’ label, which spread rapidly as a tactic during the great creative uprising of US labour in the 1880s, sparked by both the Knights of Labor and the American Federation Labor. Boycotts, cooperatives, and union labels all proliferated, as complex webs of classconscious shopping opportunities wove together working-class communities. By 1908, when the AFL’s more conservative model of craft unionism had triumphed over the Knights’ more inclusive vision, 68 of its national-level affiliated unions boasted union labels. The union label thrived in economic sectors where working-class consumers bought products or services. It was especially effective in industries in which union men purchased low-priced goods in front of their union brothers, such as beer or the quintessential union-labelled product, the cigar, bought in bars. It didn’t work in steel, on the docks, or in other sectors that did not involve working-class consumers, so its usage was always structurally limited to a subset of the labour movement. Union label promotion also included the union shop card, which butchers, retail clerks, barbers, and others placed in storefront windows to indicate that the workers inside were unionised. Cards, in turn, shaded over into the union button, which workers such as musicians and those in the building trades wore to indicate that they had paid up their quarterly union dues. Union members were then exhorted to watch for those buttons, such as making sure that the conductor was displaying his or her union button before entering a streetcar. Almost all trades appended to their printed materials the ubiquitous, tiny logo of the International Typographers’ Union label, known as the ‘union bug’, which indicated that they had been produced in a unionised shop. As a tactic, the label always inherently contained institutionalised support for employers. In its very purpose, it advertised an employer to be good - in contrast to the boycott, which marked an employer as bad. The US labour movement most forcefully promoted the union label during the 1920s, when the AFL emphasised labour-management cooperation and reached a nadir of conservatism, exclusionary craft unionism, and lack of interest in organising the unorganised. In 1925 the AFL launched a national campaign promoting local branches of a new body called the Trade Union Promotional League, which had little success. Racism, moreover, continued to besmirch local label campaigns. The Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ summarised its union button on the cover of the national magazine, for example, with ‘Skilled Wellpaid Bartenders and Culinary Workers Wear Them. Chinks, Japs, and Incompetent Labor Don’t’. Nonetheless, the union label has always dangled a tantalising potential for mobilising working-class people’s purchasing power on behalf of fellowworkers ’ struggles. In practice, unions have had problems getting union members and their families to shop union. Even at the height of the label’s popularity in the early twentieth century union leaders complained that they were having a hard time getting members to look for the union label and card. It turned out everyone wanted other unionists to buy their own label, but didn’t seek out the labels of others; usually because union goods and services were more expensive, less convenient, or simply less preferable for a wide range of reasons. The label also ran aground on the shoals of jurisdiction: while the inclusive and militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) advocated a universal union...

Reducing Youth Access to Alcohol: Findings from a Community‐Based Randomized Trial

Underage drinking continues to be an important public health problem and a challenge to the substance abuse prevention field. Community-based interventions designed to more rigorously control underage access to alcohol through retailer education and greater enforcement of underage drinking laws have been advocated as potentially effective strategies to help address this problem, but studies designed to evaluate such interventions are sparse. To address this issue we conducted a randomized trial involving 36 communities to test the combined effectiveness of five interrelated intervention components designed to reduce underage access to alcohol. The intervention was found to be effective in reducing the likelihood that retail clerks would sell alcohol to underage-looking buyers, but did not reduce underage drinking or the perceived availability of alcohol among high school students. Post hoc analyses, however, revealed significant associations between the level of underage drinking law enforcement in the intervention communities and reductions in both 30-day use of alcohol and binge drinking. The findings highlight the difficulty in reducing youth drinking even when efforts to curtail retail access are successful. Study findings also suggest that high intensity implementation of underage drinking law enforcement can reduce underage drinking. Any such effects of enhanced enforcement on underage drinking appear to be more directly attributable to an increase in perceived likelihood of enforcement and the resultant perceived inconveniences and/or sanctions to potential drinkers, than to a reduction in access to alcohol per se.

Let them see change

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to encourage annual dramatic visual change.Design/methodology/approachThe author incorporates principles of retail merchandising and his experience in retail grocery to make the argument for annual dramatic visual change.FindingsA recent reset of the children's collection led to increased circulation, improved staff contact with patrons, and a project narrative to share with elected officials.Originality/valueThe paper offers anecdotal evidence from a unique experience as a grocery retail clerk that annual dramatic visual change boosts the library's status in the community.

