I don't know the context here, so I'll just speak on the broader issues.
Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit out there, that people shouldn't tolerate. There's also a lot of lazy fucks screaming "exploitation" and "capitalism" and demanding free gibs.
Ideally, we should have a fair system where people should and can 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps.' That's not exploitation, that's self improvement.
This is my lolbertarian side talking, but let's just cut out a bunch of the bullshit, and let people make up their own minds. Job sucks? Leave, and find a better one. You're not entitled to shit...but neither are employers.
Make your own job. Every plumber and contractor I know is killing it right now. You could probably pull six figures just doing easy shit like junk removal and pressure washing.
As someone who has two college STEM degrees and is currently working on a 3rd, I can't help but disagree. Toilet paper in the sense that the quality of education is shit and I should have been taught much more during my time in school, sure. But the fact of the matter is companies care enough about my toilet paper to offer me worthwhile jobs.
My nigger, I literally got a Psychology degree (miles below your STEM one in value and over-supply) and applied it to help me get multiple jobs over the years in completely unrelated fields.
And if in your entire degree all you learned was things that can only be used in that one specific field with no lateral applicability (or worse only studied to pass the tests), that's more on you than the job market.
Shit half the point of going to college is to network with people around you, many of them going into the same industry because you share a shit ton of classes over years.
The degree itself is the least useful thing they give you. Those are toilet paper because its often the bare minimum for any job related to it.
Hard disagree on the utility of a psychology degree. I do agree that the degree is the least useful thing they give you. Internships are way more important. More important than grades.
It has great utility, that's why I was able to make great use of it. But none of that was in anything remotely resembling the Psychology field because those jobs have 1000 applicants a day, even at PhD (or PsyD) level.
Even my Practicum wasn't in Psychology itself*, I volunteered with the local big brother type org for a year and gained considerable skills with children instead.
The classes aren't teaching you to pass the test, its supposed to be teaching you valuable skills that the test is making sure of. But so many STEM people just expect their degree to land them an instant job and forget all that.
*The largest supplier of positions for this was the local women's shelter, of which my professor forbid me from going to. In case anyone thought my misogyny wasn't limited to online.
There are a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have been there, most of them valid even if Righting Injustice should be done. But we all accepted it with a laugh and I got to help a lot of lost boys get somewhat back on the path instead.
Job sucks? Leave, and find a better one. You're not entitled to shit...but neither are employers
Something a lot of people don't understand is that employers are able to screw you over because you can easily be replaced. Therefore, a stable and healthy career includes obtaining desired skills that are hard to replace. Only then do you have negotiating power.
Until you obtain these skills, you should be happy to have a job at all.
a stable and healthy career includes obtaining desired skills that are hard to replace.
Not even necessarily hard to replace, just not easy.
Show up, do good work. Occasionally you'll get screwed, but if you really do good work, you'll generally land on your feet...and your ex-boss will probably suffer under a string of subhuman retards he tried to replace you with.
and your ex-boss will probably suffer under a string of subhuman retards he tried to replace you with.
My experience is that the ex-boss in this scenario is also a subhuman retard and will learn nothing because he wouldn't know a good worker if it bit him in the ass. Your advice is still good. It's ultimately on the worker to a place that's well run.
And if they, oh I don't know, decide to dump a shit load of Pajeets in the area to take the jobs for less? As much as I would agree with that notion in a just world with honorable employers...
Until you obtain these skills, you should be happy to have a job at all.
And once we cull all the useless plebs who aren't ever going to be skilled enough for a job where you can make negotiations, then our society will be great again!
We can just fill those useless easily replaceable jobs with jeets and illegals to get us by, of course. While we shit on the less capable whites who can't make something of themselves for being worthless lazy losers who should be thankful they can be allowed to flip fucking burgers for pennies for us Real Chads in Real Jobs.
This mindset certainly isn't just repeating the exact same cycle that Boomers had that led us to half the messes we are trying to clean up right now.
Those are two separate sides of your argument. Gaining skills and being irreplaceable useful/good at your work are the best way to go about things and always will be.
Saying people should be happy to just have a job at all if they aren't part of the upper half of society, is egotistical speak from someone who thinks himself irreplaceable and above the lowly masses.
Its the exact mindset that is behind "if you don't go to college, you won't ever succeed at anything in life" that destroyed our entire job market, academia, and numerous other facets of society. Because civilization is filled with jobs that have low end or even no skills that are crucial to our functioning, and treating them as pathetic prizes easily replaced is how we end up with Jeets owning every gas station and Mexicans in every field.
phrase it however you want. The reality is, if you aren't desirable above the rest, the odds of having and keeping a job are dicey. No amount of commie-speak can make things otherwise.
Except it isn't, because you are competing with the same low skill level competition. Which means the fact that you are already hired, the paperwork done, and the training complete puts you well ahead of any new hire unless you are well below productivity or some other major factor. Which is how something like McDonald's could be a "career" for someone who money wasn't a major factor, instead of requiring it to be a transitory period.
You know, the way it worked for decades. Until the wrench got thrown of "we can just hire illegals at slave rates so we are doing you a favor by keeping you hired, so you best be happy about it."
