shouldn’t the federal minimum wage apply to everyone who is doing work in the US? This seems like fraud
how would you distinguish this from regular outsourcing
Outsourcing is the problem.
The owners take advantage of our commons, tear up our roads, and succeeded because of domestic infrastructure, only to refuse to pay full price for labor and allowing even those wages, in lieu of the taxes they bribe our government to enact loopholes to dodge, to “trickle down” domestically as their always bullshit yay market capitalism talking points lied?
It’s absolutely clownshoes that outsourcing labor/manufacturing is allowed, not because of domestic shortages for a skill, but to explicitly pay pennies on the dollar for the employees you need and screw the country you don’t want to pay taxes to despite record profits even harder.
It’s insane. But we let the owner class dictate whatever they want here, and our well bribed government will even sell it for them by calling it “something something freedom” while never mentioning social consequences, accountability, or responsibility. We aren’t so much a country as a piggy bank and cudgel for the global owner class.
Something something candlemaker’s petition
For those in WTF.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/candle-makers-petition.asp
Borders are violence
I agree, and I’m for dismantling them.
But capitalism has to go with them. Because as it is, the owner class already enjoys a borderlees world, while manipulating those borders against everyone else.
Borders exist solely to maintain and enhance the power of a nation state’s elite. If a people allow an elite class to rise without check, borders will always be inevitable.
That the neat thing, you don’t.
Here, for certain industries (might be all but I don’t have first hand accounts of that), the contractors must make sure that the companies/freelancers they employ pay their taxes, otherwise, they are on the hook for it.
Do the same. If a company outsource work, they should prove that they pay the same as they would in their region, and if it not, be hit hard by fines and/or jail time.
But one can only dream I guess
Should apply to that as well if they’re interacting with the US market. All the way through subcontractors to the end employee. No hiding behind contracting local companies.
i don’t like outsourcing either, but realistically the machine of capitalism isn’t going to allow you to be rid of it in its entirety
honestly i don’t even know if getting rid of multinational organisations is on the whole a good thing, and that’s the only way i can see of getting rid of outsourcing
Outsourcing entirely being gone isn’t realistic… But there’s a huge difference between moving an entire team of say developers to India and having a worker teleconference in to be a cashier. Anyone directly interacting with a customer or end user in any capacity should be paid the same as a local employee in the location they’re “working”.
A Telecashier is fucking stupid and ridiculous.
Remember when we learned that Amazon’s “just put it in your cart to buy” algorithm was really just a bunch of people in India watching you shop on the store surveillance system? That was, like 3 months ago maybe??
yesssssss, but i don’t know how you’d make a legal distinction between those two
then again i’m not a law talking guy so what do i know
but realistically the machine of capitalism isn’t going to allow you to be rid of it in its entirety
Who said anything about that? We’re just talking about putting tariffs on outsourced labor to correct for negative externalities.
This practice is rampant across industries and only getting worse. We must demand an end to it through legislation.
We may not agree with it, but this is exactly the same thing as an overseas call center. They’re not physically located in the US and are not subject to any laws here.
They aren’t doing work in the US though.
That is naive. I hope you don’t have any employees
$3 is loads more than the Philippines minimum wage. I think it’s $8-$10 per day.
Also, y’all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
I’ll ask my wife when she gets home, but I bet $3 is equivalent to $10-$12 in the US.
Also, y’all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
You misunderstand. We aren’t unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that’s obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity. There is no reason to use a teleconferenced cashier for a retail location other than minimizing employee pay, not just by paying the minimum required here but literally taking a local job and shipping it overseas so you can instead pay what would be a clear poverty wage here, while undoubtedly having record profits like all these companies end up with.
We aren’t unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that’s obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity
This makes it sound like your problem isn’t someone getting hurt; it’s someone doing well.
Everyone complains about small businesses being driven out, especially in NYC. Their two biggest costs are rent and labor, so of course they try to minimize both of them.
You know what’s cheaper than hiring a cashier and teleconferencing them from the Philippines?
