Damn right. We (the workers) don’t care whether you bitch about things occasionally, as long as it isn’t constant. We don’t mind if you’re late occasionally because something unavoidable happened. The problem starts when you either come in late all the time, or don’t show up at all. We get stuck doing your work for you, while you keep getting paid. So, when you then cry about how hard you have it, expect a little bit of resentment from us. We’re there to get paid, and that means doing our work - not yours.
As far as surliness, well it isn’t only directed at some customer. Often the co-workers get a good amount of it too. Don’t look so shocked then, when you get it right back.
I know the “corporate suits” have no loyalty. In return I feel no loyalty to them. But, they are entitled to get at least some small token effort of work, for the pay. If you hate your job, look for another one. When you find one, turn in your notice and move on to greener pastures. Meanwhile, don’t make it more difficult for your co-workers and then expect them to like you.
The big problem in my workplace are the lazy, indifferent teenagers and their fucking cellphones, though we occasionally get the shiftless white trash types (as chronicled in another thread a few months back). :rolleyes:
Y’know, most businesses aren’t huge corporations and don’t pay their CEO’s huge sums, and most CEO’s don’t steal, either. Well, they probably make off with some office supplies, but who doesn’t?
I can believe this. We are the hardest workers. I think it may just be that the problem workers specificalloy are worse now than they used to be, and some businesses wind up with so many of them that it becomes a huge problem for them. And from their perspective it is a huge problem acros the board.
A question for manhattan and tomndebb (and whoever else wants to answer it):
If an employee is working for a company that doesn’t adequately reward success or failure, and that institutes policies that show a clear disregard for the well-being of the workers (e.g., cutting health benefits despite making a profit because competitors were doing likewise), why should an employee work hard and show up on time? Why shouldn’t the employee game the system just like the executives (in such a situation)?
It seems like there should be a convenant between the employer and the employee: the former should respect and reward the latter’s good work; and the latter should do good work and not shirk responsibility. At least in the environments I see (which are tilted heavily towards the “VERY large corporation” side of things), I don’t think either side holds up their end.
Not single day went by when I worked at a shithole grocery store (A&P owned!) where I didn’t get reminded that I was less than a piece of lint that they could replace with no difficulty whatsoever.
However, when I called in sick or late or whatever you’d think that the fucking world was going to come crashing down.
Fact of the matter is that the current business strategy is “employees be damned”. Will it work? We’ll see. I noticed recently when I called for tech support that a place that used to have Indian tech support now has gen-u-ine 'Merikans answering the phone.
I think most companies care for their employees. If you’re working at a place that treats you like dirt, then move on.
We had a girl (19 years old )in my department a few years ago who didn’t get the workday started at 8am. She’d wander in at 10 or 10:30. My boss explained this to her, and told her that after the Christmas break (she was taking two weeks off) she would expect her to come in at 8am on the dot.
So, between the time my boss talked to her and the time of her Christmas break, did she come in on time? NO! She’d still wander in at 10am. But hey, we told her we’d give her until after the Christmas break to change the setting on her alarm clock.
Bless her heart, the day after her vacation, she comes in…at 8:30am My boss promptly fired her, and she told other co-workers that she didn’t know why she’d got fired.
The business that treat their employees like shit aren’t going to be around for long. Likewise, if you come in on time and do your job well, you will reap the benefits.
Because when a worker does everything in his power to get the most amount of compensation for the least amount of labor, he is a lazy shiftless bastard that deserves to have his job outsourced and is lucky that management doesn’t hire an elephant to cornhole him.
On the other hand, if the owners of businesses and the CEOs that they hire do everything in their power to get the most amount of labor for the least amount of money they are virtuously looking out for the shareholders and meritoriously acting as the very engine that drives our wonderful system. Truly, we should send comely lasses with the ability to suck a golf ball through a garden hose to blow them until their toes curl.
Being surly to customers and co-workers is not gaming the system. Showing up late or failing to show up, at all, particularly without providing sufficient notice to let those who did come in make plans to cover the situation, is not gaming the system. Expressing rude hostility to one’s immediate supervisor who is probably making a measly 2.5% more in pay–and had to give up overtime (that he or she still works) for the privilege–is not gaming the system.
Each of those actions is either a way to harm the company, meaning that one’s own job will be jeopardized, or taking out frustration on people who are innocent of any wrongdoing and are certainly not fat cats living off the sweat of your brow.
Everyone loves to hear the story of the “brave” soul who couldn’t take the nonsense any more and either walked out berating the boss or simply failed to show up one day. I’ve been in several places where that happened and I never saw anything brave about it. In each case, their absence resulted in extra work for people for whom they claimed to be making their point.
People who are irresponsible are jerks.
If you need to make a point, find a way to make it that neither harms your co-workers nor shoots yourself in the foot.