Targeting the Local: Policing Clandestine Methamphetamine Production in a Rural US Community

AbstractIn the United States, state-based efforts to curtail the spread of methamphetamine (“meth”) have targeted domestic producers through heightened regulation of precursor chemicals used in the clandestine meth-production process. This article examines the impact of these efforts on the exercise of police power in a rural community affected by methamphetamine. As the author shows, the targeting of local meth production has incorporated residents of rural communities into the policing process by variously encouraging and requiring them to adopt a new way of perceiving the local landscape, centred around methamphetamine. Under the new legislation, previously benign objects such as cold medicine, batteries, and drain cleaner have been re-signified as objects with criminal potential that residents of rural communities are called upon to police. This has led to the expansion of police power within and beyond the formal domains of law enforcement. Through the targeting of local production, civic volunteers, pharmacists, retail clerks, natural resource officers, and others have been drawn into the policing of the meth problem. This reveals a key dynamic in the localization of police power: as police power is localized, the local is reimagined in terms of police power.

Gender differences in information search: implications for retailing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the influence on search behavior of gender, purchase confidence, and internal knowledge in different purchase situations. It is expected that there will be gender differences on search behavior, particularly given different purchase situations.Design/methodology/approachMultivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze the main and interaction effects of the independent categorical variables on multiple dependent interval variables. An online survey was distributed to employees in different geographic locations in the USA.FindingsThe results of situational use indicate that sources of information are perceived differently by males and females depending on their levels of purchase confidence and internal knowledge, suggesting that, when consumers consider sources of information, such as retail clerk, family/friends or themselves, the purchase situation influences that decision.Research limitations/implicationsThe measure of the situational influence through brief descriptions of hypothetical consumption situations was required. Such descriptions could not include every possible feature of a natural setting, resulting in subjective interpretation by respondents of what are socially acceptable, possibly confounding results.Practical implicationsConsumers bring to the buying decision different types of experiences and expectations. Understanding how males and females seek varied sources of external information is relevant to the service industry in designing promotional plans, whether the product of choice is a restaurant, vacation resort, and hotel or tourism destination such as a winery.Originality/valueThe contribution of the research is to broaden the understanding of search behavior and the role gender plays, particularly in different purchase situations.

Evaluating Retailer Behavior in Preventing Youth Access to Harmful Legal Products A Feasibility Test

This article reports results from a feasibility study of a community effort to reduce the availability of legal products that youth can use to get high. The study evaluated the potential of youth purchase attempts to detect actual changes in retail availability of harmful legal products. These results were triangulated with self-reports from retailers about their own policies and practices. Before the intervention, less than half of retailers reported using any of six possible strategies identified as ways to reduce youth access to harmful products, and less than 8% of baseline youth attempts to purchase potentially harmful legal products were refused or questioned. After the low-dosage intervention, retailers reported increased use of three strategies and a statistically significant increase in the percentage of purchase attempts that were either questioned or refused by retail clerks. These findings (a) demonstrate the potential feasibility of retailer-focused environmental strategies and (b) support continued use of youth purchase attempts as a measure of actual retailer behavior.

Questions and Answers

Abstract This Case Exercise presents and critiques the case of a 52-year-old right hand dominant male who received a Qualified Medical Evaluation regarding his right wrist injury; the examination report includes several erroneous conclusions that are discussed following the case presentation: The examinee is a retail clerk at a liquor store who complained of progressive right hand pain and numbness in 2004; the examination took place in 2006, and the examiner reports an extensive list of relevant reports reviewed. Because the patient declines a carpal tunnel release procedure, the physician declares the patient to be at maximum medical improvement and uses tables in the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Fifth Edition, to rate 19% whole person impairment and to apportion 90% to work activities. Readers can pause at this point to evaluate the case and then compare their results with the analysis. The author notes that the report does not discuss activities of daily living and does not report in detail the results of physical testing. Nor does the written report correctly explain how the rating was performed, with a detailed discussion of the rating process with reference to specific criteria and to specific tables, figures, and page numbers. As written, the report provides inadequate information to grade sensory or motor deficits and suggests the use of subjective reports, not objective findings.

