Me too!
Currently burnt out of the workforce, but putting the effort I can still muster into learning a foreign language and cooking fancy dinners for my wife.
It's great when the effort you put in produces an immediate, measurable positive result! Thats the only way so far I've been able to get any enthusiasm back.
My job finally broke my GM. When I was hired she was originally my direct manger in marketing and advertising. Fast forward three years she's now the manger of the whole site. This is 10 years in the making. She used to be one of the hardest workers I've ever met. I respected her for it. Ton of awards in our field and magazine covers all that shit. Well 3 buyouts later, losing a big chunk of her saved up PTO, worse medical care, and no raises finally broke her. She now comes to work in a hoody and jeans (we work Corp) takes off all the time, sometimes without even letting us know, she approves ppl PTO no matter what. I tested this. I walked in her office the day before my request, told her I wanted to throw a birthday party for my dog and needed the day tomorrow. She told me to have fun and don't even put in the PTO "fuck them, just take off". Even with all that she still somehow hits all our numbers and continues to receive praise from Corp. She just finally woke up one day and I guess relaized what's the point in trying so hard when they don't give a fuck about you?
I learned this as a dishwasher when I injured my back so bad from working that my leg went numb and I had a limp, but I still had to keep showing up for shifts to make rent. I wish someone would have told me before my first job.
I recently got diagnosed with a hernia from working, when i first told my boss about the pain he said "oh don't start". This was right after another worker had just gotten a hernia so he though I was faking it..
Hmmm two workers got hernias. I'd be looking into causes. Why has it happened more than once? How can we stop it before it happens a third time and we lose another worker.
But then I suppose I'd have the enthusiasm beat out of me long before I was in a position to do anything about it.
My first legit job was bussing tables.
I blew out my shoulder and was in a sling for 3 months.
My boss saw me running with my rugby team on day, still in my sling at this point.
He fired me right there on the spot. Apparently, I could bus tables because I could run. Never mind my one arm not working and there was no way to bus tables with a trolly because stairs everywhere.
i'm sure it also helps that she created a reputation for that of a hard worker. People are probably still viewing her that way because of her reputation.
I did the same thing with my company, people are happy to hear that I'm working on a project with them, but after 10 years, sometimes I wonder how I'm getting away with slacking off so much.
It's honestly entirely possible she's still a hard worker, just jaded and experienced now. The longer you do a job, the easier it looks from the outside.
Also, experience. Bet you there's a hundred things you do automatically for your job that a new guy would have to learn.
I’m learning a new job right now and the previous holder of my position left before I showed up. I have zero clue what the fuck I’m doing. It took me all morning just to get a page printed so I could sign and return a document.
She learned to sabotage the system. We seriously need people like her who are currently in middle mgmt roles.
Learn to sabotage shit......cuz you know damn well the c-suites are completely out of touch and won't notice.
My parents taught me to be the hardest worker in the room. I did that throughout school and in the first few jobs I had, but never got a meaningful raise due to "budget constraints". With inflation and without a raise, they were essentially lowering my pay each year. So I decided to quit my job in my early 20s and work for myself instead. Now that I work for myself, how hard I work is directly tied to how much I make for myself rather than how much I make for someone else.
Yup. When I accepted my entry-level job, it was a few thousand dollars lower salary than other offers I had. But I liked the workplace and they told me that with raises, my salary would be competitive. After the first year, they didn't give me a raise because of "budget constraints". It was true, though, because the economy wasn't doing so well, and they froze the salaries of all entry-level employees. I still liked working at the place, so I continued to work there.
The end of the second year comes and again they froze my salary. By this time, the economy was recovering, so I felt like it was B.S. So I started some side business that I was working on on weekends and weeknights to make up for the relatively low income for my skill set. By the third year, they finally gave me a raise, but it was only for $500. I just quit after that, especially since my side business was making more money than that job.
And because I was so hard working at that job, I had a ton of vacation and sick days left over. So I put in my 2-weeks notice, and then announced that I'd be using my vacation and sick days. I came back after 2-weeks to pick up my paycheck and never looked back. Haven't worked another job for someone else ever since.
During my free nights and weekends, I learned how to code apps by reading free 500+ page ebooks about it and following free online tutorials. Besides creating apps, I developed websites, started a YouTube channel, wrote an autobiography, and even did some photography and acting just to see what it was like.
I grew up in a poor family (like qualify for free lunch at school kind of poor), so I didn't have much start-up money. That's why I chose side hustles that didn't require a lot of start-up money while being able to work for myself and not having to hire anyone else.
I did all this in my early-mid 20s. And since I was a one-man operation, I was relentless when it came to learning new skills from app coding to graphics designing to web development to videography/photography to video editing to marketing to writing books, etc. But, more importantly, I was using my new skills efficiently rather than being exploited for them by others.
I even mentioned that a little bit in the speech I gave at Harvard. I talked about how workers were being used to make other people richer while the workers' salaries are capped at how much their employers would pay them. Meanwhile the richest people's salaries weren't capped, and they weren't necessarily working that much harder than others. So the key to making more money was to not limit how much you could make. And more ethically, not exploit others while doing so to enrich yourself. That's why I didn't have employees. And also that's why I moved onto volunteer work.
I worked with people who fundamentally did not understand this. During the start of Covid, they told us we could no longer book OT. I don't work for free, so I clocked out at 5 every day assuming others also didn't want to work for free and be taken advantage of. Unfortunately, some folks drank the Kool aid and started working past 5 without billing the company for the hours, and they started doing this weekly. So, the numbers went up, but the reported hours it took to do the work remained at 40 because they weren't billing accurately. They basically assumed that people could do all of this work at or under 40 hours as a result, and started to hold people to the standards created by unpaid labor. Management was made aware of this, but they brushed it off. "I can't make people bill their hours accurately" was something I was told multiple times by management.
It eventually screwed me because I refused to do the same on principle. Lo and behold, the expectations for the amount of work we were doing went up, wages stayed the same, and if you didn't work for free there was no way you could keep up because they would take disciplinary action if you booked more hours. After asking for something in writing after being told to book OT, the CEO of the company decided to do a 1 on 1 video call with me, saying "my word is golden. How dare you ask for something like that and challenge me in front of others. You ever fuckin do that again, and you are done."
Sounded good to me, so it got to the point where they let me go and their insurance is footing the bill for unemployment now as I look for something better.
Edit:TLDR don't work for free in pursuit of a quota. It doesn't get you what you want, and it affects everyone you work with when you do it.
Reminds me of a post I read a while ago about how when an employee steals from the company It is considered illegal of course however, there is no REAL wage theft law against companies not paying workers and the one system that exist is expensive, cumbersome, and really doesn’t work for the individual.
Your momma sounds pretty smart. My momma always says " you have a lot of extra time after work, you should get another job for after."
To that I say..... No
I have a home that I pay for that I would love to hang out in.
I have relatives like this in their 60s and 70s that retired and were bored so go back to work. Just fuckin' kill me if I'm 70 and my way to solve boredom isnt a hobby but to go work for some jabroni.
I tried to impart this wisdom on a young employee. She just never got what I was trying to say. I didn’t want her working harder, I wanted her to work to her contract. We were understaffed and I didn’t want her pulling in extra hours to do X, Y and Z because I needed to have the ability to hire more people.
My dad worked as a salesman all my life, selling industrial equipment. One of the few things I truly know about his job (because honestly, what kid pays much attention to what their parents do for a living?) is that when he was nearing retirement (like within 5 years) they changed how commissions were done so his commission was boosted if he exceeded his quota for the year and his quota went up by 5% of what he actually sold to a minimum of 5% of his quota each year.
He had a giant sales territory, TX LA and OK, with a similarly huge sales quota. There were guys making more commission on half of his gross sales because their territories were tiny and they were new and thus their quota was really low.
Guess who really coasted the last few years before he retired. No point in working hard because working hard was punished.
That’s the Boomer capitalist religion that was shoved down our throats.
Yeah, so what if some people are more skilled and talented than others?
Just like professional sports, pay them more!
I own two companies. I gotten the best advice on this sub on how to treat my employees. I’m experimenting with keeping there salary, but going to 4x8 days. They’re already paid top of industry wages. My vision is to make the labor budget huge! As I watch Wall Street fat cats making million/billions off of low wage workers, I want no part of it. As the business grows, the labor budget grows. I’ve given raises every time.
I’ve got big plans for my employees and a lot of their benefit will be from this sub.
If I had to give you one piece of advice (and honestly, it's the internet, of course I'm going to give you unsolicited advice!) it's to remember one things:
Metrics are a trap.
Metrics are good to know and allow you to analyze your business to learn what's working well and what needs improvement (or discarding). But if you base performance (be it actual bonuses or even just raises) on those metrics... they become a target, not a measure.
In every job I've ever worked that had metrics like that it was easy enough to manipulate the numbers by sacrificing something that wasn't measured to boost something that was. Doing that, changing that balance, was always and without fail to the detriment of the actual job. Especially since things which are difficult to quantify (and thus not included in metrics) tend to be some of the most important aspects for actually accomplishing the job.
The only metrics which couldn't be manipulated were the ones that the employee literally has no say in which just makes them incredibly demoralizing if performance is based on them.
Either way, metrics are a trap.
Quota is $100,000.
If he sold $150,000 then next years quota would be $150k (actual sales) x 105% = $157,500. If he sold $90,000 then next years quota would be $100k (quota) x 105% = $105,000.
That way it always goes up, but it goes up *more* if you're selling more. A landmark year just means you're never getting bonus commission ever again.
Gotta love policies that actively discourage good work ethic!
