Similarly, the argument of the hunter is that it is actually a duck that wants to hang out with other ducks.
I admit I’m rather fond of at - will employment because I don’t tolerate jobs I hate well, and I’ve walked off a few with no notice due to severe psychological distress (as in, I either needed to quit or go to psych ER.) I’m not really sure what would have happened if I hadn’t been allowed to walk away. Also with the most recent nanny debacle, being an employer has been eye opening as to how difficult it can be to deal with a problem employee when you are dependent on their labor.
I will say that absolutely every time my husband and I have given an employer advanced notice out of courtesy, we’ve been fucked over. Never again.
I am indeed in Australia and as you rightly note, we have some very good industrial relations laws on the books, including one that says if you get laid off because your job no longer exists or the company is downsizing etc, your employer has to give you a certain amount of notice AND pay you the equivalent of a specific number of weeks’ pay, plus any paid leave owing to you (we get four weeks per year).
A few years ago I was working somewhere which got shut down by HQ because it wasn’t making any money anymore, and got paid something like three month’s salary in redundancy payout. What that meant was instead of going “OhfuckohfuckohfuckwhatamIgonnado”, I was going “Well this sucks, but at least I don’t have to worry about the mortgage or food or the bills for a few months while I look for another job”.
These protections don’t apply to casual or contract workers, though.
As a general rule, absolutely nothing would happen here if you did that, except your employer would think were were an asshole and not provide you a reference, and obviously you wouldn’t get paid anymore. If you’re in a small industry word would get around you bailed, which would make it hard to get hired anywhere else in that industry too. If you were just working a McJob or something and couldn’t deal with it anymore and quit without notice, they’re not going to sue you or come after you for lost profits etc.
In the UK, where we have similar employment laws to Australia, you are still allowed to quit a job immediately if it’s causing you severe psychological stress. An acquaintance of mine did just that recently, in fact. And I once literally walked out of a job in a pub because the landlady (manager) went crazy, screaming abuse at me.
Employers are also allowed to fire employees immediately for a whole range of valid reasons. “Valid” is the key word.
The latter problem you and your husband had is less likely in a country where giving notice is the norm.
Relevant:
Yes, un-summarized links to Quillette posts are excellent examples of virtue signaling.
There was some TERF-y stuff in there, but it resonated with me in some ways. I’d be curious how many extreme leftists come from an evangelical background. I was just thinking that people who had a sense of innate badness, of needing to do good works to be saved, may be easily exploited religiously or politically. I almost mentioned earlier my fear of being a bad person and how that also drives me to do things. Maybe that is a remnant of my religious days.
I was debating whether to post it for that reason, but there was a lot more too it and I thought you might be interested in the author’s experiences.
Seems very possible. A lot of the current ideas around ‘whiteness’ seem to involve this very Christian idea of innate (or unavoidably-imposed-by-society) badness that you need to struggle against but can never get rid of.
But is it being raised religious that creates this feeling, or that people who naturally have it are drawn to religions or to other ideologies that satisfy the same need?
I wanted to share something related to the issue of sincerety. I mentioned before that the organization I work for has an explicitly anti - racism bent and that we’ve been doing so much I can’t keep track of it all. And to be honest, I’ve grown weary.
Well we were recently notified of a mandatory micro-aggression training.
Yes, I’m freaking tired.
But the last mandatory training we had in which we addressed micro aggressions also, we had a lot of coworkers or color share their feelings and experiences, and… Well, it’s just really hard to discount these things when you’re facing someone else’s pain. To hear people of color that you know and love make themselves vulnerable because the issue matters to them that much… That’s not some abstract principle, it’s the reality of their lives. And wanting to prevent other people’s pain is the reason I got into this field in the first place. It’s the reason a lot of us are there.
That’s interesting and a little surprising to me, because I would have expected that wanting to help people in practical ways was the main reason. Making sure everyone has food and medicine and a safe place to live, that kids can get an education, that adults have opportunities for training and to get a job, that everyone can live a dignified life. That sort of thing.
Are you able to share any of the things they said?
Do you think those things are categorically different from preventing people from being in pain? It doesn’t sound like it to me. Making people not be in pain seems super practical to me. Particularly when I’m experiencing pain.
Yeah, that’s how we prevent the pain.
I don’t like the implication that ensuring all my coworkers are treated with dignity is somehow not practical or useful.
But my point is my empathy is what drives my work. I can’t see someone cry without crying too. And seeing people in pain was a humbling experience given how annoyed I was to do yet another mandatory training, because it reminded me these aren’t abstract concepts. So I wanted to share that when people roll their eyes at the idea of racial equity they’re probably not looking into the eyes of people directly impacted by racism.
What they told me was in confidence, but the prevailing theme was “you don’t belong here because you’re black.” That was the message they’ve heard at every professional level. We watched a video of a black man being harassed in a nice neighborhood for no apparent reason and my black coworkers described feeling numb, some refused to watch, and the black man present was able to relate to this kind of treatment. The prevailing theme was people made to feel like they weren’t wanted and didn’t belong.
A lot of the black folks employed at my organization have had issues with the way we handle things for a long time. I hope they are finally starting to feel heard.
My organization is large, modern and comprehensive. It has long been viewed by some as the well-funded white organization draining funding from struggling black organizations that need it. Then there’s the fact that a good chunk of our clients are people of color and for a long time executive staff did not reflect the racial diversity of our client base. This has created tension between us and some other organizations in the community, as well as within our organization. This is part of the ongoing effort to address all that. The ultimate end result will be to better serve our clients.
And people want to judge without having half a clue about the complexity of these issues when it comes to community work.
I’m struck by this particular example, because I work in QA, and two of my co-workers are trans. Do you not see potential issues for them if their boss thinks they deserve to be institutionalized? Do you not see any potential issues for the business if one of them gets passed up for promotion, and she can point to her boss’s Twitter feed as evidence that he’s prejudiced against trans people, and that not giving her that promotion was illegal discrimination?