The owner running the cash register. You know, like nearly every non-chain restaurant in the country.
Owner could be the chef, it you know, might not want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week
Then don’t open a restaurant if you can’t even afford the minimal staff to run it.
They found a way to make it work.
So, there actually is a reason to do this beyond pay, but clearly pay is the actual reason they do it.
A restaurant has a set amount of staff. What happens if a few are sick and they have trouble finding someone to fill in?
A remote agent like this could be from a larger organization being contracted out and you’d never have to worry about not having someone to be available.
Edit: 1 person could even be managing multiple stores where they queue the person to assist you as it detects you approaching. Less ideal would be ‘someone will be available in 45 seconds’ type queuing.
Or they just hire enough staff to run the business in the first place. Something that used to just be how you operated a business. If the business wants to gamble on regularly operating without enough employees to cover multiple sick calls then they need to deal with the results of that decision.
Pull from other locations to cover, or God forbid, a manager actually covers a shift, or just close the location for a day if they cannot cover it. You know, what every business that operates with employees deals with.
You’re making excuses and trying to find a justification for a fucking disgraceful, greedy choice by the owner of this business.
No I’m not, you’re just jumping to conclusions. I clearly said it’s obviously about the pay.
The actual idea has potential merit like it or not. It doesn’t have to be scummy. It could be a US based corporation that pays US employees the same or more than what they’d get paid to be there in person.
The employee as I said could be managing more than 1 store, thus be providing more valuable work, and thus earning even more than they’d be earning at the restaurant, or 711, or wherever.
And they could be doing it from the comfort of their home making for a happier employee.
It just turns out that the way this has been implemented has been terrible and exploitative.
Edit: it could even be numerous ipad based kiosks around a mall where you could talk to someone and ask questions about the mall, without having to find and go to the info booth that’s in a single spot (that could also have an actual person there for those that want that). There’d always be someone available since there’d be multiple people for multiple malls all trained on each mall.
I mean, yeah probably. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s a race to the bottom for people living in higher cost-of-living places.
I really don’t care how much buying power they have over there. A fair days work here in the US should be paid in turn.
And flood the islands with US currency? Seems that would lead to massive inflation and hurt the people not working “in” the US.
So what your saying is they should be paid less because their currency is trash? That’s a logical fallacy.
Well, if you’re gonna advocate for people, you should care what their experience is.
No, you can always advocate for someone to get paid more regardless of your knowledge of conversion rates.
Okay. Imagine the purchasing power of someone who made the NYC minimum wage of $16/hr.
Maybe pay people for their time, not what the exchange rate “might” be.
If I’m paying NYC minimum wages, I’m getting someone from NYC, in NYC.
Sorry lady from the Phillipines. You’re out of a job because they put in this new “outsourcing must be at local wage rates” law.
Do you think anybody in NYC would cry over this?
I am not sure why anyone in NYC would care about
Sorry lady from the Phillipines. You’re out of a job because they put in this new “outsourcing must be at local wage rates” law.
Lol what is your angle here
Why are people from NYC more deserving of a job than her?
NYC more deserving
That ain’t how this works. If somebody is has some sort of special skill that is needed or there is a shortage, fine.
But using foreign labor to lower wages locally, is just a bad policy for the state and for the workers, only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
Why would anyone who works for money shill for the benefit of the rent seeker?
Why would anyone who works for money shill for the benefit of the rent seeker?
Have you seen nearly Facebook America? They regularly vote against their own interests. Wouldn’t surprise me at all that the same people are the ones barely making ends meet, are advocating against unions, being pro corporate business, and laughing all the way to bankruptcy and homelessness day by day because it makes them feel superior to just one person.
only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
I know this isn’t what you meant. But you know de-localizing jobs would probably have the effect of lowering rents.
only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
And the people who are now employed, and their local community that they spend that money in.
Again why is someone in NYC more deserving of it than someone else?
Depends on the region, lowest is about 350 php or 6 usd per day. Most of the call centers are in the big cities however where wages are a bit higher and they well enough to be thought of as a decent job.
