:smack: It’s a vicious cycle… Okay, this time it was the alcohol…
Your post could have been interpreted either way. “Those” is an unclear antecedent, as in:
In any event, I’m willing to concede that you meant a subset of people with problems.
If I thought every employer is evil, greedy and uncaring, I would not try to communicate with any employer – what would the point be? They would not care, and any information they got would be used for evil. In addition, I would not characterize most of the employers as evil, greedy and uncaring. I would say instead that the way our society is structured, companies tend to act greedy, evil and uncaring, regardless of the personal qualities of many employers. Greed, evil and uncaring are rewarded when the shareholder, who is often not personally associated with the firms he or she owns shares in, makes all the rules, and the only rule that matters is, more money every quarter.
Also, our society is greedy and brutal because of its structure. The unselfconscious defense of firing I’ve seen here is proof of it. I would expect that if I were to be transported to ancient Rome and I attempted to tell the Romans that they shouldn’t enslave people, that it was a brutal and cruel practice, I’d get a ton of Roman rolleyes, a line of people wanting to bitchslap me Corinthian style, etc. They’d be saying, “But if we don’t crucify the bad slaves, the good slaves won’t be motivated!” and “What possible method is there to motivate someone to work 80 hours a week for you, other than enslaving them?” and “Crucifying may be brutal, but with some people it’s the only thing you can do!”
You may catch on eventually. Or not.
Ya know, Evil Captor, I just cannot follow your logic here. What in the hell does this strawman have to do with the argument at hand?
And, who knows. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is brutal. Personally, I don’t think so. If you don’t do the work, you don’t deserve the job, simple as that. I cannot believe anyone would argue with this line of reasoning, but apparently you do. You lie, cheat, or steal from me (as the person in the OP did), you’re fired. I don’t give a shit what your excuse is. And I expect the same from my employer if I ever did that to them. Ever hear of fucking personal responsibility?
If I hire people to work for me (and I occassionally do in my line of work), they had better produce. I don’t think they’re bad people if they don’t…they just won’t get hired again. My reputation depends on these people. So far, nobody’s failed me. But I wouldn’t think twice about firing somebody who did a bad job. It’s not my responsibility to provide anyone with a living. And it’s nobody’s responsibility but my own to provide myself with a living.
I consider myself pretty liberal, and I believe in socialism-style safety nets and minimum standards of living. However if you lie and cheat to me, and steal my money, well. Quite simply, fuck you. If that makes me an asshole, so be it. Give me my toaster.
So, did you decide that future raises, bonuses, or salary increases of any kind were going to a fund for bad workers? 'cause, you never did answer me there. After all, it’s quite easy to moralize and blame society until you actually have to do something about it, and be accountable to it, yourself. As for me, I like working for a company that saves money by getting rid of people who refuse to do their job.
Comparing firing people to slavery? C’mon. Quite the opposite – a system where you couldn’t fire someone is limiting choice far more that the opposite.
At its core, it’s a socialist argument. Again, I’m all for a social support structure, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t fire people who just don’t do their jobs (for whatever reason). There are laws to prevent people for being fired based on their race, or gender, or what have you; there are laws that protect people’s positions if they have medical problems and need leave. What more are you asking for? Again, what is YOUR plan for running profitable businesses without firing anyone? What would you, specifically, do to avoid ever being “brutal” through firing? Help me “catch on” – tell me what you think I should do differently. Is it just my attitude? Should I cry a thousand tears for each employee I fire?
“Unselfconscious”? “Greedy and brutal”? “Proof”?!
Piffle.
Your hypotheticals and poorly stuffed strawmen are insults to the dignity of work. Yes, dignity. Fatcat are built into any system but their presence doesn’t erase the fact that parasites don’t rate respect. It doesn’t matter what end of the spectrum they occupy. Paris Hilton is no more despicable than any everyday feather-bedder who whines his/her way out of responsibility.
You haven’t. Obviously.
Everybody has problems, weak spots and personal vulnerabilities. Good employers allow human frailities but aren’t obligated–legally or morally–to pay people while they work through their assorted personal problems. Because actual productive work doesn’t just waft away and somebody–a lot of quiet ‘somebodies’–must inevitably carry the load.
Your cosmology is too narrow because it dismisses those whose work actually depends on other, equally fallible, individuals.
I hope you wouldn’t fire someone for doing a bad job once. That wasn’t the issue here anyway - it was pure lack of ethics and honesty. Several places I worked had a list of things that would result in immediate termination (like violence on the job as an extreme example) and I think Bricker’s example would fall into this category.
Many places have very specific plans for people who are not keeping up. If you don’t live up to the plan, out you go. EC, do you think firing someone that way is brutal?