I know its fun to say things that are diametrically opposed to the Leftists' version, but that's the kind of short sighted thinking that gets us into messes and makes the Right easy to manipulate.
if it's not illegal immigrants, it will be dipshit teenagers, H-1B visas, college dropouts, the list goes on. if it's a low skill position, or the job market is saturated, there is a ginormous pool of people who can replace you and your employer knows it.
The internet has amplified this issue because anyone can look for a job anywhere in the country at any given point, so we are now all competing against everyone else at a given time.
However, the fundamental fact here has not changed since the inception of job markets. Unions were created to fight against this natural economic force, and we see how they destroy everything they touch.
Literally most people are incapable of cultivating truly irreplaceable skills. If the baseline for not being abused by your employers is 90th percentile abilities, then that shit isn’t going to work long term.
There's defiantly a lot of both going around. Self-improvement is possible, the people saying it can't be done are catastrophizing or hyperbolizing. Yes, you can buy a house, but it takes longer, and requires more savings and careful planning. More than it every used to. It is also true that this is the worst generation to have to face that problem, as they have the lowest work-ethic, worst time preference, and most cynicism than pretty much anyone but the millennials.
The stuff in op is The kind of management you see when an office has a history of not being productive. The first thing good management would have tried is results-based metrics. " I don't care how or when you get your work done, so long as you get it done, it gets done right, and it gets done legally". This works for good teams and motivated workers, but hardly works for soul sucking jobs. When results based metrics don't work, they resort to this kind of stuff because otherwise nothing gets done.
I must be off because I've had plenty of jobs and actually liked all but one of them. Made friends. Sometimes hooked up with female coworkers. Learned cool stuff. Had some cool experiences. Definitely got some cool stories to tell. Maybe people are just have bad attitudes. Either that or I'm just extraordinarily lucky.
I was military, US Navy, so yea, I did, but not because of any of this stuff, this is pretty standard stuff, mostly.
I never had a work laptop, but I did have a desk with a desktop on it, that I logged into with a login/password. No mouse jiggle timer, that is retarded.
Work hours were set, and even a minute late could result in paperwork, depending on supervisor.
If its standard in any field to start popping a warning at you if you don't move your mouse for an entire minute, then that is a bigger problem than anything.
Even from a full "employer is god, you best never take a moment for yourself" mindset, that's just going to create carpal tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries and drown productivity by trying to squeeze atoms of gold from a rock.
10 minutes or higher I could see, that's 95% of the time slacking happening. Even 5 could be arguable. But one singular minute where you can't even rub your eye, cough and take a drink, or any other numerous little relaxations that keeps a man sane is beyond retarded.
Also, sometimes blanket, wide-sweeping policies like this are made, because they crowd they are hiring is literate, but have no professional etiquette. So after a few years of this, the office starts treating you like animals.
Electronic Arts was like this. They would hire low-income, first office job high-school graduates for giant QA departments. Simply to brute force test suites. You'd get one in 10 that would treat it like an office job. This eroded their own, for lack of a better word, privileges.
After a few months of this, they (EA management) felt they had to restrict the QA badges so they wouldn't work outside of their assigned building floors, and scheduled a separate lunch time for their teams so they wouldn't mingle with the regular white collars.
Eventually they just outsourced the majority of QA hordes so they wouldn't locust the campus so hard.
You see this same phenom at Dell call centers, or for retro take the mail room in old skyscraper set-ups.
Strict sandwich leave: Not sure what this means. I assume it means "leaving your workstation to eat a quick lunch, such as a sandwich." I wish it wasn't so strict either, but I could go either way here. (EDIT: I have been corrected and now agree with the guy complaining!)
Mandatory 10-7 office timing: Dude, if YOU can't keep a schedule, that's YOUR problem. That said, when I worked in a big retail store in 2004, I did once get a minor chewing-out for NOT taking my break because I was so busy that day that I worked the whole nine hours. Credit to the store in question, but things are probably different now.
Salary deductions for late arrivals: See above. You're working less time, you're getting less pay. Arrive on time.
Time tracker for not moving mouse: Okay, THAT'S overboard, what the hell? I'm serious, what penny-pinching jackassery is this? I'm with the complaining guy! What if you have to pee?!
Not allowed to change password or access work email credentials: Very odd, especially the latter. Valid complaint.
CEO's office auto-locked: I get the big man wants his privacy, but a trustworthy man would want to listen to and address concerns, in my eyes. What's the boss afraid of? What's he hiding?
Quitting requiring 15 days notice: Isn't this standard policy? Give them two weeks to find someone to replace you? That's what I've always heard.
Overall, not as bad as I was fearing, but I still understand this guy's concerns, and get why he left.
Full disclosure: I have never worked an office job, so there could be a LOT that I'm missing. Maybe this particular job really is as painful and draining as he says it is. Still, again, I get why he doesn't want it.
Looked it up. It's a totally ridiculous policy IMHO. Here's an example:
You ask for this Friday off. You ask for next Monday off. You already had the weekend off.
They approve it. Four days of leave are deducted from your allotment.
