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Hard no. Not even close. I know people who worked at Dillards selling shoes who made over 50k back in the 90s. UPscale retailers were mindbogglingly inefficient and they charged for it. Thing is, they paid well. My grandmother worked at Higbee’s down town Cleveland and while she wasn’t the major bread winner, she did make enough to add considerable income to their home—nothing today outside of management or Costco can say that.The economics today have been heavily disrupted by technology, advances in logistics, software and so on. In the course of my life in retail, it wasn’t so much about entry level jobs paying crap (they always have) it’s just that the economics of how a store is run have changed drastically. Whats left are all the original crap jobs but far fewer of the higher paying jobs and a fraction of the benefits once offered.That’s not anybody’s fault or some perfidy on the part of fat cats. Most of this money isn’t going to them. Most of it is going to cutting prices to the bone. The retail market in the US is so competitive and so un-regulated that it’s the wild jungle out there. Every retailer is in a vicious war with the others. And no wonder, they’re all going broke because it’s always in the process of being disrupted by something new.In my time at Kohl’s, here are some changes I saw. I will use my own coding for simplification of store ranking positions.Levels: 1, 2, 3 are individual contributors (Or “ICs”; the numbers represent seniority). $8–$12 per hour.Levels: 4, 5 are junior and senior supervisors (small/big departments). $10–$17 per hour.Level 6 is a key-carrying hourly manager. $15–$25 per hour.Good? Okay, let’s do this.All stores except REALLY busy ones lost their HR manager. They have a store manager, a hardlines/dock manager and a softlines/CS manager. The store managers became the store HR managers too. Supposedly 50% of that payroll went to make competitive pricing (which I did see) and then to hourly worker support (more headcount and hours, which I don’t believe I ever saw).Loss of a $55,000–75,000 salaried job. This means, someone below them has just lost a career target they can aspire too making it far harder to work their way up to a good income.The software the company uses eliminated the need for major hand-written scheduling, gantt charting projects, etc. Suddenly the store admin, an entry level supervisor role (level 4), went from a full time position to a part time. Then it was downgraded to just senior IC (level 3). Employees can use their own app or the website to self-schedule and ask an interactive agent questions about benefits and pay. Same rule: fifty/fifty split on payroll savings.Loss of a $$25,000–30,000 a year full time job with good benefits and vacation. (This was the MOST desired spot in the store: decent pay, insanely good hours — can be home right as kids get home, ability to work from home, flexible hours, relaxing office environment, key power player in the store, enjoyable job to do.)The software that runs the cash office was really upgraded. The diminishing use of hard cash and checks means that credit cards were the vast majority of our purchases. The cash office supervisor (Level 4) was abolished. We kept the four part-time cash office associates but instead of six hours a day, we went down to four hours a day. Same rule: fifty/fifty split on payroll savings.Loss of a $20,000–25,000 a year full time job with good benefits and vacation. (This was the second most desired spot in the store: decent pay, insanely good hours — can be home right as kids get home, ability to work from home, flexible hours, relaxing office environment, key power player in the store, enjoyable job to do.) Sure, not a lucrative career, but that wasn’t the point — it was mostly women, mostly stay-at-home moms who had a comfy job where they made mad money to do nice things for their family — gone.Inventory Tracking Software is so accurate that it allows everything to be processed into and out of the store with no human hands meddling with the system. In the past a dock supervisor did this, but there is no dock supervisor (level 5) any longer. That position was abolished. Half the payroll went to unloaders/merchants. A key carrying manager (salary or hourly) comes in to unload the truck with the team and “force” as much product to the store meaning that no additional labor was needed for backstock and processing during the week.