please help me understand this

[cmort666]

So you had the only job in America left that wasn't "flipping burgers?"

When I got laid off my my last good job, I didn't find ANY job for two years. My only offer came a month after my unemployment ran out... not counting pure commission sales of financial instruments, which is more of a con than a "job".

Do you consider "flipping burgers" beneath you?

As somebody with a college degree and twenty+ years of IT experience, YES. Of course it wouldn't have paid my rent and I'd have ended up homeless anyway.

If I took a job flipping burgers, my short term goal would be to become the next manager. I would do that by being the best burger flipper they ever saw.

Good for you.

My short term goal is to become Emperor of Congo. I hear it pays better.

I guess we just see the world from different perspectives.

EXTREMELY different perspectives.

 

[cmort666]

Also, local out here can mean a 50 mile commute one way.

Mine is 60.

 

[snubbyfan]

Of course if I had my druthers I'd druther have this man's job.

Life is just soo unfair

 

[snubbyfan]

Mine is 60.

Yeah and I gotta admit, it's a beautiful drive. It's like a daily drive down Skyline Drive. No traffic, just beautiful mountain scenery.

 

[cmort666]

I know you don't like to hear it, but some of you need to quit looking at management, and start looking in the mirror for the source of what's holding you back.

Yeah, you're right:

• I structured the job so that I had to work illegal, forced, unpaid overtime.
• I kept people on the job who were clearly mentally unstable and dangerous.
• I advised people to speak to the police without benefit of counsel, after my hiring and retention policies led to workplace violence and criminal investigations.
• I fraudulently induced people to take positions on the premise of additional money which was never paid.
• I was too big of a coward to decide who would go a day without pay (after showing up for work) because of MY management incompetence.

Shame on me...

 

[cmort666]

Yeah and I gotta admit, it's a beautiful drive. It's like a daily drive down Skyline Drive. No traffic, just beautiful mountain scenery.

Mine's across I-90 then down I-77 to Akron.

Not exactly what I'd call "scenic".

Of course since I leave home between 6:15 and 6:30 in the morning and leave work after 5:00pm, I don't see much of it anyway...

 

[speedyquad]

I'm 40, and have worked since I was 8, and that has never been my experience.

I know you don't like to hear it, but some of you need to quit looking at management, and start looking in the mirror for the source of what's holding you back.

really...see my post above...300+ hours of overtime last year...i've had perfect attendance for a few years now...i've worked a 15.66 hour day, not taking a lunch, to get a job done...i've made suggestions that have saved time on job setups, caught mistakes before they were printed, saving what could have been in excess of 50 grand had just one of them made it to a customer, and i could keep going. i am not the lazy do the minimum employee that stays stagnant. i too have worked since i was 12...started mowing lawns then as soon as i was allowed, i began working at a resort as a busboy. during my college years, i maintained a 3.6 gpa while working 35 hours a week at a grocery store AND attending 96% of the calls that the fire department that i was a volunteer member of.

yet, i have only received one 2% raise in the last 3 years. the company that i work for has purchased 5 other print shops in that time.

so tell me it's me and not management.

 

[cmort666]

300+ hours of overtime last year

I probably did that at my previous job... without getting paid for it of course.

Kind of an interesting situation. I wonder if the unquestioning fans of management here think that my employer should have paid me if I went home four hours early instead of working four hours of overtime.

I guess that I just owed them four hours of unwaged labor, kind of like a serf doing service for the lord of the manor.

Apparently that sort of thing only works one way...

 

[Hillbilly77]

Oh, goody. Another thread devolved into a P'ing match.

 

[speedyquad]

I probably did that at my previous job... without getting paid for it of course.

Kind of an interesting situation. I wonder if the unquestioning fans of management here think that my employer should have paid me if I went home four hours early instead of working four hours of overtime.

I guess that I just owed them four hours of unwaged labor, kind of like a serf doing service for the lord of the manor.

Apparently that sort of thing only works one way...

there are times when we have worked overtime during the week and then we were ahead of schedule so they tell us to take friday off without pay or send us home a little early.

we don't get any overtime until we work 40 hours. one week, i was 46 hours in when my wife called that my 1 yr old had a seiuzure. of course i left. i had to use 6 hours of vacation and ended up with 58 hours +6 hours of vacation for the week. so when it benefits them, they can do it...when it don't well, thanks for coming in...now give us back some of what you earned.

 

[model70hunter]

The Devil looked at her and smiled. "Yesterday we were recruiting you, today you're staff..."

Snub, love it. Too funny, but true....

 

[cmort666]

we don't get any overtime until we work 40 hours. one week, i was 46 hours in when my wife called that my 1 yr old had a seiuzure. of course i left. i had to use 6 hours of vacation and ended up with 58 hours +6 hours of vacation for the week. so when it benefits them, they can do it...when it don't well, thanks for coming in...now give us back some of what you earned.

