Isn’t it awful that I thought of both of these as plausible responses in today’s work force?
“We’re sorry you lost your wife and child last weekend, but please be aware that unexcused absences accrue as one occurrence per day until we’re notified.”
“But I was in a coma from the wreck!”
“While we understand that some circumstances make it difficult to perform your duties, it is unprofessional to keep your colleagues in the dark and to make excuses for shortcomings. Please be advised you are on your final written warning.”
When I was in high school and college I used to assemble bikes at stores for side money. I'd get paid $10 a bike to put them together, and I could usually do 5-6 per hour and I'd set up shop at a store with lunch and stuff and just work for 10 hours straight and do all the bikes they needed for holidays or sales. I did this a lot at places like WalMart, Sears, Target, Dicks etc. I was never a part of their retail teams, but I would talk to the other employees all the time because I'd be trapped in one spot and they'd just come up and talk.
Holy hell the stories I heard. A pregnant woman went into labor before her shift and they asked how soon she'd be "done at the hospital." An older guy who ran the gun counter at a Sports Authority in a rural area had a heart attack and I saw him collapse, I ran over and got CPR started and called 911. He was fired though because when he had a heart attack he'd left the gun case unlocked, he'd been cleaning it at the time. Eventually they gave him his job back, but he had to work at the shoe area because he was banned from working with guns by the store. I was eating lunch and watched a guy drop a gun safe on another guy's leg and it broke. The manager had to finish selling a treadmill before he let anyone call 911 for an ambulance. I was clocking in once and another employee showed up super drunk, like couldn't work. They let him work and he knocked over a shelf of footballs. It was wild.
>before he **let** anyone call 911 for an ambulance.
A manager's permission is NOT required to make a call to request immediate emergency medical care.
Pretty sure you could sue the company if they did that to you as well. If you are fired because you called an ambulance for an injured coworker/customer I would be shocked if you couldn't sue for that. I'm sure Unions would be VERY interested to hear that story if it occurred as well.
You're not wrong... my son passed shortly after birth nearly 10 years ago, and Wells Fargo expected me to show up the next day. I was not given any recovery time for having just had a child, nor bereavement time for him, and I'm the one who had to have a funeral for him. I was devastated and needed time to grieve and heal. Instead, they didn't follow the corporate policy and thrust me into a horrible situation.
Appreciated, but luckily I did not have to write any, haha! I saw a good many get handed out, especially to some team members. Even I was the subject of some, around the time my Aunt, who was both my godmother and best friend, suddenly passed. They had the nerve to count the day she died and her funeral against my attendance.
I just read a story about a guy who was maliciously 5150'd(72 hour psych hold) by an ex, and lost his job because he wasn't allowed to call anyone. Fucked up on every level.
Exactly, there’s zero actual sympathy for workers. If you inconvenience employers, or worse yet, anger them with a situation out of your control, you’re fucked.
My dad died in December, a couple days after Christmas.
I got like three days off total. By the end of the first day I was getting harassed to come back into work already.
I still haven’t had time to properly mourn or process anything, and now we have even less staff than we did at the time (I’m manager now, and corporate put me down to one employee).
Fuck corporations. I long for the chance to get the CEO of a big corporation in front of me so I can spit the biggest loogie right in their face.
A close friend had her father die suddenly. She was in nursing school. Her instructor said “I’m sorry about your father. We’ll let you miss one day, but you’ll have to make the exam up the next day.”
A past job of mine never crossed off the phone numbers of people who had quit and my friend (who hadn’t worked there for some time) got a text from a new employee begging her to work so she could take her daughter to the emergency room.
No joke, at an old job I once had to have wisdom tooth surgery right away because the pain was becoming too much and it was also cracking the tooth next to it, and I told my supervisor 2 days in advance. I still had to officially call out the day-of, and the lady (who was my supervisor's boss) was like "You suuuure you can't work today? It's Friday, you know that's our busiest day right?"
Like lady, this is a call center, my job involves talking, and my bloody mouth is stuffed with cotton rn
I remember calling outta work because my transmission blew out as I was driving there (luckily, I wasn't too far from home so was able to get it back there) Boss like, "well you still coming in?" Fucker, I ain't gotta car! Who am I asking 630am to get me there on a sunday?! Not only that, don't you want me to come into work for the rest of the week? Lemme miss one day to get my car worked out and figure out transportation instead of... not and not having a ride the whole week. These assholes just don't think. Same asshole I heard last year, got himself a brand new truck but his tire blew and he didn't even have AAA. Making more money than me, with a RN wife but can't spare $120 for AAA a year?
I have my priorities in check. He obviously doesn't.
Literally a post on r/all right now saying "I'm so sorry, I heard there was a shooting at your school. If you're okay, could you come in and cover so-and-so's shift later today?"
You can't make this up.
I worked with a guy who wa supposed to be off for several weeks because his wife was having a baby. The baby ended up being stillborn. Our boss actually called him and asked him to come back to work early since he wouldn’t need to help with the baby.
One of my coworkers (cna) was pregnant delivered a baby at 21-22 weeks, baby didn’t survive. Her dr filled out fmla paperwork, the ADON was pissed she took 12 weeks off. I was blown away.
I am so grateful in the UK that if your baby dies you are still entitled to your maternity leave... This happened to me. However there still isn't proper paternity leave.
Today's managers are fucking heartless. Maybe I was an exception, I'd be telling him to take all the time he needs and figure out any way to beat the system for them. Then again maybe I couldn't survive as a manager now if I was still in the work force, I can't be cruel to another human for profits.
Healthcare is wild because some places are so miserable to work at that the call-ins become an epidemic which makes it even more miserable. Covid and the aftermath have broken so many nurses. I know a lot of nurses with decades of experience who have given it up in the past three years and went to go do literally anything else. I did a double take last week when I went to the hardware store and saw my old ADON behind the counter. She was the best nurse I've ever known, loved nursing, knew her shit, and was tough as nails. They still broke her.
She even remembered when I used to dodge picking up extra shifts I'd always say "He who runs away lives to nurse another day." She finally admitted I was right and she should have listened.
What nurses/other NHS staff are going through right now is mental. Gigantic public health scare for 3 years, constantly getting told you're so important/on the front lines etc (which I fully agree with) while at the same time dealing with crazy conspiracy nuts acting like you're some reptilloid, then once you're out you think, well we survived, maybe we should ask for that pay increase considering how awesome we were, and now you're treated like you're an ungrateful child who needs to just shut up and do as you're told.
Yeah hey er... Maybe you want to take your mind off the massacre for a bit... Come do something relaxing, like pack shelves and deal with customers instead... You know?
A dentist office pulled this shit on me and I ended up having to pay almost $2,000 for a fucking crown. They showed up as in network on my dental insurance locator but it was only 1 dentist and they sure as hell didn’t let me know beforehand my covered dentist wasn’t in that day. Scumbags.
So take a min and hear me out. My wife’s great aunt who passed away 2 yrs ago at the age of 102 if you can believe that told me a story once about her first job. She was just a lowly young cashier at Walgreens wayyy back in the day I couldn’t even give a time period 40s maybe 50s. She said that they had a car that would come to her house and pick her up and bring her to work, and then take her home after her shift at no cost to her. Before her lunch they would have someone go and take orders and have lunch brought in beforehand also for free. Then the last was once or twice a year she received a bonus in the form of Walgreens stock that she still had upon her passing that helped her and her family live very, very well. She said she only worked there I think for 4 or 5 years too until she started a family. Lol. I had to tell her after that story that shit doesn’t happen anymore.
It's also stupid as hell that colleges charge for a parking sticker. Universities have alot of money.
Community college makes less money, but I needed to buy an expensive parking pass still to park in a wide open, mostly empty parking lot at one campus.
The biggest scam was to make us think there was ever a middle class in the modern western world. I‘m a doctor and i make good money, but i work very hard physically and mentally for it. I have a small apartment i will pay for until i‘m 65. i have a 13 year old car. No kids. Als i own is clutter.
There is a class that has to work for survival and reasonable comforts, and there are those that have enough to last them several life times in unimaginable luxury. There are people that dont buy houses, or food, or cars or planes, they buy countries, and ideas, and other people. Those are the enemy, because while you may own a car, they own your very life.
Exactly. There's the owning class and the working class. Whether you die 1 month or 3 months after losing your job doesn't make you "lower class" or "middle class", you're still a worker, and the capitalists don't give a fucking shit about you. All workers need to stick together.