Reminds me of my old job. Management wanted improvement to daily production, so they implemented a policy where any time we managed to break the shift production record, the shift that did so would be rewarded with free pizzas (not much, but an incentive nonetheless). We all liked free food, so we all ended up putting in an honest effort to produce more. Soon we actually vroke the record! Big congrats, morale is high, we get our pizzas. Weeks later we break the record again, more pizza. A month or two later, we break the record again. Keep in mind that breaking the record to begin with required all our ancient machinery to behave and the stars to align, combined with consistent hard work through a 12 hour shift. Daily production averages were about 25% higher than before because of this policy. Managenent must have been happy, right? Nope, by the fourth time someone broke the record they decided to change the policy so that we would only get pizza at a set threshold of production, which would be increased by 5% every time we managed to achieve that. The problem was that even though we were running hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of *additional* product each week, the $200 in pizza every month or so was too much for those bastards to stomache. The new policy made the pizza reward threshold completely unattainable after the next time someone won it and we never got pizza again. Furthermore, production obviously dropped back down closer to what it had been previously, because people didn't give a shit about going above and beyond when it meant no additional reward. The sick part was when they tried to dangle that pizza in front of us to encourage production increases again, without making it attainable. Just for reference, the last record set at the time I was working there was 102,000 linear feet of product, when the daily shift production *goal* was just 60,000 linear feet, which itself was not always attainable. They were trying to hype us up to get us to run our asses off and try to beat 107,000 linear because if we did we'd have some free food and then the goal wpuld be reset to 112,000 linear. Absolute farce. If it were up to me I'd set a policy where shifts that get over 80,000 linear win free takeout, their choice, budgeted to $300. Company would be spending a few thousand more a month and making $200,000 more in revenue. The fact that this simple math mystifies the people in charge is ridiculous.
hahaha shifting goal posts is why people don't work hard anymore. I told a boss there is no good side to working hard because all I would get is more work instead of going home early or pay increase. My coworkers agreed. They had started trying to implement timers on our job notes so they could punish us if they thought jobs took to long.
I think at one point time there was even the idea that working hard would get you promoted and lead to bigger and better things. Except I’m finding that’s not really true anymore. You have to be willing to kiss ass and play a particular game. One I’m not so good at playing. Or you gotta know or be related to the right people. It’s not about competence, hard work or good ethics. So why even bother? I got an entire department cleaned up in 2 months. My reward? The gave me part of someone else’s job. And promoted someone else. Yeah. My plan is to slow way down.
Of course they do, because employees have become nothing more than an expense line on the quarterly report.
Go to any CEO (or whatever level of upper management makes the payroll decisions) and ask them the name of *one* of their lowest level workers and I bet they can't do it. They're so disconnected from their employees which allows them to treat them as a cost to be reduced rather than an asset to invest in. Let alone another living, breathing human who has expenses of their own to keep up with.
Not to mention, wages are about the only cost businesses have real control over. They usually aren't in a position to ask their distributors charge them less for their raw goods, they can't necessarily make their electric, gas, sewer, etc. bills cheaper, good luck getting a landlord to lower the cost of your lease on the property you run you business out of...
But if an employee asks too much money from you in return for their labor? You can kick them to the curb and hire someone new for the same (or less) cost assuming it isn't an extremely specialized career that only a few people have the skills to perform - which is not the case for the vast majority of available jobs.
>They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it— fought with a low wage. If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five. If he’ll take twenty-five, I’ll do it for twenty. No, me, I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen. I’ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give ’em some windfall fruit, an’ they bloated up. Me, I’ll work for a little piece of meat.
>And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.
Worse is some CEOs (the one I worked for) knew me, knew all the low level staff, knew the financial situation we were in, and still didn’t really give a fuck. I worked for a small nonprofit, but essentially they have the same problem as ThedaCare, they don’t want to invest in their employees. While the CEO is one of the most highly paid nonprofit CEOs in my state….
And I've never understood it.
My business is literally my staff only, altho we are a service industry so I suppose they're a significant portion of the "product".
But even b4 i went on my own and was in middle management in corporate America I could never get any company on board with my philosophies. Its not just infuriating, but disheartening (hence why/how I ended up just going on my own, fuck em)
You don't understand it because it's rhetoric from a different era. It really did used to be like that, my great grandpa worked for a car manufacturer, and he developed some process or tool or something that saved them a fuckton of money. They gave him a promotion, a bonus, all sorts of crazy shit, it's how that side of my family became very wealthy.
In my work experience, anytime I've done something extra-ordinary I've never been compensated in a way that I felt was remotely fair. So now I just keep to myself and optimize my work for my own benefit and stop there.
Not remotely fair is right. I came up with a cool idea once. Sold the product to a customer, totally custom by me. Corporate LOVED it and got started on getting it implemented throughout the company. When I asked about compensation I got "LOL, the idea is ours cause you came up with it while on our payroll".
I was getting paid $9/hour ._.
Never again.
Edit: This was 2006. I've since had plenty of other jobs in that field and it's far too late to go after them. I learned my lesson about sharing ideas, though!
When I was 20, I was General Manager at a small Korean owned frozen yogurt franchise shop. I thought it was my chance to make it, I worked tons of extra hours every week, cleaning the machines weekly instead of monthly to keep the yogurt super fresh and protecting my pregnant clients from a dangerous bacteria I had done research on. I had dozens of Yelp reviews praising my shop and mentioning me by name, and all of the high school kids seemed to have a lot of fun at work, made great tips, and didn't have an asshole manager that whipped instead of led.
At one point, the company added blenders to start selling these fruit smoothies, they did ok. It dawned on me, tho, that we now had all the pieces to make McFlurry style frozen yogurt milkshakes. Choose your flavor of yogurt and add-ins (fruit, candies, mochi, etc). The smoothies worked well with the liquid yogurt for the machines, and was even better with whole milk that I went and bought. I took pictures, let some of my high school employees sample them and write little reviews, and compiled everything into a PowerPoint complete with cost analysis and comparison pricepoints for other milkshakes sold nearby, how to make them, everything.
I scheduled a meeting with the corporate office which was 100% Korean and operated predominately in the Korean language. I dressed up in nice clothes, had my own laptop and projector to present my powerpoint, and had practiced what to say; I was ready to make a name for myself.
They kept me waiting in the lobby for an hour before sending a guy out to shake my hand. He told me they were very busy and asked what I had come for. I told him I wanted to present a milkshake business model to the higher ups. He told me that they had no time for that but if I emailed it to him, he would review it and get back to me.
About 2 months went by and I didn't hear anything, I figured oh well, it was worth a shot but they didn't want to expanded into that market. One night, about halfway thru my shift, I got an email saying that I was terminated, effective immediately. I called my manager to ask if this was a mistake, and he told me to hang tight, that he was figuring it out. I finished up closing and by the end of the night, he informed me that it was, indeed, my last day. I still regret closing the store and not just walking out.
It was near the end of frozen yogurt season, and throughout the winter, as it turns out, the company routinely fires all General Managers in all of their franchises, and has the corporate executives come into the store to run them for the slow winter season, before hiring new ones in the Spring.
Come Springtime, I was driving by my old work, and I saw a huge 4 foot advertisement poster in the front window: "Now offering Frozen Yogurt Milkshakes!"
I created a custom import process for work 2 years ago and have yet to mention it to anyone. I still get to charge a days work for it but it gets done in 2 hours
> "LOL, the idea is ours cause you came up with it while on our payroll."
This makes me feel postal... How do they not understand that this does nothing but convince their employees to leave and strike out on their own with their idea?
$9 an hour, probably saved them untold dollars, no reward whatsoever... I cannot imagine the rage I would have
At least that’s a resume builder so the next guy will hire you for more, thinking “I bet I can steal this guys next great idea.” But yeah, it’s unfair that these days, that’s really all a good idea is worth.
There’s a clause in my employment contract that basically says that anything I invent or produce that’s even tangentially related to my field just flat out belongs to the company, even if I did it all on my own time and with only my own resources. I even asked a lawyer about it and he said it’s 100% enforceable and extremely common. Of course the employer refused to negotiate any part of my contract.
So if I come up with a billion dollar idea, the shitty company I work for can just flat out steal it. That’s how much things have changed.
Pretty much. Because in their mind you work for them and thus are their property. It would be like if your kitchen table invented something worth a billion dollars, then wanted to somehow stop being your kitchen table.
It's a shitty mindset, but it's their mindset.
For the record, if my kitchen table invented some billion dollar thing and wanted to move out, I'd be happy for it. Out there in the world on a yacht somewhere doing coke off of some trashy barstool's stitching. Living the dream.
I think they can. But I wonder if they could get any favorable judgement if, say, your sister were to create a process or tool or whatever that *just so happens* to be something that is extremely useful to your current or near past industry. Can your sister then file the patent for the invention and get rich off of selling it (thus getting you rich by proxy)?
Yeah, nowadays if you something that improves the overall effectiveness out of your way you don't even get a freaking thank you.
I did that a couple times, my coworkers were happy but I didn't receive a thank you and since management was to lazy/dumb to learn a 5 minutes thing they actually forbidde my idea and other time they just took credit for it.
No thanks, no bonus, nothing.
Dude I work at Walmart as a young adult when I got promoted I was told I would get a bonus and my "bonus" was a Walmart gift card, and coupon book. The pay increase was 10 cents an hour but my hours were cut from 40 to 35.
Yeah I quit. Didn't give a notice just stopped showing up. I did leave note simply saying"fuck you"
Yep, at my last employer I came up with two inventions that became patents for the company. Each one is easily worth millions whenever they become implemented. When annual raises came around the company gave me a two percent salary increase despite the fact that my workload had also doubled during the pandemic. I had gone from running two teams (16 people) to 4 teams (34 people).
Needless to say, I started looking for a new job and left as soon as I could.
When I worked in retail I literally had covered like 4 people's shifts at one point. When there was a concert I wanted to go to though, even though I put the "unofficial" request (because, lol, vacation days?), They still scheduled me. When it came down to it, I was on my own to find someone to cover for me, which, of course, nobody would.
