Managerial Capitalism: Being and Becoming

At first glance, Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist stance on private property and the process of accumulating profit (or wealth) may seem to extend a vote of confidence to the business manager as a type. After all, managers manage the private property of stockholders (which can include themselves) with a fiduciary duty to do so to increase shareholder value by maximizing profit. The notion of profit-seeking by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost is arguably too simplistic. Squeezing a workforce too much, for example, can backfire in the long term. Nietzsche was concerned about such a thing happening even though he claims that the vast majority of laborers must be kept to subsistence wages for culture to be possible. He castigates petty, short-sighted managers who do not look out for the spiritual and economic welfare of workers, and yet holds that those workers must be slavish in the sense of being exploited by employers so culture can emerge and be sustained by the rich. To be for such exploitation and yet against petty cost-cutting managers renders Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy interesting as well as useful in terms of keeping a capitalist economy from being reduced to the mentality of its bottom-feeder producers. I first discuss the matter of exploitation and then turn to how Nietzsche addresses his wider socio-economic philosophy more specifically to human-resource management. Within the wider subject-heading of exploitation, very different approaches, or mentalities, to human resource management can be discerned. In dichotomous terms, there can be said to be a pathos of distance between enlightened self-interest and selfish, short-sighted greed.

Nietzsche claims that capital accumulation and economic inequality are necessary for adequate investment in culture, such that not everyone must be oriented to satisfying basic needs. Moreover, private property and accumulating money serve a more fundamental function in terms of human being and becoming, the latter being construed in terms of, growing. Nietzsche’s use of this term can be thought of in terms of Aristotle’s appropriation from the natural world for his philosophy.

It has seemed to me in life that some people may have a static orientation, whereas other people may be inherently oriented to change, as in self-development. The static orientation is based on being, whereas the default of dynamism can be said to be based on valuing becoming. It may be that people wetted to a static state of being feel threatened psychologically by change-oriented people because the latter typically want the former to work on themselves too. In a dysfunctional family in which most of the people value stasis, for example, the person who values development may ironically be scapegoated precisely because any change is rejected, even that which would make the family healthy. Translated into Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy, possessing assets, or private property, applies to a person’s static nature, whereas accumulating wealth means that a person is dynamic—changing.

To Nietzsche, capital accumulations by titans, and those by wealthy people more generally, have permitted the advent of culture in terms of there being adequate investments in it—something that we moderns may take for granted even though much of human (pre) history our species was oriented to meeting survival needs. Regarding a society having some individuals rich enough to develop a cultural scene, Nietzsche insists that what Marx calls the surplus value of labor of the vast majority of workers must be transferred to the few—the capitalists—so they have enough money to invest in culture. A city benefits even though most laborers work for subsistence wages. Nietzsche relates capitalist enterprise to culture as follows:

“In order for there to be a broad, deep, fertile soil for the development of art, the overwhelming majority has to be slavishly subjected to life’s necessity in the service of the minority, beyond the measure that is necessary for the individual. At their expense, through their extra work, that privileged class is to be removed from the struggle for existence, in order to produce and satisfy a new world of necessities. Accordingly, we must learn to identify as a cruel-sounding truth the fact that slavery belongs to the essence of culture. . . . The misery of men living a life of toil has to be increased to make the production of the world of art possible for a small number of Olympic men.”[1]

Slavery here is in the sense that the laborers are held to such a minimum monetary compensation that they cannot free themselves from working so their basic survival needs are met. For the privileged class—the capitalists—to be removed from the struggle for existence is a late-arriving novelty for our species, and thus the advent of culture can be construed as a luxury rather than as an intrinsic aspect or manifestation of human existence. Put another way, even though the dominance of the capitalists over labor, which I submit is a better description than is the word slavery, “belongs to the essence of culture,” culture does not belong to the essence of our species. So even though culture raises the entire species from being oriented to satisfying subsistence needs, the scaffolding that is constructed to reach the rarified air can be viewed as artificial.

Neither is the exploitation that is necessary for culture natural. Landa argues that the relevance of Nietzsche for capitalism lies precisely in slavish exploitation. Even though Nietzsche claims to have “stood far above any strictly material concerns, the basic fact cannot be ignored that, if his ‘aesthetics’ necessitate slavery, . . . if the production of ‘culture’ means the ruthless material subjugation of the vast majority of people to the benefit of an elite, then a socioeconomic theory of exploitation is inscribed into the very core of his aesthetic theory of noble culture. And it precisely here, I argue, that Nietzsche’s pertinence for capitalism lies, in the dreary fact of exploitation . . .”[2] Although the economic elite undoubtedly benefit, however, it is the species that benefits from culture. Put in terms of socioeconomics, a city benefits by having some buildings devoted to culture rather than to the means of production. Although this point renders the exploitation somewhat better morally, Nietzsche’s criticism of modern morality means that he rejects the normative objection that economic exploitation is unethical. Considering that the benefits of accumulated wealth for culture benefit not just the rich and the exploitation (i.e., economic “slavery”) is spared a damning ethical verdict, it is not difficult to see why Nietzsche would be in favor of culture. Of course, apart from Nietzsche, the holding of the vast majority of a workforce to subsistence wages while an economic elite gets rich off the transferred surplus value of labor is ripe for ethical castigation. Even if we reject Nietzsche’s socioeconomic account of culture as a result, Nietzsche presents another rationale for being wealthy—one that is existential in nature.[3]

Private property and accumulating wealth correspond to being and becoming, respectively. As such, Private property and capital accumulation are “firmly established by Nietzsche as representing the rudiments of life itself.”[4] Nietzsche claims that “those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: ‘one must possess something in order to be something.’”[5] Does this mean that the subsistence-limited worker bees do not exist? Surely not. Perhaps Nietzsche means to count as something rather than to be something. This interpretation is in line with the businessman’s value-set wherein to count as someone is a matter of how much one possesses (i.e., how wealthy one is).

The capitalists would perhaps be less familiar with Nietzsche’s rationale for the act of accumulating possessions, including money: “But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, ‘one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.’ For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more—growth, in one word—that is life itself.”[6] Here, becoming is put in terms of growth as a natural process of life.[7] The will to power is for Nietzsche the will to life, and strength is the self-confident embrace of the fullness of life in overcoming obstacles in order to feel the pleasure of power. According to Landa, Nietzsche claims that to “live truly and properly is therefore to Exploit, Possess and Accumulate . . . Under this light, the will to power reveals itself as the metaphysical extension of the will to money.”[8] But do counting as something in virtue of having material possessions and growing as a plant does count as metaphysical? Moreover, what use did Nietzsche have for speculative metaphysics? Rather than being grounded in existentialism, Nietzsche’s view of being and becoming may bear a family resemblance to Heidegger’s claim that a person as a dasein, or one that is, comes to realize oneself hammering in an open field; only in action does a person realize oneself as one is as a that (i.e., an entity). The action to which Nietzsche refers is only open to the capitalist, however, in accumulating wealth, for the worker bees are enslaved to meeting their subsistence needs and thus are cut off from becoming in the sense of growing.