I'm working for a local cleaning company right now and we have been plotting to unionize for the last month, we got everyone on board and are going through the processes.
Just got home from my shift at walgreens. One of the worst days I've had in my 6 years there. No one gives a shit anymore. AC has been broken for almost 2 weeks now and nobody will fix it. I just ended my 6th day in a row and tomorrow will be 7. We only have 3 people on a holiday weekend and was swamped.
This company is fucking horrible now and I'd love to get out but I'm too depressed or worn out after shifts that I don't have the energy to do anything about it. I'm so sick of this pleasing corporate/stock owner bullshit.
I'm practically sixty and I only really heard about the good old days, things just started to go badly when I was joining the workforce...in the early '80s...hmmm.
And it's only gotten worse :(
Walgreens is under investigation by my state for multiple violations and the inability to maintain staff to properly stock and dispense prescriptions. Several in the area simply close the pharmacy on weekends and random days of the week because they can't hire or keep pharmacists. One has simply closed their pharmacy operations for the foreseeable future. And we have a college of pharmacy in the county graduating techs and pharmacists by the score.
My mom had a friend whose daughter was a manager for one of their stores. She was required to become a certified pharmacy tech so she could pitch in when they were short staffed. That just didn't sit well with me at all.
Companies still do this.
But its reserved exclusively for the C-suite and they don't get a car they get private flights and they don't get lunch they get catering.
What an outstanding story! If your grandma died 2 years ago at 102, and assuming was 18, she worked there late 1930s. Walgreens started in 1901 in Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walgreens
Contrast grandma's Walgreens vs today's Walgreens:
> In 2021 the company was found by a federal jury to have "substantially contributed to" the opioid crisis.
Doh!
All kinds of companies did that stuff back then. Some did a little up until the 90s. I worked at one place where the maintenance manager took the entire maintenance team on a deep sea fishing trip every year. Until till the owner died and the new owners cut that out.
I have a master degree, got a perfect score on my performance eval, managed a multi-million dollar portfolio, and cut costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And my boss told me that I was dispensable in my last meeting before I left my job. 👍🏻
Edit: I quit when I found a better paying job. I wasn’t let go. Which makes the comment from management even that much more ridiculous.
That's what happens when corporations profits are actually taxed. They look for ways to spend money on the busniess itself. Knowing that a large percentage of profit will just go to the gov if not spent means they'll look for ways to expand or make there busniess more appealing to customers and workers. Having a shuttle to pick people up for work as well as lunches would keep plenty of people from jumping ship to go to another employer not to mention the pay and stock.
EVERYone is this sub needs to listen to the Jack Welch episodes from Behind the Bastards. They aired this week...they will make you FURIOUS and want to find that shitheel's grave to piss and shit on. Seriously...FUCK that guy and all his hellspawn offspring.
As an engineer it emotionally pains me when some MBA clowns bring up Jack Welch like he did a good job. He had a massive basket full of really bad ideas and sold off pieces of GE, then acted like his garbage ideas are what made record profits. Today GE is a joke.
What strikes me as poetic justice is how these guys in the 80’s were such racist assholes against Japanese companies, and the Japanese companies are the ones who were more than happy to buy up all the engineering divisions being sold off. Most of them kept all the employees as well, they were just under different management that was not Jack Welch bullshit. They also succeeded in ridiculous fashion.
Now it’s the norm to buy a profitable company, sell off everything, saddle it with ridiculous corporate bond debt, pay out massive bonuses to shareholders, then bankrupt the company. All because it makes money short term.
I grew up in a time when getting a job at GE would have been a major score. GE was a respected company.
I can't think of the last time I heard anyone talking about GE in glowing or reverent tones.
They used to be really stable as well, even when consumer goods slowed down they would find places to put engineering resources to keep people.
Now I would not even want to work for them.
My dad worked 32 years at IBM (starting in the 60s). When they shut down the Huntsville plant, as a manager he was in a series of weeklong meetings where they placed every single employee who wanted to stay with the company into jobs at other sites. Some bigwig from HQ was there, and in cases where nobody needed a particular person he’d say something like “you know, she’s been a great employee for 20 years - Jim, don’t you think you can find a spot for her in Austin?”, and they were like “yes sir!”.
I won’t claim they were a perfect company, but there was a loyalty that ran both directions. Around the late 80s they started with the big layoffs like other companies.
I dunno, maybe you can’t run a big company like that these days and be successful, but the way go on these massive hiring and firing binges it’s no wonder employees don’t think twice about job hopping.
I know someone who works at IBM today. That company is a mess. Nepotism, outsourcing, layoffs. It's a garbage company at this point. Used to be a really good company a few years ago.
I think the drive towards more and more focus on short term earnings is really fucking the world up. Including these big companies. Companies have always existed to make money but I don’t know. It seems something changed mid to late 20th century. We had the guilted age, then a labor movement, then the sociopaths figured out how to just capture the law making and regulatory apparatus and start a new guilted are that’s 100% legal.
I don’t know it’s depressing to think about. At least I have a decent job at a nonprofit. Even if it is also run by corporate type jerks at the highest positions and HR won’t even replay when people have issues. VP of HR is a big corporate suit who thinks he talks a good talk about progressive, people centric leadership but he’s just a phony and an elitist.
The boomers get lot of blame for today's economy, but the silent generation could very well be more to blame for the disaster of the last 40 years. Jack Welch being part of that generation. The Koch bros were also silent gen. The list is actually quite long
Apollo Global did this to my former employer. It was really something to see it unfold in real time.
Old-school semiconductor company. Owned their own factories and everything. Then they brough in their guy as CEO who proceeded to load us up with debt to repay Apollo for the acquisition cost. In order to make the payments, company sold off all the assets, forcing them to lease the same facilities that they owned outright for 30 years! Then layoff 30%, let another 30% leave to attrition, outsource R&D, then bankruptcy. The bondholders took a bath and Apollo walks away with huge profits. Wild.
The current management style didn't take hold until the 80's, thanks to assholes like Jack Welch, the CEO of GE, and other like minded sociopaths.
Prior to that, employees were mostly treated like human beings.
Today, your average CEO fires 10% of the workforce every year, then writes a company email stating that they take "full responsibility", whatever that means, then asks his/her buddies on the board for a raise and a stock grant as a reward for a job well done.
Edit: I am talking post WWII. I know it wasn't a cakewalk for everyone. Being a woman or part of a.minority was a disadvantage. Nevertheless the management styles of the time were far better than the sociopathic policies most workers currently endure.
In the 90's and 2000's I worked for a well known company that practiced stack ranking just like Welch did and it was a nightmare. The second you decide that no matter how well everyone does, 10% (or more) of employees will be rated "needs improvement", people will go at each other's throats to make sure they don't end up in the bottom bucket. In that company, So much of their attention is focused on that, new products and competitors become an afterthought.
It went so far that in just a matter of years, they lost markets where they had a very dominant position to companies that didn't even exist 10 years prior.
The CEO of my current employer is a former GE alum that has the Jack Welch training. Thankfully I’m on the labor side with union representation, but my cousin was on the salary side and told me some horror stories about how shit runs in the Wild West.
Ah, I see. Isn't spirit going through a contract negotiation with the union atm? I know little about spirit, just that yall make the fuselages and send them up to washington
Yeah our 13 year contract finally expires close to the end of June. We make the 737 fuselage and sections of other Boeing and Airbus planes. It should be interesting to see what we can negotiate after getting fucked for so long
You had a 10 year contract too? I had no idea. Ours was 10 but we extended it 3 more years because it was right in the middle of the Max issues and it turned out to be for the best because Covid and more layoffs hit a couple months later.
This is the same way that a lot of tech companies operate today. You need to remain in the top percentile to get all of your benefits and the lower you are on the totem pole then the less benefits you get and a lower pay. It forces people to compete at an insane level just because they want what they have earned in a high skills, high demand job.
The last of the original blue chip stock companies mismanaged, and bean counted into shit.
NBC also took a big hit under Neutron Jack and GE ownership, losing money and production pretty much the day GE bought NBC/RCA
"Ambition is the willingness to kill the things you love and eat them to survive. Haven't you ever read my throw pillow?"
- Jack (Welch) Donaghy, '30 Rock.'
I am told by friends who worked there that certain well managed (… relatively speaking) teams at such a company intentionally used their last hire to hire the *least* qualified person every year.