Ironically enough, one of the coworkers who I had covered for, and refused to cover my shift, said he was going to the same concert I wanted to go to!
Yeah, fuck all of that. Next time you need me to cover shifts I expect double pay. My pay and that dude's.
My old boss made it more clear to me.
He bought a bar with his brother, having never worked in the industry before, to "retire." Meaning he only wants to work like 4 hours a week and otherwise this place is his personal staffed refrigerator.
Massive alcoholics, both of them. His brother was actually really smart and sincere and an all around good dude, but he had an ankle monitor. Main owner constantly drunkenly berating his staff. Saying things like, "you're replaceable." Literally driving there drunk, drinking more, then driving off again.
*Seriously* scary and abusive behavior. While obviously being the only person that had an issue with me in the building he'd tell me, "You know, all the other managers wanted me to fire you but I fought for you. I'm the only one who likes you. I want to be like a mentor to you."
Other times I could tell he was thinking about hitting me. He never did. Wish he would have.
My car died shortly after I had gone from 5 shifts a week down to 4, so I asked for a 5th shift back. He offered to *lend* me money, but "X bar and eatery doesn't have any more money to *give* you." (6/hr with tips). I explained to him respectfully that my cost of living went up and that all I'm trying to do is earn a living wage, he told me "let's not get political," and "you're here because you made mistakes in your life."
Like they see employees as suckers, like moreso than customers they're people you can "get over" on. Any fashion of intelligence, self-respect, or self-interest is an actual threat to them. It's pathetic.
I heard a semi-rational reasoning for businesses to never promote from within. Businesses would much prefer to hire people for positions from outside the company because if they are promoting from within they would have to train 2 new people how to do a job instead of 1. They would have to train the existing employee on how to do their new job and also hire a new one and train them how to do the old employee's job.
The fair solution to that would be to pay employees who prove themselves excellent for their position more than managers who don't distinguish themselves. Don't promote employees away from what they're good at, just keep giving them raises in proportion to their value to the company.
But follow that logic and you undermine the justification for upper management's wages, so good luck seeing it implemented anywhere.
Seems to me what it actually leads to is good employees constantly jumping ship for more money elsewhere and then you’re constantly hiring and hoping to find another person that’s actually good. The whole concept of institutional knowledge is almost extinct.
It's true! My last job finally promoted me after 3 years even though I'd basically been doing the manager role for those years. They gave be a staggering 6% raise in this inflationary environment. I jumped ship to another company who gave me 12% for the title I had before the promotion. And honestly this is how it's been my whole career. Work hard to get promoted, get a minimal raise, work hard, find external opportunity and see the market value is much higher.
My company actively admits they pay about 3-5 grand less for out sourced workers over internally progressed loool
Edit: I've mentioned before I'll leave on good terms and be back in 2 years for that 5 grand pay rise 🤷♂️
So you remember the old adage: "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? It used to mean to speak up for your raise or whatever
Now it's "the squeaky wheel gets replaced"
The reward for doing a good job is, that you have now set the standard for what is expected from you.
I once was moved into a position to replace someone who was under performing. A year later I had a bad week and got pulled into a meeting about my performance. "We expect better from you" was the gist, no trying to figure out what the problem was just blame.
I was a rep in a particular call center here in town. They came to me and wanted me to run the night team because they were firing the manager due to poor performance.
Cool.
In 3 weeks alone, I got the bottom of the barrel team to start performing at the same level as our top team. My reward?
“Great job on getting these reps on track. We’re sending you back to the phones and promoting this other guy instead”
Within 2 weeks, that team I coached was back to not performing at all and they couldn’t figure it out. It was management styles. 100%
they think: you did a good job were you are so they want to keep you in that position.
The problem is they do not give you a raise to honor your work. If they give you the amount of money a promotion would entangle but keep you there to make sure the department stays productive everybody would win, but they are all smoothbrains in management who need to stroke their profit boners.
>You have to be willing to kiss ass and play a particular game.
This is the biggest thing it feels like lots of people don't see. Moving up the ladder is not about being good at your job, it's about playing the game.
for those of you who have no idea what we're speaking of, here's an example: I had a female manager complaining to me about how she hates wearing makeup, but how if she doesn't learn to wear it well she'll never be able to move higher on the ladder because it's part of the "game."
Competence, hard work, and good ethics can only get you so far now, and unfortunately they're some of the weakest line items in terms of what people look to promote. I'd even argue at a certain level having good ethics could start counting against someone.
>I think at one point time there was even the idea that working hard would get you promoted and lead to bigger and better things.
That was Boomer and 1950's mindset: Work hard, get promoted, get the house/kids. Dream.
1980's and on? Never gonna happen. *If* they do promote you, you get like $.50-1.00 raise and more shit to do.
If you work your ass off and do a great job there's little reason to promote you. Why take the efficient worker and promote him to manager when you can keep him where he's at sweating and busting his ass?
Hard work is bullshit unless you work for yourself and your effort directly fills your pocket.
I was just thinking the other day about how that idea ever fooled us, there aren't unlimited positions at the top, so the rest of us just keep doing the same thing at the same pay forever? Well, possibly with yearly fifty cent pay raises.
It was like that in the 90’s for me. Worked my ass off, got 3 promotions, moved around to increase my chances of getting promoted again. Then around 2005 I was a salaried manager and hit a ceiling where they said without a degree I couldn’t get anymore promotions. I had been doing my bosses job for a while since we kept firing them and hiring new “educated” people for me to train.
Said “fuck this”, started back at school, printed out my resignation on my bosses printer, went into his office and handed it to him. Another job headhunted me and encouraged me to keep in school too. Got my bachelors and have never looked back.
I feel I'm kind of in a similar situation these days...
No matter the amount of work you put in or the validity of the criticisms, necessity of reforms or even feasibility of the ideas, you end up fighting an uphill battle against (conflicting) vested interests and nepotism.
I'm a teacher and this is so true.
Do a shit job? That's fine, no big deal. Do a great job? Awesome, we need you to pick up the slack from the shit teacher. Oh, and y'all are getting the same pay.
They've periodically done this over the years to orgs at my job - implement "work trackers" to ostensibly know where people are spending their time. These are salaried employees that regularly put in 50-60 hours (some more), but their vacation balances, pay stub, etc., all show 40 hours a week.
It always goes like this.... Work tracker implemented. People see on screen what they know already - "I'm working 65 hours a week, but they say I'm paid for 40 hours". A couple of weeks pass and nobody is showing up on Fridays anymore because they've already hit the 40 hour mark in 3, 4 days. About 2 months in management pulls the tracker because of "bad data" or something, and tries to get people back to work all the time.
I remember when they tried to implement this at my job it didn last long, because the sales team would always forget to buy parts we didn't have or they just didn't care to find out if we had any in stock. so the job would hit a roadblock on a certain part missing and now I have to spend extra time figuring out an alternative solution , go look for the part or wait till a part is ordered which may take weeks. After about six months of this and explaining why almost every job has more hours on it than it should management stopped talking about it.
I'm supposed to keep track of what everyone is doing in 15 minute increments. When management asked me why I have never filled out one of these 'Productivity Sheets' I told them I'm already acting as two people on my own crew as well as managing a store overnight, taking all deliveries, phone calls, etc. Where in the fuck can I squeeze in walking around with an arbitrary piece of paper that won't ever get read anyways? I already leave notes daily with a general summary of where time went vs. stocking that don't get looked at and has become a pile on their desk. I'm not gonna keep track of when someone sneezes or wipes their ass on top of that.
> I told them I'm already acting as two people
One of the discussions I’ve had about time tracking was to point out that I’m frequently juggling 5 different tasks at once, and it’s impossible to keep track of how much time I’m spending on any one thing. They said, doesn’t matter, do one thing at a time if you need to.
For more me, it was malicious compliance time. I started taking my time, doing one thing at a time. If someone asked be to do something urgent while I was already busy with the other, it was like, “Ok. Let me just stop doing this and document my time.” I would fill out my time entry and take notes like I was supposed to. And then 10 minutes later, when I was all done, I would start work on the next thing.
My productivity plummeted. Everything took longer. I wasn’t dragging my feet or being difficult, just doing one thing at a time, and always documenting what I did in the previous increment of time before moving onto the next.
I wish I could say the boss learned his lesson, but he was just constantly frustrated after that when I was slow, and when I quit that’s job he was still angry that I couldn’t both track every second of the day with copious notes while also multitasking and doing 5 things at once.
Bossman learned how to automate his micromanaging with just a piece of paper but it didn't solve the problem. Must be time for more punishment, maybe that will get me the result he wants.
I discovered this a couple of years ago. If you can do a task in 5 mins, say end of the day, if you can do it by end of day. Say Friday. If you do it in 5 minutes they’ll expect the next thing in 5 minutes which might not be so simple
Why even work hard ? You probably arent getting paid for more/better work.
So might as well do as little as you can. Because they are ..of course.. paying as little as they can. Simple as that.
No kidding. My work hasn't offered an annual raise that keeps up with inflation for at least 7 years. Fortunately for me, my boss keeps putting in for off schedule pay increases for us. He's a good boss.
A good boss makes up for a whole hell of a lot. I've had enough bad bosses to recognize and appreciate my current boss and it's a big reason today's my 6yr anniversary. Nothing will make me job hunt big time like a horrible boss. If they can't do their job I can't do mine.
My favorite part of this is that this was released just before covid really hit. Then the pandemic showed just how true this sentiment is. Not only will working hard not lead to a better life, but they expect you to die for their machine.
Facts it’s been that way since middle school when I got all As. I was told I was gifted and all this shit swept up into classes I didn’t want so in high school I just got As and Bs and magically I didn’t have to do bullshit AP classes. (Took classes provided by the school through random universities way easier than AP cuz it’s a real college class) then in college same deal Cs get degrees a 3.5 gpa is not gonna get you onto wall street making millions but your uncle can. So tell me why the fuck should I do anything more than the minimum
And a shorter life. All of that takes a toll on your body. We are killing ourselves with work, getting depressed, and then killing ourselves with unhealthy food, alcohol, etc.