$30,000 full time job, gone. Third most desired spot in the store because of the early hours. Always 6am-2:30 PM. Great hours. Always home in time for kids.Custodian supervisor was removed (level 4). All custodial staff terminated or converted to other departments. A service area contractor was hired to come in and clean the store in the AM. No full time custodian on duty any longer—the staff onhand could handle it. In other words, I had to clean up shitty fitting rooms and the bathrooms went to hell. Same rule: fifty/fifty split on payroll savings.Loss of a $22,000 job that men and women did in their retirement. I had a wonderful woman who worked for YEARS as a custodian manager at a Hospital. She was so proud of the fact that she never missed a day of work. We lured her away because she was retiring and wanted a 20-hour a week job working in the morning. We hired her then fired her in six months—job abolished. I was crushed.The morning replenishment supervisor (level 4) was downgraded from full time to part time associate (level 3). The hours expanded to the rest of the crew. This time they actually did it. An “in stock” team comes in every morning for four hours (two people) to get any merchandise that might’ve been backstocked to the floor.Loss of a decent $25,000 a year job. (Easy hours, flexible around one’s schedule, little stress.)All front end supervisor (level 4) coverage was reduced from open-to-close to just Friday evenings, Saturday from noon to close and Sunday afternoon. They were not down-leveled but two positions out of four were abolished and cut from 40 hours a week to 20 hours a week (to include cashier shifts).Loss of two decent, $25,000 a year jobs.The store visual (merchandising / decor) supervisor (level 5) who installed graphics and help set the look for a sale, was cut down a level (4). Her assistant was removed. Same rule: fifty/fifty split on payroll savings.Another highly sought after job that people just drooled over. You set your own hours, work 40 a week whenever you wanted (except for mandatory Monday mornings or major service events when shit had to get done). When we let our senior visual manager go, I was so sad. $30,000 job with easy hours (you can even do it when the store is closed and it’s a JOY to do— visually setting all the mannequins and setting up the graphics is an artsy-worker’s dream).The Ad Set team was removed. They worked from 8pm-12am. The system was upgraded to electronic tags and pricing. No need to swap out signs. The technology caused the ad set supervisor to be downleveled from 5 (high authority due to the complexity of the task and the team) to level 4 and given one helper to use in their short, once every week shift. That’s right. One four hour shift for a previously 25–30 hour leader who could also add 10 more hours a week to be at full time. The entire crew and the hours are gone.The beauty department supervisor was removed. A beauty associate was added. to work on Friday and Saturday evenings. Department was moved to jewelry. Same rule: fifty/fifty split on payroll savings.Loss Prevention Supervisor (level 5) abolished. Two part-time LP associates added (in uniform) to walk around the store only on busy days.Loss of a $30k-40k job.Abolishing of 1/3 of all district managers. $125,000 job + bonus. A difficult job but still one people aspired to.Abolishing of 1/2 of all regional VPs. $200,000 job + bonus. A difficult but clearly high level job that people sought after.What’s coming down the pike? Easy, these are the things being developed RIGHT NOW that aren’t science fiction:Every item embedded with an RFID tag. You walk through an archway and it scans all tags and rings them up.Robotic floor cleaners (Walmart is already testing them).Automated in-stock robots that can do most of the picking and moving of product to the floor. An associate (for now) still loads it. Because the robot does most of the thinking, the associate just man-handles the product. Team will go from about 15–30 people at night to 10–20 people. The third shift stocking supervisor is being abolished. The manager won’t need any help due to the smaller team size.Amazon and Walmart are both testing automated delivery drones. Goodbye delivery people.You see, we added a few dozen hourly headcount. We abolished all full time positions except for hourly levels 5 and 6. WE lost a salaried manager. See, nothing is inherently wrong or unethical with these changes. Kohls didn’t get a say in what the market looks like. Kohls has repeatedly struggled gaining market share and to do that, it has to compete or go bankrupt costing everybody their jobs. I watched stores struggle and my friends who opened stores in California and Florida all had horror stories of how hard it was to transplant the Midwestern corporate culture of the company to different regions of the country.All that is fine. But what isn’t fine is the fact that models of efficiency (like QualPro and SixSigma and Kaizen) have turned making businesses efficient into a literal science. When Kohls went with one of those efficiency modification systems, they really changed. Entire stockrooms were remodeled based on how the organization observed the number of steps it took to get from point a to point b. Everything was under the microscope. The way the trucks were unloaded went from a slow peck at the truck to everything all at once dumped off the truck and to the floor (where you sell things, so that is good).Efficiency is good but there’s one thing to know. There is one part in every business that is utterly wasteful and problematic and quarrelsome and inefficient and frequently lazy: humans. Humans are wasteful bags of mostly water. Capitalism is good and efficiency is good but there is a point, beyond which, if efficiency for the sake of efficiency is chased, it doesn’t pan out so well for us. (Unless we all get put out of work by machines that do the stuff we don’t want to, then, well, that utopia/dystopia will have to be the problem of someone long from now.)

