This post PERFECTLY encapsulates what’s wrong with America, as demonstrated in this thread, and why places like China, and India are eating our lunch!
You still haven’t learned how to multiquote, etv78? You’ve been here a while…
Why do you make the assumption that government workers from China and India bust their asses, and that the reason China and India are “eating your lunch” is that? The low salaries and sweatshop hours aren’t managed by those government workers.
Sorry I post to much Nava! :rolleyes: As to China and India “eating our lunch”: you haven’t noticed the U.S. hemorrhaging jobs to places like China and India? I see no reason to believe it will stop any time soon.
They are sending jobs to China and India because they pay their workers nothing, don’t have to worry about safety standards and use child labor. It’s not because they’re such superior workers.
That’s who you want us to emulate???
We had 22 employees because the dept was running like shit and was outdated. The eight remaining employees had a nice clean work enviroment and did not need to bust their asses to get their job done. The ass busting only came in while updating the production line.
I am a firm believer is recognizing sustainability in everything including a fair labor pace to work at. Wasted time because of poorly maintained machines is not a good policy because it makes for more jobs.
ITD: I don’t want us to emulate them. But I DO want us to recognize that those countries ARE where the jobs are going.
They go there for terrible, terrible reasons. You want to complain about civil servant work ethic in the state and federal government, that’s a fair debate. To say that work ethic is the reason jobs are going to sweatshops in China and India makes no sense.
I’ve been ‘indispensable’ at nearly every job I’ve held. I’ve been laid off from most of them. There is no such thing as a indispensable employee.
I believe in doing my job correctly, efficienctly, on time and to the best of my ability. That’s all I can do. What my employer choses to do with his bottom line had absolutely zero to do with how great of an employee I am.
My first career: 18 years BOH, hospitality industry, where there is no downtime, ever. You may have heard the saying; “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.” When it’s slow, you go empty & clean out a reach-in or rotate stock or clean shelves or something. That’s restaurant work in a nutshell. Rush hits and things start to really swing, it’s deadline perfection every 28 seconds or so until the rush is over. Very exhilarating, but it’s a young person’s gig. A gig where nobody ever would say “Slow down, you work too fast!” unless you were, say, coked out of your head and injuring yourself or others.
Flash forward another 18 years and now I’m an administrative assistant at a state university. I had to retrain myself out of fast-tracking every single thing that came my way and being vexed by not completing everything every day (i.e. “not finishing the prep list”). Took me a few years to learn that academia has a natural ebb and flow of productivity - there are ferociously busy periods countered with times when there is so little to do that you turn to hoarded busywork tasks or surf the internet. I have a relatively new secretary on my staff who is still in whirlwind mode…when I suggest she pace herself a little, it’s more to keep her from going crazy in the slow periods – which she totally does. Yes, rock it out when warranted, absolutely meet all deadlines, but pace yourself. Every little thing does not have to be done before end of shift, every day. In fact, some things cannot be finished at your preferred pace because someone else needs to review, edit and reply or whatever.
I suppose that, since this is a government/union job, this could be perceived as dragging out a job or soaking the clock, but we have to be here 8-5 regardless. When we busy, we busy, and we kick ass. When we slow, we slow, and we chill. There’s no advantage to anyone in killing yourself to meet imaginary or self-imposed deadlines.
I’m not going to highjack this thread any further, but one cannot compare 401K’s in general to pensions in general and say either is better any more than one can compare men in general to pigs in general and…OK, bad analogy, but you get what I mean.
There is nothing, however, to keep you from providing both to your employees. My company, admittedly in the minority, does.
Yeah, no-one would have recognized that if it weren’t for you. I think you might have just discovered the key to America’s economic problems single-handedly.
You should start your own social media campaign to get out the previously-unknown information that companies are sending work overseas to cheaper, less-regulated labor markets. Who knows? Maybe you’ll end up with a MacArthur Award or something.
That only works with people who are both lazy and smart.
What do you do for work again?
Yes. While on long exercise, my Comd started to notice I was quite exhausted at the O Groups (meetings) and started to check my work hours. I had ten students working for me, so I was editing and babysitting all of them, along with my own regular (non-exercise) work.
Eventually, he ordered me to “go to ground” as soon as the meeting broke. I was told if I didn’t listen, the Sergeant-Major would stand at the foot of my bunk and make sure I slept. Who wouldn’t find that soothing? I tried to get to sleep at a more reasonable time, but there was so much to do, and just me to do it.
Naturally, the Commander also loved the output, so it was kind of a catch-22/
We all are.