Lest it be concluded that Nietzsche’s view favors business managers, including executives, rather than stockholders who are oriented to the long-term value of their stock, Nietzsche spanks down the typical managerial primacy of immediate profit: “No doubt, the wide-ranging, multi-faceted perspective of the philosopher, as compared with the narrow view of the standard market-apologist intent on immediate gains, endowed the former a much more flexible class position. . . . Since the preservation of the class hierarchy and the prevention of a comprehensive socialist alternative was the foundation of Nietzsche’s social vision, he was at times perfectly willing to criticize naked exploitation of labor when that meant dangerously exacerbating class enmity to the point of imperiling the overall stability of the system. As in the following example: ‘What we now refer to as justice, is from this point of view a highly refined usefulness, which does not take into consideration only the present moment and exploits the opportunity, but rather reflects with responsibility on the lasting consequences, therefore taking care of the well-being of the worker as well, of his physical and spiritual satisfaction, in order that he and his descendants will continue to work for our descendants, and will be available for a longer period of time than a single individual’s life. The exploitation of the worker was, as one now understands, a stupidity, a ruthless enterprise at the cost of the future, which endangered society. Now we have before us almost a war, and the price for achieving peace, for sealing contracts and wining trust, will at any rate be very high, since the foolishness of the exploiters was great and long-lasting.’”[9] A company’s management that can be characterized by the short-sighted, petty greed of its managers is sub-optimal from the standpoint of maximizing stockholder wealth in the long-term, and thus is not in line with being and becoming. Even in terms of the wealth of non-stockholder executives, cutting labor benefits that are already trivial so as to boost next quarter’s bonus detracts from being able to retain workers whose efficiency can “grow” the company, and whose sons and daughters may decide to work for the company. In short, to the extent that the manager as a type cannot master (i.e., overcome) the instinctual urge of greed manifesting as short-sighted, selfish pettiness, Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist philosophy is not in favor of managers of such a pathetic mentality of weakness. The philosopher’s (amoral) approbation is reserved for managers who apply enlightened self-interest to management of stockholder wealth concentrated as a company by looking after non-supervisory employees in order that they will (and their offspring, if hired) continue to produce such that stockholder wealth can grow like a tomato plant on a vine during a warm, wet summer.

It is ironic that it is a philosopher who “chides economic liberalism on strictly pragmatic grounds and promotes, against the irresponsible zeal to maximize profits at the immediate present, the contraceptive measure of a ‘highly refined usefulness’ whose purpose is to ensure that the very principle of profit will survive on an enduring basis. To the extent that the ruthless practices of economic liberalism, by over-exploiting the worker, become themselves a potentially destabilizing factor jeopardizing the future, Nietzsche is willing to show his teeth to the masters as well, and recommend what one commentator readily celebrated as ‘an enlightened labour policy.’”[10] Nietzsche’s esteem for the will to money as possessing and accumulating goes not include the greedy zeal to maximize profits without adequate attention being placed on resisting expedient measures that are oriented to temporarily boosting quarterly profits and the stock price.

Beyond taking away employee perks such as complimentary gym memberships even though exercise can elongate how long an experienced employee can work, managers can detract from the long-term monetary value of a company (and stockholder wealth) by being petty with customers. When grocery-store companies decided to charge customers for paper bags, customers rightly perceived the managers as petty. When petty managers of airlines figured out that they could boost revenue by charging customers for seats with extra leg-room and for checked luggage—even applying a weight-limit to each suitcase—the business judgment was that any business lost in the long-run from customers feeling “nickeled and dimed” by a greedy management would be made up for by the more immediate revenue gained from the fees. An example of a viable substitute in the long-term in North America could be high-speed trains.

In contradistinction to banal, incrementalist managers, Nietzsche’s esteem for self-confident strength, which says in terms of its natural rather than contrived, self-interested generosity, what are the parasites to me? A person having an overflowing surplus of power (and wealth) and is oriented to life can be contrasted with the new bird of prey—the weak who seek to dominate by petty cruelty. Whereas the self-confident, strong business titan is oriented to the pleasure that is obtainable from a large, successful business deal, the weak manager greedily clutches at cutting costs budget-item by budget-item. Whereas courageous titans can be likened to the Greco-Roman conquerors whose nature it was to gain land and captured slaves, petty, control-obsessed managers can be likened to ascetic priests whose weak nature it is to inflict “Thou Shalt Not!” as a weapon to beguile the self-confident strong.

Managers who market themselves as leaders rather than managers while actually micro-managing subordinates are nonetheless innately weak rather than strong. The “leadership versus management” dichotomy itself may be a guise wherein petty managers seek to rebrand banal management as something that is enlightened in terms of self-interest. To be sure, Nietzsche points to the possibility of such self-interest being adopted by managers in order to meet the spiritual and (basic) material needs of workers so the best of them do not leave. Indeed, such economic self-interest should extend to take into account generations of workers.

Therefore, even though Nietzsche’s philosophy can be regarded as pro-capitalist because private property and accumulating wealth enable a sense of being and becoming, respectively, it cannot be said that the philosophy lauds the business manager as a type. Rather, it depends on the underlying mentality of a particular manager and even of a company’s management. Organizational culture can play a large role in forming and maintaining managerial values, norms, and practices. The culture of Enron was dramatically different than that of Ben and Jerry’s, for example. Just because Nietzsche’s philosophy can be reckoned as pro-capitalist does not mean that he would support any management. In fact, capitalism itself need not be defined in praxis by its lowest common denominator. Nietzsche’s philosophy can be utilized to keep that from happening, or to raise an economy based on private property and the market-mechanism above the squalid mentality of its bottom-feeder producers.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Greek State,” in On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 178-79.
2. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 28.
3. This is not to say that Nietzsche was an existentialist. The Leibniz scholar, Patrick Riley, once asked me whether I thought Nietzsche’s philosophy falls under existentialism; he didn’t think so either. Neither is the philosophy nihilist; Nietzsche asks, “what is nihilism today if it is not” being “weary of man.” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 480.
4. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 28.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Fabor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 77.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p.  77.
7. Here Nietzsche is in line with Aristotle.
8. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 29.
9. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 30. Translating from Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbanden (Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), Vol. 2, pp. 681-82.
10. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 31. Landa quotes from Keith Ansell-Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker—The Perfect Nihilist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 91.

Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.

It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.

As for the E.U., Eurostat reported that in 2023, “the average annual full-time adjusted salary per employee ranged from €13,503 [$14,853] in Bulgaria to €81,064 [$89,170] in Luxembourg, with the EU average standing at €37,863 [$41,649].”[1] I submit that the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state averages rather than citing the E.U. average except for comparing the E.U. to other empire-scale polities, such as the U.S., India, and China. As for the U.S., the average annual salary per employee ranged from $45,180 (€41,073) in Mississippi to $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts, with the US average standing at was $59,384 (€53,986). Again, the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state averages, except in comparing the U.S. as a whole to the E.U. as a whole. The U.S.’s $59,384 (€53,986) average is higher than the E.U.’s €37,863 ($41,649). To be sure, comparing union-to-union has its drawbacks, for the overall conclusion that salaries were on average higher in the U.S. than in the E.U. in 2023 masks the fact that Luxembourg’s average of €81,064 [$89,170] is higher than the average of $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts.

I submit that the intellectual beauty in this sterling symmetry is essentially that of logic absent any distortive ideology that would push someone into comparing the average of a state in one union with another union overall. As an example of an illogical category mistake, making a list of averages on salaries per worker by listing Luxembourg as number 1 and the U.S. as #6 after Austria would omit the averages of U.S. states such as New York, California, and New Jersey whose 2023 averages are higher than those of Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria. If member-states are to be included, the states from both the E.U. and U.S. must be included to avoid a misleading and distortive category mistake. Similarly, if the U.S. average is included, so too must be that of the E.U., whether or not the state averages are included.