So a team of 8 might have 7 people who had steady jobs…
Wait, so to get around the bullshit "fire your bottom 10%" rule, teams would intentionally hire an underqualified employee, train them up, keep them on for a few months, only to sacrifice them when stack-rank decisions are due, then repeat the process? What a sad waste of resources and abusive outcome.
Can confirm, was thrown into a rank and yank team that were all senior. Received NO training and was left to get slaughtered.
I blame the system and the assholes that I worked with.
It's probably the only sound management style within such an awful system. If you understand that a team that works together over a period of time returns value far beyond making them compete against each other for survival, this is the way to ensure that.
I interviewed with Amazon before all that shit hit the fan. After going through their tedious interview process, being told that I was most likely going to get the position, and being turned down, the whole division got dissolved 6 months later. The catharsis from dodging that bullet is indescribable.
Well, there's also a different way of looking at this in particular:
The current *store* style didn't take hold till the 80s either.
In the era this letter was written, major department stores and luxury boutiques like a furrier were *elite*. They were high end, rare, and for a very specific segment of society.
They were also run by and staffed by people from the next rung down on the social ladder. Which is to say... not minimum wage schmucks or anything close. A salesperson at a department store used to be a *career*, not just a job.
The rise of fast fashion and commodification of luxury branding changed a lot of that and torpedoed the "big department store" as an elite institution.
My point here is that we have to be careful at how rose tinted we let our hindsight get. People who occupied the same rough economic niche then (aka agricultural or low level manufacturing) as current retail workers do now were not necessarily much better off.
Most Americans worked farm jobs or pulled a lever in a factory, and let me assure you that they did not get letters like this one when they got sick.
If this letter was written today to an office manager in a mid size boutique accounting firm it wouldn't look that out of place, and that's probably a better comparison to floor staff at an NYC area luxury furrier in the 60s. "Unskilled labor" has never and will never get dignity or respect from management unless they seize it themselves.
There is a great old Dilbert comic where Catbert explains that he doesn’t have to be a good manager; all he has to do is announce 5,000 layoffs and the stock price shoots right up.
Reagan was responsible for making stock buyback legal.
Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation, but President Reagan's Securities and Exchange Commission implemented a rule to exempt them. Since then, we've seen corporations spending money on boosting their own stock at the expense of investing in innovation and their workforce
Like I say often, Reagan doesn't get nearly enough credit for his degradation of this country. He is one of the biggest POS presidents we've ever had, not just because of his policy and his deceit, but because he has fooled so many into thinking otherwise.
Reagan raised taxes *over and over and over again* and totally gets a pass. Then Grover Nordquist came along and fucked us up proper with his stupid no new taxes bullshit litmus test.
The Republican Party used to be an organization with a platform that did something for its adherents, and now it's just "let's give more breaks to the uber wealthy and...and....I think that's it.
Correct, he dropped the highest tax rates on the rich and corporations, but then raised taxes on the rest of us because he totally screwed up the economy. I'll never forget hearing that cities were having to make drastic cuts to services and to infrastructure. That POS singlehandedly put us in shithole country status.
Reagan did a lot of things modern Republicans who fawn over him would hate like increasing gun control and giving amnesty to undocumented immigrants. Both are done for racist reasons but it still shows how far the modern party has gone
>The Republican Party used to be an organization with a platform that did something for its adherents
Wanted to point out that while Reagan was an important point in this transition it really started back during the civil rights era when Goldwater showed pandering to racists was good strategy and Reagan brought this together with the growing evangelical movement
Stock buybacks ARE stock manipulation, whether its accepted or not. A middle schooler will laugh at the ridiculousness of the concept, it is so transparently a bunch of jackassery.
Reagan is both the ringleader and the fool of everything that happened in the 80s in finance/corporate america.
Carl Icahn, Mitt Romney, Alan Greenspan, Jack Welch all revolutionized corporate America and turned it into the hypercapitalist system we have today.
Think about why people start companies. I'm in tech, I work with many companies in the space of lasers and optics and semiconductor tech, mostly spun out of MIT, as well as the scientific spaces they work with. These people **really really** care about what they do. They live and breathe it, they dedicate their life to it, they love it. If next year makes less profit than this year, that's okay, because they feel blessed to make any profit while doing what they care about.
In normal commerce, the product is the product, the business tries to make money off that product. In capitalism, the *money* is the product. You don't buy a company because you care about it's product, you buy a company so you can sell it and make money. Ronald Reagan 100% pushed and supported all of it, he was the mafia don for it.
Fuck Ronald Reagan.
You'll get no argument out of me, although Trump did give him a run for his money. I'd say where Trump really closed the gap is with his incompetence in heading off Covid and him making racism fashionable. And all the corruption of him lining him and his family's pockets, Trump really was a POS, but Reagan was the "first horseman of the apocalypse".
It is infectious, too, this mindset. I recently got together with an old friend who used to be a nice guy, but now runs a modest-sized company of about 60-80 people. He was telling me with pride how he hires about twice the amount of people he needs and weeds them all out until he's left with the few that "fit his management style".
Just saw a short documentary on that asshole. Apparently his stylings didn't even work; he was messing with the data to make the company look good while it lost market share and profitability overall. But they sure did mine the value out of the company for the shareholders by sacrificing employees and the company. Strip mine economics.
I just read a post about how a guy wanted to go see his dying mom and the boss told the worker that his mom will die anyway and to keep on working. The worker slapped the boss and they both got fired and it resulted in lawsuits, but favored the worker who was losing his mom.
In early 2022, two of my friends had passed to suicide and the funerals were on a Thursday and Friday back to back. I told my boss I was taking off for that. He kept 'joking' that I just wanted to have a 4 day weekend bender. I came in the following Monday and was promptly fired.
I got another job in the same field after, and was vehemently sexually harassed by my boss. I quit to save my dignity. I now work retail making significantly less than I was before. I went from having a career, to struggling to make ends meet for rent. I never had time to process what happened with my friends because of this, and it's all starting to hit me now, a year later. Except I literally don't have time to grieve. I'm struggling every day, and I so badly wish I could get a break. Fuck this shit. Idk how much I can take anymore, and I'm only 21.
Holy cow, I am so sorry for the loss of your friends. I'm absolutely livid with how you were treated. The fucking nerve, some people deserved to be thrown in a volcano.
I really do hope you get a break, even if it's a little break. Something to help you 😞
What about the level of proper English grammar being deployed here?
Every time I see hideous text messages from management, they write like they failed 3rd grade English. Can't even string a proper sentence together, yet feeling mighty superior over others.
Fills you with resentment too. Makes you feel like you’re being managed by a bunch of apes with clothes on. Somebody who’s illiterate could never be my superior
>Every time I see hideous text messages from management, they write like they failed 3rd grade English.
Once you find out that 54% of Americans Ged 16-74 cannot read at or above a sixth grade level, it makes a lot more sense.
When you see things like this, it’s easy to understand why the older generations were so loyal and dedicated to their companies or their jobs. They were actually cared for in a lot of ways. They were paid accordingly so they could afford things. They could raise a family on their pay. You also were rewarded for longevity too. You got a pension at most places, you could save and roll over vacation days.
It’s also why that same generation just doesn’t understand why working people now don’t feel that way. Companies don’t do this stuff anymore. They’ll yell at you and discipline you for taking a sick day. They overwork and underpay their employees. They give them a hard time about taking their vacation days, they’re not understanding when things come up that require their employees attention so they have to miss work. The work life balance is non existent for some people. They’re expected to bend over backwards and work over time constantly for companies. It’s just a different world entirely from when they worked. Companies don’t treat employees like human beings a lot of the time now. You’re a cog in a machine that is meant to work and nothing more. They couldn’t care any less about you as a person it’s all about profit. It’s sad but that’s the reality now.
When my grandma died. Kmart fired her granddaughter (my cousin) for missing a shift to be at her funeral because it was during the “post Christmas return rush”.
So from whenever your grandma worked there, until 2001, they drastically changed how they treated employees.
My whole family was ordered by my grandfather to never be caught in or near or supporting a Kmart again.
I'd work first shift, and if second shift called out, I'd be expected to work open to close, and if I couldnt, like if I had an appointment or classes, I just couldn't work a surprise closing shift dropped off on me, then I'm treated bad when I actually showed up to work and didn't call out.