I would just unplug the camera and computer. Every day. Even if I wasn’t buying anything.
Fuck this business.
Be sure to wear gloves.
Why?
Because a person 8000 miles away can’t wipe down anything so the place has to be dirty
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Ya because they totally won’t cut corners to save a buck
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Because you don’t want to leave fingerprints behind when you unplug something on camera.
Secret…agent man!
Hi
Oh sorry, I didn’t mean you, not-so-secret agent man
It’s not illegal to unplug something
Actually, it could be. That could be considered vandalism (you’re intentionally making unauthorized modifications to equipment to prevent it from working as expected) which is illegal.
But this is New York, so who knows if they would even enforce that.
They can just plug it back in. It’ll be ok.
Oh, I guess if you can just plug it back in, that just invalidates the downtime that was caused or data being lost.
Being able to undo vandalism doesn’t make it suddenly not vandalism.
No, at worst, it would be criminal mischief. Criminal mischief with $0 in property damage…
So people can just unplug cables at data centers because it’s “$0 property damage criminal mischief”?
Come on, their lawyers would (successfully) argue that they experienced loss of revenue for any amount of time their remote cashier system was not connected and operational…
You’re significantly overestimating the police response to a non-vandalism.
Edit: In nyc, they don’t even finger print for an actual vandalism…
They use fingerprints for murder cases, not camera unplugging cases.
Also, this lady now has a job and you’re talking about ruining her job.
I want to upvote the first half of this and downvote the second half.
Man wtf is this shit jfc…
I’d presume they have a few cashiers from the Philippines but at least one person managing the store.
Boo for OP who didn’t name and shame
https://nypost.com/2024/04/09/us-news/nyc-restaurants-use-zoom-cashiers-from-philippines/
adding that she splits tips with her manager and kitchen staff at the restaurant.
They don’t even let her keep her entire tips. The whole situation is fucked. Somebody mentioned in the article also brought up a great point…
“Today, this is a Filipino woman behind a screen, controlling a POS system — but it’s not crazy to believe that probably in the next six to twelve months, this could be an AI avatar doing all the same things,” he said.
What a shitty future we have.
From the article, Sansan Chicken, Sansan Ramen, and Yaso Kitchen, all in NY. (Since nobody has said it yet)
Well yeah. When you eat at a restaurant, and tip, generally you’re not intending to tip the solely the cashier.
Before chanting along with the hate chant just think for a second. When’s the last time you tipped a cashier, with the intention of the tip going to the cashier and none of the rest of the staff?
I never intend for them to go to the manager.
Um…yes I do. If I enjoy the service of one particular waiter, I expect that the tip (at least the majority of it, let’s say around 75-90% if not 100% of it) goes to the waiter who served me. If I’m tipping a cashier, I just give him a few bucks and tell him to pocket it discreetly.
That’s right folks, this is why you don’t tip cashiers or anyone else for that matter unless they get sub min wage rate.
Zoom ID and pass are in the image tho 😄
Was about to say the same. Up vote instead.
this should be straight up illegal.
It’s not only legal it’s effectively encouraged. Capitalism is a race to the bottom, regardless of consequences.
When the supreme Court has their finger in the scale it makes everything feel fuckin hopeless
They don’t help, sure, but this shit happens anyway in capitalism. It’s an inevitability.
Yeah it sucks how money flows to the people who can use it most under capitalism, without anyone having to force it to happen.
Is this how you think capitalism works? Yikes.
Capitalism is not a meritocracy the second someone fies and passes on their money
The person in the Philippines gets a good job out of this
They’re being paid minimum wage. It’s not a great job.
Edit: And apparently they split their tips with the people working in the restaurant too, so I really feel like this is just exploitation.
The minimum wage in the Phillipines is around $10 a day.
If this is right:
Looks like the absolute max is less than $10, and the absolute minimum is less than six dollars.
- $5.24 (306 PHP)
to - $9.76 (570 PHP)
How come agricultural laborers get shafted? An immediate guess is the government trying to keep food costs down.