Having demonstrated how the common category mistakes regarding trans-Atlantic political and economic comparisons can be rectified logically, I am under no illusion that such pristine logic will gain any traction, given the sheer intractability of the Euroskeptic, or state’s rights, ideology in Europe even into the 2020s in spite of state-nationalism having spawned two long wars that went global in the preceding century. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn masterfully explains why scientific revolutions as paradigm changes are typically resisted so much by scientists who are entrenched in the paradigm enjoying the inertia of the status quo. Both personal interests and emotional as well as intellectual investment in an existing paradigm play a role in elongating the existing paradigm’s life-span artificially. So too, clutching onto political and economic comparisons between a state in one empire-scale union of states and another such union had become more ideological than based in fact by 2024, with denial of logic being just one of the implicit casualties. Old Kant must be rolling in his grave.

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1. Servet Yanatma, “Average Salary Rankings in Europe: Which Countries Pay the Highest,” Euronews.com, December 24, 2024. I added the dollar equivalents using the December 30, 2023 euro/dollar exchange rate of 1.1. The highest rate in 2023 was 1.12 and the lowest was 1.05.

The Screen Actors Guild Strike: American Capitalism Is Inherently Unbalanced

On July 14, 2023, Hollywood actors joined the writers in going on strike against the studios, which had changed the business model in ways, according to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), that were leaving the vast majority of actors out financially. At the time, AI (artificial intelligence) was the red-hot buzzword, promising unheard of advances but also baleful clouds on the horizon. The president of SAG sounded the alarm on not only the threat of AI given the studios' new business models predicated on ubiquitous streaming and digital technology, but also the more long-standing and ingrained American corporate system of Capitalism wherein upper managements get away with not sharing the surplus of corporate wealth due to an inherent or institutional conflict of interest. Indeed, Fran Drescher, the president of SAG, was not far from calling into question the taken-for-granted assumption in Capitalism that residual profits should go to stockholders exclusive. Questioning that default (as well as claiming that CEOs get to set their own compensation by controlling their respective boards of directors) would have made Drescher's announcement of a strike truly revolutionary. She was so close. 

Regarding AI, even Drescher's position can be perceived as short-sighted even though it was an improvement on the studios' new business model. The ability of studios to use the likenesses (images) of actors who have been bodily scanned (creepy) in one project for use as computer-generated “acting” in future movies in which the actors themselves are neither compensated nor participate was among the issues to be arbitrated in which the studios and SAG were far apart. To an actor, the loss of control over one’s image can complicate or even detract from one’s efforts to construct a public image. To be sure, not being paid for such extended likenesses being used was noxious to the actors even though no additional work on their part would be required. This just means, however, that royalties, or residuals, rather than pay for the use of the images would be appropriate, and thus fair. Furthermore, rather than being able to pressure actors on a project to agree to their respective likenesses being used in perpetuity, studios should be required to get permission for the specific uses (rather than a general permission) at the time of each future project. Actors would not feel that they might lose their existing work if they refuse to give a general permission in perpetuity. Even such an arrangement, incorporated into the studios' new business models, might not last long. A student of AI suggested to me that just as non-profit organizations have open-source libraries of written works, such organizations in the film industry might make available, royalty-free, images of volunteers that start-up film companies, students, and even Hollywood studios could use. Extras, or background actors, could conceivably be used only in shots in which mere images won't do. 

Of greater significance, SAG’s position extended to challenge a basic tenet of Capitalism itself. Were the strike a true inflection point, as Fran Drescher, the president of SAG claimed, the union had an opportunity to make the dogmatic, or arbitrary, tenet transparent if for no other reason that Drescher was aware and critical of the long-held assumption that had long before become embedded as a “necessary” plank in the economic system.

I contend that it is arbitrary to set the owners of a corporation as the receivers of the residual from the surplus of revenues over expenditures (i.e., profit), whereas banks and labor get only a fixed amount classified as expenses. All three groups can be thought of as providing inputs, or resources, that a management can use to make a profit. From this perspective, it seems arbitrary to say that only one of the group has a right to the residuals from the profits. The philosopher John Locke claimed that a person “mixing” one’s labor with land gives rise to a property right on said land. Centuries later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a maker of wedding web-sites could refuse to have same-sex couples as clients because she had expressed herself in her work. It seems rather obvious that screenwriters and actors are also in an expressive profession. In “mixing” their self-expressive labor in a film, writers and actors can be said to have an ownership interest in what is typically referred to as art. Painters, after all, sign their paintings. It is possible that the writers and actors of a film have more of a claim on the profits than do the studios. In depicting the strike as occurring at an “inflection point,” the president of SAG had the opportunity to make such a claim, thus challenging the monopoly on profits hitherto enjoyed by the owners of the studios.

In announcing the strike in 2023, Drescher called attention to the large gap in compensation between the CEO’s of the studios and 99% of the members of the SAG union who were struggling financially. To be sure, the inclusion of “extras,” or background non-speaking roles that are on a per-project pay basis, means that the 99 percent were not depending on acting as a full-time job. Even so, the astounding pay of “A-list” movie actors may give people outside of the industry the misimpression that acting constitutes a wealthy profession.

The impression left by films grossing hundreds of millions of dollars that studios are wealthy is more accurate. The studios plead poverty, the SAG president exclaimed in astonishment, and yet somehow they have the money to pay tens of millions of dollars to their CEOs. In fiscal 2022, for example, the CEO of Disney made $24 million just before the company laid off 7,000 employees.[1] Drescher could have added that Netflix co-CEOs earned $43.2 million and $39.3 million in 2020—when the company raised the monthly price of its subscription.[2] Doubtless the management claimed that the company had no choice but charge customers more. It is interesting that managements can so easily put their companies in convenient straightjackets.

The union president must have sensed an opportunity to challenge the greed of American CEOs more generally as evinced in the increasing inequality between their compensation and the average of their respective workforces. “High seven figures, eight figures, this is crazy money that they make,” she said.[3] Implying that a basic shift in wealth distribution between upper managements and workers was justified, she stated, “What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor. . . . When employers make Wall Street and greed their priority, and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run, we have a problem.”[4] A basic problem in the American system of Capitalism.

The ratio of CEO compensation to that of the average worker in the U.S. in 2020 was 299.[5] Just one year later, the ratio was nearly 400, according to Statista. Even as the coronavirus shuttered or hampered many businesses, which meant mass layoffs, CEOs made out well nonetheless. Some CEOs made a thousand times that of the average worker. The annual ratios in the E.U. were much lower than in the U.S. That CEOs of American corporations had typically reached complete control of their respective boards of directors, which are technically to function in part as a check on their managements, presents not only accountability issues more generally, but also a situation in which the CEOs can set their own compensation and that of their managerial cadres. At one major corporation in 2023, the stockholders voted to deny the management’s proposed compensation package. Astonishingly, the resolution was nonbinding and the board approved the package anyway. This points to the existence of a major structural flaw in corporate governance in the U.S.

In pointing to the greed of CEOs of American companies in general, Drescher expanded her union’s agenda beyond the immediate financial interest of the members. She was making a societal contribution in claiming that the huge disparity of wealth between managements and workers was by then so large that an inflection point had been reached wherein SAG would try to set an example for other unions to follow in objecting to the arbitrary feature of American Capitalism wherein CEOs do not have to share the surplus of corporate wealth. She could have gone a step further by taking the opportunity to question the underlying assumption that stockholders should get the residual of profits that are not retained or invested. Even though the business model of studios had changed due to AI, the greed of American CEOs and their ability to set their own compensation packages had existed for some time and was finally too much for workers to take. That is to say, it was time for an enduring yet arbitrary (rather than necessary) aspect of American Capitalism to be changed. The system had been broken for some time, and the advent of AI meant that the harm would soon become even more unbearable.

