Having a work ethic is a fine thing. Just don't let sleazy employers take advantage of it, because you'll get nothing in return.
"In this company we're like family."
Repeatedly devalue workers through layoffs and never promoting
Workers give up trying to climb the corporate ladder and do the bare minimum
surprised pikachu
They taught me this shit as a kid when my dad got laid off. "This quarter" thinking can have very long-term consequences.
Work ethic never went out of fashion. Many, many people work very hard everyday. Always have. Work is a part of life, always has been, always will be. It's the incentives that are the problem. Paying people just enough (or not enough, in many cases) to just keep their heads above water, for taking on more and more work, so that owners, investors, and executives can make ever increasing profits, just doesn't motivate people to work very hard. Much of the hard work in the current system is motivated by fear. That is not positive or sustainable.
Hard work feels great when it benefits you, your community, folks you care about, or even just real people.
It feels fucking awful to work hard when the only people who will benefit are some rich assholes who exploit you.
Nice and succinct and 💯
a great round up of the difference between work versus toil.
As long as my boss is happy and satisfied, I don't give a shit. I usually work 8 hours on Monday, pretend I'm working the entire week and chill from Tuesday to Friday
So you turn on the lights, get your coffee and read your newspaper/browse your phone until someone else is actually there.
Then you do the same thing once you are the only person left.
Congratulations. Flipping on and off lightswitches is the shittiest metric a company can seek and is evidence of bad management.
Congratulations. Flipping on and off lightswitches is the shittiest metric a company can seek and is evidence of bad management.
There's an economic i enjoy reading names Richard Wolfe who bemoans the capitalist mentality of counting towards on productivity.
You clock in and you count up the hours. You get on the factory floor and you count up the widgets you've made that day. You check your portfolio and count up all the money you've made.
There's no concept of an upper bound. No idea how much you actually need or benefit from. One more is always desirable.
But what if, instead of counting up, we counted down? Know we need 10 widgets every day, so we count down until they're finished. Know we need 10 tasks done so we count down until they're completed. Know we need $100 to pay our bills, so we count down until we've earned it. Then we go home and enjoy our lives, rather than grinding endlessly at the millstone to build a surplus nobody asked for.
Even if you are productive from the minute you walk in to the minute you leave... who does that even benefit? Are you doing anything genuinely useful or just doing bullshit jobs to look busy? Are you reducing the workload of your peers or creating extra work for other people?
Because in the latter case, you're not a hard worker. You're a ballooning expense. Everyone behaving like you would be a disaster for your employer and your community at large.
Look, a company makes money by not giving you, the worker, the surplus the company made.
There's no concept of an upper bound. No idea how much you actually need or benefit from. One more is always desirable.
They expect infinite growth.
In biology they call that "cancer" and if not stopped it destroys the host system.
Alternative title: How to be the best Tool, and still be completely disposable!
Every damn job where I tried to do this did not end well for me. I got treated like absolute shit and the people who abused me were praised for their actions even when they got fired after I was for trying to do the same shit to other people. It brought only harm to me and did not even benefit my employers all that much.
This advice makes you an exploitable schmuck and they will do that simply because they can.
I have a work ethic. My work ethic is to be paid fairly for my labor.
Shit when im the first one in, i leave the lights off. Then i get mad at the person who eventually turns them on. If i have to be in that early, i dont also want to be miserable from the bright lights
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
Uhh, my computer is lit up and I can hear the damn fluorescent lights when I’m sitting there alone, piss off and let me drink my coffee in peace.
No, no, this is good advice, actually. I mean, it is a pain to go to the office twice, but flipping a switch only takes seconds, and you have the rest of the day to fuck around.
Plus if you're the last one out, you can steal all the office supplies and sell them on eBay.
I used to get paid four hours showup time to drive fourty five minuets in to the plant to push a reset button on a motor control station. Usually at two in the morning. Shift operators were not allowed to do this task as there may be a reason the the reset tripped. Drive back home, catch more sleep. Then show up for the regular shift at seven thirty..
So get woken at 2am, leave home at 2.30, arrive back home at 4.15 (15 mins to get to the button and check things) , fall asleep if you're lucky by 5am, get woken by your alarm at 6 in the middle of REM sleep, shower, dress, leave at 6.45 for 7.30 arrival at work
I would be coming in late that day.
I've learned to be the one to turn the lights off. It pisses the boss off but ensures everyone knows the shift is over
the only people who want to put in longer hours at the office have absolutely nothing to go home to.
they should be pitied instead of being vilified. drop them a "get well soon" message in social media should you encounter them.
And if they have someone they should be getting home to, my experience is they won't for long (cause and effect can sometimes flip, but outcome is the same).
Fuck you. Pay me.
If you pride yourself on being a hard worker just know that everyone else is in a group chat without you.
Everybody is down to work. They just aren't little bitches who say thank you when you abuse them.
If I saw one of my employees being the first one in the office turning on the lights as well as the last one turning them off, I'd see that as a problem.