Earlier you characterized what the executives were doing as “gaming the system,” and now you seem to be saying that workers who exploit the system for their own personal gain aren’t gaming the system because their behaviour harms their coworkers and the customers.
I don’t get it–the “gaming” CEO’s behaviour also harms the workers and the customers. Is it simply a manner of degrees? Come in late and you’re a jerk who’s stealing $25 worth of labor and harming your co-workers. Give yourself a ridiculous salary and an extravagant expense budget and you’re just “gaming” the system. I can’t help but think that social class figures prominently into the distinction we like to make between the two.
Since when? Have you ever read “Nickel and Dimed”? There are hundreds of successful businesses out there who treat their employees incredibly badly, all in the name of the bottom line.
That hasn’t been true of a lot of jobs I’ve had. I’m a good employee; I do my job well, get in on time, and always call in if I can’t be at work when I’m supposed to. But I’d say about half the jobs I’ve had, I really didn’t feel like I had much chance of “reaping the benefits” if I did a good job. Being laid off was a constant threat as a high-tech worker, as jobs continually were sent overseas.
I think it’s great that they’re thinking of introducing soft skills courses. Those are pretty important in any workplace, and if one employee decides that it’s his or her right to show up whenever the hell he or she wants, it breeds resentment and lowered morale, which does slow productivity.
Yeah, CEOs are paid waaay too much, and I sincerely hope that comes to bite them in their collective ass some day soon, but that seems sort of irrelevant to the article. Regardless of your status in a company, if you’ve agreed to work for someone and have been told you have specific hours, it’s your duty to show up when specified, on time, and remain there until your hours are up, period. And if you can’t work with your co-workers or customers, yet your job requires that you do, you have no business being at that job.
Getting hired does not mean you’re entitled to do whatever you want.
Well, here I am thinking this is going to be about the porn actress in HBO’s PORNUCOPIA: GOING DOWN IN THE VALLEY who described herself as “perky and punctual” to the casting director.
Carry on. I’ll go work on my resume on the office computer.
But they do make you feel a lot better about the ass-fucking you have to take while you are secretly interviewing for another job. Personally, I always did my best until my employer demonstrated they were not worthy of it. Once I determined that my best interests and my employer’s no long coincided, I ceased to give more than the absolute minimum required of me, which was usually more than my employer did in return.
Why is it when an employer compensates people at no more than the ‘competitive’ rate with no more than ‘competitive’ benefits, he expects slavish devotion and sterling behavior? You get what you pay for.
Which brings me to my point; these kinds of surveys rarely factor in the pay scale of the employees in question. Is the employer paying above the average wage for workers in the same industry, or below?
I’ll wager (without cites for any of my hunches) that the problem employees work for employers who pay below average wages. Guess where all the exemplary workers (who get no press at all) are working?
The CxOs were able to talk a board of directors into offering them an exorbitant salary. This does, indeed, take some money out of the pockets of the corporation and shareholders (scattered across the hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and the hundreds of thousands of shares of stock at some fraction of a penny per share).
It is wrong. It is stupid. The boards and the corporate shareholders who allow this to happen should be ashamed (at the least) and should be punished (if I could figure a legal way to do so).
Those fat cats are not, however, inflicting direct harm on another human being. And being rude or stupid is not “gaming” the system. If you can find a way to actually game the system–getting the company to willingly pay you a wage you do not deserve or for work you are not going to do–then go for it. (I certainly know people on the bottom rungs who have found ways to genuinely game the system, but it was not by being surly and failing to show up for work.)
I guess I don’t see how not showing up for work is “inflicting direct harm on another human being.” Being obnoxious or verbally abusive; certainly. But not making people work harder because you’re not there. That seems about as direct as making people work harder because you gave yourself a raise instead of hiring more workers.
Agreed–but I think abusing absence policies most certainly can be…
Once again, I’m not talking about myself. I do show up to work on time, and pull my weight, etc. I just don’t think that my doing so is always rational behaviour.
I’ve worked in situations where, for various reasons, it was virtually impossible to fire someone, and people certainly did game the system by not coming to work–they got payed for hours they didn’t work.
There are organizations that put together efforts like this, in order to protest unfair actions by employers and to promote the interests of employees. Those organizations are called UNIONS. Unions, according to the article, are among those who are complaining about lazy and incompetent employees.
And I defy you to show that the laziness and poor performance of most employees has anything to do with a protest against Big Business, as opposed to simple incompetence by unskilled individuals. For example, I will be pleased to buy you a bottle of single-malt scotch if you can show that the horrible customer service at Best Buy is actually a clever type of wildcat work slowdown meant to protest Corporate America.
If there is an executive abusing absence policies, he ought to be publicly dumped. Similarly, an executive who actually causes customers to go elsewhere should be very ceremoniously, publicly, and spectacularly dumped.