It means weekends sandwiched by leave count as leave. They're burning your leave for days that you already had off.
The password thing is double-edged. Let them change it and they'll pick something easy to guess. Don't let them change it and they'll put a post-it note with the password on the laptop because they can't remember it. Letting the user change it, but enforcing strength requirements is about the best you can do before going to biometrics or physical keys.
Looked it up. It's a totally ridiculous policy IMHO. Here's an example:
You ask for this Friday off. You ask for next Monday off. You already had the weekend off.
They approve it. Four days of leave are deducted from your allotment.
It's a bit much. But I've also never felt the need to try to "sandwich" anything. Why take both days off? Take Thursday off if you want a four day weekend. Or don't, and enjoy a three day weekend. Five day "weekend" is silly.
Because most people plan "Events" on the weekends, so if you need to travel and don't want to be rushing there and back, its a smart idea to take Fri/Mon off so you can spend each of those days traveling for whatever was planned and have time to relax and get into the groove of whatever is going down.
If my buddy has a wedding on Saturday two states over, I'll drive friday, party saturday, sober up sunday, and then go home monday. And then I am not limping into work exhausted from a long trip I had to push through.
I think it was the NSA which would do regular mandatory password changes and then occasionally throw you out of your office to do a physical search for things like passwords on post-its. But yes, people choose awful passwords all the time, I assume it's even worse when it's protecting assets that aren't even theirs. Having strict password policies in the workplace makes sense.
Salary deductions for late arrivals: See above. You're working less time, you're getting less pay.
I'm assuming you either live in some country that uses different terms or haven't had a salaried job, but salaried employees are explicitly not paid based on the hours they work. Of course this also means they aren't paid anything for working overtime.
That said, when I worked in a big retail store in 2004, I did once get a minor chewing-out for NOT taking my break because I was so busy that day that I worked the whole nine hours.
There are a lot of strict laws about breaks and the like that have been passed over the years. Every state is variable but the majority of them are something close to "if you work 5+ hours, you legally must take a 30 minute lunch break" with some amount of paid coffee breaks also required to be offered.
I know this because back in the day I would prefer to just work when I was at work so I could get my shit done and leave, and I would be forced under threat of termination to get off the clock for a lunch in the middle of my shit.
It was infuriating, but its the law and even more infuriatingly a law that we need to prevent businesses from working people ridiculously.
That explains why the guy above me was so adamant.
It was a Wal-Mart, by the way--the old standard model was about to close and the new Super (which is now the standard model) was opening up in town, so they were on a hiring spree.
God, those cheers they made us do in orientation and the break room. So corny. Ugh.
Major corporations are the most strict about it because they try to "one size" the policy within the company to hit every state's regulation so they don't have to have a shit ton on the books for every different states. Double so if they also have to comply with a union too.
I'm thankful I never had to work a Walmart, my retail store days were bad enough without all the humiliation rituals they put those boys through.
I had to look it up, but "sandwich leave" is when you take off both days around a holiday, apparently. Yeah, just do better.
"Whaaaa, I'd normally only get a three day weekend, but if I take one day off I get a four day weekend...but if I take two days off I get a five day weekend...you're oppressing me by punishing me for doing this!" Absolutely pathetic nonsense.
Dude, if YOU can't keep a schedule, that's YOUR problem.
Absolutely.
That said, when I worked in retail, I did once get a minor chewing-out for NOT taking my break because I was so busy...
Been there. One of my bosses was inexperienced (I was his first employee) and, once I'd left, apparently missed me dearly and said I was worth two or three of these other retards he had to hire. Humble brag, but there you go.
Damn, I was getting annoyed when he was getting frustrated when I wanted to reach a good stopping point, and was volunteering my time to wrap things up and make my next work day smoother. Dude, just step back, let me cook. I got this. I'm not asking for overtime, I'm not asking for time at all. Let me clock out at 5:05, 5:10. Who cares? I'm still charging you eight hours.
Time tracker for not moving mouse: Okay, THAT'S overboard, what the hell?
Yeah, fuck this.
Not allowed to change password
It's a work computer.
Overall, not as bad as I was fearing, but I still understand this guy's concerns, and get why he left.
Cause he was a communist loser?
EDIT: Not sure why this got downvoted, but fuck all y'all! I'm in that sort of mood. Come at me, bro.
Work computer, okay, fair. Don't want to lock people out of the computer out of spite before you leave. They probably had someone do exactly that once.
Cause he was a communist loser?
That can be true AND there can be valid concerns here. Not mutually exclusive.
But again, I've never worked an office job. It sounds like hell, though.
One of the things school and university do a really bad job of explaining to young people is the expectations of work, how to negotiate with work, and a realistic timescale for your career. These are certainly things which I had to mostly learn on my own.
The truth is that when you first start working, you probably are going to have to put up with being subject to certain 'unfair' requirements, because you are unskilled and can be easily replaced. That doesn't mean that you personally are not a hard worker, or couldn't be trusted with more autonomy, but your employer has to tailor his lower level management to the lowest common denominator. Thankfully, I never experienced anything like the OP's screenshot, but the point still stands.
