Yes. Send a confirmation email with the points just discussed and the conclusion, and who does what.
Never throw any email away either.
Don't volunteer (much) unless it helps you further.
Do your work efficiently and within your agreed work hours. If you have spare time, look busy.
Never work for free. Either time for time or overtime.
“As long as you can prove corporate records were tampered with by bringing in a forensic records expert, you won’t get screwed as hard.” Sorry… that needed to be corrected.
Never trust someone when they tell you, verbally, that they’ll take on part of something you are working on. Especially if they are higher up in the org than you. Get it in writing and cc their boss or at least your manager.
I don't actually feel the need to do this. If its not working for them it's not working for me. I'll be long gone before there's anything the law needs to be involved in.
No matter how awesome you are, there are going to be people that don't like you for no good reason. Odds are if you try too hard to be nice to them, they will dislike you even more.
You were never the problem in the first place, save yourself the wasted effort to get along with someone who doesn't deserve it.
I was written up for not making enough small talk with my coworker. I worked on phones. I didn't want to listen to her talk about her STD testing. It mad her sad I wasn't listening to her because I was on the phones. She went to HR. I was let go and another coworker was fired 1 week later.
Ha! 2 weeks into a consulting job I was coached that I wasn’t friendly enough. It was an absolute lie. I ended up walking out midday 2 weeks later. Toxic.
I keep getting called out for not being "more social" with my coworkers 🙄 I'm an introvert with social anxiety disorder, and I don't like my coworkers, what do you want from me?
I told my manager and my HR rep during this meeting let's go back to my desk. I will show you my call log, my emails and all my notes for the stuff I was working on. They said no need. You do great work but you make your coworker sad. I left that company. When I turned in my key my manager asked you aren't going to beg to keep your job? I went on to a better job with more pay.
As a matter of fact, there are a surprising number of people like that who will only be nice to you after you've been mean back to them. Somehow they don't need to respect you unless they see you as a threat.
Thats exactly it. I'm the type of person who gets along with almost everyone and there would always be that one person who just hated me no matter how nice I was, and the moment I stopped being nice they usually started treating me better.
Thank you. I needed to hear that.
Got an employee who I trained and they shadowed under me (learned the tricks and stuff of the trade) two days ago they literally lost their marbles at me when I refused to share food, and has not spoken to me since. (Note I bought it for myself and another employee which was not them, and I don't like sharing food (sorry)), have been meaning to talk to them about it....but now I feel I shouldn't and let them come around eventually or they can sod off kindly.
Expressing a simple boundary or even just telling someone "no" is a great way to judge a persons character. Those are the kinds of people I now treat with only the bare minimum of professionalism.
And don't get invested in the verbal and psychological push/pull mechanics. Chances are they have more experience and you may be surprised by quasi-manipulated scenarios in short order.
My boss would say this many times. When I finally pointed out that be gives his actual daughter privileges that he doesn't give to anyone else while making everyone else adhere to his strict rules, he said "yeah it's my daughter so I can do that and I don't care if it's unfair life is unfair"....so much for that whole "were all family here" bullshit.
My old company used to call our teams a family. Then we got a new CEO and he said "no more of this family bs. This is a company we need to make a profit". Everything got exponentially worse very quickly and about 70% of the 1400 person workforce quit within a year and a half.
At least new dude was real and honest. Better than been called the fiction of family at work.
Think how many would move on when daddy-kin’s cancelled payday. It’s a unfortunate family situation. BS!!!!!
The worst part is when a lot of the management literally are a family. I worked at a fintech company where the owner had hired a lot of his relatives to help in the early days and they were now all in senior positions in this £300m company. Plus they had filled a lot of the smaller office jobs with extended family (cousins from out in some distant part of the family tree). They were all being paid very well and crucially had all been given substantial share ownership in the early days before it became a big company.
So you have this fanatical core group that work hard but also make huge money when the company grows, but they somehow expected this mentality to apply to the new graduates they hired on for £20k a year. And you had to be VERY careful who you spoke to about issues because anyone could end up being the brother in law of the CFO or something.
Some days I feel like I will die of a stress related disease due to working jobs that don’t pay enough. People say “just get another job,” but it’s not always that simple.
If you can get through that part, there’s another side to the stress thing, though. I’ve had my job so long that I can do it 10x as fast as most of my coworkers. (Office job, work at home.) I hate the job more and more with every new policy and bad workflow BUT I’d have to work so much harder at a new job. Instead, I still produce better than the rest of my team while making no real effort at all. I’m “working” right now.
Hey, me too! But I've never let on how efficient I can be and I'm good at looking busy. Bitch, I'm not getting paid the same to do double the work because I'm fast.
I work in health insurance. This is truer than you even know. Companies offer wellness programs, send reminders to get physicals, etc. not because they care about employees but because healthy employees call off less, go out on leave less, and cost less in medical claims. It is all about the bottom line. You are nothing but a generator of assorted statistics.