Working but Poor: Perspectives from a Rural, African American Family

IntroductionWhile much attention has been focused on moving families beyond welfare, little attention has been given to the destination of many of those families. Research indicates that far from achieving self sufficiency, many join the ranks of the working poor. This group has been an omnipresent but invisible part of the American workforce. This lack of visibility has been based on the assumption that working poverty was a temporary situation (Shulman, 2004) which will be rectified as the worker gains in experience and seniority. For many workers this was not the case, since a variety of structural and individual factors prevent such advancement. This was particularly true with respect to rural areas where infrastructural and employment issues can thwart all but the most thoughtful intervention attempts.Who are the Working Poor?While various definitions have been used to classify the working poor, their numbers, by any definition are surprising. In 2003, 20% of the nation's poor were individuals who worked for at least 27 weeks of the year. And, of that number, three in every five worked full time (U.S. Department of Labor, 2005). One third of children born to working families are part of low income families (Kahne, 2004). Those numbered among the working poor span all races/ethnicities but those of African or Latino descent are more than twice as likely as Whites to be among the working poor (U.S. Department of Labor, 2005). Shulman (2004) offers an excellent description of this population:They are all around us in jobs essential to our lives. Low wage workers are security guards and childcare givers. They are nursing home workers and retail clerks. They are hospital orderlies and teacher's assistants. They are hotel workers and pharmacy technicians. They bone the chicken that we eat, clean the office buildings where we and handle our questions and complaints at call centers. (p. 21)While some of these employment options require education or training beyond high school, that training does not always translate into higher wages (Blalock, Tiller, & Monroe, 2004).Why Does the Working Poor Population Continue to Grow?The number of Americans who comprise the working poor has risen over the past and continues to grow (Kim, 1998). A variety of reasons have been advanced to explain this increase. Changes in employment structure, including the loss of high wage manufacturing jobs has limited the opportunities available for those without advanced degrees (Gringeri, 2001). The restructuring of the welfare system was among the most important factors in the rise of the working poor population. This restructuring has forced former and current welfare recipients, with limited education and training into the low wage job market where jobs provide few, if any, benefits, and little if any opportunity for advancement (Whitener, Gibbs, & Kusmin, 2003). While the stated intent of this strategy was to get people into the force so that they could work their way up, that scenario rarely occurs due to structural factors beyond the control of the worker (Whitener et al., 2003). The failure of the minimum wage to keep pace with the cost of living has made salaries earned in low wage jobs less valuable in the marketplace (Kahne, 2000; Spriggs, 2006).Low wages are among the chief reasons that workers remain among the working poor and this was never truer than among residents of rural areas (Kahne, 2004; Kim, 1998). For those living in rural areas, wages are often significantly lower than wages received in more urban areas (Gringeri, 2001). Kahne's (2004) on low-wage, single mothers reveals that those working for $6 per hour, which is above the federal minimum wage, could not earn a salary above the poverty level for a family of two. Yet these low wage workers up the core of much of the new economy. And it was estimated that low wage jobs will make up 30% of the economy by the end of the decade (Shulman, 2004, p. …

Friday Night Heroes: Small-Town Wrestling in Tennessee

[End Page 62] In local auditoriums, national guard armories, gyms, and bars, people gather to watch epic battles between heroes and villains. These are regular working people, waitresses and factory workers, farmers and mechanics, retail clerks, young and old, all seeking a release from the mundane routines of life, present to witness a spectacle at times shocking and repulsive, at other moments truly comedic and falsely tragic in its performance. I remember my first trip to a wrestling match as an adult, sitting in my chair and wondering if and when and what to photograph. The crowd was at a fever pitch, seemingly waiting for an excuse to tear something apart. Would it be me? Would my camera provoke the crowd's hostility? The wrestlers themselves seemed to be parodies of the human body, in some cases more and in some cases less than human. Some marched around with more muscles than one would think necessary for any human, while others walked with equal confidence in bodies of more untoned mass than is healthy for any human. Their movements and gestures resemble those of fighting cocks, prancing around the periphery of the ring, staring at each other, shouting insults. They are actors. Regular folks by day, forces to be reckoned with at night. This atmosphere of chaos, this spectacle of apparent violence belies the real reason fans and wrestlers alike are drawn to these venues. They are there to have fun, to vent freely and without consequence. Truly the last thing they want is violence; this is not why they are here. Violence is the job of the wrestler, who acts out a story, a human story of triumph and loss and struggle. The spectators are there because they have been fighting something all week that they could not beat: a boss, bills, a divorce. By Friday they are tired and want to see a fight that the good guy can win. [End Page 63] Click for larger view Figure 1 Madison, Tennessee, 1999. All photographs by Joseph Shay.