Leo Frank was a Jew who in 1915 was convicted of murder in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The evidence however shows that Frank was almost certainly innocent!On April 26, 1913, a 13 year old white girl, Mary Phagan, of Irish descent, was raped and murdered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.Initially several men were arrested on suspicion of the crime but it was a Jew, Leo Frank, who stood trial for it. On August 25, 1915, Frank was found guilty. A final appeal in April 1915 to the US Supreme Court was rejected. Frank had been condemned to death by hanging. On Monday, June 21, 1915, the conviction was commuted to life imprisonment. The Judge authorizing the commutation mentioned new evidence that was expected to overturn the conviction altogether. Frank was interned at a prison farm where a fellow prisoner slashed his throat with a knife. Frank survived but while recovering on August 16, 1915, he was taken from prison by a vigilante group of armed men. The next morning he was lynched at Marietta, the hometown of Mary Phagan.Ever since then the case has been a matter of controversy. Anti-Semites frequently re-hash it for their own reasons. Most Jewish and non-Jewish historians now seem to opine that Frank was innocent.As a result of the trial of Leo Frank and even before his lynching the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) was founded in late September 1913. The ADL claimed its aim included "To stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all." Over the years the ADL has fulfilled a need. It has also issued controversial statements and adopted policies that some patriotic American Jews as well as Gentiles have found offensive. The Frank case is sometimes brought up in order to indirectly besmirch the ADL.The case and everything around it produced an enormous amount of documentation. Here in outline form is what we consider to be the main points.Leo Max Frank (1884 – 1915) had been born in Texas, raised in New York, and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1908. He was descended from German Jews and belonged to a Jewish Reform Congregation that believed in cultural assimilation and keeping a low Jewish profile. Frank had married a Jewish woman of some standing. He was involved with the local Jewish community. Frank was a mechanical engineer by profession. He had studied pencil manufacturing in Germany and was employed as the superintendent of a factory producing pencils.An Afro-American janitor, James "Jim" Conley, under investigation confessed to having assisted Frank in preparing the murder and disposing of the body after it. He claimed at first that a day before the murder Frank had called him to the office and told him to write two notes. These had been found. They had seemed to implicate Newt Lee, the Black night watchman who first reported the murdered body of Mary Phagan. Conley later changed his story. The new version claimed that on the day of the murder, a Saturday, Frank had met Conley in the street. It was a holiday. They went to the factory. Frank dictated the murder notes for Conley to write, gave him cigarettes, then told him to leave the factory. Conley could write and the language used in the notes was characteristic of his diction. The police accepted the authorship of Conley for the notes. After that Frank refused a confrontation with Conley and the police were reported as taking this as a confirmation of his guilt. Later Conley again modified his account. He claimed that Frank told him: "He had picked up a girl back there and let her fall and that her head hit against something." Conley said he and Frank took the body to the basement via the elevator. They then returned to the office and Frank dictated the notes.Source: Atlantic Journal.Ar first both Newt Lee, the janitor, and Frank were arrested. Militias were raised by the authorities to avert the threat of mob action against both prisoners. Lee was later released. Meanwhile suspicion had fallen on Conley. [The legal defense was later convinced that Lee had actually assisted Conley after the murder]. The Defense and the Prosecution at the trial