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[1] Samantha Bergeson, “Fran Drescher Blasts Bob Iger’s Strike Comments: ‘I Would Lock Him Behind Doors,’” IndyWire, July 14, 2023.
[2] Todd Spangler, “Netflix’s Ted Sarandos to Earn $40 Million in 2022, Read Hastings Pay to Top $34 Million,” Variety, December 31, 2021.
[3] Bergeson, “Fran Drescher Blasts Bob Iger’s Strike Comments: ‘I Would Lock Him Behind Doors.’”
[4] Ibid.
[5] Moira Ritter, “CEOs Made 299 Times More Than Their Average Workers Last Year,” CNN.com, July 15, 2021.

American Law Enforcement: Extricating the Aggressive Personality and Presumption to Violate the Law Off-Duty

The assumption that more police than we might expect have in not being subject to the law even while off-duty suggests that hiring, training, and retention practices of police departments are inadequate. The presumption of being an ubermench and thus untouchable is dangerous when the person can legally carry a gun. Memo to police departments in the U.S.: please notify your employees that they are subject to local, state, and federal laws, period. Any indication of any presumption to the contrary subjects the culprit to termination. Unfortunately, police departments and their respective city governments in the U.S. are far from such enlightenment as could hold their employees accountable.

In June, 2023, a police employee of Orlando, Florida faced charges by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office for reckless driving and resisting and fleeing from a deputy. The culprit “refused to show the deputy his license, got back in his car, and took off . . .”[1] He had been driving at 80 mph in a 45 mph zone. It is significant that he thought that going to work was a viable excuse for speeding. Even more incredibly, he told the deputy to notice his police uniform, as justifying the speeding! When the deputy asked for the man’s driver’s license, the violator abstinently said a quick, “NO!,” and turned to get into his car before fleeing the scene. How dare you as me for MY license! That’s something I do to OTHER PEOPLE. How arrogant, wrong, and incorrect. Moreover, the man’s reaction to being held accountable provides the public with a view of someone having the legal use of a gun and yet not willing to be held accountable himself. He may have incorrectly appropriated the former President Nixon’s erroneous declaration that if the president does something, it is legal. A local police employee is not even close to being the president of the United States. Even aside from prosecuting the presumptuous law-breaker in Florida, the city of Orlando would have done well in considering whether such a person should be granted the legal right to use lethal force.

My point includes the subtle one that prosecution is not sufficient and is thus inadequate as a litmus test for deciding whether a police employee literally takes liberties off duty should remain employed. Due to lack of evidence of a malicious intent, a police employee of Chicago, Illinois was not found formally guilty of assaulting a 14-year-old, whom the off-duty employee had wrongly assumed had stolen his son’s bike. The employee inserted one of his knees in the eighth-grader’s back.[2] Regardless of whether there was sufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution, the photograph of the man on top of the boy should be enough for a chief of police to decide that such presumptuousness predicated on being a police employee should eliminate the attitude from being on a police force. The presumption in being allowed to attack a child who happens to walk past a stolen bike would be a red flag even in the case of a police employee on-duty. Off-duty, a man who happens to work as a police employee is just like any other dad. While any father may feel like being judge, jury, and executioner of a suspected thief of one’s son’s bike, what father would actually act on the urge? Hence, the off-duty police employee can be seen as presumptuous, and even as questionable psychologically, as can a police employee who curtly says no when asked for his driver’s license for speeding to get to work. An aggressive tenor can be detected from both men, and this alone should bar them from having the legal right of lethal force.

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1. Connor Hansen, “Orlando Police Officer Accused of Reckless Driving, Leaving Traffic Stop after Exchange with Deputy,” Fox35 Orlando, June 12, 2023 (accessed June 17, 2023).

2.  Alex Hammer, “Moment Off-Duty Chicago Cop Kneels on 14-Year-Old Boy’s Back after Mistakenly Accusing Him of Stealing a Bike,” DailyMail.com, July 4, 2022 (accessed June 17, 2023).

On the Weakening of the Rule of Law in the United States

When law enforcement (i.e., police) conveniently exclude themselves from obeying law, the contradiction should, I submit, be sufficient for the perpetrators to be fired. It is not enough for their boss to chastise or even suspend the hypocrites, for they are inherently unfit for law enforcement, and should instead be treated as actual or potential criminals. What about when such a sordid mentality comes to proliferate through a police department, especially if it lies beyond the competence of a city government to hold even such a department accountable? What if a local political “law and order” culture tacitly exempts police and goes on to look the other way as the latter render the locality into a police state? I contend that the Phoenix metropolitan area, including the suburbs surrounding Phoenix itself, furnishes us with a case in point.

In a subway station in New York City in October, 2021, two cops shoved a passenger out of the station because he had asked them why they were not wearing masks, which federal law at the time required be worn on subways, light rail, street cars, buses, and indoor subway stations. The alpha male policeman lied in declaring to the passenger that he was “a disturbance,” and subsequently shouted. Sounds like a bully to me. Not exactly a fitting persona for people who can legally kill others, yet how many police departments willow out such misfits?

Whereas the bully component can be dramatic enough to grab headlines in the news, the presumptuous decision made by police employees—and this is what “officers” really are—that the law does not apply to them is noxious in its arrogance. As NYC mayor de Blasio said after viewing the video of the subway incident, “if you’re going to be in law enforcement, you actually have to participate in following the law.”[1] The mayor noted that the police had been given the mask-requirement instructions “a thousand times.” It was not as if the two police employees did not know that they were breaking the rule—and violating a federal regulation!—when they aggressively turned on the passenger who was motivated to see that the law was enforced. Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA (the metro transit authority) put it well in saying, “I don’t want to see [passengers] being pushed out of the system by people who are not complying with the rules that the federal government sets. Come on, enough.”[2] 

Unfortunately, “Come on, enough” could be said of the Phoenix (Arizona) police department, which the U.S. Justice Department had found guilty of lying to the department about having denied police-accountability protesters their constitutional right of political protest. To knowingly intimidate protesters with excessive shows of guns, police employees and vehicles, and low-flying helicopters reveals an immaturity and lack of judgment on proportionality that de facto de-legitimate a police department even if such qualities are salient in the local culture.

In Phoenix, self-exemption from having to obey federal law had become overwhelmingly salient in the local culture, given the proportion of light-rail and bus passengers who did not wear masks—or wore them only covering their respective chins! Even a significant number of bus drivers had self-exempted themselves from the signs on the buses: “As Per Federal Law, Masks Must be Worn on the Bus.” Calling the mass transit authority (Metro Valley) to report some of the drivers who were disobeying company policy and violating federal law, I was stunned to hear, “Our drivers don’t have to wear masks. Don’t pay attention to the signs on the buses.” A manager of TransDev, one of the bus-operations sub-contractor, left a voicemail informing me that even though masks were required by federal law, the company had no such policy.” Interesting. Company policy trumps federal law. Welcome to Arizona.