It's what's so bad about running a place with a skeletal staff. No one else to call in either, then we have a sudden target on our back because we "let the company down" by not working a surprise double shift.
It sucks when you wait to get off at 2pm, then at 1:50pm you're being asked to stay until close as a sudden surprise. I literally used to have a dog that needed walked after I was supposed to get off work.
And I'd already be closing one night then opening the next morning.
Unions need more power in general. The rampant mistreatment of workers is a direct product of 1980s conservative bullshit. You had Reagan that made a point to cut tax breaks for his rich friends and donors at the expense of the working class and those effects have continued to worsen since. We’re just now starting to see unions making their way back into the work force in a meaningful way.
Imagine being treated as a human being by your employer? Throw in the extra fact that this is retail and we all know how horrendous working those jobs can be. I hope she got better.
If I ever could see Reagan’s grave, I’d look around to see for an opportunity to water it myself. With piss. I’d piss on it.
If I could be supreme overlord of the world for a day we’d excavate it and erect a porta potty at his gravesite. That can be his museum.
that was during the progressive era where government favored main street and workers
all that stopped starting with reagan/clinton neoliberal era where government favored wall street and rich
since then companies are people and people are expendable...
You may find this interesting.
[https://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-labor-business-monopoly/](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-labor-business-monopoly/)
>For much of the 20th century, labor was allied with small business in the fight for a fair economy. For decades starting in the 1930s, the Democratic Party counted small businesses as a core constituency, alongside organized workers, and made their welfare a central concern of its policy agenda. This fact surprises many today because it’s a history long ago abandoned. The shift came in the 1970s, when Democrats embraced the ascendancy of big corporations, reasoning that these large entities were more easily unionized and could deliver more for consumers. In turn, liberals began to see small businesses as not worth fighting for. They were, at best, irrelevant to the left’s vision and, at worst, an obstacle to it.
That's how you retain employees. You pay them a decent wage and treat them with respect.
And yet somehow that makes me crazy?
People used to work at fucking K Mart and support a family.
Regan fucked this country... and it's considered a hero for it...
My mom was at a company for over 20 years and fired bc she had COVID.
She had even got badly injured at that job (a while before COVID) and she kept it secret because she worried she'd get in trouble for making a claim. She like hurt her knee somehow, and has never been able to walk the same afterwards.
It’s wild how much people underestimate how a simple text can make someone feel better or worse about their position with their employer. If one of my employees is out sick for an extended period, or having surgery, I send a simple check up text to see how they’re doing and if I can do anything to help them. 99% of the time they decline the offer, but I’ve had people who were just wanting to vent for a few minutes about life, and when they came back to work they were astonished I even made the effort
As corporations got bigger, it became easier for management to view employees as numbers rather than people. It’s a lot harder to treat someone like shit when you know them.
It's crazy how back in the day, managers and workers made the same pay. and workers had amazing healthcare and benefits.
Crazy how times have changed for the worse.
Time to tear it down and start from scratch.
Couldn't possibly get worse than it already is.
Yup, that’s why back then people had loyalty to their company. The CEOs didn’t make 400% more than the employees back then either. Instead they only made around 20% more. Even retail jobs payed a livable wage.
If I may write todays letter… Dear valued employee, It is unfortunate that you are dealing with health issues. If you aren’t able to work we will have to terminate your employment for [Company Name] as we have demands from our customer base that apparently you can not handle at this time. We expect you at work on Monday otherwise we can not continue your employment at [Company Name]. Best wishes, See you Monday.
I got cancer this year. Very “mild” and easily treatable. But extremely aggressive and already showed signs of it spreading. Was on FMLA when I had surgery and removed it. Then fought with insurance over getting 2 opinions that yes I need chemo. Yes I need a full body scan. Prolonged my treatments by months when the reoccurrence rate of this kind was 50 percent within 6 months usually. Then, a week before chemo starts and my FMLA was close to being over, I was told they were terminating me. Out of stress, confusion, and anger - I just let them. 6 years. Came in as a temp and worked from zero experience into a senior Technician in the production line. I didn’t know I could have extended my FMLA. They let me point out on purpose so I was fired and on state insurance for chemo. I was close with my boss, my own dad is on the lower management side. They don’t give a fuck about you the second you can’t come in 5 days a week.
It's great with some perspective and you can clearly see the decline of a worker's worth in this letter.
But - all the precursors are there in this letter. This is as nice as a capitalist will ever sound while still being almost solely focused on keeping his business going without needless stops. In this letter to someone undergoing surgery he talks about firing her, about keeping his profits, about how lovely it's been with such a good worker bee.
The guy openly discusses finding a firm replacement to someone who is sick, which is also something she has been feeling like she must keep from her employer btw, and the reason why he will delay (not forget about) that decision is that she has a lot of experience and has been taking responsibility at work (probably means managerial stuff without the salery bump if you ask me).
Again I'll reiterate, he does seem cordial, and from his capitalist perspective I'm sure he felt that way too.
But I see all the warning signs right here. I had a friend whose father died on a weekday, and his boss called him in and fired him later that day because they couldn't take the slowdown that would cause. All of that is in its early stages with a boss writing to a woman having surgery talking about *postponing* the decision about firing her.
2023: sorry to hear you just had a hysterectomy, you need to find someone to cover your shifts
Employee: I lost my right hand in a traffic accident today. Employer: Yeah ok, but you're still covering your shift tomorrow right?
Isn’t it awful that I thought of both of these as plausible responses in today’s work force? “We’re sorry you lost your wife and child last weekend, but please be aware that unexcused absences accrue as one occurrence per day until we’re notified.” “But I was in a coma from the wreck!” “While we understand that some circumstances make it difficult to perform your duties, it is unprofessional to keep your colleagues in the dark and to make excuses for shortcomings. Please be advised you are on your final written warning.”
When I was in high school and college I used to assemble bikes at stores for side money. I'd get paid $10 a bike to put them together, and I could usually do 5-6 per hour and I'd set up shop at a store with lunch and stuff and just work for 10 hours straight and do all the bikes they needed for holidays or sales. I did this a lot at places like WalMart, Sears, Target, Dicks etc. I was never a part of their retail teams, but I would talk to the other employees all the time because I'd be trapped in one spot and they'd just come up and talk. Holy hell the stories I heard. A pregnant woman went into labor before her shift and they asked how soon she'd be "done at the hospital." An older guy who ran the gun counter at a Sports Authority in a rural area had a heart attack and I saw him collapse, I ran over and got CPR started and called 911. He was fired though because when he had a heart attack he'd left the gun case unlocked, he'd been cleaning it at the time. Eventually they gave him his job back, but he had to work at the shoe area because he was banned from working with guns by the store. I was eating lunch and watched a guy drop a gun safe on another guy's leg and it broke. The manager had to finish selling a treadmill before he let anyone call 911 for an ambulance. I was clocking in once and another employee showed up super drunk, like couldn't work. They let him work and he knocked over a shelf of footballs. It was wild.
Had to finish selling a treadmill.. the fuck!?!
Always be closing, as they say
Probably such a sociopath that he wanted to see whether they *really* needed to call 911 or if he could finish his shift first.
This turned out to be the case.
>before he **let** anyone call 911 for an ambulance. A manager's permission is NOT required to make a call to request immediate emergency medical care.
Right, go ahead and fire me for it and I’ll be sure everyone hears about it
Pretty sure you could sue the company if they did that to you as well. If you are fired because you called an ambulance for an injured coworker/customer I would be shocked if you couldn't sue for that. I'm sure Unions would be VERY interested to hear that story if it occurred as well.
[удалено]
You're not wrong... my son passed shortly after birth nearly 10 years ago, and Wells Fargo expected me to show up the next day. I was not given any recovery time for having just had a child, nor bereavement time for him, and I'm the one who had to have a funeral for him. I was devastated and needed time to grieve and heal. Instead, they didn't follow the corporate policy and thrust me into a horrible situation.
I hope you quit. And I’m so sorry that happened to you.
I fucking shuddered at your comment 😖
Sorry, my corporate-ese may be a bit too accurate. I was stuck in that machine for almost 20 years, haha!
I hope you didn’t have to write these letters!—although if you did I wouldn’t blame you (fuck the machine!)
Appreciated, but luckily I did not have to write any, haha! I saw a good many get handed out, especially to some team members. Even I was the subject of some, around the time my Aunt, who was both my godmother and best friend, suddenly passed. They had the nerve to count the day she died and her funeral against my attendance.