Preventing Illegal Tobacco and Alcohol Sales to Minors through Electronic Age-Verification Devices: A Field Effectiveness Study

Efforts to prohibit the sales of tobacco and alcohol products to minors are widespread. Electronic Age Verification (EAV) devices are one possible means to improve compliance with sales to minors laws. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of EAV devices in terms of the frequency and accuracy of age verification, as well as to examine the impact of EAV's on the retailer environment. Two study locations were selected: Tallahassee, Florida and Iowa City, Iowa. Retail stores were invited to participate in the study, producing a self-selected experimental group. Stores that did not elect to test the EAV's comprised the comparison group. The data sources included: 1) mystery shopper inspections: two pre- and five post-EAV installation mystery shopper inspections of tobacco and alcohol retailers; 2) retail clerk and manager interviews; and 3) customer interviews. The study found that installing EAV devices with minimal training and encouragement did not increase age verification and underage sales refusal. Surveyed clerks reported positive experiences using the electronic ID readers and customers reported almost no discomfort about being asked to swipe their IDs. Observations from this study support the need for a more comprehensive system for responsible retailing.

Thinking about Self in a Family Way

I never had to worry about my identity as a middle school music teacher. Or as an off-hours videotape editor. Or as a paper boy, retail clerk, or warehouse worker. As an academic, though, I think about it all the time—perhaps not identity so often as subjectivity, and perhaps not my own so much as others'. Yet the connections between self and subject are seemingly obvious. My first book, Playing Indian, tried to take seriously people with pale faces who would be “Indian.”1 “That,” said some acquaintances, “has got to be personal!” My next project turns to my own family, asking how mixed blood and culture bounded and created my grandparents and great-aunt. In effect, it stands as a matched bookend to the first project: one concerned with whiteness, the other with a family way of thinking about race, culture, and Indianness. While I continue to insist that these projects are not about me, per se, I can hardly deny that they are informed by my own curious position. It feels as if a recent self, apparent for perhaps fifteen years, asks most of my questions. That self is taken with dualisms, both as structuring devices and as things to worry at, contemplate, and complicate. It quests for a usable past, not necessarily to explain itself to others but to make its questions visible through narrative and metaphor. Explanation and visibility, though, go hand in hand. My recent self has two stories to tell, and they necessarily implicate both self and subject. The first tends to function as history; the second as parable.

Nickel as an occupational allergen. A survey of 368 nickel-sensitive subjects.

To define the role of nickel as an occupational allergen. Survey using path-test results. Contact dermatitis clinic in the university hospital of a large industrial British city. Three hundred sixty-eight nickel-allergic patients seen during a 5-year period were assessed for the relevance of nickel contact in their workplace. Patients were divided into possible occupational nickel allergy and nonoccupational nickel allergy groups. Nickel was considered an occupational allergen or possible occupational allergen in 84 (22.8%) of 368 patients shown to be nickel sensitive on patch testing. The main workers in whom nickel was a common allergen were hairdressers, retail clerks, caterers, domestic cleaners, and metalworkers. Those for whom occupational exposure was possible had a significantly higher prevalence of hand dermatitis compared with the nonoccupational nickel allergy group. Nickel allergy seemed to function as a secondary occupational influence, often in conjunction with other factors, such as irritants. Although the overall importance of nickel as an occupational allergen cannot be easily assessed, there is evidence of its importance in some occupations, especially those involving wet work. The possibility that nickel is acting as an occupational allergen needs to be assessed on an individual basis, taking into account personal circumstances and environment, but particularly should be considered in patients with hand dermatitis.