Your goal in any company should be to make yourself indispensable as quickly as possible. The more integrated you are with the day to day operations, back-end systems, customers interactions etc. the stronger your negotiating position for raises and benefits. My current employer would go bankrupt within a month or two if I quit tomorrow, and that means I am able to command my own working conditions from a position of power. Of course, I usually don't take advantage of that power because I have a good work ethic and I'm reasonable, but it's an unspoken barrier between me and my boss that he can't push me around or easily replace me.
It seems like a simple concept, but I certainly didn't understand it when I was a teen. Lots of young people seem to believe the employer/employee relationship is always a top down exercise of power where you are completely at your boss's mercy. The truth is that yes, it usually starts that way, but it doesn't have to stay that way if you act shrewdly within a company. (This is also why I think the modern culture of job hopping is a bad idea, but that's another subject).
Your goal in any company should be to make yourself indispensable as quickly as possible.
Pfft. Think again, Boomer. Your goal is to gather enough experience and then sell yourself to the next company willing to pay you more to do the same job or for a higher position; all so you can gather enough experience to sell yourself to the next company willing to pay you more to do the same job or for a higher position.
It's a documented fact that people who move companies frequently earn more than their peers who stay at the same company. Having worked in finance, I can confirm this also. I've seen dozens and dozens of acct. managers come and go within a matter of weeks because they're all chasing the better pay plans. You have to have the mind of a mercenary, not a conscript. That means when you land a job, you keep looking for the next job.
I mean, if that's the way you want to live, I guess. Or you could do what I have done and go to the interview, get the job offer, go back to your own company and say 'This company is going to scalp me for $x, so unless you pay me $y, I am going to leave'. That way you keep your seniority, your benefits, your colleagues, get a raise, and you don't have to fit into a new workplace.
'This company is going to scalp me for $x, so unless you pay me $y, I am going to leave'.
I've seen people try that. It's taken as "extortion" by idiots who had no business making such decisions in the first place, and because they have to maintain the illusion that everyone is expendable. If they wanted to give you a raise, they would have.
"Seniority" won't save you from layoffs. "Benefits" are non-existent. "Colleagues" are little more than LinkedIn contacts.
Well, the way I see it, such a negotiating tactic is no-lose. If your existing company isn't willing to dig deep to retain you, then you take the job. If they are, you get everything you had previously negotiated with the business, plus a raise.
It has worked for me on two different occasions, but you are correct in that it relies on a management structure that understands the value of its people.
The reason why I don't job hop isn't because I feel like a slave to the company I work for, it's because I have squeezed them to keep me. I have a personal relationship with the people above me, so it's a lot easier to negotiate because they have seen the quality of my work. At a new company, you are an unknown, so the employer/employee relationship is a lot more hostile.
I agree with the password bit. It's bad enough I need to memorize a 16+ digit password every 6 months. I'd be pissed of they didn't let me design my own so I could remember the damn thing.
I gave another general response, but let's go through the specifics.
I wasn't even sure what a "sandwich leave policy" was, and legitimately thought it was food-related.
...how employees' leave days are calculated when they fall between weekends or public holidays...For example, if a public holiday falls on a Friday and an employee decides to take Thursday and the following Monday off, the weekend days of Saturday and Sunday will also count as leave.
A little weird...but who the fuck takes both days off. I can see one, but not both. I don't see a huge issue with this. Take Thursday off if you want, make it a four day weekend, whatever. Show up on Monday. This isn't hard. Or just have your normal three day weekend. Who the fuck cares?
I've worked retail, but not specifically "office," but...yeah, a specific schedule is a thing. Salary deductions is absurd, though, unless you're habitually showing up later or something. And the mouse tracking thing is absurd nonsense that would make me want to do a Rule 2. I'll give you that one, totally. That's the most egregious of these.
"I wasn't allowed to change my laptop's password..." YOUR laptop, comrade? If your employer has power over your laptop...it wasn't ever your laptop. That's a work computer. You don't get to change that shit.
"Questionable practices." I find it unlikely that your boss was locking you in their office. You could open the door if you want. I almost guarantee it. If not, yeah...Rule 2 again. What can I say, I'm feeling Rule2y this evening. But yeah, that smells of bullshit. Doors don't lock from the inside. Someone is being gay and/or a woman. Turn the fucking door handle, bitch.
They thought it was a huge issue because they did extra work to implement it.
The easiest way to implement it is that whatever day you take off that comes out of your vacation. You have to do extra steps to try to sandwich in irrelevant days.
It's a huge security issue to not be able to change shit. That means other people know your direct login credentials, and thus could be doing shit on other people's accounts. The fact that shit is pregen also means that it won't be memorable to the employee an likely require them to write it down. I'm not convinced you've had work issue hardware before. The issues there are self-evident. Doors locking remotely is begging to get #metoo'd.
I don't know the context here, so I'll just speak on the broader issues.
Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit out there, that people shouldn't tolerate. There's also a lot of lazy fucks screaming "exploitation" and "capitalism" and demanding free gibs.