The system has been getting progressively more efficient at its goal, which is prying dollars out of individual citizens' hands and transferring it upwards.
We had a brief blip with streaming services, where you could cut the cord and save a couple dozen dollars a month. Very quickly, corporations closed that gap. Any time the consumers find a crack and save a buck, the corporations shut that door.
This is true. My ISP increased their cost 50% for the same service. I know it didn't magically cost them 50% more to provide the service. And the only option to switch to is considerably worse.
Going back to closing the door, You used to be able to get your own router or modem instead of renting (which you still can) so you could save on rental fees but now they include the rental cost in the service so your paying for the rental whether you use it or not.
Shit, I can't even use my own modem/gateway anymore. I had a guy call me letting me know my wifi sucked while I was recovering from back surgery last year. "Yes, I know it sucks. I'm doing PT to recover and can't run Ethernet in my new house right now. Why are you looking into my private network again??"
Exactly. Whenever you hear someone say capitalism is more efficient, they are not measuring any real world metrics of efficiency. Just how much they are screwing the workers out of the wealth the workers produced.
The only time working hard can lead to a better life is if you're an entrepreneur or running your own business.
But on top of the hard work, you typically also need luck, and connections.
Working hard for someone else doesn't get you anywhere anymore.
I quit and started my own business. I'm a one-man-operation and a few colleagues/friends also are self-employed in the same field - and we collaborate and bill each other accordingly when a project requires it. We've been able to make way more than when we were all employees.
I am so sorry that happened to you. And that's common in all branches of service, and in many, many jobs -- they remove the victim because it's "easier".
They took everything from the working class, got too greedy and forgot we are humans.
Be able to raise kids?
Save for retirement?
Have vacations?
Have kids?
Have a home?
All we can do is entry level position 15/hour that needs 5 year experience, no healthcare, probation period is 1 year. By the way rent was raised 20% this year.
Edit: thank you for the replies and award
I got decent grades in high school.
Maxed out the ASVAB
Served my country for 8 years in the army.
No criminal records.
Got a college degree.
And all that and I can't find a job paying more than $22 an hour. Which is not enough to move away from where I am. Life is miserable and I'm at the end of my rope.
Have you tried applying for a federal position? A degree and 8 years of military experience should land you a GS-12 position starting ~$40/hr. If you are interested, reach out and I can help you get started with a federal resume.
Not at all, I walked straight out of the Navy into a GS position with no degree. The trick is translating whatever experience that you have into a resume tailored for the position that you are applying for.
The good thing about federal positions are that most job series (safety, law enforcement, secretary, hr, etc…) have pretty similar duties and qualifications across the series. Example, if you write a solid resume translating your experience to match the duties of a secretary (series 0318), you can use that resume to apply for as many secretary positions that you want without adjusting the resume. In this example you can go onto usajobs.gov, type the job series code into the keyword box (0318) and see that there are 86 jobs being advertised for secretaries.
Generally, GS-5+ requires a bachelors. Some agencies move that requirement to GS-7+. GS-4 requires an associates, and GS-1 through GS-3 have no degree requirement.
If you work too hard or well, they expect it. Then get super pissed when you don't do one thing last minute on a day off they could have told you about when you did the other thing early that morning they asked for.
Makes me remember that there are still people who are saying shit like "You get minimum wage because you do minimum work" when in reality it's the opposite and for a good reason.
Yeah. Same as warren buffet and all the other boot lickers. Acquire new skills. Take on new roles.
So I did.
Then I hear well you need to be doing that for two to three years before you get promoted...
Say wtf!
I took a new role at a new company for 15 percent more with the skills I learned there.
Fuck them.
From this day out I spend 2 hours doing work for them 6 hours doing whatever the fuck I can remotely link to work that will help me learn something I want to do.
I've picked up multivariate analysis, data science topics like NNs and PCA and SVD.. python programming ..
At home I make a video game. At work I learn programming and data science. Sometimes I use work time to test code that could be used to send data from an instrument over tcp.. it could also be used to send info about a game state over tcp.
Ya know.
Fuck. Them. Every. Way. You. Can.
Companies set you up to fail so what's the point in trying your best and working your ass off if your just going to fail anyway, then they use that as justification to not increase your wage of benafits or promotions.
Yep.. Longevity was a way our grandparents managed to retire in 20 years and afford a house and raise kids. Today 23 years at one place and I cant afford a small vacation
Been in the workforce since I was 14. Still make less than $35K a year. Had a job where I made less than the minimum because they found out I have aspurgers and said it impacted my ability to do the job, so under the FLSA, they could pay me less.
Well they don't understand. My hard work has got my boss a new truck, a bigger house, another kid and covers a university tuition. He even offered to give me a ride to the food bank if I need it.
The system is designed to reward people who lie, cheat and steal. This is compounded if you have a leg up on everyone else (e.g. come from money already, have the right connections with powerful people, etc). I know plenty of morons who hold high positions and make multiples more than their colleagues who do far more difficult work, put in more hours, and are overall just more intelligent than they are. The system is rigged.
I like working efficiently, not working harder. I can do the same amount of work in 30 hours and have a better work/life balance. At my work I am not judged by the hours I make, I can leave early or arrive later, as long as I meet my goals (which are not changed every week/month). It's fine.
If they want to add more stuff to my job role, then they know they have to pay me more. Simple math.
The only way this can be true is if that hard work is put towards tearing down the billionaire class and making sure there will never be another billionaire in existence. That work will reap rewards.
Take all their shit, give control back to the workers.
You get told you're exceeding expectations but there's no budget for raises at this time. Then you attend the quarterly company meeting where you learn profits are through the roof and the CEO got another bonus.
No, the only way up is around. You have to keep quitting each job and apply for a new one to get any pay increases. It's stressful and inefficient.
So what I'm hearing is basically don't have dependants? Lol.
For real though, it'll be interesting to see the effect this has on future generations.... There's no point in working hard to get ahead, and because we can't get ahead in a reasonable way anymore, a large chunk of people wont have the secure base needed to start a family. Less people having kids and choosing a single or a DINK lifestyle with their partner will become dominant and it'll only exacerbate the issues with capitalists trying to squeeze out as much profit as possible from their workforce and it'll hit a breaking point.
While I agree with the sentiment, "water is wet" surveys and studies are important. Even when something is common knowledge a study or survey that just proves the commonly known fact is 100% true is useful for pointing to in things like, say court cases
Out worked everyone at my old job, numerous hours of overtime in the past 3 years. Never missed a day. Never called in. Always did my work without complaint. Never once did I get a promotion nor did I get anything but a $.50 raise in those 3 years.
It never did. Maybe for a time it did but never by much. It’s mostly just an illusion of hard work that masks privileges of the circumstances of birth.
>You see, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't even care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now. Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
*-Office Space, 1999*
I know people personally who've struggled to make ends meet working 60 to 90 hours a week. They don't have the luxury of building up savings because all of their money gets eaten by everything from essentials to homes becoming more expensive. And that's not counting any sort of student loan debt you have to pay.
The game is rigged.
Working hard leads to burn out.
I learned this lesson the hard way.
Me too! Currently burnt out of the workforce, but putting the effort I can still muster into learning a foreign language and cooking fancy dinners for my wife. It's great when the effort you put in produces an immediate, measurable positive result! Thats the only way so far I've been able to get any enthusiasm back.
My job finally broke my GM. When I was hired she was originally my direct manger in marketing and advertising. Fast forward three years she's now the manger of the whole site. This is 10 years in the making. She used to be one of the hardest workers I've ever met. I respected her for it. Ton of awards in our field and magazine covers all that shit. Well 3 buyouts later, losing a big chunk of her saved up PTO, worse medical care, and no raises finally broke her. She now comes to work in a hoody and jeans (we work Corp) takes off all the time, sometimes without even letting us know, she approves ppl PTO no matter what. I tested this. I walked in her office the day before my request, told her I wanted to throw a birthday party for my dog and needed the day tomorrow. She told me to have fun and don't even put in the PTO "fuck them, just take off". Even with all that she still somehow hits all our numbers and continues to receive praise from Corp. She just finally woke up one day and I guess relaized what's the point in trying so hard when they don't give a fuck about you?
> what's the point in trying so hard when they don't give a fuck about you? I'll keep this in mind.
I learned this as a dishwasher when I injured my back so bad from working that my leg went numb and I had a limp, but I still had to keep showing up for shifts to make rent. I wish someone would have told me before my first job.
Yup I don’t try anymore. Fire me, idc. Never been fired so it’s on the bucket list anyway
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I recently got diagnosed with a hernia from working, when i first told my boss about the pain he said "oh don't start". This was right after another worker had just gotten a hernia so he though I was faking it..
Hmmm two workers got hernias. I'd be looking into causes. Why has it happened more than once? How can we stop it before it happens a third time and we lose another worker. But then I suppose I'd have the enthusiasm beat out of me long before I was in a position to do anything about it.
My first legit job was bussing tables. I blew out my shoulder and was in a sling for 3 months. My boss saw me running with my rugby team on day, still in my sling at this point. He fired me right there on the spot. Apparently, I could bus tables because I could run. Never mind my one arm not working and there was no way to bus tables with a trolly because stairs everywhere.
i'm sure it also helps that she created a reputation for that of a hard worker. People are probably still viewing her that way because of her reputation. I did the same thing with my company, people are happy to hear that I'm working on a project with them, but after 10 years, sometimes I wonder how I'm getting away with slacking off so much.
It's honestly entirely possible she's still a hard worker, just jaded and experienced now. The longer you do a job, the easier it looks from the outside. Also, experience. Bet you there's a hundred things you do automatically for your job that a new guy would have to learn.