- $5.24 (306 PHP)
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Resulted in community silence instead
Why does it seem that the ones who have everything have nothing inside, nothing inside?
We must be mistaken
People should just not go there. But it’s america and they probably have 1dollar chicken nuggets or something.
I would probably just turn around if I saw and understood what I was looking at. Definitely wouldn’t go back a second time.
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They are not physically in the US, and probably work listed as some sort of overseas contractor. Whatever wages they earn are from their employer who contracts for the restaurant.
That’s probably how it works.
At that point why even have a cashier? Just put a POS and have people swype to enter like a subway.
Because then you can’t show the world that you’re a piece of shit who enjoys exploiting cheap labor.
Sounds like they’ve already got a POS, just higher up on the org chart.
Ah, wordplay!
I’m confused, what else could POS mean but Piece of
rshit?POS - Point of Sale
Also POS - Piece of shit
Also POS - Also Piece of shit
FTFY (sorry, just having fun 😊)
POS POS: piece of shit point of sale
Username checks out.
$3 is good pay over there, buys way more than our $3. Bet people are scrambling for those jobs. Good money when the daily min wage is $8-$10.
For example, my wife’s ex took her family and friends to the fanciest restaurant they could find. $120 (including tip) for 16 people.
Americans are the ones exploited here. McDonalds is pumping money out of the country and taking our jobs.
There’s a movie called Eurotrip. Its about 3 college aged kids taking a road trip through Europe.
I forget what country they get to, but it’s a run down mostly Indian country. They stay at a hotel, and the bell hop handles their bags. They try to give him a tip, but realize they only have like 17 cents. So he gives him a nickle, and says “Its not much, but maybe having some American money is novel.”
The bellhop is shocked. Made to look like he’s angry. So the bellhops boss is just walking by. This is after his interaction with the main characters are done. His boss starts yelling at him. And he yells “FUCK YOU! YOU SEE THIS??? I GOT A NICKLE!!! I OPEN MY OWN HOTEL!!!” And the boss is horrified. He says something like “For a nickle, that hotel will be the nicest in (whatever country they were in).”
Your comment reminds me of that scene.
But do you think Scotty ever found out?
Don’t tell him just in case.
Your take away here is that Americans are the real victims? If we are talking about countries, theres not many that have caused as much suffering and death as America. We just do it for money instead of religion.
America exploits the rest of the world, full stop.
America exploits the rest of the world, full stop.
South America, west Africa, some of the Middle East, yea. Rest of the world, not that much. Out of any conquering army, the US installed regimes have been a bit above the Soviets. Japan and West Germany did great, SK had a tyrannical dictator, so was Chiang-Kai Shek- though the US nowhere near installed him. But neither the Kim’s nor Mao were much better. South Vietnam was propped up by the US but created because of the French. Ho Chi Minh may not have been that bad, and his replacements were ok. Pol Pot was very bad though. Lets not talk about the Soviet invasions of Poland, Budapest, and Prague. And even before that how they forced out previous democratic governments. Basically all the Soviet regimes in Europe sucked(Tito may have been ok, but wasn’t Soviet). Not to mention actions in Mongolia and Central Asia.
If we were to mention British, French, and Spanish empires too. I’d say US world order is a bit above average compared to other world orders- especially in more recent years. Definitely not defending a lot of CIA actions abroad and FBI actions domestically.
Plus the addition of hindsight bias being applied to what used to be morally grey actions.
I do wish we would just be more honest as a country.
The POS is too busy running the company
Sometimes it’s nice if someone gets a job, and sometimes people like to talk to a person while they’re paying.
I would rather use a POS terminal than try to talk to someone over zoom with no headphones. If it’s not a human in person who can just say “hmmm the computer is broken here’s your sandwich” then it’s worse.
Good thing they build a wall so these mean immigrants are not stealing jobs.
immigrants are not stealing jobs.
I know you are being cheeky… But you are using their lingo. It is strategic as it skips the the perp ie the rent seeker looking to underpay for labour.
You know how fake teevee always got NYC migrant bussing story?