In October, 2021, with passengers passing by to pay, this bus driver was violating federal law by refusing to wear a mask. I reminded her that masks are required on city buses. After I took my seat, she made a general announcement that if any (paying) customer on the bus feels unsafe, he can get off and catch the next bus. Notice that the driver had lowered the plexiglass "window" pane and thus was being unsafe (and thus inconsiderate). Her passive aggression in her hostile announcement added insult to injury even though she felt convinced that she was entitled to break federal law. This sense of entitlement backed up by passive (and active) aggression is salient in the local culture. I called in a complaint to the regional transit authority (Metro Valley) against that driver. 

A few weeks later, I witnessed the same driver again not wearing a mask. At least she had the plexiglass window pane up, though the federal regulation requires masks be worn by operators even behind plexiglass. I had heard back from TransDev, a subcontractor bus-operating company, telling me on my voicemail that the company policy allows drivers to go maskless, even in spite of the federal regulation. Metro Valley customer service had a week earlier informed me similarly that passengers can board the buses even though the company's signs on the buses forbit it as "per federal law." Such entitlement! Such willfulness! Such passive aggression! Such ignorance! A company policy does not outweigh a federal law or regulation. 

Seeing a managerial-level Phoenix policeman walking from his "Supervisor" car to the police substation on Central Ave near Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus, I told him that I had encountered: bus drivers (and light rail security guards) refusing to wear masks and even allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. I added that the regional transit authority and one of its sub-contractors arrogantly and ignorantly declaring that such passengers can ride and bus drivers need not wear masks.

To my profound, jaw-dropping astonishment, the police patrol manager informed me that “the only real law is Arizona law,” and my governor told us that we don’t have to follow that federal mandate.” Every law and regulation mandates, I said to correct for the man’s ignorant belief that a mandate is optional and does not have the force of law. I pointed out that state governments cannot constitutionally nullify federal law; South Carolina had learned this lesson in 1832. I also cited the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. “Where did you learn that?” the policeman asked, “At Yale?” I had told him that I had studied political theory (as well as theology) at Yale. The man’s disdain for higher education was just as salient as was his sordid ignorance, and of course he presumed that he could not be wrong. Unfortunately, the local workforce in general was saturated by unbelievable ignorance that would presume itself to be infallible and lash out as if in getting even.

I reported my conversation as well as the messages from the regional transit authority and its TransDev subcontractor to the office manager of the Phoenix mayor’s office. I even called the city manager’s office and asked for a managerial level employee to return my call. Instead, a misleading intern called me. Meanwhile, nothing changed in the mass transit system. Given the decadence in the local culture, I would have been surprised had anything changed. I was most concerned that the city government would not pounce on such outrageous statements by a police manager concerning federal law. Such utter corruption and an inert local government could produce a toxic, perfect storm beyond the reach of the U.S. Justice Department to counter, for the local police department and regional transit authority (and its two operations sub-contractors) had become infused with the local culture. 

Specifically, I am referring here to the sense of entitlement that laws can be ignored or simply dismissed if they are inconvenient, and the defense mechanism of hostility in the face of having the bloated, self-serving sense of entitlement questioned or contradicted outright. For instance, I called the police non-emergency number in 2021 to report loud bass from cars at a self-serve carwash near where I was living at the time. The offender was still present when the police arrived. To my utter shock, one of the two patrol police employees claimed that no law prohibits loud noise in a residential neighborhood. "The business owner has posted signs--right over there--citing the Arizona statues and the local ordinance number (2-22). Would you take a look?," I countered in a calm voice that belied my real objection to his ignorance. "No, I won't," he objected like a child. So the man-child would not even go to the offending pick-up truck to speak with the young men. While I was waiting for the business owner to call me back, the man-child slowly followed me as if I were a suspect rather than witness reporting an ongoing, almost daily crime that the local police had failed utterly to stamp out. The man-child's sense of entitlement was evident not only in his lying about the law, but also his abject refusal to drive or walk over to one of the signs. He assumed himself infallibly to be on solid ground, from which he then tried to intimidate me (hostility). Getting back at me for what? What sort of sordid mentality invents retribution out of thin air? A week after I had reported the man-child's behavior to his department, I received a call from a patrol supervisor, who was intent on arguing with me by insisting that the sign read "No Trespassing." "I don't doubt that such a sign exists there, but that's not the signs that I was referring to when I said that the signs read 'No loud noise, no revving engines, ...' and at the laws are cited at the bottoms of the signs--one posted at each post." The woman hung up on me. There would be no accountability within that woefully stubborn and corrupt police department, which had lied to the FBI concerning another matter: intimidating protestors who were protesting against police brutality in 2020.  A dysfunctional culture, whether of a locality or an organization, is extremely difficult to cure. 

---

[1] Liam Reilly, “NYC Mayor ‘Troubled’ by Video Showing Unmasked Officers Forcibly Removing Masked Subway Commuter,” CNN.com (October 21, 2021).
[2] Ibid.

Ethical Human Resources Management

Ethics applied to human resource management is typically thought to boil down to treating subordinates well. Kant’s categorical imperative, treat other rational beings not just as means, but also as ends in themselves, applies to this sense of ethical HR management. Specifically, human beings are not only cogs in a machine; they have lives outside of work that should not be expected to reduce to serving the interests of the employer. Another side of HR management also exists, however, that concerns the handling of unethical employees. Such handling can be ethical or unethical.

Front-line employees who deal with customers whether in person or at a call center are especially subject to customer complaints. The choices that such employees make on how to deal with customer complaints regarding themselves can be ethical or unethical. For instance, an employee who resists a customer’s request to speak to the employee’s supervisor acts unethically by exploiting the conflict of interest. The conflict lies in the employee putting his or her own vocational interest above the interests of the customer and even the company. Gate-keeping refers to an employee’s efforts in getting the customer to say why he or she wants to speak with a manager so if the reason reflects badly on the employee, he or she can lie about a supervisor being available or insist that the customer speak only to the employee about the issue. Such an employee is operating at a primitive level—that of self-preservation—rather than as a duty-bound agent of a principal (e.g., a company).

I contend that a company’s management that does not have adequate safeguards against such an exploitation of a conflict of interest operates unethically with respect to its human resources. Should a customer inform a supervisor of a specific employee who is exploiting the conflict of interest and yet the supervisor does not set negative consequences for the employee and notify middle-management that the company’s safeguards against such exploitation are not sufficient acts unethically too. Safeguards are possible beyond relying on individual customer complaints. The latter strategy is flawed because the complaints that actually reach a supervisor are reduced in conditions in which employees can get away with exploiting the conflict of interest. Put another way, a company is unethical in relying on individual complaints to willow out problematic employees as a safeguard because it is hampered by the exploitation itself. Interestingly, whereas exploitation of employees is a common refrain, an employee’s exploitation of customers is less commonly known.

Stronger safeguards are ethical where their efficacy cannot be compromised by an employee’s exploitation of customers. Concerning phone calls, for example, the greeting could include the following: “At any time while speaking with a representative of the company, you can press 5 should you like to report a problem you are having with the representative.” The call could go to a designated manager who acts as a safeguard. In a store, a designated desk could be identified as the place where customers can go if they have had a problem with an employee. Unlike a typically customer-service desk, the person taking the complaints should hold a rank higher than that of the entry-level employees. Unfortunately, entry-level employees may tend to cover for each other, and thus extend the conflict of interest rather than curtail it.