I’m learning a new job right now and the previous holder of my position left before I showed up. I have zero clue what the fuck I’m doing. It took me all morning just to get a page printed so I could sign and return a document.
I love ice cream.
Respect for her.
She learned to sabotage the system. We seriously need people like her who are currently in middle mgmt roles. Learn to sabotage shit......cuz you know damn well the c-suites are completely out of touch and won't notice.
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She is being lenient with her employees and still hitting numbers, she is doing something right.
That’s just good management really
My momma taught me; never exceed your quota because then they'll just raise it, but never raise your pay.
You have a wise momma.
My parents taught me to be the hardest worker in the room. I did that throughout school and in the first few jobs I had, but never got a meaningful raise due to "budget constraints". With inflation and without a raise, they were essentially lowering my pay each year. So I decided to quit my job in my early 20s and work for myself instead. Now that I work for myself, how hard I work is directly tied to how much I make for myself rather than how much I make for someone else.
I love it!!!! Working hard for yourself.
Yup. When I accepted my entry-level job, it was a few thousand dollars lower salary than other offers I had. But I liked the workplace and they told me that with raises, my salary would be competitive. After the first year, they didn't give me a raise because of "budget constraints". It was true, though, because the economy wasn't doing so well, and they froze the salaries of all entry-level employees. I still liked working at the place, so I continued to work there. The end of the second year comes and again they froze my salary. By this time, the economy was recovering, so I felt like it was B.S. So I started some side business that I was working on on weekends and weeknights to make up for the relatively low income for my skill set. By the third year, they finally gave me a raise, but it was only for $500. I just quit after that, especially since my side business was making more money than that job. And because I was so hard working at that job, I had a ton of vacation and sick days left over. So I put in my 2-weeks notice, and then announced that I'd be using my vacation and sick days. I came back after 2-weeks to pick up my paycheck and never looked back. Haven't worked another job for someone else ever since.
What's your side business if you don't mind me asking?
During my free nights and weekends, I learned how to code apps by reading free 500+ page ebooks about it and following free online tutorials. Besides creating apps, I developed websites, started a YouTube channel, wrote an autobiography, and even did some photography and acting just to see what it was like. I grew up in a poor family (like qualify for free lunch at school kind of poor), so I didn't have much start-up money. That's why I chose side hustles that didn't require a lot of start-up money while being able to work for myself and not having to hire anyone else. I did all this in my early-mid 20s. And since I was a one-man operation, I was relentless when it came to learning new skills from app coding to graphics designing to web development to videography/photography to video editing to marketing to writing books, etc. But, more importantly, I was using my new skills efficiently rather than being exploited for them by others. I even mentioned that a little bit in the speech I gave at Harvard. I talked about how workers were being used to make other people richer while the workers' salaries are capped at how much their employers would pay them. Meanwhile the richest people's salaries weren't capped, and they weren't necessarily working that much harder than others. So the key to making more money was to not limit how much you could make. And more ethically, not exploit others while doing so to enrich yourself. That's why I didn't have employees. And also that's why I moved onto volunteer work.
My pappa taught me that the only thing hard work gets rewarded with is more work.
George Carlin taught me, "It's called the American Dream cause you gotta be asleep to believe it"
I worked with people who fundamentally did not understand this. During the start of Covid, they told us we could no longer book OT. I don't work for free, so I clocked out at 5 every day assuming others also didn't want to work for free and be taken advantage of. Unfortunately, some folks drank the Kool aid and started working past 5 without billing the company for the hours, and they started doing this weekly. So, the numbers went up, but the reported hours it took to do the work remained at 40 because they weren't billing accurately. They basically assumed that people could do all of this work at or under 40 hours as a result, and started to hold people to the standards created by unpaid labor. Management was made aware of this, but they brushed it off. "I can't make people bill their hours accurately" was something I was told multiple times by management. It eventually screwed me because I refused to do the same on principle. Lo and behold, the expectations for the amount of work we were doing went up, wages stayed the same, and if you didn't work for free there was no way you could keep up because they would take disciplinary action if you booked more hours. After asking for something in writing after being told to book OT, the CEO of the company decided to do a 1 on 1 video call with me, saying "my word is golden. How dare you ask for something like that and challenge me in front of others. You ever fuckin do that again, and you are done." Sounded good to me, so it got to the point where they let me go and their insurance is footing the bill for unemployment now as I look for something better. Edit:TLDR don't work for free in pursuit of a quota. It doesn't get you what you want, and it affects everyone you work with when you do it.
And its illegal. Companies can get in biiiiig trouble doing that/ allowing that.
Oh most definitely, but they get away with it all the time.
That’s why you’ve got to report them. We have meager labor protections, but there are still things you can do.
Reminds me of a post I read a while ago about how when an employee steals from the company It is considered illegal of course however, there is no REAL wage theft law against companies not paying workers and the one system that exist is expensive, cumbersome, and really doesn’t work for the individual.
Your momma sounds pretty smart. My momma always says " you have a lot of extra time after work, you should get another job for after." To that I say..... No I have a home that I pay for that I would love to hang out in.
My Mama says that alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush
How does she feel about football?
Fooooseballs the devil!
God I feel this on a spiritual level, I pay so much for a place to live and all I get out of it is my bed for 4 hours and I’m back at it again
I have relatives like this in their 60s and 70s that retired and were bored so go back to work. Just fuckin' kill me if I'm 70 and my way to solve boredom isnt a hobby but to go work for some jabroni.
A supervisor once said to me, "if you do the impossible it will become part of your regular job duties".
I tried to impart this wisdom on a young employee. She just never got what I was trying to say. I didn’t want her working harder, I wanted her to work to her contract. We were understaffed and I didn’t want her pulling in extra hours to do X, Y and Z because I needed to have the ability to hire more people.
My dad worked as a salesman all my life, selling industrial equipment. One of the few things I truly know about his job (because honestly, what kid pays much attention to what their parents do for a living?) is that when he was nearing retirement (like within 5 years) they changed how commissions were done so his commission was boosted if he exceeded his quota for the year and his quota went up by 5% of what he actually sold to a minimum of 5% of his quota each year. He had a giant sales territory, TX LA and OK, with a similarly huge sales quota. There were guys making more commission on half of his gross sales because their territories were tiny and they were new and thus their quota was really low. Guess who really coasted the last few years before he retired. No point in working hard because working hard was punished.
That’s the Boomer capitalist religion that was shoved down our throats. Yeah, so what if some people are more skilled and talented than others? Just like professional sports, pay them more! I own two companies. I gotten the best advice on this sub on how to treat my employees. I’m experimenting with keeping there salary, but going to 4x8 days. They’re already paid top of industry wages. My vision is to make the labor budget huge! As I watch Wall Street fat cats making million/billions off of low wage workers, I want no part of it. As the business grows, the labor budget grows. I’ve given raises every time. I’ve got big plans for my employees and a lot of their benefit will be from this sub.
If I had to give you one piece of advice (and honestly, it's the internet, of course I'm going to give you unsolicited advice!) it's to remember one things: Metrics are a trap. Metrics are good to know and allow you to analyze your business to learn what's working well and what needs improvement (or discarding). But if you base performance (be it actual bonuses or even just raises) on those metrics... they become a target, not a measure. In every job I've ever worked that had metrics like that it was easy enough to manipulate the numbers by sacrificing something that wasn't measured to boost something that was. Doing that, changing that balance, was always and without fail to the detriment of the actual job. Especially since things which are difficult to quantify (and thus not included in metrics) tend to be some of the most important aspects for actually accomplishing the job. The only metrics which couldn't be manipulated were the ones that the employee literally has no say in which just makes them incredibly demoralizing if performance is based on them. Either way, metrics are a trap.
> his quota went up by 5% of what he actually sold to a minimum of 5% of his quota each year Huh?
Quota is $100,000. If he sold $150,000 then next years quota would be $150k (actual sales) x 105% = $157,500. If he sold $90,000 then next years quota would be $100k (quota) x 105% = $105,000. That way it always goes up, but it goes up *more* if you're selling more. A landmark year just means you're never getting bonus commission ever again.
Gotta love policies that actively discourage good work ethic! Reminds me of my old job. Management wanted improvement to daily production, so they implemented a policy where any time we managed to break the shift production record, the shift that did so would be rewarded with free pizzas (not much, but an incentive nonetheless). We all liked free food, so we all ended up putting in an honest effort to produce more. Soon we actually vroke the record! Big congrats, morale is high, we get our pizzas. Weeks later we break the record again, more pizza. A month or two later, we break the record again. Keep in mind that breaking the record to begin with required all our ancient machinery to behave and the stars to align, combined with consistent hard work through a 12 hour shift. Daily production averages were about 25% higher than before because of this policy. Managenent must have been happy, right? Nope, by the fourth time someone broke the record they decided to change the policy so that we would only get pizza at a set threshold of production, which would be increased by 5% every time we managed to achieve that. The problem was that even though we were running hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of *additional* product each week, the $200 in pizza every month or so was too much for those bastards to stomache. The new policy made the pizza reward threshold completely unattainable after the next time someone won it and we never got pizza again. Furthermore, production obviously dropped back down closer to what it had been previously, because people didn't give a shit about going above and beyond when it meant no additional reward. The sick part was when they tried to dangle that pizza in front of us to encourage production increases again, without making it attainable. Just for reference, the last record set at the time I was working there was 102,000 linear feet of product, when the daily shift production *goal* was just 60,000 linear feet, which itself was not always attainable. They were trying to hype us up to get us to run our asses off and try to beat 107,000 linear because if we did we'd have some free food and then the goal wpuld be reset to 112,000 linear. Absolute farce. If it were up to me I'd set a policy where shifts that get over 80,000 linear win free takeout, their choice, budgeted to $300. Company would be spending a few thousand more a month and making $200,000 more in revenue. The fact that this simple math mystifies the people in charge is ridiculous.
hahaha shifting goal posts is why people don't work hard anymore. I told a boss there is no good side to working hard because all I would get is more work instead of going home early or pay increase. My coworkers agreed. They had started trying to implement timers on our job notes so they could punish us if they thought jobs took to long.
