Today two of my friends (also Dopers - I’ll let them out themselves if they’d like) were laid off by the dickwads that run the corporate pisspot that pays my bills. Five people in all were laid off from my division today, one of which has been with the company for 20 (yes, TWENTY) years!
Do all corporations lead their employees to believe that they are in business to provide nice working environments for people? I know this is terribly pollyanna-ish, but the company I work for actually feeds this line of bullshit to its employees. And somehow, for the past nine years, I have eaten their shit, wiped my mouth with a spare square, thanked them, and asked for more.
The company line:
We never lay people off.
We’ll never go public because that would cause us to bend to the will of investors and go for short-term gains.
We re-invest all profits into the company in the form of research.
What a load of crap! Our owner/CEO was on the list of the world’s top 100 richest people. Did he get there by investing the profits into the company? Give me a break.
I am so fucking blindly loyal that I have looked past the obvious - all corporations are blood sucking leeches out to suck the last bit of life and hope from their employees. Actually, to be more acurate, they’re automatons, with no morals or scruples. People are utterly expendable, and all that matters is the bottom line.
So why give my loyalty, my blood, my energy, to a machine? Why be a cog? Does it really matter if I fill out my status report and make sure that I show up to meetings on time? Who gives a flying fuck into a rolling donut if the new marketing program is set up in a fucking flow chart and communicated clearly to the goddamn telemarketers? How does this benefit ME? or my FAMILY? or the people I LOVE? or the WORLD? The only benefit is the paycheck I receive every week. There’s got to be a less demeaning way to earn a living. I’m sick of pimping out my soul by letting this corporate machine ass-rape me every day.
One of my friends actually took the job at this company because he had been laid off before and was ready to work for a place with a reputation for never laying off employees. He actually turned down a higher paying job to come here for the stability. So this is his thanks??
Thanks, Jurhael, but you know, nothing really happened to me (except that I’m completely selfish because I’ll so totally miss these two guys’ IRL company on a daily basis.)
However, completely sucky stuff has happened to two very intelligent, sweet, funny men.
Corporations make up their own laws. I’ll never forget the time my father was offered a total dream of a job with another funeral home-and was forced to turn it down because he was sued. They had made him sign an agreement not to work for a competiter within a 25 mile area for two years-all in order to get a bonus he had worked so hard for. Why did he sign it? Because he knew he earned that bonus-and because those types of contracts are illegal in Pennsylvania. It never should have held.
Unfortunately, the lawsuit would still have gone through. Doesn’t matter. I’m so fucking bitter about this.
Morgainelf, I know exactly how you feel. The idiots I work for posted the largest growth in their industry, actually made a profit, and have decided to start laying people off. Today, they let my supervisor go, and then we get an e-mail from one of the VPs of the company saying the following:
Huh? WTF? You’re trying to keep people and you ditch people who are needed for the place to function? The fuckwads haven’t even told us who we’re supposed to report to. They didn’t even bother to tell us what happened to our team lead. We’d never have known if someone hadn’t seen security escorting him (and five other team leads) out of the building. Goddamn cock smokers!
No, you shouldn’t be loyal to a corporation. That way lies madness. Corporations are entities with one goal: profit. Anything else is a distraction.
Look, a job is just that. You’re trading your work for money. It’s a simple contract.
You have the right to leave at any point (Guinistasia’s complaint about yellow dog contracts is correct. In most states (at least the one’s I’ve been in) they’re unenforceable.) and the corporation has the right to send you on your way at any point.
But most people develop a comfort zone or a sense of security about their employment. This is dangerous. You have feeling about the company for which you work but the company is not a person. It can have no feelings whatsoever.
Now it IS possible that you can develop feelings of loyalty towards specific persons in your firm. That’s fine. I’ve shifted jobs (um, a lot) and I’ve taken certain people with me. I shift. I call them. They shift. Previous employer suddenly has no marketing department. I weep for them.
But loyalty towards a corporation is a foolish thing. No matter how long someone has worked at one there’s no guarantee of future employment…none at all. Nor should there be.
Sorry if that comes off as too harsh. But if employees have the right to leave at any time (and they should) why shouldn’t a corporation have the right to tell them to leave and any time?
Oh, and from the ‘somewhat ironic’ department part of our day.
I’m currently home today. I skipped work because the CEO of a division of the Washington Post is calling me for a phone interview about taking over several of his magazines.
I pretend like I am an actor. All day, I act like I give a rat’s ass, and do good as needed for the company, but my expectations of how they will act at crunch time are not very high.
I accept it’s all bullshit and move on.
