My BiL worked in the respiratory department when he was the best on giving tests on the machines. He got paid when he was on call-out, regardless of whether he actually was called out.
I was on call-out for my IT job eons ago, and I only got paid if I had to go into the office to fix a problem. If I was smart enough to figure out and correct the problem over the phone, I was paid nothing. I just got to awaken out of a deep sleep to a rush of adrenalin and still have to go in at my regular time the next day.
I loved the time I actually drove in, but half way there figured out the problem (I like to drive on the freeways – helps me think). So, I walked into the backroom, told the production control person what to do, and turned around and went home. Got paid portal-to-portal for that one. I was also just wearing a tweed coat over my nightgown, so I was happy to leave quickly.
The firm where I work managed to balance “COVID-19 response” with some social events when cases were lower (pre-Omicron). Everyone is free to work remotely. The few social events we had were mostly outside and proof of vaccination was required.
I have to say, just being able to interact with employees face to face on occasion goes a long way in not feeling like some faceless drone staring into a laptop responding to texts and email all day.
I can see how there would be a correlation between innovation and turnover. From my experience, innovation tends to go hand in hand with uncertainty and demanding cultures. There is constant pressure to achieve results, often with ambiguous goals or requirements. And they can often be run by eccentric personalities. And a few years experience at one of those innovative companies can open a lot of doors.
Ugh, call centers are notorious for that sort of mandatory enforced jocularity. FFS people, just let me do my job and go the fuck home, I don’t WANT a slice of cold pizza I can eat at my desk while handling calls. Yuck.
And I can’t help but think that if the entire healthcare sector walked off the job demanding single payer universal healthcare they would probably get it. And then, no longer being held hostage by losing benefits in a pandemic, you’d REALLY see who hates their job enough to tell the company to fuck right the fuck off. I mean, employers have decided that what they REALLY want is employees who are contractors they don’t have to provide benefits for–well fine then, take those benefits off the table (and Medicare For All reduces costs across the board for both employers and employees while covering a hugely ignored sector of the population) and then employees can bargain for what their time is worth. I suspect the employers will not like the results of the experiment nearly as much as they think they would.
I believe another scene from ‘Office Space’ lampoons that dynamic to a tee: the sleazy manager of a chain restaurant admonishing the waitress for not having enough “flair”. It wasn’t really so much the flair, it was more the waitress wanting a straight answer form the manager about what exactly he wanted, but he refused to define what’s “enough”, making the goal of “enough” so nebulous that he can admonish anybody for not performing “enough”, and in turn maintain a culture of high-handedness.
Or if they are on your time, not company time. But in general lack of social events is correlated with the company seeing workers as cogs, and not willing to give up even a minute of productivity for a get together. The company I used to work for, which did give a shit, got acquired by another, which didn’t, and the difference was striking. We managed to have our own events even if not official policy, and they were so well liked that a lot of us who left for various reasons came back for off-site lunches years after we left. In the last one, after layoffs, about half the attendees no longer worked for the company.
I hope you went out singing “Take this job and shove it.”
My BFF still works there and after I left was Peter Principled into being a lead. For the first year after I left, her motivational speeches to her team basically said Don’t do a Jane. I know she’s much happier but she didn’t care if she couldn’t work for the state again. You might, so don’t do a Jane, give us at least two weeks notice.
On the first day of one of his last jobs before he retired, my father was given a pager. He took it home, turned it off, dropped it in a drawer, and forgot about it. He said to me: “I’m not a doctor. I’m an engineer. Nobody’s life is depending on me. There’s no problem that could possibly exist that couldn’t wait till I get back to the office the next day.”
Continuing in this vein, my boss once called me while I was at a dinner party on Christmas Eve far from home to tell me to fix a software problem. I did it, but I made up my mind there and then to quit, which I did a few months later.
The fact that this occurs, particularly in entry level jobs, makes it clear that the right wing complaints about ‘’‘Obama’‘’ phones are nothing but classist bullshit.
It’s kind of amazing how technology changes the way we behave in sometimes unexpected ways. When I started working remotely in 2020, I would sometimes find myself logging into my work computer to check emails and complete a few tasks at 8 or 9 in the evening. Nobody pressured me into doing this nor was I particularly pressed for time. I’d just suddenly think about work and then log in to see if there was anything I needed to do. I had to consciously make an effort to stop doing that.
Likewise with the telephone. It made it so easy to contact people that a lot of people didn’t consider the ramifications. Most of us don’t want to be tethered to our jobs 24/7. I’d be pissed if my boss texted me with work related requests after hours unless it was some sort of emergency. (I’ve been contacted by my boss after hours and weekends a few times when an employee unexpectedly died. I needed to contact our EAP provider and get a grief counselor on site ASAP.)
Yup, me too. But I’ll do that more often on a Saturday or Sunday. And somethings I need to do ‘off’ hours work, when no one else is on the system. It’s a hellofaloteasier to be able to do that from home now.
I’m very happy where I work. Going on thirty years now. And I can finally work from home.
Oddly, with at least half the staff in my department working from home, we communicate and know each other better due to a lot of IM’s. Works great.
We’ve had two social events since COVID struck. Basically picnic type outdoor events. One was pot luck, another the food was provided. Everyone brought a six pack of beer to the second one. I don’t think we got paid for the second one, but we did shut the department down early. Having alcohol at a company event makes company lawyers quite uneasy.
As much as I like the folks I work with, I don’t look forward to these events. I think a lot of that has to do with my poor hearing. I do have hearing aids, but when more than a few people are chatting away, I have to go into ‘smile and nod’ mode.
I’m off today, but am seeing IM’s fly by. I’m very tempted to chime in, but would be chastised if I did.
I work for small county government, and they do this stuff right.
I had a job that did on occasion – when we had a box undergoing environmental tests it had to be looked over 24/7 but this was intermittent, perhaps twice in a year.
One such time, one of the members of the team was living on a boat while three of us were watching over a box through a weekend. When he came in on Monday morning he asked if Rudy, our doofus boss, had come in over the weekend. “You’re kidding, right?” was the response because Rudy never worked weekends.
"Well, then he’s going to have an unpleasant surprise come the end of the month. He called me four times with these picayune questions. The calls have to be placed through a marine operator at $15 a pop and if he wasn’t here, they’ll be charged to his home phone.
I work in a boring office environment where the most serious work related injuries are carpal tunnel syndrome. But we have a few thousand employees and every year we lose a few to accidents, illness, or some other calamity. We’ve never had someone die while working so long as I’ve been there. Thankfully.
And that’s fair. I don’t mind doing teambuilding exercises with my coworkers during work hours, and I’m happy to go to lunch with them or dinner on business trips, but I’m not so keen to socialize with them outside normal working hours. And I actually like these people. I’ll put in a little face time when we have gatherings to celebrate the completion of a project and at the company picnic but that’s about it. Those social events should be completely optional with no pressure to participate in.