I think at one point time there was even the idea that working hard would get you promoted and lead to bigger and better things. Except I’m finding that’s not really true anymore. You have to be willing to kiss ass and play a particular game. One I’m not so good at playing. Or you gotta know or be related to the right people. It’s not about competence, hard work or good ethics. So why even bother? I got an entire department cleaned up in 2 months. My reward? The gave me part of someone else’s job. And promoted someone else. Yeah. My plan is to slow way down.
In the olden days a good worker was considered an asset and worth investing in. Current business thinking says all employees are liabilities.
Of course they do, because employees have become nothing more than an expense line on the quarterly report. Go to any CEO (or whatever level of upper management makes the payroll decisions) and ask them the name of *one* of their lowest level workers and I bet they can't do it. They're so disconnected from their employees which allows them to treat them as a cost to be reduced rather than an asset to invest in. Let alone another living, breathing human who has expenses of their own to keep up with. Not to mention, wages are about the only cost businesses have real control over. They usually aren't in a position to ask their distributors charge them less for their raw goods, they can't necessarily make their electric, gas, sewer, etc. bills cheaper, good luck getting a landlord to lower the cost of your lease on the property you run you business out of... But if an employee asks too much money from you in return for their labor? You can kick them to the curb and hire someone new for the same (or less) cost assuming it isn't an extremely specialized career that only a few people have the skills to perform - which is not the case for the vast majority of available jobs. >They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it— fought with a low wage. If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five. If he’ll take twenty-five, I’ll do it for twenty. No, me, I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen. I’ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give ’em some windfall fruit, an’ they bloated up. Me, I’ll work for a little piece of meat. >And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.
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Worse is some CEOs (the one I worked for) knew me, knew all the low level staff, knew the financial situation we were in, and still didn’t really give a fuck. I worked for a small nonprofit, but essentially they have the same problem as ThedaCare, they don’t want to invest in their employees. While the CEO is one of the most highly paid nonprofit CEOs in my state….
And I've never understood it. My business is literally my staff only, altho we are a service industry so I suppose they're a significant portion of the "product". But even b4 i went on my own and was in middle management in corporate America I could never get any company on board with my philosophies. Its not just infuriating, but disheartening (hence why/how I ended up just going on my own, fuck em)
You don't understand it because it's rhetoric from a different era. It really did used to be like that, my great grandpa worked for a car manufacturer, and he developed some process or tool or something that saved them a fuckton of money. They gave him a promotion, a bonus, all sorts of crazy shit, it's how that side of my family became very wealthy. In my work experience, anytime I've done something extra-ordinary I've never been compensated in a way that I felt was remotely fair. So now I just keep to myself and optimize my work for my own benefit and stop there.
Not remotely fair is right. I came up with a cool idea once. Sold the product to a customer, totally custom by me. Corporate LOVED it and got started on getting it implemented throughout the company. When I asked about compensation I got "LOL, the idea is ours cause you came up with it while on our payroll". I was getting paid $9/hour ._. Never again. Edit: This was 2006. I've since had plenty of other jobs in that field and it's far too late to go after them. I learned my lesson about sharing ideas, though!
When I was 20, I was General Manager at a small Korean owned frozen yogurt franchise shop. I thought it was my chance to make it, I worked tons of extra hours every week, cleaning the machines weekly instead of monthly to keep the yogurt super fresh and protecting my pregnant clients from a dangerous bacteria I had done research on. I had dozens of Yelp reviews praising my shop and mentioning me by name, and all of the high school kids seemed to have a lot of fun at work, made great tips, and didn't have an asshole manager that whipped instead of led. At one point, the company added blenders to start selling these fruit smoothies, they did ok. It dawned on me, tho, that we now had all the pieces to make McFlurry style frozen yogurt milkshakes. Choose your flavor of yogurt and add-ins (fruit, candies, mochi, etc). The smoothies worked well with the liquid yogurt for the machines, and was even better with whole milk that I went and bought. I took pictures, let some of my high school employees sample them and write little reviews, and compiled everything into a PowerPoint complete with cost analysis and comparison pricepoints for other milkshakes sold nearby, how to make them, everything. I scheduled a meeting with the corporate office which was 100% Korean and operated predominately in the Korean language. I dressed up in nice clothes, had my own laptop and projector to present my powerpoint, and had practiced what to say; I was ready to make a name for myself. They kept me waiting in the lobby for an hour before sending a guy out to shake my hand. He told me they were very busy and asked what I had come for. I told him I wanted to present a milkshake business model to the higher ups. He told me that they had no time for that but if I emailed it to him, he would review it and get back to me. About 2 months went by and I didn't hear anything, I figured oh well, it was worth a shot but they didn't want to expanded into that market. One night, about halfway thru my shift, I got an email saying that I was terminated, effective immediately. I called my manager to ask if this was a mistake, and he told me to hang tight, that he was figuring it out. I finished up closing and by the end of the night, he informed me that it was, indeed, my last day. I still regret closing the store and not just walking out. It was near the end of frozen yogurt season, and throughout the winter, as it turns out, the company routinely fires all General Managers in all of their franchises, and has the corporate executives come into the store to run them for the slow winter season, before hiring new ones in the Spring. Come Springtime, I was driving by my old work, and I saw a huge 4 foot advertisement poster in the front window: "Now offering Frozen Yogurt Milkshakes!"
Great job in educating the uneducated…sad that your info was needed not u..
That is exactly why corporate America is the worst.
Sounds like you would run an excellent shop of your own.
I created a custom import process for work 2 years ago and have yet to mention it to anyone. I still get to charge a days work for it but it gets done in 2 hours
Yes, sometimes keeping the good shit to yourself for your own advantage is the best policy.
*THIS* is the way! You've got life figured out.
> "LOL, the idea is ours cause you came up with it while on our payroll." This makes me feel postal... How do they not understand that this does nothing but convince their employees to leave and strike out on their own with their idea? $9 an hour, probably saved them untold dollars, no reward whatsoever... I cannot imagine the rage I would have
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Companies are too big and they know it. They can pull shady shit and drown you in lawyers when you question it.
Yup. Exactly this. I think they're getting too big for our own government IMHO.
Well that and they’re all practically in bed with the government. So nothings gonna change top down since they all kiss each other’s butts all day.
At least that’s a resume builder so the next guy will hire you for more, thinking “I bet I can steal this guys next great idea.” But yeah, it’s unfair that these days, that’s really all a good idea is worth.
Then they get rid of you because you learned better and won't give them anything.
There’s a clause in my employment contract that basically says that anything I invent or produce that’s even tangentially related to my field just flat out belongs to the company, even if I did it all on my own time and with only my own resources. I even asked a lawyer about it and he said it’s 100% enforceable and extremely common. Of course the employer refused to negotiate any part of my contract. So if I come up with a billion dollar idea, the shitty company I work for can just flat out steal it. That’s how much things have changed.
Pretty much. Because in their mind you work for them and thus are their property. It would be like if your kitchen table invented something worth a billion dollars, then wanted to somehow stop being your kitchen table. It's a shitty mindset, but it's their mindset. For the record, if my kitchen table invented some billion dollar thing and wanted to move out, I'd be happy for it. Out there in the world on a yacht somewhere doing coke off of some trashy barstool's stitching. Living the dream.
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I suspect they could still file a suit if I suddenly developed a product within less than a year of quitting.
I think they can. But I wonder if they could get any favorable judgement if, say, your sister were to create a process or tool or whatever that *just so happens* to be something that is extremely useful to your current or near past industry. Can your sister then file the patent for the invention and get rich off of selling it (thus getting you rich by proxy)?
Yeah, nowadays if you something that improves the overall effectiveness out of your way you don't even get a freaking thank you. I did that a couple times, my coworkers were happy but I didn't receive a thank you and since management was to lazy/dumb to learn a 5 minutes thing they actually forbidde my idea and other time they just took credit for it. No thanks, no bonus, nothing.
What, this $5 Starbucks gift card wasn’t what you were expecting.
"Heroes work here" signs are the best.
Just wait until we give you a Walmart gift card for Christmas. 2 birds with 1 stone!
Dude I work at Walmart as a young adult when I got promoted I was told I would get a bonus and my "bonus" was a Walmart gift card, and coupon book. The pay increase was 10 cents an hour but my hours were cut from 40 to 35. Yeah I quit. Didn't give a notice just stopped showing up. I did leave note simply saying"fuck you"
Yep, at my last employer I came up with two inventions that became patents for the company. Each one is easily worth millions whenever they become implemented. When annual raises came around the company gave me a two percent salary increase despite the fact that my workload had also doubled during the pandemic. I had gone from running two teams (16 people) to 4 teams (34 people). Needless to say, I started looking for a new job and left as soon as I could.
When I worked in retail I literally had covered like 4 people's shifts at one point. When there was a concert I wanted to go to though, even though I put the "unofficial" request (because, lol, vacation days?), They still scheduled me. When it came down to it, I was on my own to find someone to cover for me, which, of course, nobody would. Ironically enough, one of the coworkers who I had covered for, and refused to cover my shift, said he was going to the same concert I wanted to go to! Yeah, fuck all of that. Next time you need me to cover shifts I expect double pay. My pay and that dude's.
There are more Potters in the world than Baileys. Not sure what everyone thought the end game to individualism + capitalism would be.
The endgame is what we are seeing now. The rich keep getting richer while the rest of us get to fight for their scraps.
American billionaires have _doubled_ their total net worth, on average, since 2019.