But we never hear about migrants being bussed into the heartland to work in meat packing or some other hard work.
Who is paying to bus them anyway?
Asking for a friend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
Oops! All Plantations now!
Guess it wasn’t much of a land for the free. Unless people start pushing back, I gotta question if it’s the home of the brave, either.
Can’t wait to hear how Trump says Philippines
This shit has got to be outlawed. Companies are doing this across the board. Literally skirting labor laws, outsourcing jobs that should be going to us citizens, all to just continue pouring more money into the tops pockets. When will we have all had enough?
It’s a simple enough solution in this case. They are performing the work of employees, so for all intents and purposes, they are employees. They are directly interacting with US customers at a physical location within the US. Their place of work is that physical location, even if they are not physically present. They need authorization to work in the US, and the minimum wage laws applicable to that location applies to these workers.
All that is missing is the lawsuit under existing labor laws, which they will probably lose.
Good luck finding a judge taking such a position
Judiciary is just a rubber stamp for the corporate needs. Last 40 years of court rulings speak for themselves.
Courts ain’t saving slaves
Sounds like something the Department of Labour could legislate… Or could have.
But the supreme court just ruled that this falls under the courts jurisdiction and there’s a snowflakes chance in hell that a case pushed high and far enough will result in those ghouls will rule in favour of labour interests.
Yeah, I don’t think SCOTUS would side with an IRS or Labour Department rule requiring businesses pay minimum wage. But you’re forgetting the “racist” angle: the courts would love nothing more than to support a State Department determination that they are “immigrant workers” and require a work visa.
So what can the citizens do to get traction on this?
Not with this fucking compromised supreme court. Nothing was capitalized on purpose.
I would not shop here. If I saw this, I would turn around and walk out. Go somewhere that they value work.
BuT nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe
BuT nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe
:D
Obligatory -
How about this one from about 2000 years ago:
37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;Matthew 9:37
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+9%3A37&version=KJV
That was awesome. Deep cut!
Everyone in the US takes advantage of cheap overseas labor. It’s just usually not directly in your face.
It’s usually impossible not to, because we have no visibility into the supply chain or there’s no other options. In this case, it’s impossible to ignore.
This feels cyberpunk. Some netrunner will hack the system and give free meals away because fuck the corpos, right?
I don’t think you need a netrunner to plug a mouse into the pc behind the monitor and hit “Leave” on the (I assume) Zoom call.
Even easier, unplug the ethernet cable.
Whoa, slow down there, Einstein, I don’t understand your hacker jargon!
Or turn off the monitor and bounce lol. If you don’t have employees to fix things, systems are hilariously easy to break.
plug a mouse into the pc behind the monitor and hit “Leave” on the (I assume) Zoom call.
“If someone’s consistently lucky, it ain’t luck”
Fuck corpo shit
Are there movements in the US or globally to force all business into worker coops? Unions are good but I think this is their ultimate limitation, that employers can just offshore their jobs
Argentina has somewhat of a history of workers seizing their factories. I think it would be extremely hard in the U.S. due to the well-funded police. Generally, I guess the movement would be “anarcho-syndicalism.”
Edit: misremembered worker factory takeovers in the past as occurring in Venezuela instead of Argentina.
Thanks. I didn’t know about Venezuela’s history at all. But I meant not more on a policy level to mandate that all companies must be owned equally by employees instead of shareholders
They’ll send in the national guard
Got some sources on that? I was born and raised there and all I can find is the government seizing factories, not the workers
Edit: some sources of my own
Oh shit. Mixed it up with Argentina.
Thanks! First time hearing of this.
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Forcing isn’t good.
By that hyper-simplistic “logic” people shouldn’t be forced into prison if they murder someone.
Clearly some kinds of forcing in some situations are “good”, and if some are good but other not, that means the real discussion is all about “when is forcing right and when is it not?” something that childlike “logic” of yours doesn’t even begin to address.
