Comment on Scheduling is hard
shalafi@lemmy.world 4 days ago
At my last job HR announced that they had found studies showing increased productivity and employee satisfaction when people had one 3-day weekend a month. From there on we were given a choice of any Monday or Friday off, but we had to take one.
My friend: “Yeah, that’s fucked up not paying you.”
“It’s PTO.”
“That’s fucked forcing you to use your PTO.”
“It’s on top of our PTO. We get an extra 12-days a year now.”
I’m sure someone will find a cynical take on this story.
Lemmy: CaPitALisM!
Gosh! I left out a really important part! That business wasn’t part of a monopoly or cartel. Well, ironically, we did have a basic monopoly, no one else did what we did, but we weren’t a subsidiary of a megacorp, if you get my drift.
LOL, two years in a row our CEO told the board we would lose money on purpose to build our people and products. They applauded him. We fucked around and made a profit anyway. Got FAT Christmas bonuses!
If you think that’s a one-off company, you should hear how Quik Trip stores operate. Imagine people dedicating a career to working in a convenience store. That’s another story. (And an amazing one.)
Work hard, get experience, stack resume, move on until you land at a solid employer.
When my two friends and I moved to NW Florida, we knew no one, had no family. One guy started at an oil change place, way below his skill set and experience. Kept quitting and moving to better jobs. Within a decade he was the top service manager for the top car dealer in the area, clocking 6 digits, treated with utmost respect, seat at the table.
Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
I don’t get the take about “CaPitALism”. If your employer did what you say then they did so in spite of the system of capitalism, not thanks to it. A good employer will set their sights long-term, aiming to keep their employees happy in order to build a stable future, but that’s not what the system rewards, the system rewards short-term profits.
Also, the last story kind of reminds me of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”-rhetoric (the term also drives me insane because it’s literally against the laws of physics). Are there people who work hard, take steps to advance their careers and achieve success because of their efforts? Absolutely! Are there also other people who try just as hard and don’t achieve the same successes, either due to other struggles or just due to random chance? Most definitely.
shalafi@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Funny, that’s how it worked at my last job. And then there’s Quik Trip, an untold story.
As to the working hard part, I think you’re missing the “move on” part. Gain experience, QUIT. Lemmy in general, if not you, has this victim take on employment. As an old supervisor used to say, “Fuck me? No, no, no, fuck YOU!”
“They’re getting rich on our labor!”
“What if I told you, you can withhold that labor?”
If one’s job is that shitty, they can easily move on for the same pay at another shitty job. The least we can do is punish bad behavior.
Anyway, capitalism was pretty OK when we had unions (back to the punishing bad behavior bit) and didn’t allow megacorps to monopolize every sector of the economy. Most here are probably too young to remember those days. :(
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 4 days ago
That’s kind of the trick. People who collected loads of capital then spent loads on developing an ecosystem of media, ‘academics,’ and political manipulation that has steadily chipped away at those unions, and the ideas and circumstances that make them possible. The glut of overpriced degrees with distorted prospects, the idea that schooling is for getting a job rather than advancing knowledge, the union busting activity, the system of HR, the mergers on top of mergers that build monopoly, all paid for by capitalists who already had more money than they could use.
‘Just quit’ is pithy, but misses out on the fact that survival without a job is not an easy prospect. It doesn’t even punish the management who are making their workplace awful. It all gets displaced onto the other employees and the company machinery. Hell, it can serve as a reward in some places. If they throw work at someone until they quit, the employee has been doing all that work until then, so no worries there, the work can be shoved off onto the other employees on the team, and most people aren’t going to quit over a small extra ask when the alternative is months of job searching with no unemployment. And for however long that manager can spin that out, they’re just adding to their bonus. And then, ironically, they can do exactly what you are talking about and quit, going over to the next company saying ‘look at this, I cut costs at my old job by XX%.’ and getting the job-switch payraise with a premium for doing things that harm their former team and employer.