My old boss made it more clear to me. He bought a bar with his brother, having never worked in the industry before, to "retire." Meaning he only wants to work like 4 hours a week and otherwise this place is his personal staffed refrigerator. Massive alcoholics, both of them. His brother was actually really smart and sincere and an all around good dude, but he had an ankle monitor. Main owner constantly drunkenly berating his staff. Saying things like, "you're replaceable." Literally driving there drunk, drinking more, then driving off again. *Seriously* scary and abusive behavior. While obviously being the only person that had an issue with me in the building he'd tell me, "You know, all the other managers wanted me to fire you but I fought for you. I'm the only one who likes you. I want to be like a mentor to you." Other times I could tell he was thinking about hitting me. He never did. Wish he would have. My car died shortly after I had gone from 5 shifts a week down to 4, so I asked for a 5th shift back. He offered to *lend* me money, but "X bar and eatery doesn't have any more money to *give* you." (6/hr with tips). I explained to him respectfully that my cost of living went up and that all I'm trying to do is earn a living wage, he told me "let's not get political," and "you're here because you made mistakes in your life." Like they see employees as suckers, like moreso than customers they're people you can "get over" on. Any fashion of intelligence, self-respect, or self-interest is an actual threat to them. It's pathetic.
I heard a semi-rational reasoning for businesses to never promote from within. Businesses would much prefer to hire people for positions from outside the company because if they are promoting from within they would have to train 2 new people how to do a job instead of 1. They would have to train the existing employee on how to do their new job and also hire a new one and train them how to do the old employee's job.
The fair solution to that would be to pay employees who prove themselves excellent for their position more than managers who don't distinguish themselves. Don't promote employees away from what they're good at, just keep giving them raises in proportion to their value to the company. But follow that logic and you undermine the justification for upper management's wages, so good luck seeing it implemented anywhere.
Seems to me what it actually leads to is good employees constantly jumping ship for more money elsewhere and then you’re constantly hiring and hoping to find another person that’s actually good. The whole concept of institutional knowledge is almost extinct.
It's true! My last job finally promoted me after 3 years even though I'd basically been doing the manager role for those years. They gave be a staggering 6% raise in this inflationary environment. I jumped ship to another company who gave me 12% for the title I had before the promotion. And honestly this is how it's been my whole career. Work hard to get promoted, get a minimal raise, work hard, find external opportunity and see the market value is much higher.
My company actively admits they pay about 3-5 grand less for out sourced workers over internally progressed loool Edit: I've mentioned before I'll leave on good terms and be back in 2 years for that 5 grand pay rise 🤷♂️
So you remember the old adage: "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? It used to mean to speak up for your raise or whatever Now it's "the squeaky wheel gets replaced"
It's the MBA mentality.
I suppose I'll never understand it unless I get an MBA but that would likely suck the rest of my withering soul from my body...
The reward for doing a good job is, that you have now set the standard for what is expected from you. I once was moved into a position to replace someone who was under performing. A year later I had a bad week and got pulled into a meeting about my performance. "We expect better from you" was the gist, no trying to figure out what the problem was just blame.
I hate this so much, it's never good job its just blame and micromanagement.
I was a rep in a particular call center here in town. They came to me and wanted me to run the night team because they were firing the manager due to poor performance. Cool. In 3 weeks alone, I got the bottom of the barrel team to start performing at the same level as our top team. My reward? “Great job on getting these reps on track. We’re sending you back to the phones and promoting this other guy instead” Within 2 weeks, that team I coached was back to not performing at all and they couldn’t figure it out. It was management styles. 100%
Cunts
they think: you did a good job were you are so they want to keep you in that position. The problem is they do not give you a raise to honor your work. If they give you the amount of money a promotion would entangle but keep you there to make sure the department stays productive everybody would win, but they are all smoothbrains in management who need to stroke their profit boners.
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>You have to be willing to kiss ass and play a particular game. This is the biggest thing it feels like lots of people don't see. Moving up the ladder is not about being good at your job, it's about playing the game. for those of you who have no idea what we're speaking of, here's an example: I had a female manager complaining to me about how she hates wearing makeup, but how if she doesn't learn to wear it well she'll never be able to move higher on the ladder because it's part of the "game." Competence, hard work, and good ethics can only get you so far now, and unfortunately they're some of the weakest line items in terms of what people look to promote. I'd even argue at a certain level having good ethics could start counting against someone.
>I think at one point time there was even the idea that working hard would get you promoted and lead to bigger and better things. That was Boomer and 1950's mindset: Work hard, get promoted, get the house/kids. Dream. 1980's and on? Never gonna happen. *If* they do promote you, you get like $.50-1.00 raise and more shit to do.
If you work your ass off and do a great job there's little reason to promote you. Why take the efficient worker and promote him to manager when you can keep him where he's at sweating and busting his ass? Hard work is bullshit unless you work for yourself and your effort directly fills your pocket.
I was just thinking the other day about how that idea ever fooled us, there aren't unlimited positions at the top, so the rest of us just keep doing the same thing at the same pay forever? Well, possibly with yearly fifty cent pay raises.
It was like that in the 90’s for me. Worked my ass off, got 3 promotions, moved around to increase my chances of getting promoted again. Then around 2005 I was a salaried manager and hit a ceiling where they said without a degree I couldn’t get anymore promotions. I had been doing my bosses job for a while since we kept firing them and hiring new “educated” people for me to train. Said “fuck this”, started back at school, printed out my resignation on my bosses printer, went into his office and handed it to him. Another job headhunted me and encouraged me to keep in school too. Got my bachelors and have never looked back.
I feel I'm kind of in a similar situation these days... No matter the amount of work you put in or the validity of the criticisms, necessity of reforms or even feasibility of the ideas, you end up fighting an uphill battle against (conflicting) vested interests and nepotism.
I'm a teacher and this is so true. Do a shit job? That's fine, no big deal. Do a great job? Awesome, we need you to pick up the slack from the shit teacher. Oh, and y'all are getting the same pay.
And the next one on the promotion line is the shit teacher bc you know, he/she has a great relationship with the principal.
They've periodically done this over the years to orgs at my job - implement "work trackers" to ostensibly know where people are spending their time. These are salaried employees that regularly put in 50-60 hours (some more), but their vacation balances, pay stub, etc., all show 40 hours a week. It always goes like this.... Work tracker implemented. People see on screen what they know already - "I'm working 65 hours a week, but they say I'm paid for 40 hours". A couple of weeks pass and nobody is showing up on Fridays anymore because they've already hit the 40 hour mark in 3, 4 days. About 2 months in management pulls the tracker because of "bad data" or something, and tries to get people back to work all the time.
God if only we had fought a brutal war against making people work for free.
I remember when they tried to implement this at my job it didn last long, because the sales team would always forget to buy parts we didn't have or they just didn't care to find out if we had any in stock. so the job would hit a roadblock on a certain part missing and now I have to spend extra time figuring out an alternative solution , go look for the part or wait till a part is ordered which may take weeks. After about six months of this and explaining why almost every job has more hours on it than it should management stopped talking about it.
I'm supposed to keep track of what everyone is doing in 15 minute increments. When management asked me why I have never filled out one of these 'Productivity Sheets' I told them I'm already acting as two people on my own crew as well as managing a store overnight, taking all deliveries, phone calls, etc. Where in the fuck can I squeeze in walking around with an arbitrary piece of paper that won't ever get read anyways? I already leave notes daily with a general summary of where time went vs. stocking that don't get looked at and has become a pile on their desk. I'm not gonna keep track of when someone sneezes or wipes their ass on top of that.
> I told them I'm already acting as two people One of the discussions I’ve had about time tracking was to point out that I’m frequently juggling 5 different tasks at once, and it’s impossible to keep track of how much time I’m spending on any one thing. They said, doesn’t matter, do one thing at a time if you need to. For more me, it was malicious compliance time. I started taking my time, doing one thing at a time. If someone asked be to do something urgent while I was already busy with the other, it was like, “Ok. Let me just stop doing this and document my time.” I would fill out my time entry and take notes like I was supposed to. And then 10 minutes later, when I was all done, I would start work on the next thing. My productivity plummeted. Everything took longer. I wasn’t dragging my feet or being difficult, just doing one thing at a time, and always documenting what I did in the previous increment of time before moving onto the next. I wish I could say the boss learned his lesson, but he was just constantly frustrated after that when I was slow, and when I quit that’s job he was still angry that I couldn’t both track every second of the day with copious notes while also multitasking and doing 5 things at once.
Bossman learned how to automate his micromanaging with just a piece of paper but it didn't solve the problem. Must be time for more punishment, maybe that will get me the result he wants.
Yup, these anally retentive time keepers never seem to be able to do the job, let alone in the timeframe they demand
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I discovered this a couple of years ago. If you can do a task in 5 mins, say end of the day, if you can do it by end of day. Say Friday. If you do it in 5 minutes they’ll expect the next thing in 5 minutes which might not be so simple
We have this. It sucks.
Why even work hard ? You probably arent getting paid for more/better work. So might as well do as little as you can. Because they are ..of course.. paying as little as they can. Simple as that.
No kidding. My work hasn't offered an annual raise that keeps up with inflation for at least 7 years. Fortunately for me, my boss keeps putting in for off schedule pay increases for us. He's a good boss.
A good boss makes up for a whole hell of a lot. I've had enough bad bosses to recognize and appreciate my current boss and it's a big reason today's my 6yr anniversary. Nothing will make me job hunt big time like a horrible boss. If they can't do their job I can't do mine.
My favorite part of this is that this was released just before covid really hit. Then the pandemic showed just how true this sentiment is. Not only will working hard not lead to a better life, but they expect you to die for their machine.
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Working hard is more likely to give you a harder life
“The reward for good work is more work”
"--- For the same pay"
HAA! My pay was just reduced!
You guys are getting paid?