focused on the possibilities that the guilty party was either Frank or Conley.Newt LeeOther previous suspects had included one white man, John Gantt, and another Afro-American, Gordon Bailey:John Gantt, was a former bookkeeper at the factory who had been dismissed for theft but returned on the day of the murder. He had previously been on friendly terms with Mary Phagan and was probably in the factory when the murder took place.Gordon Bailey was an elevator operator at the factory.The newspaper, "Georgian" hired William Manning Smith as attorney for Conley. Smith specialized in representing black clients. Tensions were growing between the black and white communities due to suspicion that Conley was the murderer.Frank while being questioned and later incarcerated is described as being nervous. In light of what later transpired and what we know of the prevailing climate he cannot be blamed for this. His testimony also contained inconsistencies but not extraordinary ones or those that are not explainable especially when compared to the other witnesses. The family of Frank and/or other members of the Jewish community also tried to assist him. This however backfired against them and was misconstrued as attempting to tamper with due process of law. The Jews were depicted as attempting to use their money and influence to undermine justice.Jim ConleyConley had been arrested after he was found rinsing what appeared to be bloodstains out of a shirt. He claimed the red marking were the result of rust and this excuse was accepted by the police. The prosecution led by Hugh Dorsey alleged that Conley could not be the culprit since he was black and therefore not intelligent enough to make up a complicated story. Other evidence however indicates that Conley was literate, self-assured, and quite capable. It is also almost certain that Conley had been consistently coached as may be seen by him changing his statements to fit new findings. The Prosecution claimed that the murder had taken place on the second floor near the office of Frank. They suggested that Frank had forced his attention on Mary Phagan: In the resulting struggle she had hit her head on a lathe whereon traces of hair had been found and what appeared to be blood stains on the floor.[In April, 1914, a state biologist was to say in a newspaper interview that his microscopic examination of the hair on the lathe shortly after the murder did not match those of Mary Phagan].The Prosecution claimed the murder took place opposite the office of Frank whereas the Defense believed it had occurred in the basement in the domain of Conley. Both sides quoted forensic evidence but that of the Defense appears to have been the most consistent. The Prosecution placed a lot of emphasis on the alleged sexual doings of Leo Frank. This was to be a major factor in turning public opinion against him to a drastic degree. The Defense for its part was to state that the great interest in the alleged sexual habits of Frank had gone against him in the eyes of the jury and denied him a fair trial.There were claims that Conley had been heard to admit to the crime but this evidence was never considered. Most of Frank's movements during the day seem to have been accounted for. The day of the murder was a Saturday and not a day of work but Mary Phagan had arrived by tram to pick up her pay at about 12:15. Frank said he paid her and that a witness, Lemmie Quinn, had turned up shortly afterwards. Quinn gave testimony that such was the case but because Frank had not mentioned this when first questioned the evidence was dismissed.After the trail it was shown that the murder notes must have been written in the basement where Conley was, and not in the office of Frank: They had been written on dated order pads signed by a former employee that were only kept in the basement!In 1982 Alonzo Mann, gave testimony. He was then 83. He had been an office boy at the factory. He said he had seen Jim Conley carrying the body of Mary Phagan to the basement. Conley had threatened to kill him if he said anything. After this Alonzo had asked his mother what he should do and she had told him not to say anything.The Defense at the trial and later, in their legal appeals, would claim that the large vociferous crowds and open threats of violence had intimidated the witnesses and jury.Taking everything altogether it seems quite clear that Frank was not guilty of the crime he was charged with. The evidence shows that Conley was. Not all the relevant proof had been placed before the jury. There was an atmosphere of condemnation directed against Frank who was depicted as an unprincipled lecherous assimilated rich Jew who had committed a crime. In the eyes of some him being as he was constituted a crime in its own right.See Also:Yair Davidiy's answer to Was Leo Frank evil?Leo Frank CaseLeo Frank - Wikipedia100 Reasons Leo Frank Is Guilty