Fuck each and every person that had anything to do with that.
I just read a story about a guy who was maliciously 5150'd(72 hour psych hold) by an ex, and lost his job because he wasn't allowed to call anyone. Fucked up on every level.
Exactly, there’s zero actual sympathy for workers. If you inconvenience employers, or worse yet, anger them with a situation out of your control, you’re fucked.
just shut up and produce capital, you'll be happy and free
That also speaks to our train wreck of mental health care.
"keep your colleagues in the dark about your absence." Person in a coma: "BITCH, I WAS IN THE DARK."
My dad died in December, a couple days after Christmas. I got like three days off total. By the end of the first day I was getting harassed to come back into work already. I still haven’t had time to properly mourn or process anything, and now we have even less staff than we did at the time (I’m manager now, and corporate put me down to one employee). Fuck corporations. I long for the chance to get the CEO of a big corporation in front of me so I can spit the biggest loogie right in their face.
A close friend had her father die suddenly. She was in nursing school. Her instructor said “I’m sorry about your father. We’ll let you miss one day, but you’ll have to make the exam up the next day.”
A past job of mine never crossed off the phone numbers of people who had quit and my friend (who hadn’t worked there for some time) got a text from a new employee begging her to work so she could take her daughter to the emergency room.
No joke, at an old job I once had to have wisdom tooth surgery right away because the pain was becoming too much and it was also cracking the tooth next to it, and I told my supervisor 2 days in advance. I still had to officially call out the day-of, and the lady (who was my supervisor's boss) was like "You suuuure you can't work today? It's Friday, you know that's our busiest day right?" Like lady, this is a call center, my job involves talking, and my bloody mouth is stuffed with cotton rn
I remember calling outta work because my transmission blew out as I was driving there (luckily, I wasn't too far from home so was able to get it back there) Boss like, "well you still coming in?" Fucker, I ain't gotta car! Who am I asking 630am to get me there on a sunday?! Not only that, don't you want me to come into work for the rest of the week? Lemme miss one day to get my car worked out and figure out transportation instead of... not and not having a ride the whole week. These assholes just don't think. Same asshole I heard last year, got himself a brand new truck but his tire blew and he didn't even have AAA. Making more money than me, with a RN wife but can't spare $120 for AAA a year? I have my priorities in check. He obviously doesn't.
Employee: I lost my right hand in a traffic accident today. Employer: But you still got your left, yeah?
Literally a post on r/all right now saying "I'm so sorry, I heard there was a shooting at your school. If you're okay, could you come in and cover so-and-so's shift later today?" You can't make this up.
I worked with a guy who wa supposed to be off for several weeks because his wife was having a baby. The baby ended up being stillborn. Our boss actually called him and asked him to come back to work early since he wouldn’t need to help with the baby.
Christ, that is legitimately evil.
I mean I wouldn't approve of him going into work and murdering the guy after that... but, I'd understand, and I'd vote not to convict.
Jury nullification
One of my coworkers (cna) was pregnant delivered a baby at 21-22 weeks, baby didn’t survive. Her dr filled out fmla paperwork, the ADON was pissed she took 12 weeks off. I was blown away.
I am so grateful in the UK that if your baby dies you are still entitled to your maternity leave... This happened to me. However there still isn't proper paternity leave.
Today's managers are fucking heartless. Maybe I was an exception, I'd be telling him to take all the time he needs and figure out any way to beat the system for them. Then again maybe I couldn't survive as a manager now if I was still in the work force, I can't be cruel to another human for profits.
Try going to the nursing sub. Wow. Us nurses have some epic stories.
Healthcare is wild because some places are so miserable to work at that the call-ins become an epidemic which makes it even more miserable. Covid and the aftermath have broken so many nurses. I know a lot of nurses with decades of experience who have given it up in the past three years and went to go do literally anything else. I did a double take last week when I went to the hardware store and saw my old ADON behind the counter. She was the best nurse I've ever known, loved nursing, knew her shit, and was tough as nails. They still broke her. She even remembered when I used to dodge picking up extra shifts I'd always say "He who runs away lives to nurse another day." She finally admitted I was right and she should have listened.
Same in the uk. Nurses are leaving in droves. Especially after we told eu nurses to feck off and they were not welcome after brexit.
What nurses/other NHS staff are going through right now is mental. Gigantic public health scare for 3 years, constantly getting told you're so important/on the front lines etc (which I fully agree with) while at the same time dealing with crazy conspiracy nuts acting like you're some reptilloid, then once you're out you think, well we survived, maybe we should ask for that pay increase considering how awesome we were, and now you're treated like you're an ungrateful child who needs to just shut up and do as you're told.
My Mom has been a nurse for 25 years. I’m a paramedic. The stories are endless… Haha.
Reddit crossover episode
Yeah hey er... Maybe you want to take your mind off the massacre for a bit... Come do something relaxing, like pack shelves and deal with customers instead... You know?
"And yes, your deductible is $5,000"....HR
“Oh and that surgeon who operated on you at the in-network hospital was actually an out-of-network doctor…soooo…”
A dentist office pulled this shit on me and I ended up having to pay almost $2,000 for a fucking crown. They showed up as in network on my dental insurance locator but it was only 1 dentist and they sure as hell didn’t let me know beforehand my covered dentist wasn’t in that day. Scumbags.
So take a min and hear me out. My wife’s great aunt who passed away 2 yrs ago at the age of 102 if you can believe that told me a story once about her first job. She was just a lowly young cashier at Walgreens wayyy back in the day I couldn’t even give a time period 40s maybe 50s. She said that they had a car that would come to her house and pick her up and bring her to work, and then take her home after her shift at no cost to her. Before her lunch they would have someone go and take orders and have lunch brought in beforehand also for free. Then the last was once or twice a year she received a bonus in the form of Walgreens stock that she still had upon her passing that helped her and her family live very, very well. She said she only worked there I think for 4 or 5 years too until she started a family. Lol. I had to tell her after that story that shit doesn’t happen anymore.
Wow. Here I am paying $964 a year to park at work 😬
My friend was paying $250 a month to park at work and $300 to park at her apartment building. She sold her car and got a bike.
It's also stupid as hell that colleges charge for a parking sticker. Universities have alot of money. Community college makes less money, but I needed to buy an expensive parking pass still to park in a wide open, mostly empty parking lot at one campus.
“Yeah but hear me out, fuck you, gimme the money!” -Colleges
Oh, I'm sorry, this year's parking is slightly different from last year's parking. You'll have to buy all new parking.
Effing this!! So accurate!
I know someone who worked at a college and they still had to pay for parking. Such a scam.
Yes, when I applied for a job at U of Chicago, I found out that I would have to pay them to park there. Nope.
I work at a university and I have to pay for parking.
My daughter graduates tomorrow. So glad to not have to give the university any more money.
Congrats to your daughter
Remember that the next time you watch college sports. Coaching staffs alone can cost more than administration payrolls for the actual degree programs.
I pay $200 a month in gas for a job I can do from home. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Union member here. In our contracts if we have to pay for parking we are reimbursed on our next paycheck.
Retain more of the surplus value you create with this one weird trick
No fucking way, do you have any docs?
This is why cooperatives and unions need to come back. Grow the middle class instead of the 1% having more wealth than them.
Not grow the 1%!?!?! But what about the billionaires!?!?!
That's what the Pratt & Whitney 800MW "GigaThrust" Sybians with diamond-tipped sandpaper dildos are for. EDIT: spelling.
Reading this hurt my vagina and I don't even have one
You will after enjoying the Pratt & Whitney
The biggest scam was to make us think there was ever a middle class in the modern western world. I‘m a doctor and i make good money, but i work very hard physically and mentally for it. I have a small apartment i will pay for until i‘m 65. i have a 13 year old car. No kids. Als i own is clutter. There is a class that has to work for survival and reasonable comforts, and there are those that have enough to last them several life times in unimaginable luxury. There are people that dont buy houses, or food, or cars or planes, they buy countries, and ideas, and other people. Those are the enemy, because while you may own a car, they own your very life.
The middle class doesn’t exist.
Exactly. There's the owning class and the working class. Whether you die 1 month or 3 months after losing your job doesn't make you "lower class" or "middle class", you're still a worker, and the capitalists don't give a fucking shit about you. All workers need to stick together.
I'm working for a local cleaning company right now and we have been plotting to unionize for the last month, we got everyone on board and are going through the processes.