Ideally, we should have a fair system where people should and can 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps.' That's not exploitation, that's self improvement.
This is my lolbertarian side talking, but let's just cut out a bunch of the bullshit, and let people make up their own minds. Job sucks? Leave, and find a better one. You're not entitled to shit...but neither are employers.
Job sucks? Leave, and find a better one. You're not > entitled to shit...
That doesn't work out when there aren't any jobs. College STEM degrees are literally toilet paper, ask me how I know.
Make your own job. Every plumber and contractor I know is killing it right now. You could probably pull six figures just doing easy shit like junk removal and pressure washing.
As someone who has two college STEM degrees and is currently working on a 3rd, I can't help but disagree. Toilet paper in the sense that the quality of education is shit and I should have been taught much more during my time in school, sure. But the fact of the matter is companies care enough about my toilet paper to offer me worthwhile jobs.
My nigger, I literally got a Psychology degree (miles below your STEM one in value and over-supply) and applied it to help me get multiple jobs over the years in completely unrelated fields.
And if in your entire degree all you learned was things that can only be used in that one specific field with no lateral applicability (or worse only studied to pass the tests), that's more on you than the job market.
Shit half the point of going to college is to network with people around you, many of them going into the same industry because you share a shit ton of classes over years.
The degree itself is the least useful thing they give you. Those are toilet paper because its often the bare minimum for any job related to it.
Hard disagree on the utility of a psychology degree. I do agree that the degree is the least useful thing they give you. Internships are way more important. More important than grades.
It has great utility, that's why I was able to make great use of it. But none of that was in anything remotely resembling the Psychology field because those jobs have 1000 applicants a day, even at PhD (or PsyD) level.
Even my Practicum wasn't in Psychology itself*, I volunteered with the local big brother type org for a year and gained considerable skills with children instead.
The classes aren't teaching you to pass the test, its supposed to be teaching you valuable skills that the test is making sure of. But so many STEM people just expect their degree to land them an instant job and forget all that.
*The largest supplier of positions for this was the local women's shelter, of which my professor forbid me from going to. In case anyone thought my misogyny wasn't limited to online.
That's because you'd probably call them out for allowing abusers into the shelters to avoid accountability.
There are a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have been there, most of them valid even if Righting Injustice should be done. But we all accepted it with a laugh and I got to help a lot of lost boys get somewhat back on the path instead.
we get rid of the pajeets and the jobs that need to exist will be there
Something a lot of people don't understand is that employers are able to screw you over because you can easily be replaced. Therefore, a stable and healthy career includes obtaining desired skills that are hard to replace. Only then do you have negotiating power.
Until you obtain these skills, you should be happy to have a job at all.
Not even necessarily hard to replace, just not easy.
Show up, do good work. Occasionally you'll get screwed, but if you really do good work, you'll generally land on your feet...and your ex-boss will probably suffer under a string of subhuman retards he tried to replace you with.
My experience is that the ex-boss in this scenario is also a subhuman retard and will learn nothing because he wouldn't know a good worker if it bit him in the ass. Your advice is still good. It's ultimately on the worker to a place that's well run.
yep. it's amazing how rare the "actually doing the work" and "endeavoring to do good work" skills are.
And if they, oh I don't know, decide to dump a shit load of Pajeets in the area to take the jobs for less? As much as I would agree with that notion in a just world with honorable employers...
And once we cull all the useless plebs who aren't ever going to be skilled enough for a job where you can make negotiations, then our society will be great again!
We can just fill those useless easily replaceable jobs with jeets and illegals to get us by, of course. While we shit on the less capable whites who can't make something of themselves for being worthless lazy losers who should be thankful they can be allowed to flip fucking burgers for pennies for us Real Chads in Real Jobs.
This mindset certainly isn't just repeating the exact same cycle that Boomers had that led us to half the messes we are trying to clean up right now.
I'm not saying it's right or moral, that's just how it is. if you don't want to be replaced, don't be replaceable.
Those are two separate sides of your argument. Gaining skills and being irreplaceable useful/good at your work are the best way to go about things and always will be.
Saying people should be happy to just have a job at all if they aren't part of the upper half of society, is egotistical speak from someone who thinks himself irreplaceable and above the lowly masses.
Its the exact mindset that is behind "if you don't go to college, you won't ever succeed at anything in life" that destroyed our entire job market, academia, and numerous other facets of society. Because civilization is filled with jobs that have low end or even no skills that are crucial to our functioning, and treating them as pathetic prizes easily replaced is how we end up with Jeets owning every gas station and Mexicans in every field.
phrase it however you want. The reality is, if you aren't desirable above the rest, the odds of having and keeping a job are dicey. No amount of commie-speak can make things otherwise.
Except it isn't, because you are competing with the same low skill level competition. Which means the fact that you are already hired, the paperwork done, and the training complete puts you well ahead of any new hire unless you are well below productivity or some other major factor. Which is how something like McDonald's could be a "career" for someone who money wasn't a major factor, instead of requiring it to be a transitory period.
You know, the way it worked for decades. Until the wrench got thrown of "we can just hire illegals at slave rates so we are doing you a favor by keeping you hired, so you best be happy about it."
