HUMOUR:

THE ULTIMATE END OF OUTSOURCING:

Either laugh of cry...it's real. There's a huge industry in China made up of people who play games all day to gather imaginary "gold" for online games. Something about "world", "hell" and "handbasket". Reality moves far ahead of satire.

CANADIAN LABOUR - WINNIPEG:
PIZZERIA GUSTO WILDCATTED OVER FIRING OF CHEF:



The following item has caused a bit of a flurry here in the Peg, with armies lining up on both sides of the debate to comment. It starts off small...real small...a student at Red River College putting together a self made book. Writing, designing, and self publishing it all in one the student put together a collection of interviews with Winnipeg chefs entitled 'The Last Crumb' and printed up all of 100 copies. Not exactly an overwhelming piece of publicity, but the owner of one restaurant read about his chef in it and decided that said chef was a detriment to the image of his outfit. Termination. The chef, however, was popular with the other workers at the restaurant, and they walked out along with him in protest. Here's the first story on this matter. Read it and see what you think. Form an opinion. Then go on to the second one. Here, from the Winnipeg Free Press...
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Not making any dough here
Chef says he was fired, eatery doors closed
By: Matt Preprost

One of the city's most celebrated restaurants is closed after staff walked out Friday when the head chef was fired.

Scott Bagshaw, who ran the kitchen at Pizzeria Gusto on Academy Road, said he was fired Friday afternoon after the eatery's owners read a story Bagshaw shared with a Winnipeg writer about a "two-day bender" while working in Australia almost eight years ago.

Bagshaw says he was fired and was asked to finish out his shift. Instead, he and his kitchen staff walked out.

"We walked out in solidarity," Bagshaw said. "The restaurant is still closed. They don't even have a dishwasher, they've got nothing.

"The intellectual property of the recipes, they don't have that either. They've got a menu but they don't have a way to recreate it," he said.

Pizzeria Gusto co-owner Don Mottola declined comment Sunday evening. Several calls and messages left to co-owner Bobby Mottola went unreturned by press time.

The pizzeria is a popular restaurant and many local and national food magazines laud Bagshaw as one of the top chefs in Winnipeg.

Cook Tara Podaima and sous-chef Matt Withoos were working Friday and walked out with Bagshaw, Podaima said.

"I was prepping in the kitchen. Scott came to work and came into the kitchen to let us know he had arrived and then went out to the front. He came back five minutes later and told me he was fired," said Podaima, who had worked for Bagshaw for over a year. "We told (Matt) what happened, got changed, packed up, and headed out the door.

"It wasn't really a question in our mind whether we would go with him or not," Podaima said.

Podaima said the other kitchen staff didn't show up for work later that night or on Saturday. The restaurant is normally closed Sunday.

A hand-written sign on the restaurant door says that it is closed for the evening and apologizes for any inconvenience.

In the story about his experiences in Australia, Bagshaw, 36, details a party romp he was taken on by his then-boss after working 23 straight 16-hour days. Bagshaw went to party after party for two days straight over a weekend, without sleep, before returning to work on the Monday. The story happened in 2002, while he was working at Monsoon Vietnamese Bistro in Australia.

"The (Pizzeria Gusto) owners came in after they saw it and said I misrepresented what the restaurant was about and what it needed to represent," Bagshaw said.

"I don't see how (the story) would damage the restaurant," he said. "Anything I said about the restaurant was positive and all my stories didn't take place in this restaurant, not even in this country."

In August 2008, Free Press food critic Marion Warhaft gave the restaurant four and a half stars out of five; the same year, Where magazine named the restaurant one of the top 10 in Canada.

Bagshaw's Australian story is published in an upcoming book about Winnipeg chefs called The Last Crumb, written by Red River College student Rhéanne Marcoux, who wrote, designed and self-published the book as part of a year-long project. Only 100 copies were printed, and Marcoux is still trying to line up stores and restaurants to sell it.

"My intentions when writing this book were to get Winnipeg chefs the acknowledgment and proper recognition they deserve," Marcoux wrote in an email. "I never could have anticipated this. I was shocked and really bothered by it all," she said.

Added Bagshaw: "She wanted stories about chefs being chefs -- the crazy stories about how we live and how we think. (Bobby) was aware about the book, he knew what was happening and he was all for it," Bagshaw said.
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Seems fairly straighforward doesn't it ? The boss at Pizzeria Gusto loves control beyond all things, and he should really do something about his long standing habit of indulging in concrete enemas. Ah, but there's another little bit of this story that makes it a little more complicated. Here's the rest of the story from CBC.
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Chef fired over racy comments
CBC News
The doors of a popular gourmet pizza restaurant in Winnipeg remained closed for a third day on Monday after an article in a recently published book allegedly prompted its owner to fire his head chef.