Computer Chips and Paper Clips: Technology and Women’s Employment ed. by Heidi I. Hartmann, et al

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews—Labor and Technology 939 Computer Chips and Paper Clips: Technology and Women’s Employment. Edited by Heidi I. Hartmann, Robert E. Kraut, and Louise A. Tilly. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986. Pp. xvii + 216; tables, bibliography, index. $19.95 U.S./Canada/Mexico; $24.00 out­ side North America (paper). Computer Chips and Paper Clips is a National Research Council report on the effects of technological change on women’s employment. Be­ cause so many women are employed in clerical work, it focuses on change in those occupations; and because so much of the recent tech­ nological change affecting this work can be classed as “information technology,” or computers and telecommunications, it focuses on the effect of computerization on clericaljobs. The bulk of the book is eco­ nomic and sociological rather than historical, but the authors are con­ cerned with the historical context of their study: they devote a chapter to “Historical Patterns of Technological Change,” and throughout the book they present data covering several decades to illustrate the trends discussed. The authors conclude that because men and women have been and are still treated differently in the labor market, technological change will affect them differently. But they suggest that the issues they address are relevant to other occupations, other technologies, and other groups in society. The overall implication is that generalizations can be made about “technological change” wherever it appears. Chapter 2, “Historical Patterns of Technological Change,” presents five case studies of “the effects of innovation on women’s occupations” for the purpose ofusing “history as a guide for understanding the com­ plex relationship of technological change and women’s employment” (p. 24). The first case, “The Telephone and Telephone Operators,” skims the introduction and early development of telephone usage and then discusses the development of the job of telephone operator, one which was early pegged as appropriate for women rather than men or boys. Next, “Workers in Printing and Publishing” focuses on typeset­ ting technology and the competition, throughout the history of the oc­ cupation, between men and women for printingjobs. The third case, “The Automated Office and Its Workers,” is subdivided into discus­ sions about secretaries, accountants and bookkeepers, insurance clerks, and banktellers, and dwells mostly on changes since the advent ofcom­ puterization. “Retail Clerks” traces changes in the retail industry in the 20th century and the attendant transition from thejob of salesperson to the (feminized)job of cashier. This case, like the first, is particularly useful because it explores (if briefly) pre-computer history. The last case, “Nurses and Nursing,” is again most concerned with computer­ ization and recent developments in medical technology. The value of this book for historians of technology lies not so much in its historical content as in the more general issues it raises. Many of these questions are as integral to historical investigations of technology 940 Book Reviews—Labor and Technology TECHNOLOCY AND CULTURE in society as to contemporary and projective, predictive ones. The au­ thors, however, represent a variety of disciplines, and the historian is often left wishing for a more detailed analysis ofhistorical context. The authors confront the problem of defining potentially ambiguous terms, such as “technology” and “clerical work,” and they confront questions about the uniqueness of any one technological innovation, such as the telephone or the microprocessor. They also ask questions about tech­ nology in a broader social context: How does one distinguish techno­ logical factors from other economic or social factors in evaluating an aspect of societal change? How much of a particular technological “ef­ fect” could alternatively be ascribed to a technological or organiza­ tional choice, determined by the people making decisions and not by the technology at all? And then who makes those decisions? Although asked, these questions tend to be answered open-endedly. The authors conclude that “technology can be implemented in both job-enriching and job-degrading ways” and that “any technology can be used in a number of ways and that social choices about its use are genuine” (p. 150). In an examination of social policy, the determination that these questions cannot be answered definitively is more important than an exploration of the ways...

A Preliminary Investigation Into the Influence of Customer-Firm Interface on Information Processing and Task Activities in Service Organizations

This study examined how customer-firm interface (CFI) mediates the relationship between information processing and task activities in service organizations. Data were collectedfrom 181 service clerks, 83 nurses, and 126 pilot trainers, with average ages of 27 years, 38 years, and 31 years, respectively. The subjects were selectedfrom two retail organizations, two hospitals, and a military installation. Ninety-one percent of the pilot trainers and 63% of the retail clerks were male; all the nurses were female. Information processing was measured in terms of equivocality and amount, and correlational and hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine the data. CFI was found to mediate the relationship between information equivocality and task activities. CFI and task activities were also independently related to information amount. These findings suggest an expansion of earlier research showing only a bivariate relationship between information processing and task activities.