I know its fun to say things that are diametrically opposed to the Leftists' version, but that's the kind of short sighted thinking that gets us into messes and makes the Right easy to manipulate.
if it's not illegal immigrants, it will be dipshit teenagers, H-1B visas, college dropouts, the list goes on. if it's a low skill position, or the job market is saturated, there is a ginormous pool of people who can replace you and your employer knows it.
The internet has amplified this issue because anyone can look for a job anywhere in the country at any given point, so we are now all competing against everyone else at a given time.
However, the fundamental fact here has not changed since the inception of job markets. Unions were created to fight against this natural economic force, and we see how they destroy everything they touch.
We import too much unskilled labor, while having exported most of our actually valuable low skill jobs.
Literally most people are incapable of cultivating truly irreplaceable skills. If the baseline for not being abused by your employers is 90th percentile abilities, then that shit isn’t going to work long term.
There's defiantly a lot of both going around. Self-improvement is possible, the people saying it can't be done are catastrophizing or hyperbolizing. Yes, you can buy a house, but it takes longer, and requires more savings and careful planning. More than it every used to. It is also true that this is the worst generation to have to face that problem, as they have the lowest work-ethic, worst time preference, and most cynicism than pretty much anyone but the millennials.
Only thing out of that list that stands out to me is the auto-locking door, that is a definite fire hazard.
Everything else seems, to me, to be standard work stuff.
Sounds like you've experienced a lot of shitty management.
The stuff in op is The kind of management you see when an office has a history of not being productive. The first thing good management would have tried is results-based metrics. " I don't care how or when you get your work done, so long as you get it done, it gets done right, and it gets done legally". This works for good teams and motivated workers, but hardly works for soul sucking jobs. When results based metrics don't work, they resort to this kind of stuff because otherwise nothing gets done.
I must be off because I've had plenty of jobs and actually liked all but one of them. Made friends. Sometimes hooked up with female coworkers. Learned cool stuff. Had some cool experiences. Definitely got some cool stories to tell. Maybe people are just have bad attitudes. Either that or I'm just extraordinarily lucky.
You've had the pleasure of working with good teams. Heck, you are probably one of the reasons all your teams were good.
I was military, US Navy, so yea, I did, but not because of any of this stuff, this is pretty standard stuff, mostly.
I never had a work laptop, but I did have a desk with a desktop on it, that I logged into with a login/password. No mouse jiggle timer, that is retarded.
Work hours were set, and even a minute late could result in paperwork, depending on supervisor.
No locked doors for meetings.
No 15 day notice, you couldn't quit. :)
If its standard in any field to start popping a warning at you if you don't move your mouse for an entire minute, then that is a bigger problem than anything.
Even from a full "employer is god, you best never take a moment for yourself" mindset, that's just going to create carpal tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries and drown productivity by trying to squeeze atoms of gold from a rock.
10 minutes or higher I could see, that's 95% of the time slacking happening. Even 5 could be arguable. But one singular minute where you can't even rub your eye, cough and take a drink, or any other numerous little relaxations that keeps a man sane is beyond retarded.
Agreed. Likely means the whole thing is fake.
Guessing this was written by a woman and this is actually her fantasy.
Sounds like a shit job. I wouldn't work there either.
Was this a job working for Matt Lauer?
It sounds like a shitty place to work.
Also, sometimes blanket, wide-sweeping policies like this are made, because they crowd they are hiring is literate, but have no professional etiquette. So after a few years of this, the office starts treating you like animals.
Electronic Arts was like this. They would hire low-income, first office job high-school graduates for giant QA departments. Simply to brute force test suites. You'd get one in 10 that would treat it like an office job. This eroded their own, for lack of a better word, privileges.
After a few months of this, they (EA management) felt they had to restrict the QA badges so they wouldn't work outside of their assigned building floors, and scheduled a separate lunch time for their teams so they wouldn't mingle with the regular white collars.
Eventually they just outsourced the majority of QA hordes so they wouldn't locust the campus so hard.
You see this same phenom at Dell call centers, or for retro take the mail room in old skyscraper set-ups.
Let's go through these one by one.
Strict sandwich leave: Not sure what this means. I assume it means "leaving your workstation to eat a quick lunch, such as a sandwich." I wish it wasn't so strict either, but I could go either way here. (EDIT: I have been corrected and now agree with the guy complaining!)
Mandatory 10-7 office timing: Dude, if YOU can't keep a schedule, that's YOUR problem. That said, when I worked in a big retail store in 2004, I did once get a minor chewing-out for NOT taking my break because I was so busy that day that I worked the whole nine hours. Credit to the store in question, but things are probably different now.
Salary deductions for late arrivals: See above. You're working less time, you're getting less pay. Arrive on time.
Time tracker for not moving mouse: Okay, THAT'S overboard, what the hell? I'm serious, what penny-pinching jackassery is this? I'm with the complaining guy! What if you have to pee?!
Not allowed to change password or access work email credentials: Very odd, especially the latter. Valid complaint.
