Meanwhile, as Josh Eidelson reported this week, un-unionized employees (with union backing) kicked off "what organizers promise will be the first 'prolonged strikes' in the retail giant’s history... The union-backed labor group OUR Wal-mart says that at least a hundred workers have pledged to join the strikes, and that some workers walking off the job today will stay out at least through June 7, when Wal-mart holds its annual shareholder meeting."

The New York Times reported on the hazardous waste fine:

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The latest accident comes after authorities forced 18 factories to shut down temporarily in order to comply with safety standards. (Six were apparently up and running again by Thursday.) The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Department of State, and Department of Labor, meanwhile, convened a conference call with 70 retailers and manufacturers that do business in Bangladesh to discuss coordinating efforts to improve working conditions. None of the companies said they planned to scale back production in the South Asian country.

The April 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in Dhaka was the world's worst industrial accident since the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India.

Meanwhile, as HuffPo reported, Benetton has finally admitted its connection to last month's tragedy:

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As a college senior with plans to attend dental school, I never imagined my life would end up this way. I figured I'd graduate college, take the summer to prep for the Dental Admission Test, get into schools, then begin my trek toward normal, civilized life. That's what everyone else was doing in the biology department.

But I had no idea of the turmoil that lay in store. I ended up at Victoria's Secret the same way most men end up on daytime talk shows: I got dumped by my girlfriend; I couldn't get a new girlfriend to save my life; and, to top it all off, I began growing breasts. I now believe my boobs were the result of eating too much soy, which has a high amount of estrogen in it, and has been known to cause such reactions in prepubescent girls. But at the time I didn't realize this as I was simply too busy freaking-the-hell-out. It's one thing, as a man, to feel like you don't understand women; it is another to feel like you're becoming one.

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"We'll be working across an entire range of products coming out this year. From fashion, apparel and homeware and furniture to wallpapers, beauty products and stationary," Neame, who is also the show's executive producer, told CNBC.

"Some of these things have been available since 2012 and we publish books and have made a music album, but the more complex products take time," he said, adding that there would be even more scope for merchandizing in the future.

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Take Connie V., an Amazon customer who claims on consumer complaints forum Planetfeedback that, despite paying extra for expedited delivery to ensure a Dec. 22 arrival date, her purchases did not come until the day after Christmas.

"My gifts didn't arrive until December 26th, which made my child question why Santa didn't bring them in his sled," she wrote. "I wrote two complaints to the Amazon site and never even received a reply."

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[T]he databases, which are legal, are facing scrutiny from labor lawyers and federal regulators, who worry they are so sweeping that innocent employees can be harmed. The lawyers say workers are often coerced into confessing, sometimes when they have done nothing wrong, without understanding that they will be branded as thieves.

The Federal Trade Commission has fielded complaints about the databases and is examining whether they comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law aimed at curbing inaccurate consumer information and giving consumers more control, said Anthony Rodriguez, a staff lawyer at the agency.

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Over the weekend, sharp-eyed posters on Reddit pointed out a sign in the window of the Australian gluten-free grocer Celiac Supplies warning that "As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for 'just looking.' The $5 fee will be deducted when goods are purchased." No mention, by the way, of a refund if a customer leaves empty-handed.

Meanwhile, over in China, overrated bridal gown designer Vera Wang has celebrated the opening of her new wedding boutique by announcing that "every potential customer at the Shanghai store will be charged 3,000 yuan ($482) simply to try on the gowns for sale." Shoppers have also been scolded that they should give the store "several weeks" to get an appointment, when they will then be allotted just 90 minutes to try on clothes. Seriously, shoppers, it's called eBay, and you can ogle all day long for free there.

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In an article today, Publishers Weekly tried to reverse engineer a book's sales on Amazon by tracking its position on the bestseller list. The conclusion, which is couched in plenty of caveats, is that reaching the top of the Amazon list only requires about 300 sales through the site per day. It's not a result that will cheer the always beleaguered publishing industry.