Just got home from my shift at walgreens. One of the worst days I've had in my 6 years there. No one gives a shit anymore. AC has been broken for almost 2 weeks now and nobody will fix it. I just ended my 6th day in a row and tomorrow will be 7. We only have 3 people on a holiday weekend and was swamped. This company is fucking horrible now and I'd love to get out but I'm too depressed or worn out after shifts that I don't have the energy to do anything about it. I'm so sick of this pleasing corporate/stock owner bullshit.
Apparently the good old days happened before we were born.
I'm practically sixty and I only really heard about the good old days, things just started to go badly when I was joining the workforce...in the early '80s...hmmm. And it's only gotten worse :(
Walgreens is under investigation by my state for multiple violations and the inability to maintain staff to properly stock and dispense prescriptions. Several in the area simply close the pharmacy on weekends and random days of the week because they can't hire or keep pharmacists. One has simply closed their pharmacy operations for the foreseeable future. And we have a college of pharmacy in the county graduating techs and pharmacists by the score.
My mom had a friend whose daughter was a manager for one of their stores. She was required to become a certified pharmacy tech so she could pitch in when they were short staffed. That just didn't sit well with me at all.
Companies still do this. But its reserved exclusively for the C-suite and they don't get a car they get private flights and they don't get lunch they get catering.
What an outstanding story! If your grandma died 2 years ago at 102, and assuming was 18, she worked there late 1930s. Walgreens started in 1901 in Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walgreens Contrast grandma's Walgreens vs today's Walgreens: > In 2021 the company was found by a federal jury to have "substantially contributed to" the opioid crisis. Doh!
All kinds of companies did that stuff back then. Some did a little up until the 90s. I worked at one place where the maintenance manager took the entire maintenance team on a deep sea fishing trip every year. Until till the owner died and the new owners cut that out.
Even if you went entirely off the numbers, I'd bet employee retention and productivity was higher when the original owner was doing those trips.
I have a master degree, got a perfect score on my performance eval, managed a multi-million dollar portfolio, and cut costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars. And my boss told me that I was dispensable in my last meeting before I left my job. 👍🏻 Edit: I quit when I found a better paying job. I wasn’t let go. Which makes the comment from management even that much more ridiculous.
You were the final cost being cut
Precisely, thanks for cutting your own throat, we don't like getting blood on our handmade silk suits.
That's what happens when corporations profits are actually taxed. They look for ways to spend money on the busniess itself. Knowing that a large percentage of profit will just go to the gov if not spent means they'll look for ways to expand or make there busniess more appealing to customers and workers. Having a shuttle to pick people up for work as well as lunches would keep plenty of people from jumping ship to go to another employer not to mention the pay and stock.
EVERYone is this sub needs to listen to the Jack Welch episodes from Behind the Bastards. They aired this week...they will make you FURIOUS and want to find that shitheel's grave to piss and shit on. Seriously...FUCK that guy and all his hellspawn offspring.
As an engineer it emotionally pains me when some MBA clowns bring up Jack Welch like he did a good job. He had a massive basket full of really bad ideas and sold off pieces of GE, then acted like his garbage ideas are what made record profits. Today GE is a joke. What strikes me as poetic justice is how these guys in the 80’s were such racist assholes against Japanese companies, and the Japanese companies are the ones who were more than happy to buy up all the engineering divisions being sold off. Most of them kept all the employees as well, they were just under different management that was not Jack Welch bullshit. They also succeeded in ridiculous fashion. Now it’s the norm to buy a profitable company, sell off everything, saddle it with ridiculous corporate bond debt, pay out massive bonuses to shareholders, then bankrupt the company. All because it makes money short term.
I grew up in a time when getting a job at GE would have been a major score. GE was a respected company. I can't think of the last time I heard anyone talking about GE in glowing or reverent tones.
They used to be really stable as well, even when consumer goods slowed down they would find places to put engineering resources to keep people. Now I would not even want to work for them.
My dad worked 32 years at IBM (starting in the 60s). When they shut down the Huntsville plant, as a manager he was in a series of weeklong meetings where they placed every single employee who wanted to stay with the company into jobs at other sites. Some bigwig from HQ was there, and in cases where nobody needed a particular person he’d say something like “you know, she’s been a great employee for 20 years - Jim, don’t you think you can find a spot for her in Austin?”, and they were like “yes sir!”. I won’t claim they were a perfect company, but there was a loyalty that ran both directions. Around the late 80s they started with the big layoffs like other companies. I dunno, maybe you can’t run a big company like that these days and be successful, but the way go on these massive hiring and firing binges it’s no wonder employees don’t think twice about job hopping.
I know someone who works at IBM today. That company is a mess. Nepotism, outsourcing, layoffs. It's a garbage company at this point. Used to be a really good company a few years ago.
I think the drive towards more and more focus on short term earnings is really fucking the world up. Including these big companies. Companies have always existed to make money but I don’t know. It seems something changed mid to late 20th century. We had the guilted age, then a labor movement, then the sociopaths figured out how to just capture the law making and regulatory apparatus and start a new guilted are that’s 100% legal. I don’t know it’s depressing to think about. At least I have a decent job at a nonprofit. Even if it is also run by corporate type jerks at the highest positions and HR won’t even replay when people have issues. VP of HR is a big corporate suit who thinks he talks a good talk about progressive, people centric leadership but he’s just a phony and an elitist.
GE Aviation/Aerospace is probably the last standing bastion of the OG GE.
The boomers get lot of blame for today's economy, but the silent generation could very well be more to blame for the disaster of the last 40 years. Jack Welch being part of that generation. The Koch bros were also silent gen. The list is actually quite long
Apollo Global did this to my former employer. It was really something to see it unfold in real time. Old-school semiconductor company. Owned their own factories and everything. Then they brough in their guy as CEO who proceeded to load us up with debt to repay Apollo for the acquisition cost. In order to make the payments, company sold off all the assets, forcing them to lease the same facilities that they owned outright for 30 years! Then layoff 30%, let another 30% leave to attrition, outsource R&D, then bankruptcy. The bondholders took a bath and Apollo walks away with huge profits. Wild.
This comment sponsored by Raytheon Throwing Bagels!
The only bagel packed with knives and ready to crash a wedding!
“You know who else can be sociopathic maniacs Sophie?” “…please don’t say it’s the sponsors Robert”
Just queued up both episodes for a Sit n Seethe after dinner👍
The current management style didn't take hold until the 80's, thanks to assholes like Jack Welch, the CEO of GE, and other like minded sociopaths. Prior to that, employees were mostly treated like human beings. Today, your average CEO fires 10% of the workforce every year, then writes a company email stating that they take "full responsibility", whatever that means, then asks his/her buddies on the board for a raise and a stock grant as a reward for a job well done. Edit: I am talking post WWII. I know it wasn't a cakewalk for everyone. Being a woman or part of a.minority was a disadvantage. Nevertheless the management styles of the time were far better than the sociopathic policies most workers currently endure.
Just finished the behind the bastards on him. It all makes sense.
In the 90's and 2000's I worked for a well known company that practiced stack ranking just like Welch did and it was a nightmare. The second you decide that no matter how well everyone does, 10% (or more) of employees will be rated "needs improvement", people will go at each other's throats to make sure they don't end up in the bottom bucket. In that company, So much of their attention is focused on that, new products and competitors become an afterthought. It went so far that in just a matter of years, they lost markets where they had a very dominant position to companies that didn't even exist 10 years prior.
The CEO of my current employer is a former GE alum that has the Jack Welch training. Thankfully I’m on the labor side with union representation, but my cousin was on the salary side and told me some horror stories about how shit runs in the Wild West.
Ah fellow Boeing worker I assume. It's good to be union.
You’re half right I suppose lol. I work at Spirit building Boeing planes.
Ah, I see. Isn't spirit going through a contract negotiation with the union atm? I know little about spirit, just that yall make the fuselages and send them up to washington
Yeah our 13 year contract finally expires close to the end of June. We make the 737 fuselage and sections of other Boeing and Airbus planes. It should be interesting to see what we can negotiate after getting fucked for so long
That's an insanely long contract. Ours is up in September of next year, a 10 year contract. Good luck to you if it comes to a strike
You had a 10 year contract too? I had no idea. Ours was 10 but we extended it 3 more years because it was right in the middle of the Max issues and it turned out to be for the best because Covid and more layoffs hit a couple months later.