The thing that bothers me most is when the dopes that don’t listen to anyone end up running the comany or division into the ground but never pay the price for it. Someone else pays and then the same dangerous dopes hang around anf fuck it up later.
Now there is a school of management thought that says that actively taking your employees loyalty into consideration means they’ll stay longer and therefore contribute more (more experience leads to better performance etc…). Unfortunately, it keeps running into the ‘longer tenured emplyees cost more in terms of salary and bennies’ argument. And that’s a pretty difficult one to overcome when you’re a corporate manager looking at a quarterly loss.
I need to print this thread and keep it posted over my desk.
I turned in my resignation at a large hospital owned by the State of Texas yesterday, and it was accepted immediately. Given that I am pregnant, quitting was probably not the smartest thing I could’ve done. However, after talking about it to Airman and Zappo, I feel a LOT better about it.
One of the major reasons I left was because of the attitude that the sun rises and sets on this institution. I was tired of the notion that their lack of planning and their lack of ability to say “no” means that we should be expected to work one Saturday a month, as well. I was especially tired of their need to cover their ass by requiring me to get separate, specific doctor’s notes giving me permission to eat, not work past a certain number of hours (40, which is all my job required), be able to get up and move around every so often, etc. I left because management enforces policies it doesn’t tell anyone about. And what do I get for it? A lot of disciplinary actions for things that have never been a problem at any job I’ve had in the past, and I’m including the Navy and the VA, both of which are not known for being lax. My supervisor’s answer? “Well, we have 11,000 employees, so we have to have and enforce rules.” Good cop-out. It’s costing this department a lot of good employees.
So, I left. I’m taking my talents somewhere where they’ll be appreciated and fairly compensated.
Actually, I tend to disagree. In my experience (and I’ve really only been at this one company), the people who stay the longest are generally compensated the least. Incremental raises once a year do not keep pace with the way the economy has boomed in the past few years (last year not withstanding). My friends who have left to go to other companies have made large salary jumps. According to www.salary.com, I am currently undervalued by at least 10K, and could probably get more than that.
MsRobyn, at one time I supervised 40 people, and had to be the “enforcer” of those crappy rules. I had one employee whose wife had just had a baby and called in a few times because the baby was sick, and I had to issue him a warning that could lead to termination of employment. I felt like a complete heel, but had to tow the line (toe the line?), because it was my job. Good for you for leaving, though it’s too bad you couldn’t wait until after your maternity leave.
Especially when you’re the corporate manager who so fucked up everything that they now have a loss.
Oh, dunne u. wurrie, I’m gonna bail out of there as fast as I can. They’ve started introducing insanely contradictory policies (Okay, you’re on an old plan that’s not as profitable to us as the new plans, so if you want to change to a new plan, we have to charge you a fee! WTF? Who’s the crack addict who came up with that one.), and they sent everyone an e-mail today that said they were done “right sizing” which can only mean one thing: More fucking lay-offs! This rat’s been on too many sinking ships to think that anything other swimming for it is a good idea.
Thanks for starting this thread Morgainelf. It sucks to be laid off. I am one of the unfortunate saps of which she speaks.
Yes, I know better. Yes, I agree with everything in Jonathan’s first post about not trusting and/or being loyal to a corporation. But, for whatever reason, I really did think this one was different. For some nieve reason I allowed myself to buy into the shit sandwich that they fed us about “no layoffs”, “re-investent in the company”, “privately held = no worries about impressing stockholders”. I let my guard down and wasn’t prepared to be shit-canned for absolutely no reason besides possibly being the only competant person in my fuck-hole of a department.
Well, at least I am not letting it bother me.
I will be in New Hampshire for the next few days evenly deviding my time between snowboarding and drinking so I may not follow up on any threads I am in.
Perhaps I was unclear. It wasn’t a contract saying he wouldn’t leave. It wasn’t his leaving. It was a contract saying he couldn’t work for a competitor, within a 25 mile area, for two years. In Pennsylvania, such an agreement is illegal, restriction of trade.
Yet, he still would have had to fight it. And he wasn’t sure if he’d have any job if he did so-the other company he took the job with would be sued as well, and if he lost-he’d lose either job. The risk was too high. I so wanted him to fight it-but he just couldn’t afford it. So the big corporation was allowed to screw the little guy once again. You have no idea how bitter I am over this.
Of course, they were probably scared shitless at the prospect of my dad leaving. His manager is a shitty, pissant, whiny little man with no self-esteem, smarmy, sneaky and narrow-minded. He couldn’t wipe his own ass if my father left that place and he damn well knew it. So they panicked.
Fuckers. When he finally told us his decision, I was the one crying-not him.