Here's how the experiment worked:

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The ejection doesn't seem to have been entirely motivated by their public display of affection. It is worth noting that the smoochy couple singled out by security happens to be gay. Daniel Chesmore, 21, told the local Sacramento Fox affiliate this week, "I kissed him on the cheek. That’s how my boyfriend and I show affection." And, he said, "This is exactly what we did at the mall on Saturday." Chesmore adds that when he and his boyfriend, Jose Guzman, were confronted by a security guard, the man told them, "If you continue to kiss, you will be asked to leave the mall. Period … I counted you guys kissing 25 times." The couple also produced an audio of the guard telling them, "I told you before, we contact any couple" about this behavior.

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The bad news: The Financial Times' Emily Steel has the scoop: Off-the-rack magazine sales are getting hammered by a world of smartphone-addicted people just like me. Profession of journalism, battered again!

Data released on Thursday show a big decline in single-copy sales of U.S. magazines at newsstands and retail outlets, amid increased digital competition and reduced retail space. Single-copy sales fell 9.5 percent to about 26.7 million in 2012 from the previous year, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

"U.S. magazine executives," writes Steel, "call the habit the 'mobile blinder' after the vision-narrowing headgear worn by racehorses, and say the trend is wreaking havoc on the industry."

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“At 11 at night, I would ring the doorbell to get let in, and then from there, we would be locked in the store all night, until 7 am when they opened the store,” Honorio Hernandez, who cleaned Target stores for three years, told Eidelson. Hernandez said that generally at night, only one manager oversees the premises, and "in an emergency, workers would have needed to get the manager to unlock a door and let them out of the building."

Via the Nation:

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The software is simplicity itself. First, you choose from one of 10 product categories: for example, "Bluetooth headset," "camera," "hiking shoes." (Vij says more categories will be added in the future.) Then you rank which attributes of that product are most important to you -- for the Bluetooth headset you might choose "easy to use" and "comfort," while another shopper might go for "signal" and "volume level." There's a slider bar to determine price range, and that's about it. You click your buttons, the app crunches "ratings" of the products culled from the Web, and pops up a ranked list of top-rated suggestions.

Click on the first choice -- a Bose Series 2 -- and along with a couple of links to purchase the item from Amazon and Best Buy (Arrow's business model, for the moment, is to generate cash as an affiliate) -- you will also see multiple reviews of the headphones from real people.

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On Christmas, the Billboard-chart-dominating star took to Instagram to vent his spleen against retailers with an image of a groaning shelf -- unironically designated "beauty" -- full of caps emblazoned with the acronym YOLO. "Walgreens....you gotta either chill or cut the cheque," he wrote in Canadian, adding a "Macy's...same goes for you" warning under a photo of a YOLO-themed Charlie Brown and Snoopy shirt. Coming soon: Morgan Freeman getting huffy every time someone mentions a bucket list, and Robert Carlyle issuing an injunction against all forms of Full Montyism.

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Even the savviest shoppers can be tricked into buying things they don’t want or need. There’s no need to feel foolish; the retail industry spends an inordinate amount of time and money figuring out the science (yes, it is a science) of how to sell the most stuff. But it is a good idea for consumers to know what they're going into, especially around the holiday season, when stress levels are running high and stores are packed with shoppers spending money left and right.

Though far from a comprehensive list, here are six tactics retailers use to get you to part with your hard-earned dough.

1. Holiday ploys: The scents and sounds of the season.

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Last month, a fire in a factory used by Wal-Mart killed 112 workers. There were no fire exits. Despite the fact that more than 700 Bangladeshi garment workers have died since 2005, Wal-Mart and Gap refused last year to pay higher costs for safety. Bloomberg cited comments from a document produced by Wal-mart’s director of ethical sourcing and a Gap official for the Dhaka meeting. It stated:

"Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories. It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”

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You may not the kind of person who misses Thanksgiving to set up camp in front of a Best Buy (and if you are, no judgment, but you're insane). Conversely, you may not be the kind of person who goes in for the whole festivity thing at all. But nearly all of us get swept up to some extent in the frenzy that starts somewhere right after Halloween, goes full-tilt bonkers after Thanksgiving, and ends sometime on the afternoon of Jan. 1 in the kind of tears and exhaustion one usually experiences only after giving birth or running a marathon.

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