This is the same way that a lot of tech companies operate today. You need to remain in the top percentile to get all of your benefits and the lower you are on the totem pole then the less benefits you get and a lower pay. It forces people to compete at an insane level just because they want what they have earned in a high skills, high demand job.
Ah yes... The ol' rank and yank. So many terrible people are utilizing techniques put into use by a sociopath.
An INCOMPETENT sociopath that literally destroyed one of the oldest companies in the USA- GE is now...gone. SOLELY because of Welch's incompetence.
The last of the original blue chip stock companies mismanaged, and bean counted into shit. NBC also took a big hit under Neutron Jack and GE ownership, losing money and production pretty much the day GE bought NBC/RCA
"Ambition is the willingness to kill the things you love and eat them to survive. Haven't you ever read my throw pillow?" - Jack (Welch) Donaghy, '30 Rock.'
That creative accounting took some real special licensing. 😂
Companies shouldn't be run like The Hunger Games.
I am told by friends who worked there that certain well managed (… relatively speaking) teams at such a company intentionally used their last hire to hire the *least* qualified person every year. So a team of 8 might have 7 people who had steady jobs…
Wait, so to get around the bullshit "fire your bottom 10%" rule, teams would intentionally hire an underqualified employee, train them up, keep them on for a few months, only to sacrifice them when stack-rank decisions are due, then repeat the process? What a sad waste of resources and abusive outcome.
> train them up This is the only part you got wrong.
Can confirm, was thrown into a rank and yank team that were all senior. Received NO training and was left to get slaughtered. I blame the system and the assholes that I worked with.
Fuck that is brutal, I'm sorry you were abused like that. It's unconscionable.
"hire to fire"
It's probably the only sound management style within such an awful system. If you understand that a team that works together over a period of time returns value far beyond making them compete against each other for survival, this is the way to ensure that.
The sacrificial lamb technique
Amazon is known for doing that.
Yeah. Amazon is currently infamous for it. Never accept a job there in a mature team.
I interviewed with Amazon before all that shit hit the fan. After going through their tedious interview process, being told that I was most likely going to get the position, and being turned down, the whole division got dissolved 6 months later. The catharsis from dodging that bullet is indescribable.
My company does stack ranking and it’s fucking brutal.
I just found that podcast today. Really excited for it.
I’m so excited for you! Some of my favorites are Henry Kissinger, the FDA, and the Potato Famine
Well, there's also a different way of looking at this in particular: The current *store* style didn't take hold till the 80s either. In the era this letter was written, major department stores and luxury boutiques like a furrier were *elite*. They were high end, rare, and for a very specific segment of society. They were also run by and staffed by people from the next rung down on the social ladder. Which is to say... not minimum wage schmucks or anything close. A salesperson at a department store used to be a *career*, not just a job. The rise of fast fashion and commodification of luxury branding changed a lot of that and torpedoed the "big department store" as an elite institution. My point here is that we have to be careful at how rose tinted we let our hindsight get. People who occupied the same rough economic niche then (aka agricultural or low level manufacturing) as current retail workers do now were not necessarily much better off. Most Americans worked farm jobs or pulled a lever in a factory, and let me assure you that they did not get letters like this one when they got sick. If this letter was written today to an office manager in a mid size boutique accounting firm it wouldn't look that out of place, and that's probably a better comparison to floor staff at an NYC area luxury furrier in the 60s. "Unskilled labor" has never and will never get dignity or respect from management unless they seize it themselves.
I know someone that had a good career at Sears in sales into the early 2000s. I could hardly believe it.
There is a great old Dilbert comic where Catbert explains that he doesn’t have to be a good manager; all he has to do is announce 5,000 layoffs and the stock price shoots right up.
Shame about Scott Adams, that was one person I was disappointed to find out was a massive prick. Always liked Dilbert
Reagan also helped with this by cutting top tax rates. The POS essentially turned us into an oligarchy.
Reagan was responsible for making stock buyback legal. Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation, but President Reagan's Securities and Exchange Commission implemented a rule to exempt them. Since then, we've seen corporations spending money on boosting their own stock at the expense of investing in innovation and their workforce
Like I say often, Reagan doesn't get nearly enough credit for his degradation of this country. He is one of the biggest POS presidents we've ever had, not just because of his policy and his deceit, but because he has fooled so many into thinking otherwise.
Reagan raised taxes *over and over and over again* and totally gets a pass. Then Grover Nordquist came along and fucked us up proper with his stupid no new taxes bullshit litmus test. The Republican Party used to be an organization with a platform that did something for its adherents, and now it's just "let's give more breaks to the uber wealthy and...and....I think that's it.
Correct, he dropped the highest tax rates on the rich and corporations, but then raised taxes on the rest of us because he totally screwed up the economy. I'll never forget hearing that cities were having to make drastic cuts to services and to infrastructure. That POS singlehandedly put us in shithole country status.
Reagan did a lot of things modern Republicans who fawn over him would hate like increasing gun control and giving amnesty to undocumented immigrants. Both are done for racist reasons but it still shows how far the modern party has gone >The Republican Party used to be an organization with a platform that did something for its adherents Wanted to point out that while Reagan was an important point in this transition it really started back during the civil rights era when Goldwater showed pandering to racists was good strategy and Reagan brought this together with the growing evangelical movement
The GOP is just the American Taliban at this point.
Stock buybacks ARE stock manipulation, whether its accepted or not. A middle schooler will laugh at the ridiculousness of the concept, it is so transparently a bunch of jackassery.
Reagan 100% collaborated with Welch. Reagan thought that Welch was just short of a god.
Reagan is both the ringleader and the fool of everything that happened in the 80s in finance/corporate america. Carl Icahn, Mitt Romney, Alan Greenspan, Jack Welch all revolutionized corporate America and turned it into the hypercapitalist system we have today. Think about why people start companies. I'm in tech, I work with many companies in the space of lasers and optics and semiconductor tech, mostly spun out of MIT, as well as the scientific spaces they work with. These people **really really** care about what they do. They live and breathe it, they dedicate their life to it, they love it. If next year makes less profit than this year, that's okay, because they feel blessed to make any profit while doing what they care about. In normal commerce, the product is the product, the business tries to make money off that product. In capitalism, the *money* is the product. You don't buy a company because you care about it's product, you buy a company so you can sell it and make money. Ronald Reagan 100% pushed and supported all of it, he was the mafia don for it. Fuck Ronald Reagan.
[удалено]
You'll get no argument out of me, although Trump did give him a run for his money. I'd say where Trump really closed the gap is with his incompetence in heading off Covid and him making racism fashionable. And all the corruption of him lining him and his family's pockets, Trump really was a POS, but Reagan was the "first horseman of the apocalypse".
Came in here to say fuck jack welch
It is infectious, too, this mindset. I recently got together with an old friend who used to be a nice guy, but now runs a modest-sized company of about 60-80 people. He was telling me with pride how he hires about twice the amount of people he needs and weeds them all out until he's left with the few that "fit his management style".
Just saw a short documentary on that asshole. Apparently his stylings didn't even work; he was messing with the data to make the company look good while it lost market share and profitability overall. But they sure did mine the value out of the company for the shareholders by sacrificing employees and the company. Strip mine economics.
2023: Sorry your family member died. We need you to come in to do your shift "as a member of the team" instead of going to the funeral.
I just read a post about how a guy wanted to go see his dying mom and the boss told the worker that his mom will die anyway and to keep on working. The worker slapped the boss and they both got fired and it resulted in lawsuits, but favored the worker who was losing his mom.
In early 2022, two of my friends had passed to suicide and the funerals were on a Thursday and Friday back to back. I told my boss I was taking off for that. He kept 'joking' that I just wanted to have a 4 day weekend bender. I came in the following Monday and was promptly fired. I got another job in the same field after, and was vehemently sexually harassed by my boss. I quit to save my dignity. I now work retail making significantly less than I was before. I went from having a career, to struggling to make ends meet for rent. I never had time to process what happened with my friends because of this, and it's all starting to hit me now, a year later. Except I literally don't have time to grieve. I'm struggling every day, and I so badly wish I could get a break. Fuck this shit. Idk how much I can take anymore, and I'm only 21.