We got no overtime, PERIOD. No sick days or vacation either. We got Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's off... without pay. My first year that was three days without pay between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Then they bumped it up to TWO unpaid days off for those holidays, so for the past two years I had SIX unpaid days between Thanksgiving and New Years. The project manager for HP (a generally decent guy) couldn't understand why I wasn't visiting my family in Chicago for Christmas. I told him, "I can't afford to."

 

[speedyquad]

We got no overtime, PERIOD. No sick days or vacation either. We got Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's off... without pay. My first year that was three days without pay between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Then they bumped it up to TWO unpaid days off for those holidays, so for the past two years I had SIX unpaid days between Thanksgiving and New Years. The project manager for HP (a generally decent guy) couldn't understand why I wasn't visiting my family in Chicago for Christmas. I told him, "I can't afford to."

that sucks...maybe you should work harder

 

[cmort666]

that sucks...maybe you should work harder

Yeah, maybe they'd have given us NINE days off for the holidays... without pay.

But hey, I could always have quit and gotten a job at McDonald's... and lived in my car.

 

[gm272gs]

I worked a "fun job" for a while. By "fun" I mean that it wasn't for the money. I did have fun there, but it was "at-will" employment which means that they could terminate your employment (and you could quit) without any notice. No one ever quit of course (because they needed their jobs), but good people lost their jobs because they couldn't keep up with ridiculous manager-imposed quotas that continually increased. I saw a lot of people let go and a lot of new morons get hired for even less money. It turned out that the manager was imposing quotas far and above what the company mandated, and making himself tidy little bonuses. After I figured it out and had enough, I said "I'm done" and walked out. The manager said "Wait a minute..you're going? Just like that?" This is the same guy who fired a dozen people over a 6-month period, and never gave them a moment's notice, but was indignant that I just got tired of it and left. They fired him three months later. I believe there was a party, with cake.

 

[mstuhr]

Howdy

Howdy,
I'm learning a lot about many of you.
It's interesting. Many here will succeed or fail because of their ideology or work ethic. Some, who may well be good workers, will make it or not because of attitude.
I can't imagine anyone staying somewhere when he or she feels abused. If you stay you are allowing whatever abuse you are suffering to happen to you. It strikes me as an abused wife who stays with her husband and continues to soak up the abuse. I have never been one to be taken advantage of or treated poorly for money. I have been lucky. I have had a few jobs I hated over the years but never for long. I walked off a $60,000.00 a year job during the Clinton administration and took up driving a school bus because I had been lied to. That one and probably a half dozen other jobs over the years due to unkept promises. I was like the Three Stooges, always working or looking for work and spent little time unemployed.
I really have been lucky, but I have never regretted leaving a place where I was mistreated or unhappy, nor would I ever let anyone treat me in a way I didn't like for any amount of money.
I see people posting who are happy and some who are terribly troubled and all I can advise those who are unhappy is that no amount of money will make a bad job a good one.
Best of luck to all of you.
Mike

 

[timn8er]

When I still worked at car dealerships, It was common to put a lot of people on commission, not just the salesmen. in the parts department, we got a base salary & a percentage of parts gross profit. The base wasn't set in stone;if the month was so bad that profits were minimal, you could lose part of that too. And of course, since you were commission, they could & would make you work as many hours as they wanted. The drivers were paid by the hour, & were on what management called "comp time".This meant that as soon as they hit forty hours in a week, they were told to go home. It didn't matter that there were deliveries waiting to be done because you were doing your job & selling parts, there was no one to deliver them, so the customer would go somewhere else, costing you sales, profit & pay!

 

[speedyquad]

Mstuhr, you stay because there are no other jobs anywhere local. i can't just uproot my family for something that may not pan out.

 

[blujax01]

Well Bigbill in this thread:
http://smith-wessonforum.com/lounge/359725-loud-music-shooting-trial-my-story.html

Post #13 you said this:

"I had a co-worker who hated me for passing him and becoming his boss. He would play 50's rock n roll which I liked but I put on rap on my radio just to push him off. I took the job for the $$$ not making friends."

Sounds like you were an absolute joy to work with.

 

[quneur]

To the OP. I had a rule that I always followed; "Till the first check bounced"...

I've had paychecks bounced, withheld, or 'how much do you really need to carry you over' type paychecks many times over the years. I just have to put it out of my mind and get back to work.

As somebody with a college degree and twenty+ years of IT experience, YES. Of course it wouldn't have paid my rent and I'd have ended up homeless anyway.

Before and during my sickness, I took a job as a delivery driver for a year picking up medical testing samples for health clinics. It paid $1.50 over minimum wage. This with two undergrad degrees, in physics and application software programming (but only a year of experience). My wages went from making a healthy, upper middle class salary to making peanuts. But I put just as much effort in both jobs - do whatever it takes to get the job/project done. Making the client happy >> job/pay/management.

As to the OP situation, we can't judge a person if we don't fully know their situation. We don't know what the company's culture, what the company does, their management style, etc. The company could have lured him by offering big $$$. Then he's justified in saying he's only there for the money. Perhaps, the job was meant of temporary work (again big $$$) which they evenutally wanted to hire to a permanent position. We just don't know.