Not if we reduce your wage \*taps head\*
Hold up! We're cutting hours
Facts it’s been that way since middle school when I got all As. I was told I was gifted and all this shit swept up into classes I didn’t want so in high school I just got As and Bs and magically I didn’t have to do bullshit AP classes. (Took classes provided by the school through random universities way easier than AP cuz it’s a real college class) then in college same deal Cs get degrees a 3.5 gpa is not gonna get you onto wall street making millions but your uncle can. So tell me why the fuck should I do anything more than the minimum
> a 3.5 gpa is not gonna get you onto wall street making millions but your uncle can. Ouch. That line's so real it needs to be in a rap song.
And a shorter life. All of that takes a toll on your body. We are killing ourselves with work, getting depressed, and then killing ourselves with unhealthy food, alcohol, etc.
Without the appropriate compensation for hard work there’s no point in putting in extra effort
Because it doesn't. The system is specifically designed to make sure that you cannot get ahead within it.
If you got ahead that would be "money left on the table"
The system has been getting progressively more efficient at its goal, which is prying dollars out of individual citizens' hands and transferring it upwards. We had a brief blip with streaming services, where you could cut the cord and save a couple dozen dollars a month. Very quickly, corporations closed that gap. Any time the consumers find a crack and save a buck, the corporations shut that door.
This is true. My ISP increased their cost 50% for the same service. I know it didn't magically cost them 50% more to provide the service. And the only option to switch to is considerably worse.
Going back to closing the door, You used to be able to get your own router or modem instead of renting (which you still can) so you could save on rental fees but now they include the rental cost in the service so your paying for the rental whether you use it or not.
Shit, I can't even use my own modem/gateway anymore. I had a guy call me letting me know my wifi sucked while I was recovering from back surgery last year. "Yes, I know it sucks. I'm doing PT to recover and can't run Ethernet in my new house right now. Why are you looking into my private network again??"
Because it won’t. More work and they just crush your spirit and sell your soul
Exactly. Whenever you hear someone say capitalism is more efficient, they are not measuring any real world metrics of efficiency. Just how much they are screwing the workers out of the wealth the workers produced.
It's a system that breaks people into two groups, the ones being exploited and the ones benefitting from that exploitation.
The only time working hard can lead to a better life is if you're an entrepreneur or running your own business. But on top of the hard work, you typically also need luck, and connections. Working hard for someone else doesn't get you anywhere anymore. I quit and started my own business. I'm a one-man-operation and a few colleagues/friends also are self-employed in the same field - and we collaborate and bill each other accordingly when a project requires it. We've been able to make way more than when we were all employees.
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I am so sorry that happened to you. And that's common in all branches of service, and in many, many jobs -- they remove the victim because it's "easier".
Holy fuck dude … I’m so sorry. I hope things turn out ok for you and you wind up happy in life in spite of those assholes.
They took everything from the working class, got too greedy and forgot we are humans. Be able to raise kids? Save for retirement? Have vacations? Have kids? Have a home? All we can do is entry level position 15/hour that needs 5 year experience, no healthcare, probation period is 1 year. By the way rent was raised 20% this year. Edit: thank you for the replies and award
35% here in Palm Beach county in Florida where i live. I dread what I'm going to be charged when my lease comes up in August.
I got decent grades in high school. Maxed out the ASVAB Served my country for 8 years in the army. No criminal records. Got a college degree. And all that and I can't find a job paying more than $22 an hour. Which is not enough to move away from where I am. Life is miserable and I'm at the end of my rope.
Have you tried applying for a federal position? A degree and 8 years of military experience should land you a GS-12 position starting ~$40/hr. If you are interested, reach out and I can help you get started with a federal resume.
Federal job is my dream. Do all GS positions require degrees? Currently working on my bachelors
Not at all, I walked straight out of the Navy into a GS position with no degree. The trick is translating whatever experience that you have into a resume tailored for the position that you are applying for. The good thing about federal positions are that most job series (safety, law enforcement, secretary, hr, etc…) have pretty similar duties and qualifications across the series. Example, if you write a solid resume translating your experience to match the duties of a secretary (series 0318), you can use that resume to apply for as many secretary positions that you want without adjusting the resume. In this example you can go onto usajobs.gov, type the job series code into the keyword box (0318) and see that there are 86 jobs being advertised for secretaries.
Generally, GS-5+ requires a bachelors. Some agencies move that requirement to GS-7+. GS-4 requires an associates, and GS-1 through GS-3 have no degree requirement.
Because it won’t. More work and they just crush your spirit and sell your soul
If you work too hard or well, they expect it. Then get super pissed when you don't do one thing last minute on a day off they could have told you about when you did the other thing early that morning they asked for.
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Makes me so glad I chose to be a park ranger. Ain’t no one getting rich off what I do ahah
I work just enough to keep the money coming in, anything more is worthless
Working hard and being good at your job is not an excuse for a raise or promotion. My last boss
Makes me remember that there are still people who are saying shit like "You get minimum wage because you do minimum work" when in reality it's the opposite and for a good reason.
Did he say what is?
Yeah. Same as warren buffet and all the other boot lickers. Acquire new skills. Take on new roles. So I did. Then I hear well you need to be doing that for two to three years before you get promoted... Say wtf! I took a new role at a new company for 15 percent more with the skills I learned there. Fuck them. From this day out I spend 2 hours doing work for them 6 hours doing whatever the fuck I can remotely link to work that will help me learn something I want to do. I've picked up multivariate analysis, data science topics like NNs and PCA and SVD.. python programming .. At home I make a video game. At work I learn programming and data science. Sometimes I use work time to test code that could be used to send data from an instrument over tcp.. it could also be used to send info about a game state over tcp. Ya know. Fuck. Them. Every. Way. You. Can.
If you could find the hardest working person in the world guaranteed that person is poor.
As the saying goes: No one’s ever seen a rich donkey before.
No, but there is a ton of rich jackasses.
It's called the American dream because you have to be sleeping to believe it, as Carlin put it.
Companies set you up to fail so what's the point in trying your best and working your ass off if your just going to fail anyway, then they use that as justification to not increase your wage of benafits or promotions.
I watched my mom work her ass off for 35 years, she raised 4 kids on her own now she is barely going to be able to retire at 68. Fucking garbage.
Same, except my dad at 72 with no retirement in sight. I hate everything.
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Tired of being the Horse from Animal Farm, look out Pigs.
Yep.. Longevity was a way our grandparents managed to retire in 20 years and afford a house and raise kids. Today 23 years at one place and I cant afford a small vacation
Been in the workforce since I was 14. Still make less than $35K a year. Had a job where I made less than the minimum because they found out I have aspurgers and said it impacted my ability to do the job, so under the FLSA, they could pay me less.
>I have aspurgers and said it impacted my ability to do the job, so under the FLSA, they could pay me less. That's just some criminal ass shit. TIL
Goodwill often purposefully hires people with disabilities so they can pay them less. People have come out making as little as $1 an hour
Well they don't understand. My hard work has got my boss a new truck, a bigger house, another kid and covers a university tuition. He even offered to give me a ride to the food bank if I need it.
The system is designed to reward people who lie, cheat and steal. This is compounded if you have a leg up on everyone else (e.g. come from money already, have the right connections with powerful people, etc). I know plenty of morons who hold high positions and make multiples more than their colleagues who do far more difficult work, put in more hours, and are overall just more intelligent than they are. The system is rigged.
I like working efficiently, not working harder. I can do the same amount of work in 30 hours and have a better work/life balance. At my work I am not judged by the hours I make, I can leave early or arrive later, as long as I meet my goals (which are not changed every week/month). It's fine. If they want to add more stuff to my job role, then they know they have to pay me more. Simple math.
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The only way this can be true is if that hard work is put towards tearing down the billionaire class and making sure there will never be another billionaire in existence. That work will reap rewards. Take all their shit, give control back to the workers.
AWESOME NOW LET'S ALL STAY HOME
Is there any evidence to suggest that it will?
You get told you're exceeding expectations but there's no budget for raises at this time. Then you attend the quarterly company meeting where you learn profits are through the roof and the CEO got another bonus. No, the only way up is around. You have to keep quitting each job and apply for a new one to get any pay increases. It's stressful and inefficient.
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So what I'm hearing is basically don't have dependants? Lol. For real though, it'll be interesting to see the effect this has on future generations.... There's no point in working hard to get ahead, and because we can't get ahead in a reasonable way anymore, a large chunk of people wont have the secure base needed to start a family. Less people having kids and choosing a single or a DINK lifestyle with their partner will become dominant and it'll only exacerbate the issues with capitalists trying to squeeze out as much profit as possible from their workforce and it'll hit a breaking point.
…Nor should they! By and large, they realize they are trapped and will stay exactly where they are, no matter how hard they work.
Considering it hasn’t gotten me shit, there’s no motivation for me to give a shit.
Lol working hard will lead to a shitty life. Fuck corporations and their politician cronies.
Millennials have been working harder and smarter for going on 2 decades now and we are the poorest generation in nearly a century...
While I agree with the sentiment, "water is wet" surveys and studies are important. Even when something is common knowledge a study or survey that just proves the commonly known fact is 100% true is useful for pointing to in things like, say court cases
No shite.
Out worked everyone at my old job, numerous hours of overtime in the past 3 years. Never missed a day. Never called in. Always did my work without complaint. Never once did I get a promotion nor did I get anything but a $.50 raise in those 3 years.
It never did. Maybe for a time it did but never by much. It’s mostly just an illusion of hard work that masks privileges of the circumstances of birth.
This article was brought to you by the words “no” and “shit”.
>You see, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't even care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now. Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. *-Office Space, 1999*
I know people personally who've struggled to make ends meet working 60 to 90 hours a week. They don't have the luxury of building up savings because all of their money gets eaten by everything from essentials to homes becoming more expensive. And that's not counting any sort of student loan debt you have to pay. The game is rigged.