CEO's office auto-locked: I get the big man wants his privacy, but a trustworthy man would want to listen to and address concerns, in my eyes. What's the boss afraid of? What's he hiding?
Quitting requiring 15 days notice: Isn't this standard policy? Give them two weeks to find someone to replace you? That's what I've always heard.
Overall, not as bad as I was fearing, but I still understand this guy's concerns, and get why he left.
Full disclosure: I have never worked an office job, so there could be a LOT that I'm missing. Maybe this particular job really is as painful and draining as he says it is. Still, again, I get why he doesn't want it.
Looked it up. It's a totally ridiculous policy IMHO. Here's an example:
You ask for this Friday off. You ask for next Monday off. You already had the weekend off.
They approve it. Four days of leave are deducted from your allotment.
It means weekends sandwiched by leave count as leave. They're burning your leave for days that you already had off.
The password thing is double-edged. Let them change it and they'll pick something easy to guess. Don't let them change it and they'll put a post-it note with the password on the laptop because they can't remember it. Letting the user change it, but enforcing strength requirements is about the best you can do before going to biometrics or physical keys.
Wow. If that's what sandwich leave is, then I agree with this guy!
Sadly, I doubt there are any good guys in this scenario.
It's a bit much. But I've also never felt the need to try to "sandwich" anything. Why take both days off? Take Thursday off if you want a four day weekend. Or don't, and enjoy a three day weekend. Five day "weekend" is silly.
Because most people plan "Events" on the weekends, so if you need to travel and don't want to be rushing there and back, its a smart idea to take Fri/Mon off so you can spend each of those days traveling for whatever was planned and have time to relax and get into the groove of whatever is going down.
If my buddy has a wedding on Saturday two states over, I'll drive friday, party saturday, sober up sunday, and then go home monday. And then I am not limping into work exhausted from a long trip I had to push through.
Because Monday is culturally speaking a psychological barrier for many.
I think it was the NSA which would do regular mandatory password changes and then occasionally throw you out of your office to do a physical search for things like passwords on post-its. But yes, people choose awful passwords all the time, I assume it's even worse when it's protecting assets that aren't even theirs. Having strict password policies in the workplace makes sense.
I'm assuming you either live in some country that uses different terms or haven't had a salaried job, but salaried employees are explicitly not paid based on the hours they work. Of course this also means they aren't paid anything for working overtime.
There are a lot of strict laws about breaks and the like that have been passed over the years. Every state is variable but the majority of them are something close to "if you work 5+ hours, you legally must take a 30 minute lunch break" with some amount of paid coffee breaks also required to be offered.
I know this because back in the day I would prefer to just work when I was at work so I could get my shit done and leave, and I would be forced under threat of termination to get off the clock for a lunch in the middle of my shit.
It was infuriating, but its the law and even more infuriatingly a law that we need to prevent businesses from working people ridiculously.
That explains why the guy above me was so adamant.
It was a Wal-Mart, by the way--the old standard model was about to close and the new Super (which is now the standard model) was opening up in town, so they were on a hiring spree.
God, those cheers they made us do in orientation and the break room. So corny. Ugh.
Major corporations are the most strict about it because they try to "one size" the policy within the company to hit every state's regulation so they don't have to have a shit ton on the books for every different states. Double so if they also have to comply with a union too.
I'm thankful I never had to work a Walmart, my retail store days were bad enough without all the humiliation rituals they put those boys through.
I had to look it up, but "sandwich leave" is when you take off both days around a holiday, apparently. Yeah, just do better.
"Whaaaa, I'd normally only get a three day weekend, but if I take one day off I get a four day weekend...but if I take two days off I get a five day weekend...you're oppressing me by punishing me for doing this!" Absolutely pathetic nonsense.
Absolutely.
Been there. One of my bosses was inexperienced (I was his first employee) and, once I'd left, apparently missed me dearly and said I was worth two or three of these other retards he had to hire. Humble brag, but there you go.
Damn, I was getting annoyed when he was getting frustrated when I wanted to reach a good stopping point, and was volunteering my time to wrap things up and make my next work day smoother. Dude, just step back, let me cook. I got this. I'm not asking for overtime, I'm not asking for time at all. Let me clock out at 5:05, 5:10. Who cares? I'm still charging you eight hours.
Yeah, fuck this.
It's a work computer.
Cause he was a communist loser?
EDIT: Not sure why this got downvoted, but fuck all y'all! I'm in that sort of mood. Come at me, bro.
Work computer, okay, fair. Don't want to lock people out of the computer out of spite before you leave. They probably had someone do exactly that once.
That can be true AND there can be valid concerns here. Not mutually exclusive.
But again, I've never worked an office job. It sounds like hell, though.
See my other comments. I'm not defending and of this, per se, just thinking we're getting this from a biased loser.
Also fair.
This isn't how it works at all, you changing your password doesn't affect the companies ability to get into the computer whatsoever.
One of the things school and university do a really bad job of explaining to young people is the expectations of work, how to negotiate with work, and a realistic timescale for your career. These are certainly things which I had to mostly learn on my own.