Forcing to defend the lives of others, is very different from forcibly taking what belongs to others
The meme is right, the claim of belonging is complete bullshit. Your toothbrush and your home belong to you, a business involving multiple people belongs to everyone involved. The idea that it doesn’t is narcissism and evil.
Your toothbrush and your home belong to you, a business involving multiple people belongs to everyone involved.
You’re free to believe what you want, I’m personally a Lockean property rights enjoyer.
Cringe and evil
I think stealing the labor of others is evil
Funny bc thats in agreement with what I just said. Unless you think your home and toothbrush are not yours bc you didn’t make them.
It disagrees with the second statement not the first
It rightfully belongs to the workers. The firm is basically a vehicle for appropriating the positive and negative product of production. The just basis of property is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor (i.e. the labor theory of property). In a capitalist employer-employee relationship, the employer gets solely holds the whole product while workers are denied their claim to it despite it being a result of their labor.
Forcing is absolutely good. We force companies to do all kinds of things, in terms of corporate governance (publicly traded companies must have their finances audited, for example), ownership (banks used to be prevented from buying stock so that they would not avoid calling in bad debt), and how they do business (collusion between big tech to keep salaries down for example).
Yeah because private Enterprise will be guided by the invisible hand to do the right thing
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Having no actual person guarding your business is a recipe for theft. If this catches on it will be so much easier to steal from places. I’m ok with this
You shouldnt ever try to protect the cash register at your place of work. They give 0 fucks about you and will have a job posting up before your body is cold.
Fact but it does not negate that physically present employees deters some crime.
High traffic grocery stores who put in self check outs are staffing several guards now and put in some clown fences and gates…
But hey guy who put in self check and guy fired cashiers both got bonus…
Guy hiring security and putting fences also got bonus. These clowns will pay anyone any amount of money as long they don’t pay the worker for the actual job.
I remember working in a store and a guy walked through the scanner at the door and it went off, the other employee looked at me and was like “that guy stole something, hey?” And I was just like “yep” and we went back to whatever we were doing lol
This is the way. Ive seen the “security” do the same shit, they don’t get paid enough to throw down over a can of doritos either lol
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Retail jobs will tell you this too as they want as little liability as possible.
Plus the registers only usually have a couple hundred bucks max at one time.
Can confirm, if they give any appearance of being human, even for years on end, it’s a lie, they are complete psychopaths and will throw you into the fire not even to save themselves, just to feel slightly less insecure.
Having no actual person guarding your business is a recipe for theft.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs
gestures broadly at the entire us pharmaceutical industry
The recommended course of action in a robbery is to follow instructions and hand over anything they ask for. If they grab product and walk out of the store, don’t try to stop them. This is actually less of an insurance liability than having an actual person there.
Yes but in general people are less likely to steal if there is a person standing in front of them watching. I’m not even talking about robbery just people stealing a candy bar or whatever. If it’s just sitting out with no one around people will take it.
Stealing and robbery are different
I’m sure there’s a technical difference but I really don’t care about it.
A 17 year old kid paid minimum wage who gives zero fucks about the company isn’t a huge deterrent either. As long as you don’t put them in risk steal from corpos all the time
Unplug the display & camera, get meals for free?
… and walk into the back to make your own food?
Way better than yelling at them about no onions on my sandwich
Don’t yell at the cashier, he didn’t do anything wrong.
Depends on whether they put the order in correctly or the kitchen staff didn’t follow it, doesn’t it Jim bob?
I’d be tempted to do it just for the chaos factor.
Why not just have a kiosk at this point
The monthly subscription to the kiosk software still costs more I bet.
Right, Corpomerica will corpomerica
They do have a kiosk. Just one that’s supervised by someone in the Philippines
Japanese Fried Chicken? JFC
Looks like this is “Japang”. Terrible reviews online and described as actually a “ghost kitchen”.
Ghost kitchens for those who don’t know are basically “restaurants” for online takeout orders. They don’t do in person service.
It’s more they use spray existing kitchens to do so.
The Denny’s around here is a ghost for like 3 different places
Yes sorry you are correct, forgot that critical piece. They often service multiple “places”