Internal audit departments could definitely add assessing weak as well as presumably strong safeguards. Calls to respective customer-service departments could be made, and verification could be applied not only to those calls, but also on real complaints. Problems may be difficult to detect. As a case in point, the customer service process used by the regional transit authority in Phoenix, Arizona begins with an employee in Metro Valley’s customer-service department. Complaints on bus drivers are sent to their respective supervisors, yet they are known to cover for their respective drivers rather than provide accountability. Also, drivers circumventing company policies, including those regarding the coronavirus pandemic, has also been a major problem. Bad driving, such as braking too hard, and, relatedly, driving fast to accrue enough time to take smoking breaks, have also been endemic and beyond the reach the process of accountability. Aggravating the matter of accountability, the driver-supervisors work for the sub-contracted bus-operating companies; at least one of which dismissed videos of bad braking in 2018. In short, the customer-service department’s process of handling complaints and feedback is grossly inadequate, given the behavior of enough drivers and their supervisors. An audit would ideally uncover the corruption and come up with a process that takes the problematic drivers and supervisors (i.e., the dysfunctional culture) into account. Accountability is indeed difficult in such organizations in which employees regularly flaunt company policies and the immediate supervisors enable such behavior by refusing to enforce the policies even where unsafe driving and passenger health are concerned.

Major Cracks in Human Resources and Management in the American Grocery Industry Made Transparent during the Coronavirus Pandemic

For a certain personality-type, character, or mentality, it is easy to blame other people while remaining silent on one’s own mistakes (and mentality). This approach can be particularly harmful during a pandemic, for one’s own mistakes could be passing on the infectious illness. Such mistakes include refusing to maintain a physical distance from other people in public places and retail stores. As noxious as the blaming is, a more significant anthropological point may be that as a social and habitual animal, the human being may not be mentally advanced enough to keep a distance from other such animals even for self-preservation. I don’t think the instinctual urge for socializing exhausts the explanation, for the failure (and even refusal) to respect others enough to keep at a distance even when they ask surely involves weakness that manifests psychologically beyond merely having a bad attitude. Not even the artificial organizational-management systems our species has established are a match for the toxicity of a weakness that is even just passively aggressive toward other people. I contend that American management is susceptible to an even more severe weakness; one that foists organizational power as a club even on customers. 

In mid-April, 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, “some worker experts, union leaders and small grocery store owners” were claiming that it had “become too dangerous to let customers browse aisles, coming into close range with workers.”[1] The president of the United Food and Commercial Workers’ union pointed to “careless customers” as “probably the biggest threat” to the workers.[2] According to that union, “85% of its grocery store member workers reported that customers” were not literally going even a bit out of their way to maintain a physical distance from other shoppers and employees.[3] With supermarkets struggling to convince customers to wear masks, the union's president also said that he was urging grocery stores to make masks mandatory not only for employees, but also customers. "Everyone must wear masks," he insisted. [4] Too many customers were endangering lives. Wearing a surgical or handmade mask could not prevent the virus from being inhaled; rather, such a mask prevents the mask wearer from sneezing or coughing near another person, increasing the likelihood of infecting him or her (infection could also result from breathing regardless of whether masks are being worn). In other words, wearing a mask protects other people, so not wearing one does not indicate a weakened motive of self-preservation, but, rather, a lack of consideration and even empathy for other people. It is quite selfish, as is walking or standing by another person. 

From my own experience in several Albertsons, Kroger, Target, and Sprouts stores in Phoenix, Arizona, I saw the vast majority of customers—perhaps all of them—fitting within the union’s statistic on the lack of physical distancing. 

This customer headed directly toward me. I asked him to maintain a distance and reminded him that the aisle is one-way due to the pandemic. He showed disgust, but turned around. Disgust at me, rather than recognition that he was in the wrong. Presumptuousness on top of not being responsible. 

                                                    

                                                            

In fact, I encountered a few customers who verbally lashed out at me for asking them to keep a distance due to the pandemic as they were about to closely approach me and thus blatantly dismiss the two-carts-apart policy of the stores. In one case, the Albertsons  (Safeway) store manager was very near and yet in spite of having witnessed the violation, he refused to chastise the customer not only for violating the store’s policy of “social” distancing, but also being verbally aggressive toward me. “I think we should just let it go,” the manager told me as I looked at him in utter astonishment.

At another Safeway store, a customer headed directly at me and refused to back up, even to let me back to the products where I had been. Then he assaulted me by slamming my cart until it blocked the aisle. The sordid Phoenix police, whom I asked be called, turned it on me. I had assaulted the customer by blocking the aisle! The contrarian attitude of the seven or eight police who responded to my initiated call was as obvious as their confrontational postures toward the victim--me!

In fact, I had not seen one employee or manager of a grocery store bother to enforce the policy of “social” distancing since the U.S. Center of Disease Control issued guidelines and the Arizona government issued an order to maintain a physical distance of six feet from other people unless necessary. With regard to the masks, and I submit on the distancing too, stores generally were "reluctant to antagonize customers by turning them away."[5] According to a Wegman's spokesperson, the chain wanted to minimize "the likelihood of conflicts in our stores" and would "not put our people in the position of having to deny entry to our stores," even in states where masks in public settings are required.[6] In other words, the company's management was not even willing to conform to government orders. I saw the same refusal at Albertsons, Kroger, and Sprouts stores in Arizona. In Los Angeles in neighboring California, customers had to wear masks or coverings in stores, but Kroger (Ralphs) was not enforcing the government order. In fact, a store manager reprimanded an employee for having asked a customer to wear a mask. "I was told that it was none of my business and that I was not the mask police," the employee later reported.[7] She was being quite reasonable in wanting to protect herself. 

At the time, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Hawaii, Miami (Florida) Austin (Texas), Washington, D.C. and some others had orders mandating that grocery shoppers wear face coverings or masks in the stores, yet no penalties go to noncomplying customers or stores. Only a handful of smaller grocers in the U.S. were requiring customers to wear masks. The medium and large companies, however, were putting expediency on revenue before the safety of two major stakeholders: the employees and customers. 

Such stakeholder management is unethical because it prioritizes company gain even at a time when the business was good before the very lives of others. Yes, even employees can be thought of as others to a company's management that is oriented to the company's profits and executive bonuses. Utilitarianism is violated because the greatest good is not provided to the greatest number (of people). Even were a major chain to risk going out of business by enforcing physical distance and mask-wearing on customers, the industry was too important during the pandemic not to get money from the U.S. Government. So the executives' mindset was one of selfish enrichment over consideration and even empathy for others who could suffer greatly and even die as a result. Hume's theory of moral sentiment has it that the sentiment of moral disapprobation that people would naturally feel looking at the sordid refusals to enforce even government orders is the moral judgment against the companies. Kant would point out that the executives (and store managers) were not treating those put at risk as not just means, but also as ends in themselves (for they are rational beings worthy of intrinsic value). 

To be sure, I had seen plenty of employees and even store managers violating their own company's policy on physical distancing both between themselves and as inflicted on customers through callious disregard. Such behavior is also unethical.

For example, a store manager of a Sprouts store, whose nitch was supposedly still healthy foods, stood just behind an employee who could not wait a few seconds until I would emerge from the narrow hallway from the bathrooms to enter without passing me at close range. “He tried,” the manager said when I asked the manager why he was not enforcing his store policy (and CDC guideline) on his own employees. As I pivoted to exit the store, I glanced around to see another employee come up right behind me to grab something, with of course her manager looking on. 