Scott Bagshaw told CBC News that he was fired by the owners of Pizzeria Gusto on Friday because of racy comments he made about the restaurant business, his past drug use and his interactions with colleagues while at work.

'We play the "would you" game .… You know, "would you sleep with her?" type of thing.'
—Chef Scott Bagshaw, quoted in The Last Crumb.

The article appears in a locally published book about Winnipeg chefs called The Last Crumb, which was written by a Red River College communications student as part of a year-long, school-sanctioned project.

Bagshaw said one of the owners of the Academy Road restaurant, Bobby Mottola, read the article and fired him.

Bagshaw said he went into the kitchen and told his staff. Some responded by quitting on the spot as a show of solidarity with him — right before a busy shift.

"I walked in … and like that, no questions asked, [they] rolled up their knives, took off their [uniforms] and walked out with me," Bagshaw said.

Mottola declined to be interviewed about what happened, but said the restaurant will reopen as soon as possible.

'100% honest'
Bagshaw said he doesn't regret giving the interview that led to the article and his subsequent firing, saying author Rheanne Marcoux only asked him to tell the truth about his past experiences.

"She wanted a story about how chefs are and what we think and what we do, and I … gave it to her … like 100 per cent honest," Bagshaw said.

In an excerpt from the two-page article, Bagshaw comments on what it's like to work in the pizzeria's open kitchen:

"Being in an open kitchen does have its perks. 'We play the "would you" game,' laughs [Bagshaw], who spends most of his 14-hour shifts rubbing elbows with his sous-chef Matt. 'You know, "would you sleep with her?" type of thing. We have our inside jokes, it makes you forget you’ve been working 14 hours.'"

Bagshaw said he's already got leads for a new job. He said the loyalty his staffers showed by walking out with him was incredible.

"As bad as getting fired feels, that feeling really offset it," he said.

The entire article featuring Bagshaw can be viewed by clicking the link at the top right of the story. Warning: some graphic language appears. ( Molly Note: The article in question can be viewed by going to the link below )


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/03/29/man-pizzeria-gusto-bagshaw-fired.html#ixzz0ji9UMits
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I personally have to say that I still have a lot of sympathy for Bagshaw even if he comes of as far less sympathetic in the article. Read it. It's far more entertaining than these two news stories. If I were working there I'd definitely have walked out along with the other staff. Still...it boggles the mind to imagine what he was thinking when he made his "true confession". The 100 copy book would probably have disappeared into the student's curriculum vitae if the owners of the restaurant hadn't overreacted. They should have waited for it to die a natural death. The revelations, however, are more than sufficient for the sort of Hitler-Stalin pact of the Jesus and law and order forces allied with the politically correct to have mounted a jihad if it were to come to their ears. But it likely wouldn't have. You can, however, see the point of trying to avoid this sort of crusade, even if the owners ended up doing themselves much more damage than even the worst scenario could have created. In any case it is doubtful that more than one in twenty actual diners at this trendy restaurant would have worked up a nanogram of outrage. What do you think ?

BLOGGING:

THE POLICEMAN'S CHOICE:

This is an anarchist blog, and even more so it is a "labour blog". As such it attracts the attention of those who oppose it. Whatever it may be, the Royal Bank, Walmart, the Hudson's Bay Company, and, of course, governments x,y and z, (and many others) they all drop by here to snoop. Quite frankly their efforts are pretty futile, but it is all the old "putting in time" in any bureaucracy. I've mentioned some bizarre stuff before on this blog where the RCMP was searching down the phone number of one of the kitchens at UBC. The RCMP in Ottawa and the 'Defense Research Establishment' there are pretty good fans of Molly's Blog. I certainly don't catch all their visits because my checking is restricted because of the large number of visitors to this blog. Still, I always hope to catch them in the act of relieving their boredom by clicking on to such things as "Julie Coulard's Tits" ( a favourite amongst bored bureaucratic employees here). Not that I'd squeal on the poor bastards. The Defense Research Establishment (so-called military intelligence) has been caught before accessing porn when they were supposed to be keeping track of the great, grave, serious, overwhelming threats to the Canadian way of life. Exaggeration is hard to maintain when it reduces down to the nitty gritty of mindlessly reading half-witted leftist or Islamic rhetoric over and over and over.