Heck, even the plagiarists in colleges are often given a second chance, but I see no reason to give them a third.
First offense = “F” on assignment, a meeting with the folks at Student Life, and the chance to attend a workshop (attendance in the workshop = not having the incident put on their record, where others might see it, including people in universities where the students may wish to transfer later).
Second (final) offense = “F” for the semester, suspension from the campus for one year, and the black mark stays on the record. (Yes, there is due process, a hearing, an opportunity for the student to attend said hearing—though I don’t know of anyone who has ever bothered, since they know they’re guilty and have no defense, especially after all the warnings and info and flat-out evidence.)
Too brutal? I hardly think so.
I did, I guess I just didn’t make myself clear enough. I was explaining why I don’t think that PEOPLE who do brutal things aren’t necessarily personally brutal individuals. I used Roman times as an example of a society where people did brutal things to one another but there are plenty of other brutal societies that come to mind. Point is, the Romans who owned slaves probably weren’t especially brutal individuals compared to other Romans, it’s just that in their society having people whipped, chained in cages, blinded, etc., was something you did. Like we do firings now. We’ll get better in the future, just as we’ve improved over the Roman system, for the most part.
Please do me the courtesy of responding to arguments I have actually made. Go back and show me where I said it was OK to lie, cheat and steal from employers, and I’ll gladly back down from that position, because it doesn’t represent my viewpoint. I’m just saying, it’s still brutal to fire someone who does those things, just as it’s brutal to hamstring a slave who runs away, whether they actually ran away or just got lost on the way to the salt mines.
[quote]
If I hire people to work for me (and I occassionally do in my line of work), they had better produce. I don’t think they’re bad people if they don’t…they just won’t get hired again. My reputation depends on these people. So far, nobody’s failed me. But I wouldn’t think twice about firing somebody who did a bad job. It’s not my responsibility to provide anyone with a living. And it’s nobody’s responsibility but my own to provide myself with a living.
That’s good, because socialism-style safety nets and minimum standards of living greatly detracts from the brutality of firing. The emotional component of being fired can be gotten over, but losing one’s ability to feed, clothe and shelter oneself, and to obtain medical services, is harmful to children and other living things.
[nitpick]Paris Hilton is a bad example. She could have done nothing and lived off her trust fund well out of the public eye, but instead she chose to work as a model and actress. You don’t like what she produces for a living, fine, but she does something for a living, and unlike most folks, she doesn’t HAVE to diddly to live very well indeed. Very bad example indeed. Going by the standards you have set forth, you should respect Paris Hilton. A great deal. Though I’ll grant you, the Huxleys in England are a much better example of wealthy people who worked and contributed to society though they didn’t have to.[/nitpick]
[substantive]Hypotheticals? Strawmen? Piffle. You can dodge around using such terms all you like, but I haven’t seen anyone contest the central core of my argument, which is that firing people is brutal in a society with a weak or nonexistent social safety net. And I’ve no idea WHERE you’re getting that bit about “insult to the dignity of work”? I happen to think labor is innately dignified, but I don’t see where caring about people who aren’t good at a job insults those who are. Perhaps you could explain …
I don’t dismiss people who are successfully working in jobs. Many jobs are brutal in nature, and I have thoughts for them, too, but that’s not the point under discussion here.
The first part of dealing with a problem is recognizing it. What I think would work most effectively is incremental improvements to our social safety net, instead of dismantling it as the Republicans would have us do, so that people who lose their jobs don’t have to sweat losing their ability to feed, clothe, house and obtain medical services for themselves. That would make firing much less brutal, so much so that it would be mainly a matter of helping the fired individual make a constructive response to having been fired, fixing any personal flaws or amending their goals in ways that don’t lead to further firings. (And please don’t give me this personal responsibility bullshit – we are all products of the society we were born in. I’m warning you, if you gimme that “I was raised by wolves and became a saint anyway” shit, I WILL laugh at you.)
Please do me the favor of responding to points I have actually made.
I don’t know of any magic bullet. We’ll have to incrementally improve the system unless some social process that represents a quantum leap in efficiency and decreased brutality occurs, which I consider very possible in the next few decades. And all I ask of you or anyone who is in a position to hire and fire is that you try to think about ways to make incremental improvements in the way things happen. As a nun once said, “Every step on the way to heaven, is heaven.” Crying is ineffective, compared to that.
Yes. See other posts. You appear to be conflating brutal with unfair. If I devise a fair way to judge who shall be hit over the head with a two by four, I’m still being brutal, though fair.
How does this equate to firing, exactly?
What two by four? People in this program are given very explicit jobs to do and very explicit feedback. Is it really less brutal for them to stay in a job they can’t do and no doubt be shunned by their corworkers who have to pick up the slack? BTW, they have the opportunity to quit before they get fired - if they are not smart enough to take it (or want unemployment) too bad.