I'd talk to that worker and first ask why they were doing this as I'd be concerned that they may be having trouble at home (and were using work as an escape). I'd want to find out if there was anything they needed to help their home situation. When you manage people, their home problems become your problems. The corollary to this is that a solution for a personal home problem can become a solution to a workplace problem. I had one worker that had difficulty at work because they didn't have working laundry facilities which affected them wearing presentable clothing at work. I bought them a new laundry appliance for $500 and had it delivered. After that they were always dressed presentably at work. This was a very good worker otherwise, and this fixed the work problem as well as helped them at home in their personal life.
If they communicated they believed the "first in, last out" was their understanding of the work expectation, I'd correct them on that immediately. One of my favorite phrases to use at work are "There are days I might have to ask you to stay later. This is not that day. There's nothing urgent that can't wait for tomorrow. Go home early." (these are salary folks, so they're not losing money by leaving early).
If they communicated they were overworked, I'd work with them on the tasks to make sure they were only getting assigned a reasonable workload. This may mean hiring another worker, or eliminating tasks that don't produce a meaningful result to the company to make sure the workload would be reasonable.
Requiring your workers to be "butts in seats" (mine are WFH anyway) simply to be tick a box is the fastest way to lose your best people as it is disrespectful of their skills and their effort. Further, well rested workers (mentally and physically) perform far better than exhausted and stressed ones.
Hahahaha talk about corporate propaganda. I feel sorry for the poor schlub that reads this and is like "yeah, I'm gonna do that".
End of year performance review.
“We think your performance this year has been ok. Not great, not bad, just ok. We can’t justify a bonus for you this year with senior management.”
“But I am always the last one out every night and have been nearly all year.”
“Really, I wouldn’t know. I never stick around that late. Now that reminds me, there were those two days last month where you were seen leaving early. We don’t appreciate that lack of work ethic at this company.”
“It was because I had stayed back late the previous days!”
They were never going to justify a bonus anyway. They just want you to feel like it’s your fault.
*writing on notepad*
struggles... with... time... management.
I turn the lights on in the morning and make coffee. Because I'm the only one that knows how to make coffee that doesn't taste like dirty water. Has nothing to do with work ethic and everything to do with coffee.
I turn the lights on in the morning because "lmao I'm off at 3 to beat the traffic, suckers".
I managed an auto parts warehouse with a small fleet of delivery drivers, I was the one with the code to the alarm and they keys to everything. Sometimes if I had trouble sleeping or was a bit hungover from imbibing too much I’d sleep in and roll up to the shop around 9-10 instead of 7. Not a single one of my employees ever had an issue with starting the day later and I didn’t care about them leaving early to pick up kids or whatever. Long as you show up and shit gets done I’m putting the same hours on all your paychecks anyways
We work a lot of hard, long hours in my field. Occasionally I get a fuck off easy job but that's only when business is slow. I'm the lead tech on every job. I also have a bad problem waking up in the morning. Despite being fully sober and getting at least 7 hours of sleep, I sleep through my alarms which are incredibly loud and annoying, and they're set 5 minutes apart for two hours. Guys who know me know that they can go in, do their work, and if I'm late I let them go early by the amount of time I am late. I'm often finishing the job by myself at night.
That's ok though. That's the way the world should work. I'm not a morning person. Waking up is literally the worst thing that happens to me every day barring tragedies or serious injuries. It's so much worse in the winter too.
So, become the office janitor?
Gus Catlson: US based company consultant who writes for right based Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail. Also was a director at that newspaper. Was in charge of communications for the Thompson Reuters merger. Has a Pulitzer from 1992, but beyond that its all business reporting and opinion pieces.
Everything in his background tells me he hasn't had to work insane hours in decades. He hasn't had a boss ask him to work 10 - 20 extra hours just to have a 2% increase at the end of the year. He was in charge of a Canadian major newspaper, which aren't known for paying a proper wage. So he knows he's lying, he's just annoyed people want to have lives.
Company Objective: Pay minimum, Gain maximum work
My Objective: Gain maximum pay, work minimum
You know how a country has their country prioritized? (eg: "America First") Well I have a similar idea: "Me First". Fuck the company. They are maximizing their profits, I'm gonna maximize my profits.
Sounds like someone who's really, really bad at managing their time 🤷♂️
Yes! Pretend that you feel like this but do your own thing man. Show up to work excited but only do what you’re paid for or what they deserve.
You know thw thing is all the tales of really successful people arent about going to the office early and grinding down some stupid task a superior gave you but about following your dreams and putting effort into those. Quitting your job and taking out a loan to build a racecar or start helping people with pc repair or whatever your dream is, is better advice than putting any effort into something you hate. Its not work ethic but being a mindless slave.
Not just on the Americas side of the pond, apparently.
I'm applying for dozens and dozens of jobs right now in the UK, so I expect to get plenty of rejection emails, but today, Monday, two days before Christmas, 11 rejection emails so far, which is a record (I'm not upset, I am aware I will get far more rejections than interviews). Obviously people are working like crazy to get everything done right before Christmas, but I thought at least the UK was more relaxed on this stuff. You really couldn't wait until January to send out rejection emails? Gotta grind right up to Christmas?
This is a ticket to being seen as insufferable.
Pay me as little as you can get away with and I will work as little as I can get away with.
A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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