I imagine that the poor bastards who are assigned to check on "the anarchists" must be particularly bored. Quite frankly the greatest threat to the growth of anarchism as a political philosophy is not the evil rotten no good secret police. It's simply some people who adopt the anarchist label and proceed to disgrace it to the maximum of their ability. I have no doubt that the various police forces in Canada have a large number of agents implanted in anarchist groups, and I also have little doubt that, besides the gathering of information, that their tasks often involve the "pushing" of such groups towards violent actions that will disgrace not just the participants, not just anarchists in general but also others that anarchists have made alliances with. The latest example happened out in Vancouver. The political bosses are very happy with such work, and, if done right, it gets a commendation on your record. Still...it's a waste of money from the "opposition's" point of view because there are always more than enough so-called anarchists willing to do the police's work for them for free. As I said above...the greatest threat to anarchism and its growth is...some anarchists.

OK enough sectarian arguments. Back to the police. The other day (night actually-they have these poor bastards sitting in front of a screen 24/7) one guy from the RCMP in Ottawa came here to Molly's Blog and did his due diligence. That's all OK, though I've often thought of sending such people a bill for my services.

Anyways, just because he was bored, he went over to our sister site, Molly's Polls. He decided to vote in the poll 'What Is The Freest Country In The World'. Now if your salary is being paid by a government that hires you as a "spook", even if only an internet spook, you would expect that your first loyalty would be to said government. NO !!! This guy voted for the USA as the "freest country in the world". I guess that his idea of "freedom" may indeed include the "freedom to waterboard" or maybe the "freedom to fly somebody to Syria for torture". Ah, the different meanings of "freedom".

OK, here's what Molly wants. I'd like to see this guy being forced to lie in front of his superiors when he is questioned about where his "first loyalties lie", whether to the country that has given him a security clearance or to the only country that has ever directly threatened and invaded Canada in all of history. I wouldn't want this guy around if "peak oil" comes to be a reality. Can we say "quisling" ? Canada would be occupied anyways, but it wouldn't help any resistance to have those who favour the Empire to the south over their own country in positions of power.

Anyways keep em coming spooks. I love you too. What I cannot comprehend is how you cannot realize that visiting this blog is useless and a waste of time.

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-MALAGA:

YES VIRGINIA THERE IS AN ANARCHIST LAWYER:

Every once in awhile, while working on the 'Links' section of this blog (now far and away the most extensive set of links on the 'anarchonet') I come across things that snap my head back. The last time I can remember such a double take as what follows is when, a couple of years back, I came upon and listed items such as 'The Mormon Worker' and other "Mormon anarchists". What gives me pause is that, after the double take, I do a triple take and realize that I have no real objection whatsoever. There are indeed things in the wonderful world of anarchism that are truly disturbing, and I'm occasionally visited by demons from these netherworlds. I don't, however, see why a Mormon couldn't be a good anarchist, though I have to bite my tongue to avoid arguing about religion with same. Mercifully, the older and lazier I get the easier this becomes.

The following is one such experience. While dutifully chugging through the CNT listings for Andalucia I was readying the CNT Málaga items for future inclusion. I came across the following link within the site: Sección Sindical De CNT En El Colegio De Abogados De Málaga. Say What ??? This means "Union Section of the CNT In The College of Lawyers". Anarchist lawyers ? Well, I went searching, remembering the conference many years ago in the Netherlands on 'Law and Anarchism'. The two are not mutually contradictory, unlike the clowns who try and marry (a shotgun marriage if there ever was one) anarchism and right wing politics, especially of the neo-fascist kind (yes, there was one of these serpents who once visited Molly's paradise). Neither is this sort of thing immediately repulsive in a moral sense.

To be honest I think that an "anarchist lawyer" is worth more to the movement than 300 political science graduates who can sling academic non-words around. An anarchist accountant or an anarchist economist would be equally valuable. No, it's not a contradiction in terms. It seems, however, that at least one of the members of this Sindicato is in trouble with the Spanish equivalent of the local 'Legal College' in Málaga, as per the following article from the CNT Málaga website: 'El Colegio De Abogados De Málaga Impone Dos Nuevas Sanciones A Nuestra Delegado Sindical'. This translates as 'The Law College Of Malaga Imposes Two New Sanctions On Our Union Deleagate'. Seems that those who profit by the law are somewhat ticked about a visible anarchist in their midst, and, human nature, being nothing if not petty, are out to get the poor bugger. You can read the article in Spanish here. If there is overwhelming popular demand I will translate it into English (though I already have two Spanish translations sitting "in the queue").

Yes, I definitely feel sorry for the man and his compañera (also mentioned in the article). The site, however, gives no mechanism whereby we, on the other side of the world, can do anything for them. I do, however, wish him well. Check out the article, and the previous items there on this persecution, at the CNT Málaga site. May the guy keep pissing off the "forces of evil" and be happy about it.

Good luck compañero !