The truth is that when you first start working, you probably are going to have to put up with being subject to certain 'unfair' requirements, because you are unskilled and can be easily replaced. That doesn't mean that you personally are not a hard worker, or couldn't be trusted with more autonomy, but your employer has to tailor his lower level management to the lowest common denominator. Thankfully, I never experienced anything like the OP's screenshot, but the point still stands.
Your goal in any company should be to make yourself indispensable as quickly as possible. The more integrated you are with the day to day operations, back-end systems, customers interactions etc. the stronger your negotiating position for raises and benefits. My current employer would go bankrupt within a month or two if I quit tomorrow, and that means I am able to command my own working conditions from a position of power. Of course, I usually don't take advantage of that power because I have a good work ethic and I'm reasonable, but it's an unspoken barrier between me and my boss that he can't push me around or easily replace me.
It seems like a simple concept, but I certainly didn't understand it when I was a teen. Lots of young people seem to believe the employer/employee relationship is always a top down exercise of power where you are completely at your boss's mercy. The truth is that yes, it usually starts that way, but it doesn't have to stay that way if you act shrewdly within a company. (This is also why I think the modern culture of job hopping is a bad idea, but that's another subject).
Pfft. Think again, Boomer. Your goal is to gather enough experience and then sell yourself to the next company willing to pay you more to do the same job or for a higher position; all so you can gather enough experience to sell yourself to the next company willing to pay you more to do the same job or for a higher position.
It's a documented fact that people who move companies frequently earn more than their peers who stay at the same company. Having worked in finance, I can confirm this also. I've seen dozens and dozens of acct. managers come and go within a matter of weeks because they're all chasing the better pay plans. You have to have the mind of a mercenary, not a conscript. That means when you land a job, you keep looking for the next job.
I mean, if that's the way you want to live, I guess. Or you could do what I have done and go to the interview, get the job offer, go back to your own company and say 'This company is going to scalp me for $x, so unless you pay me $y, I am going to leave'. That way you keep your seniority, your benefits, your colleagues, get a raise, and you don't have to fit into a new workplace.
I've seen people try that. It's taken as "extortion" by idiots who had no business making such decisions in the first place, and because they have to maintain the illusion that everyone is expendable. If they wanted to give you a raise, they would have.
"Seniority" won't save you from layoffs. "Benefits" are non-existent. "Colleagues" are little more than LinkedIn contacts.
Well, the way I see it, such a negotiating tactic is no-lose. If your existing company isn't willing to dig deep to retain you, then you take the job. If they are, you get everything you had previously negotiated with the business, plus a raise.
It has worked for me on two different occasions, but you are correct in that it relies on a management structure that understands the value of its people.
The reason why I don't job hop isn't because I feel like a slave to the company I work for, it's because I have squeezed them to keep me. I have a personal relationship with the people above me, so it's a lot easier to negotiate because they have seen the quality of my work. At a new company, you are an unknown, so the employer/employee relationship is a lot more hostile.
I agree with the password bit. It's bad enough I need to memorize a 16+ digit password every 6 months. I'd be pissed of they didn't let me design my own so I could remember the damn thing.
Sounds like whoever made this isn't ready for the real world lol.
These policies are designed to make firing niggers fast and legal.
No nigger vacations.
No nigger time.
No nigger excuses for not reading email.
No nigger negotiations with the boss.
I'd guess the job is minimum wage unskilled labor.
Just saying, low key in favor of 'sandwich leave'
I gave another general response, but let's go through the specifics.
I wasn't even sure what a "sandwich leave policy" was, and legitimately thought it was food-related.
A little weird...but who the fuck takes both days off. I can see one, but not both. I don't see a huge issue with this. Take Thursday off if you want, make it a four day weekend, whatever. Show up on Monday. This isn't hard. Or just have your normal three day weekend. Who the fuck cares?
I've worked retail, but not specifically "office," but...yeah, a specific schedule is a thing. Salary deductions is absurd, though, unless you're habitually showing up later or something. And the mouse tracking thing is absurd nonsense that would make me want to do a Rule 2. I'll give you that one, totally. That's the most egregious of these.
"I wasn't allowed to change my laptop's password..." YOUR laptop, comrade? If your employer has power over your laptop...it wasn't ever your laptop. That's a work computer. You don't get to change that shit.
"Questionable practices." I find it unlikely that your boss was locking you in their office. You could open the door if you want. I almost guarantee it. If not, yeah...Rule 2 again. What can I say, I'm feeling Rule2y this evening. But yeah, that smells of bullshit. Doors don't lock from the inside. Someone is being gay and/or a woman. Turn the fucking door handle, bitch.
"Mental peace." Bye, bitch.
They thought it was a huge issue because they did extra work to implement it.
The easiest way to implement it is that whatever day you take off that comes out of your vacation. You have to do extra steps to try to sandwich in irrelevant days.
It's a huge security issue to not be able to change shit. That means other people know your direct login credentials, and thus could be doing shit on other people's accounts. The fact that shit is pregen also means that it won't be memorable to the employee an likely require them to write it down. I'm not convinced you've had work issue hardware before. The issues there are self-evident. Doors locking remotely is begging to get #metoo'd.