I feel the need to whine

@therealjrn maybe it’s just me but the one on the left could use some comfort food.

@ybmuG @amehzinggrace working from home is excellent. If you can find it. However you can still end up being treated like crap. Or getting lower pay. The lower pay can be massively offset by working from an area with a much lower cost of living. I know my mortgage on a nice house is cheaper than the average rent. And I’d probably die in a city.

I mean they’ll probably always take cost of living into account on your raises. If the company even gives any. I’ve worked for some that haven’t for years. And sometimes the benefits of working from home and the cost of moving can discourage you from searching for something “better”. Those benefits matter. Obviously if you live close to a metro area and work in tech and are willing to drive into an office you probably have more available options if they lay you off or something bad happenes. Without moving.

Something else to consider if you found something working from home. No gas money. No lunch money. No work clothes money. Less car maintenance. All the time saved.

Sometimes the pay cut makes up for itself just monetarily. Before you even get to the stress reduction.

@amehzinggrace @unksol @ybmuG Although working from home also requires more self discipline. And you need a clear spot to have a professional background for zoom (video) meetings as well as something to prop up the laptop to a height where you can both see the screen but also so the people viewing you aren’t looking up your nose.

Oh and if you have kids at home - PITA when you have a zoom meeting or they interrupt you otherwise when you are on a roll.

But, of course, the advantages are pretty big too as pointed out.

Research indicates that those who work at home in a setting where some don’t are often overlooked for promotions, are left out of the loop more, have fewer network connections at work and often have access to less information that gets given out informally because of that. You can work to overcome that but it will be mostly self initiated to keep you in the look.

@amehzinggrace @Kidsandliz @ybmuG yeah. First thing I did when I get a work laptop is dusav

@amehzinggrace @Kidsandliz @ybmuG hmm I got dropped. First thing I did was disable the web cam. We talk and share screens. And get work done. I can’t imagine 12 people sharing cameras nevermind 200

@amehzinggrace @Kidsandliz @ybmuG and your points can be true. There is literally one person in the office. I think. We might have lost them. I think our project manager flies in once a year. There’s no reason for most people to be in an office. We have work to do.

@jester747 friend, that is some kickass advice. It feels so good to repay pettiness with charity, it really does. And especially if you aren’t doing it out of a “hahah fuck you I’m leaving soon” motivation. Jesus, whatever his faults (not turning all the water into wine, just for fucking starters) was onto something with his whole “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” game. Sincere positivity is its own reward, even if one never gets any external benefit from it.

@jester747 @UncleVinny
Unless the co-worker takes all the credit from your newfound 110% attitude and takes advantage of it for their gain.

Yes, there are evil people out there that will take your kindness and doing the right thing and still crap all over you. To them, you just got more productive for them and they got a better worker for free.

Kindess doesn’t change toxicity, it enables it.
Keep your eye on the prize - leaving for a better deal.

@jester747 @mike808 @UncleVinny If you have a handy dandy psychopath test I’ll def take a couple dozen.

@jester747 @amehzinggrace Yes being the outstanding employee - that often baffles the asshats.

A plus of behaving this way is that they have no legitimate reason to criticize you or downgrade your performance evaluation (although they might do it anyway). And if you are really lucky someone over the jerk’s head may notice that you are a really pleasant to be around, hard working employee who is behaving professionally in the face of unprofessional behavior.

You may also get some people on your side doing this. Likely others see what is going on but are afraid to speak out directly. If they see you behaving in an exemplary manner in the face of abuse they might, using their informal network, comment on how you are being treated and how you don’t deserve it.

When I was going through chemo for my 3rd cancer my job was trying to make me quit because I was “too expensive for their insurance” (had also had cancer #2 eight mo earlier that same year so yes I was “expensive” but on the other hand there were around 2000 employees so that was spreading the cost over a lot of people) and I was treated like shit. I pretended I didn’t notice. It drove them nuts. Absolutely nuts. And for a while it made things worse that they couldn’t get a response out of me.

I overheard two people discussing me saying I was so stupid I didn’t notice how I was being treated. Nope I noticed but was too professional to let them know I knew or let it affect my behavior. Yes it was seriously stressful at times and sometimes I really struggled - especially the day after two days in a row of chemo where they’d make me come to work after chemo for 2 hours and then the day after that work a 12 hour day to “make up the hours” (no sick days). But they never knew that.

I also ended up with some allies who thought what was going on was wrong and would help me when I’d desperately need a nap (napped behind the copier which was in a hidden corner in the group faculty office - they’d stall the person at the locked door and make sure I knew someone wanted in so I would be standing there copying with my pillow and blanket hidden) or cover for me if I spent a lot of time in the restroom throwing up.