I agree we need a better social safety net - but we also need ways of making sure the right people are in the right jobs, and firing people who aren’t suitable, though a last resort, is good for the person in the long run and society as a whole.
I’m your boss and you’ve lied to me about your work hours, caused me to submit plagarized material to a client, and expect me to give you a second chance?
No. You’re fired. Have your desk cleared out and be off the property in 30 minutes.
Again, I don’t disagree that we need a social safety net, but I disagree that it is the responsibility of employers to fill in the gap until social programs meet some arbitrary minimum.
You first. Can I take your raises and bonuses yet, or are you still ignoring me for the third time?
Increased efficiency will tend to cause layoffs rather than prevent them. There will always be some people who just don’t, or won’t, measure up. I am just against corporations and private companies being responsible for supporting these people. This will only provide a major disincentive to hire anyone, and will decrease efficiency, raises, bonuses, and other benefits for productive employees. Again, I feel that firings are the least of the evils.
I am all for having programs available by not firing people that are salvagable, provided they are saving us money (again, attrition is a cost, not a savings in many cases). However, by far the bulk of my employees that I have fired are because they don’t want to do the job. They don’t want to fulfill the expectations. They want to grind by, do little to no work, and show up when they feel like it.
There’s no compromise with some people – either we let them work on their terms, or we can’t have them as an employee. Try some low-income jobs and you’ll see that there are a lot of unemployable people. What should I have done with the woman who liked accusing customers of being gay and screaming at them (multiple times, even after being warned)? She made it clear that not doing this was Compromising Her Personal View of God and that she WOULD do it again. I can give you many examples like this.
Ultimately speaking, there is a strong financial incentive to keep employees unless you are not re-hiring into their position.
Agreed. Imagine what the conversation would be like with **your ** boss when you had to explain why you didn’t fire this person. Unless it’s something where you’d be willing to lose your own job over over the injustice of it all (like perhaps the hypothetical mental illness or hostage situations above) you really can’t be the social worker in a case like this. You have to be the business person.
Alright, EC, let’s start from the top…
You were the one who qualified what an asshole employee was:
I took your qualification of what an asshole employee was, and ran with it:
Then you went to some great leap of logic and implied that I think that EVERY employee who has had problems are assholes…also you mixed the notion of employees that cause problems (the initial statement that YOU made) and employees who have problems are one in the same (that you tried to attach to my statements), which is false:
I then called you out on that blunder:
Then you go to the “unclear antecedant” card because YOU couldn’t keep track of your logical fallacies and moving subsets:
In other words, YOU have problems keeping track of what you post and what the rest of us are posting. I know the rest of us have been jumping on your butt from different angles, and I kind of understand this instance was amongst the many you created…but dude, seriously, take the time to read and understand our posts before shooting off the hip with your responses.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled bitchslapfest:
Without the shareholders of big companies, the capital that fueled the company to grow and hire more employees would be severly reduced or non-existent. That would mean less jobs. Small companies would be only financed by the owners themselves and be more mom 'n pop-like. When you invest, do you go to a bank that pays negative or positive interest on you deposits? Shareholders are no different from depositers…they want to see their investment grow. I guess that’s the evil you are referring to. Meh. I’ve always said, if they turn a good profit, then invest in that company to offset the cost of the products that you purchase from that company.
If you are trying to sell the notion that working is present day slavery…I’m not buying. You have the freedom to work for a person, a company, a government, or for yourself if you put your mind and effort to it. Slavery didn’t have that option. I have employees who are going to school to better themselves and I am all to happy to help them attain that goal and move on to bigger and better things if they have expressed that desire. I hold nobody down. Your slavery strawman got gored in the colleseum a long time ago.
Evidentally, I caught on quite a while back.
Well, I wouldn’t rehire them if I could clearly see they weren’t doing what’s expected of them. Even if a person is having a bad day, there’s a minimum of quality that must be met. But I tend to only work with people I know and who deliver the quality that I expect, so it’s never been an issue. But I wouldn’t hesitate if, when working with a new person, they don’t meet my expectations.
Additionally, there are shades of “doing a bad job.” Making a mistake on the job is “doing a bad job” and, yet, it’s correctable. Being dishonest and a thief on the job is also “doing a bad job” and, yet it’s correctable. For the first example, the correction is training. For the second example, the correction is firing and possible criminal charges.
I think the problem here is that , too often, plagiarists who get caught get off the hook too easily. What is an F or being fired afterall? Nothing.
What we really need here are mandatory fines AND prison sentences. Something along the lines of $20,000+ and 1 year in jail minimum. That would deter the vast majority of plagiarists and the ones that do it anyways will get what they deserve.