Because I’m a good person (and never will be again) I worked for almost six months and trained someone else to do my job before losing my job, knowing the whole time it would happen.
The situation was horrible. It was all about the MD and not about me (basically, I was 2IC, he wasn’t towing the company line, they were sending someone to take my position that was level with him and could make him do things.) Because I liked the company and the head office guy overseas, I did this.
I never, ever would again. Awkward, bad and horrible. Angry boss. Couldnt’ do anything right, who gives a crap it’s all shit, etc. etc. etc.
And of course, not knowing the exact date and not being able to committ to a new position is fun, too.
Never. Again.
I can see someone wanting out of a situation where all you do is get berated. I was almost ready for a long, enforced rest after that. Almost anything, including starvation and eviction, would have been better.
Whats not to understand? the guy works 12+ hours a day 6 days a week for a miserable evil bitch, goes to school on top of that and comes home to an unsuportive wife who only wants to tell him “i told you so” instead of trying to make the poor guys life a tiny bit less miserable.
In all fairness, we usually weren’t chained to our desks for 12 hours a straight. There is often a lot of downtime where you are waiting for people to call you back, get you some numbers, or processes to finish running.
But I agree. I see time and time again in these technlogy consulting firms where they drive their technical people on death marches trying to complete some arbitrary deadline that really doesn’t matter. Or nerds will get sucked into some problem until 4am and then not show up for work the entire next day (except the rest of the team is still working and are now down a person).
“Making the poor guy’s life a tiny bit less miserable” is not a tenable solution to this problem. That’s a band-aid solution. The point is he needs to stop working 72 hours a week.
Now personally, I’d say hell, just quit and be done with it. But I can totally understand Tamex’s frustrations here, when a much better solution would be to simply not work the overtime and let them fire him and collect unemployment. But one way or another he needs to stop letting Evil Boss walk all over him, or she’ll just grind him into the ground. And he is the only person who can do that - nobody else can do it for him.
Not to mention that this has to be stressful on her as well. She hardly sees her husband, when she does he’s often working and probably always stressed out. Plus she works herself and has a kid to look after. I understand why people are telling her to be supportive of him, but at some point he has to be able to return that support or she’ll burn herself out. This isn’t just affecting him, it’s affecting the entire family.
Heh. When I started at Intel one of the first things they tell you at orientation is that sleeping at your desk is an immediate firing offense, right up there with punching someone or coming to work stoned. Someone asked if this was true even if someone had been there until the early hours of the morning - the answer was yes. Oh, and everyone was supposed to show up at 8 am.
Oh, and one of their corporate goals was “great place to work.” Maybe they are better now that Andy is no longer involved.
It would be helpful to follow up. Here in Colorado, if a person quits due to an abusive work situation, they can appeal and if they win, will receive benefits. There’s also a process where an abusive company can fire someone, and refuse to okay benefits…the review process works here too.
But it has to be documented, and it may be different in MN. I’m just sayin’ there’s parts of the process designed to protect the unemployed from unreasonable working conditions, and that rarely comes out in these conversations. Usually all you hear is: You quit, you get no benefits.
There are also an increasing number of labor disputes in the IT field where this kind of ‘work ethic’ is causing litigation…and the employers are losing. It seems folks don’t like being used up and cast off when it suits the employer.