While they upped the ante for a while, even they got tired of hitting a brick wall trying to bait me and backed off some. This went on for 2 years until they didn’t renew my contract (the two cancers spread over 18 mo or so with treatment costs) and put in writing I was too expensive for their insurance. Illegal except in at will states if you wait until the end of someone’s contract where they can let you go for any reason they want - legal or illegal (I tried to sue for ADA violations and so found that out the hard way).

Of course getting out gets rid of the entire problem but that isn’t, as you are finding, always easy or fast. I wish you the strength to get through this without becoming overwhelmingly stressed out.

@amehzinggrace @jester747 @Kidsandliz my experience has mostly been the people you work with day to day are excellent. Other than one or two. Your manager may even be excellent. The company/higher levels who control your pay suck ass and treat you as a disposable resource.

@amehzinggrace @jester747 @unksol Yeah they forget that your people are your company, regardless of what the company does. Well and one study found that 1/3 of CEO’s they studied were high functioning sociopaths. Considering they weren’t born as a CEO, you know that there are more of those in companies busy back stabbing, etc. to hopefully help themselves rise to the top.

@amehzinggrace @jester747 @Kidsandliz @unksol
I have an opinion on that since I have been a manager/director for eons. It’s not always who or what you think it is.
Regulations and laws force us to give ‘breaks’ to those of you are who craptastic employees. You go out on stress, you get FMLA, you have a doc playing a game with you so you can go the beach. Or the union rep sits and stares at your manager after you screw up royally and you can’t touch them, even though someone got hurt. Yeah, you are 1 out of 10k employees but you set a precedence.

So big companies, these days, give no one more than the law requires them. We get told we cannot accommodate a top notch employee anymore and they legally terminate them. and that one who has been jerking your chain for the last 6 months, well, sorry, their paperwork is in order.

I’m pretty much a bleeding heart liberal, and I would want to protect you … and your job … if you are worth protecting. But I equally want a way to fire the ass of the person who is not.

@Cerridwyn I’m not sure I’m a big fan of Unions. But literally the first two things you want to talk about. Stress. FML. Were put in place because of the abuse of workers you want to keep. I agree that shitty employees should be fired. Not sure I agree anymore companies should be able to treat workers like trash.

I’m a software developer. I get nothing. I’m salary and that is lower pay than some auto workers. And we work more hours because of it. And are on call. Because we got excluded from labor laws.

Bottom line most Management will always take advantage as long as they are legally allowed to.

@amehzinggrace @Cerridwyn @jester747 @Kidsandliz also if you are any part of this in general
“So big companies, these days, give no one more than the law requires them. We get told we cannot accommodate a top notch employee anymore and they legally terminate them. and that one who has been jerking your chain for the last 6 months, well, sorry, their paperwork is in order.”

You’re part of the psychopath problem in management.

@amehzinggrace @Cerridwyn @jester747 @Kidsandliz @unksol

Sounds to me like that person is part of “an attempt at personal/family financial survival”.

Not everyone has the resources to seek and find work either as a contractor or to hold out for an job and employer who is wholly ethical.

Industry HR and financial practices evolve over time. They are driven by v high management, usually for competitive reasons. The entire industry or the entire economy drifts in a certain direction because it’s profitable for the shareholders and 1% top mgmt. Only a tiny percentage of v upper employees have any input into this.

The effective way to deal with this is usually either thru union contracts and the like, or thru regulation.

In the absence of regulatory solutions for HR horrors, the truly ethically pure and high among us in all their choices and habits (whoever seeks simplistic scapegoats) can simply blame all the employees of WM, Amazon, Google, the oil companies, most tech companies, most food and manufacturing industries, in fact most sectors of the economy, for being “part of the sociopath/psychopath problem.”

How nice for those who have the resources to be entirely pure in all their economic choices, and therefore the resources to be morally superior to the rest of us flawed and uncaring folk.

And many of these nasty HR practices are a result of the fact that regulations and practices in large organization can be gamed by the manipulative. There is currently no fully satisfactory or practical “game theory” solution for this.

@AZnatural1 That sucks…I’m sorry to hear that…reminds me of when I worked for local city government…the people around me were lazy…ppl got promotions based more on popularity…or who they knew…not skill or longevity…these people would sit around and gossip for hours…they resented me for actually doing some work…hello…why bother going at all if you aren’t working…I was bored out of my skull in any case…spent alot of time online or reading a book to dodge idiots and even spent more time in another dept downstairs to just have something more interesting to do w/ more interesting people to talk to…either way…these ppl were just around to collect a check and did the bare minimum or less…and they also couldn’t understand why I wanted to leave…best I could do there was be a squeaky wheel to the boss who was pretty indifferent to everyone…he didn’t have any favorites…so as long as I stayed on his good side…I was untouchable…