The next week, while I was waiting outside far to the left of the entry to the same store, I asked an oncoming employee to keep a distance as she passed by. She did not alter her course. She even hurled insults at me, including, “Maybe you should bring a ruler.” She then said to a customer, who also thought my request had been unreasonable, “There is something wrong with customers who ask me to keep a distance. I get thirty customers everyday asking me to keep a distance.” One implication is that she had not been maintaining physical distance much at all in the store, which implies that the store manager was not enforcing the policy on his employees. This inference is consistent with my observations by then of employees at several Kroger (Frys) and Albertsons (Safeway) grocery stores in Phoenix, Arizona. 

This Kroger (Frys) store manager was not even maintaining a distance from an employee even in just talking. How could it be expected that the manager was enforcing the policy on his employees given that he was not enforcing it on himself?

This Albertsons (Safeway) department head and employee walked close by me twice without a thought between them on the risk they were posing to a customer. 

This Kroger (Frys) employee, who worked at the self-check-out stations (and thus close to customers), lied to me that she had tried to keep a distance from me in an aisle. Walking on the other side of the pillar at the end of the aisle would have counted as trying. 

The Albertsons (Safeway) employee on the left had been even closer to the other employee's face in passing close by before stopping to talk. Two-cart-lengths distance was the store policy and Arizona's guideline.

Not once did I see an employee even move to the other side of an aisle in passing a customer. Not once did I see an employee bother to move out of the way to give a customer some distance. “I’m trying,” one employee told me even though she had not even bothered to move from the center of an aisle when she passed me. I, however, was hugging the other side. I held back from replying, “You’re not trying enough.” I don’t think she was trying at all. She was lying. In general, I had the sense that employees thought it was rude for customers to ask that the store policy be followed. At the very least, employees didn’t want to follow the policy, and their managers were not enforcing it. Even cashiers managed to evade the clear plastic screen between them and the customers checking out. I was speechless when a cashier moved her head around the plastic to hear me better at close range. Apparently she didn't think there was a pandemic going around. Perhaps her store manager had believed that scant training was sufficient for the employees. 

  

The upper sign asks customers not to talk to employees around the edges of the plastic that covers most of the desk area.

The plastic screens at Kroger (Frys) grocery check-out stations are too narrow because the plastic does not cover the area where customers pay even though the distance from the cashier is close. Also, the area at which customers spend considerable time unloading carts and waiting is also too close to the cashier to be unprotected by the plastic. 

This video demonstrates that the plastic screens at check-out are insufficiently narrow because they do not cover the area between the cashier and customer during the payment phase. Even though I told the cashier that she was too close to me, she did not back off while I was paying. Instead, she chastized me for pushing a wrong button on the keypad. "We could be infecting eachother right now," I said. "I know," she replied. 

Even so, as I was taking a photo of the sign ironically just behind her station, the cashier backed away from the next customer as she paid. The cashier was staring at me to present the illusion that she was following the guideline of "social" distancing. I wish she had been less social with me.

Therefore, it would be one-sided to conclude that employees needed more protection from customers because customers also needed protection even though managers and even employees themselves in some cases felt free to inflict on customers asking for such protection. Even more so than refusing to enforce policies and even government orders, aggressively blaming the victim is not a viable long-term strategy for retaining good customers and minimizing the number of bad employees. 

The thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, a nineteenth-century European moral philosopher, anthropologist, and philologist, is useful in providing a deeper explanation. He would say that both the employees and customers were behaving like herd animals too weak to master their base instinctual urges, including selfishness, greed, and the desire to aggressively lash out at other people. Selfishness out of weakness is not necessarily in line with furthering self-preservation; ignoring the physical-distancing policies and guidelines ran contrary to the egoist urge of self-preservation. 

The industry needed ethical leaders willing to go beyond what is convenient and expedient for the companies. Even the head of at least one major labor union sought to blame customers while looking the other way on the sordid lack of regard that at least some members were displaying for customers. Only a child would say, "I won't step out of my way in the least," and then, if caught, lie, "I tried" as the lack of effort had somehow not been noticeable. 

Nor were any of the store managers in the stores that I surveyed leaders, for they were not strong enough to enforce the health guideline and store policy even on employees. Nietzsche would explain those managers as herd animals with an extended urge to dominate without the requisite strength.[8] The indictment, therefore, exposed during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, is that retail-level managers may not be strong enough to manage stores. Generalizing so from my unscientific sample can of course only be taken as a rough-draft yet to be verified. That I saw the same pattern in every store gives me confidence that I am correct, but here I am on more solid ground in relating my observations to Nietzsche's psychological-anthropological theory. 

According to that theory, the herd animals who cannot resist their urges to dominate even without being strong enough compensate through aggression, including intending to be cruel. In contrast, a strong conqueror does not intend to be cruel, but is instead oriented to overcoming both external and internal obstacles.

 
So I was not completely surprised when an assistant manager with an employee of a Kroger (Frys) store in Phoenix, Arizona stalked me around the store because I had photographed the store manager talking at close distance with one of his employees, an employee who had refused to keep a distance from me, and a customer who had mindlessly come up to me like a herd animal moving on to the next clump of grass. These people, even the manager, violated the store policy (and CDC and state guidelines) on maintaining a physical distance from other people. Neither man was wearing a mask. Had they been more clever, they might have combined their two infractions by walking up to me and sneezing or coughing. 

The (assistant) manager not only felt the need to be confrontational and insulting toward me in a way that indicated that he really wanted to attack a customer, but also missed an opportunity to hear from a customer with proof that the store's employees were serially violating the store's policy on physical distancing--even violating a governmental guideline or order on "social distancing." In other words, the head of a large union was wrong in blaming only the customers! 

A self-confident, strong assistant manager (which may be an oxymoron) in the store would have asked me at the time why I had taken pictures instead of accusing me even though he still didn't know for sure and the management had not posted signs prohibiting photography. I would have explained that I had photographed only some infractions in which I was being but in harm's way, and that the company stood to benefit. Several days later, I had chance, impromptu  meeting in the parking lot of an Albertsons (Safeway) store with a woman who works with the county's Environmental Services department. I learned that her department had no clue that the stores were not enforcing the government guidelines on physical distancing. Referring to my earlier experience at Krogers (Frys), she said my photography was justified. "You were collecting evidence!" I had also been holding my phone up as a possible deterrent (i.e., another customer or employee approaching very near would presumably not want to be photographed). 

And yet, the (asst) manager had been accusatory, and in this sense confrontational as if he had already made up his mind that I was guilty. He and his young sidekick employee were in a hunting mode, so I did not feel comfortable bringing my earlier complaints to them. 
The two men left me, or so I first thought, but the sidekick was keeping an eye on me. Both men waited to pounce on me just after I had paid for the groceries. The assistant manager walked fast to me in an aggressive manner and shouted insults at me as if he were a policeman. "I heard from a customer and employee!" he said in a loud, threatening voice without bothering to even consider that the complainers might have been retaliating against me for getting evidence of their wrong-doing. Instead, he was an extension of their self-righteous fury. 

He even shouted at me to leave the store even though I was already outside! That he was motivated to make the demand even when I was walking away, outside the building, suggested to me that he was motivated to lash out at me for its own sake--for the pleasure that comes from even positional power. Tellingly, even though I was pushing the cart into the parking lot, the manager threatened me, "You need to leave or I'm calling the police!" There was at the time a local law against calling the police for frivolous reasons. "But he was already leaving," the police would have told him. 