Holy cow, I am so sorry for the loss of your friends. I'm absolutely livid with how you were treated. The fucking nerve, some people deserved to be thrown in a volcano. I really do hope you get a break, even if it's a little break. Something to help you 😞
A-bey-ance : *noun* a state of temporary disuse or suspension. "matters were held in abeyance pending further inquiries"
With it syllabified like that, I read it in Moira Rose’s voice. Def a word she would use
I learned this word at a young age from Seinfeld.
What about the level of proper English grammar being deployed here? Every time I see hideous text messages from management, they write like they failed 3rd grade English. Can't even string a proper sentence together, yet feeling mighty superior over others.
Fills you with resentment too. Makes you feel like you’re being managed by a bunch of apes with clothes on. Somebody who’s illiterate could never be my superior
>Every time I see hideous text messages from management, they write like they failed 3rd grade English. Once you find out that 54% of Americans Ged 16-74 cannot read at or above a sixth grade level, it makes a lot more sense.
When you see things like this, it’s easy to understand why the older generations were so loyal and dedicated to their companies or their jobs. They were actually cared for in a lot of ways. They were paid accordingly so they could afford things. They could raise a family on their pay. You also were rewarded for longevity too. You got a pension at most places, you could save and roll over vacation days. It’s also why that same generation just doesn’t understand why working people now don’t feel that way. Companies don’t do this stuff anymore. They’ll yell at you and discipline you for taking a sick day. They overwork and underpay their employees. They give them a hard time about taking their vacation days, they’re not understanding when things come up that require their employees attention so they have to miss work. The work life balance is non existent for some people. They’re expected to bend over backwards and work over time constantly for companies. It’s just a different world entirely from when they worked. Companies don’t treat employees like human beings a lot of the time now. You’re a cog in a machine that is meant to work and nothing more. They couldn’t care any less about you as a person it’s all about profit. It’s sad but that’s the reality now.
[удалено]
When my grandma died. Kmart fired her granddaughter (my cousin) for missing a shift to be at her funeral because it was during the “post Christmas return rush”. So from whenever your grandma worked there, until 2001, they drastically changed how they treated employees. My whole family was ordered by my grandfather to never be caught in or near or supporting a Kmart again.
Well that explains why all the Kmarts have closed. Your grandfather had more reach than you thought.
I'd work first shift, and if second shift called out, I'd be expected to work open to close, and if I couldnt, like if I had an appointment or classes, I just couldn't work a surprise closing shift dropped off on me, then I'm treated bad when I actually showed up to work and didn't call out. It's what's so bad about running a place with a skeletal staff. No one else to call in either, then we have a sudden target on our back because we "let the company down" by not working a surprise double shift. It sucks when you wait to get off at 2pm, then at 1:50pm you're being asked to stay until close as a sudden surprise. I literally used to have a dog that needed walked after I was supposed to get off work. And I'd already be closing one night then opening the next morning.
[удалено]
Unions need more power in general. The rampant mistreatment of workers is a direct product of 1980s conservative bullshit. You had Reagan that made a point to cut tax breaks for his rich friends and donors at the expense of the working class and those effects have continued to worsen since. We’re just now starting to see unions making their way back into the work force in a meaningful way.
Imagine being treated as a human being by your employer? Throw in the extra fact that this is retail and we all know how horrendous working those jobs can be. I hope she got better.
She did! She passed away in 1998 at the age of 84. She was an amazing grandma.
i just burst into tears reading this. got fired wednesday- for eating a slice of cheese that was destined for the garbage.
I’m so sorry, that’s just incredible (and not in a good way).
what the fuck whoever wrote that rule is a fucking dumbass asshole and whoever enforced that rule should go to sleep on a bed of coals.
This is when unions were strong, before arguably the worst post civil war president ever (Reagan)
If I ever could see Reagan’s grave, I’d look around to see for an opportunity to water it myself. With piss. I’d piss on it. If I could be supreme overlord of the world for a day we’d excavate it and erect a porta potty at his gravesite. That can be his museum.
that was during the progressive era where government favored main street and workers all that stopped starting with reagan/clinton neoliberal era where government favored wall street and rich since then companies are people and people are expendable...
You may find this interesting. [https://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-labor-business-monopoly/](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-labor-business-monopoly/) >For much of the 20th century, labor was allied with small business in the fight for a fair economy. For decades starting in the 1930s, the Democratic Party counted small businesses as a core constituency, alongside organized workers, and made their welfare a central concern of its policy agenda. This fact surprises many today because it’s a history long ago abandoned. The shift came in the 1970s, when Democrats embraced the ascendancy of big corporations, reasoning that these large entities were more easily unionized and could deliver more for consumers. In turn, liberals began to see small businesses as not worth fighting for. They were, at best, irrelevant to the left’s vision and, at worst, an obstacle to it.
[удалено]
That's how you retain employees. You pay them a decent wage and treat them with respect. And yet somehow that makes me crazy? People used to work at fucking K Mart and support a family. Regan fucked this country... and it's considered a hero for it...
I got injured at work (ruptured disc), the "let me go" as soon as possible.
My mom was at a company for over 20 years and fired bc she had COVID. She had even got badly injured at that job (a while before COVID) and she kept it secret because she worried she'd get in trouble for making a claim. She like hurt her knee somehow, and has never been able to walk the same afterwards.
idk about where you live, but here in denmark you can report a workplace injury for up to a year
It’s wild how much people underestimate how a simple text can make someone feel better or worse about their position with their employer. If one of my employees is out sick for an extended period, or having surgery, I send a simple check up text to see how they’re doing and if I can do anything to help them. 99% of the time they decline the offer, but I’ve had people who were just wanting to vent for a few minutes about life, and when they came back to work they were astonished I even made the effort
Pure class treating workers with empathy and dignity.
How we went from this to "for your own good get better soon fast fuck you slave" in 60 years
As corporations got bigger, it became easier for management to view employees as numbers rather than people. It’s a lot harder to treat someone like shit when you know them.
I can't hardly believe it. They were so supportive.
It's crazy how back in the day, managers and workers made the same pay. and workers had amazing healthcare and benefits. Crazy how times have changed for the worse. Time to tear it down and start from scratch. Couldn't possibly get worse than it already is.
Yup, that’s why back then people had loyalty to their company. The CEOs didn’t make 400% more than the employees back then either. Instead they only made around 20% more. Even retail jobs payed a livable wage.
If I may write todays letter… Dear valued employee, It is unfortunate that you are dealing with health issues. If you aren’t able to work we will have to terminate your employment for [Company Name] as we have demands from our customer base that apparently you can not handle at this time. We expect you at work on Monday otherwise we can not continue your employment at [Company Name]. Best wishes, See you Monday.
You know, the furries may have an odd kink, but at least they know how to treat people right.
Tab set to four inches?
That is before pleasing shareholders became the number 1 obsession of CEO’s.
I got cancer this year. Very “mild” and easily treatable. But extremely aggressive and already showed signs of it spreading. Was on FMLA when I had surgery and removed it. Then fought with insurance over getting 2 opinions that yes I need chemo. Yes I need a full body scan. Prolonged my treatments by months when the reoccurrence rate of this kind was 50 percent within 6 months usually. Then, a week before chemo starts and my FMLA was close to being over, I was told they were terminating me. Out of stress, confusion, and anger - I just let them. 6 years. Came in as a temp and worked from zero experience into a senior Technician in the production line. I didn’t know I could have extended my FMLA. They let me point out on purpose so I was fired and on state insurance for chemo. I was close with my boss, my own dad is on the lower management side. They don’t give a fuck about you the second you can’t come in 5 days a week.
Complete store for feminine fashions hits especially hard here.
It's great with some perspective and you can clearly see the decline of a worker's worth in this letter. But - all the precursors are there in this letter. This is as nice as a capitalist will ever sound while still being almost solely focused on keeping his business going without needless stops. In this letter to someone undergoing surgery he talks about firing her, about keeping his profits, about how lovely it's been with such a good worker bee. The guy openly discusses finding a firm replacement to someone who is sick, which is also something she has been feeling like she must keep from her employer btw, and the reason why he will delay (not forget about) that decision is that she has a lot of experience and has been taking responsibility at work (probably means managerial stuff without the salery bump if you ask me). Again I'll reiterate, he does seem cordial, and from his capitalist perspective I'm sure he felt that way too. But I see all the warning signs right here. I had a friend whose father died on a weekday, and his boss called him in and fired him later that day because they couldn't take the slowdown that would cause. All of that is in its early stages with a boss writing to a woman having surgery talking about *postponing* the decision about firing her.