Because I was obviously leaving, Nietzsche would say that the man (and his sidekick) was weak which is to say, sick. A strong person would have let the matter go when I was paying for the food and leaving the store rather than act out of resentment and an urge to subdue. A strong manager makes a point and then moves on; a weak manager cannot let go--cannot master--his or her pressing institual urges. Such mastery is the richest source of the pleasure than comes from power--far richer than acting out against a customer already leaving the store. 

The (asst) manager's young sidekick had not kept at a physical distance from me twice when we were inside of the store. That he violated the store policy even as he was questioning me as if he were a detective demonstrates weakness primping itself into dominating inspite of itself. In fact, the seccond time he had come close, I positioned my cart between him and myself (two cart-lengths was the policy, as per the recurring announcement that he presumably had heard often enough). He was stunned that I would protect myself, such was his feeling of entitlement. 

Major cracks in Kroger's human resources and store management occasion smaller cracks in customer's "loyalty" cards.

Nietzsche urges the strong to keep a distance, a pathos of distance, from the weak. If you go to a hospital, you risk getting infected by the sick. So don't hang out in hospitals. Unfortunately, I did not practice enough social distancing from the weak yet aggressive birds of prey at a Kroger Frys store in Phoenix even though the pandemic there had rendered the weakness suddenly blatantly transparent. It is tempting to engage with the birds of prey, but it is a trap, for they lure stronger people in, perhaps out of resentment for the inner weakness that the weak sense, in order not to conquer but instead to inflict. Such invisible birds of prey are infectious in that even the healthy can be beguiled into going down to the birds' acrimonious level. Nietzsche's writing style, which I am reflecting in this paragraph, certainly does not mince words; both the herd animals and those from within who dominate the herd and beguile the strong to dominate them too are sick.  

Physical distancing can thus be distinguished from social distancing; the former is advisable during an infectious pandemic and both kinds of distancing are recommended for a person who is confronted by weak, confrontational (and even aggressive) retail employees and managers. 

To be sure, not all retail employees and managers are weak, but that restless birds of prey survive in retail stores reflects badly on retail companies, including their internal accountability. Put another way, without empirical studies in the stores, it is not possible to know the percentage of workers and managers who have been infected or are innately sick--the weak cannot be but weak, and the strong cannot be other than strong. Yet the severity of the sickness suggests that the company or even the industry is unduly susceptible to the weakness and its being able to even beguile the strong into being dominated in fear. Put another way, the behavior can violate customer service so deeply that the presence of a kind of brain sickness can be inferred. 
The sheer extreme to which the Kroger (asst) store manager and his young sidekick allowed themselves to go in verbally attacking me as I walking toward the main door and even outside of the store, without instead asking why I had used my phone to record the lack of physical distancing in the store by customers, employees, and even a manager, demonstrated to me at least that something was wrong with the two men. They wanted to go beyond insults to be cruel in their aggressive walking after me, scolding me, and threatening me. 

The young sidekick's bizarre behavior was also a red flag concerning his underlying sickness (and mentality). Outside of the store, as I was heading into the parking area, he loudly threatened me, "Taking pictures on private property is Very illegal!" Then he immediately (and fakely) repeatedly thanked me for shopping there! Did he then think he had exercised good customer service? 

He obviously thought he knew the law, as did his boss, even though the company had posted no signs prohibiting photography and I had not used my phone-camera after the two men had initially accosted me in the store (they lied that a customer had complained, hiding that an employee had also complained). Also, as the employee of the county's Environmental Services department later told me, I was not breaking any law recording evidence. Of course, the sidekick would doubtlessly have declared that such taping is illegal! Perhaps I should have called his bluff. In hindsight, I wish I had taped the (asst) manager and his sidekick shouting at me from the check-out area to the parking area. Evidence! Perhaps it was out of fear of this that the manager threatened that he would call the police even though I was leaving anyway. At the time, I didn't want to trigger the aggressive birds beaming down from their perches. In actuality, the customers should be on perches!

It is interesting that an employee and customer who were violating the store policy (and government guidelines) on physical distancing  decided to retaliate against me by reporting on me rather than cease their problematic, and perhaps even dangerous, inconsiderate conduct. I held my phone up in part to dissuade them from continuing to proceed so closely to me (I also asked them, but they refused), but to no avail. They were oblivious to what they were doing, but not to what I was doing. I submit that they felt resentment--ressentiment--rather than remorse; they lashed out, rather than offered even just an apology.  They would thus be likely to continue their risky behavior. 

I contend that the mentality was by 2020 so ingrained in Arizona that the government's guidelines on physical distancing were insufficient, given the people there. Even an order would have had to be enforced by law enforcement, especially as the stores were not willing to enforce even their own policies on wearing masks because doing so could compromise earnings. 

The mentality was so prevalent among the general public (notably in the middle and lower economic classes) in at least Tucson and the Phoenix metropolitan area that aggressiveness toward strangers was very apparent to people new to Arizona. "The people here are mean as rattlesnakes," one person told me. The people native to Arizona have blamed people coming in from other U.S. states, but even such convenient deflection is actually part of the culture in the state where cacti prick. In fact, culture-shock in moving to a major city in Arizona includes adjusting to the obvious "police state" mentality, wherein security guards and the police easily partake of the excess aggression. Overly, and I suspect intentionally visible security guards even standing next to an off-duty police employee were not uncommon at Albertsons (Frys) stores in Phoenix. As this was not the case at other grocery chains there, I submit that desire to intimidate customers is a revealing part of Albertsons' corporate culture in Arizona. That is, the company's culture there reflected the societal culture.  

A security guard stands in a confrontational stance at an Albertsons (Frys) store in Phoenix, Arizona. 

The (assistant) manager and his sidekick were clearly at home in such a societal and corporate culture. At the store level at least, it was permissible to intimidate customers by an excessive show of even police force on a routine basis and verbally and physically harass customers. It is not the sort of company culture that would be conducive to managers and employees mastering their sordid instinctual urge of aggression. The instinct to be considerate towards other people, on the other hand, would not receive its due respect. 

In being so motivated to be unnecessarily aggressive toward me because an employee had complained, the (asst) manager was enabling the employee's sick game. Two birds of a feather fly together, Nietzsche would say. The healthy cannot be blamed for cutting up their store cards in order to maintain a pathos of distance from the sick. Strength can only be frustrated by weakness. This is the epitomy of the sickness that Nietzsche describes in his texts.  

So in proclaiming the law as if he could not be wrong about it and assuming that customers should know that the company prohibits photography without being told or seeing any signs posted, the sidekick not only demonstrated his ignorance, but also lashed out at me. At the very least, this anadote strongly suggests that retail is susceptible to weakness wanting to dominate even the people to be served. In fact, the managerial role itself may be susceptible as control is so salient.[9]

In the Kroger store, two birds of prey flied too close to me, literally circling me and hovering within the store and pursuing me as if I were their prey outside, as they smelled an opportunity to eke out a bit of pleasure from inflicting repressed ire (sourced in self-resentment, which is deeper than the resentment against the strong) on a customer. Customers conveniently look weaker to faint, greedy eyes from the birds' soiled perches. I regret not having photographed the birds so you too could be astonished at the severity of the sickness of the weak, but I promise the manager and his sidekick were nothing to look at. 

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[1] Nathaniel Meyersohn, “Experts Say It May Be Time for Grocery Stores to Ban Customers from Coming Inside,” CNN.com, April 19, 2020 (accessed same day).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.
[4] Nathaniel Meyersohn, "Stores Want Shoppers to Wear Masks. But Some Customers Refuse," CNN.com, April 23, 2020.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Skip Worden, On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management.
[9] Ibid.