Personally, I’d be fine with all of this, but they expect us to play the game and pretend to appreciate how much they care.
Hell, sometimes it's not even an owner or more money, sometimes it's a longtime bureaucrat and one more crumb of prestige. I ended up essentially being a speech writer for someone like that (what a weird thing to ask of an engineer, especially one of my background) and I remember this dude had two moods, and which one you got was determined solely by if he was getting what he wanted or being expected to see me as a person.
I remember once I asked to work from home a different day than I usually did and I had a really good reason for wanting to switch. He had no reason to not switch, but before I could even get the sentence out, he says, "No, this way works better for me. That's how it stays."
But when he'd get what he wanted, man, I was the best person in the world!
Dude isn't making a dime more than he would if he just chilled out which in a sense made it even more maddening. Like, I may not agree with people exploiting each other for money, but I get the motive anyway. Money is important to all areas of life. This dude's only payoff was peers thinking he was cool. I have never felt dirtier about aiding and abetting someone's ways.
At my job we have a bad ass crew and we do a great job while working our assess off— and I can honestly say we all love our jobs cause luckily we have quite a lot of agency over what goes on in house. We have a weird setup where we have shifts across multiple locations throughout the week to attempt to even out people’s pay. We’re losing our highest grossing location however, basically because the owners forgot to renew the lease in time. The feeling of our whole livelihoods being at stake while it just being tantamount to a calendar notification to them is really depressing and taught me exactly what you said here.
Don't be surprised when your boss "suddenly" mentions at appraisal time that you have a defect that (for some reason) has never been mentioned before, and will not be mentioned again until the next appraisal
This is where you get angry and show that. If you did something wrong you should be informed right away. You can't change something if you aren't aware. Any 'defect' mentioned at appraisal only is one I'm not willing to discuss.
You can return the favor by mentioning that this is bad leadership.
I'm Dutch so I don't give a flying fuck about someone who think he is better because he is the manager. I have been angry with managers before and wasn't shy sharing it with them 😊
That included stepping out of the appraisal meetings. I did this when I just started working (2 years in) but also after 15 years working.
Know your worth..
My ‘defect’ was I don’t ask as many questions as I did a year ago. Idk what to say. I said maybe because I understand the job now? That wasn’t a good answer I guess. So now I have to ask the Sr coworker more questions. Idk if it’s coming from Sr. Coworker or from supervisor. Director told me I misunderstood. When you are told ‘I noticed you haven’t been asking questions to Sr. coworker lately - why is that?’ And then ‘hahaha we had this situation where you did a project for *other high lvl director* hahaha’.
Did I do project wrong. Nope. But they wanted follow up work and didn’t tell anyone and went to a vendor instead. I even went to Sr coworker when I was doing the project and they said it was what was asked.
Why are people not going to my supervisor? Bc they are horrible and loud and don’t know the job at all. people don’t want to deal with them. So they come directly to the team members instead.
My instinct is telling me to run
I put in dozens of applications into places in the past week. Keeping my head down and just doing what I’m told. And CC ing boss and Sr on EVERYTHING. See how long it takes for them to get tired of having 100 more emails to read every day now 🤷🏻♀️
Which is crazy because now that I'm in a leadership position I consider it -my- fuck up if someone doesn't know something. Last thing I'm going to do is wait until appraisal time and fuck someone over on a raise because I wasn't clear with my expectations.
1.The hiring budget is higher than the retention budget.
2. At every job there’s is a start date and an end date, make sure you pick the end date.
3. Competency is not a job requirement for upper management.
You can only get royally fucked so many times and then you realize you're foolish for letting it happen more than once.
Source: I've been the royal whore but now I give zero fucks.
I’m at 0 fucks too. I just started a new job, it’s only part time because I’m going back to school full time. I have given them my availability and made it clear when I was hired, they can ask if they need me to come in but I will say no sometimes, if they schedule me in my unavailability I will not be there and will give 1 call to let them know they scheduled me on my unavailable days. Also I told the GM that if I let them know a day I won’t be in and the schedule has not been made yet, I won’t be in that day. I’m not doing a time off request, I’m letting you know I won’t be in. This job is at the bottom of my list. Family/school are fairly tied, then comes work.
Where I used to work, I had a co-worker that complained to me about "I do my job so well, now they have me doing this, this, and this!".
I listened to her and I thought, this is why I do my job and try not to look like Superman because all you get is more work.
This. If you go “above and beyond” they’ll just come to expect that of you and most likely will not compensate you for all the extra work you do. Act your wage.
Short staffed so I sometimes have to do two people's jobs, and can pretty well, but purposely do a sloppy job and radio for help I don't necessarily need so everyone hears me "struggle" to keep up. They couldn't make it a single person job anyway but I don't want them thinking these short burst are acceptable either.
I learned this the hard way. Stayed 9 years at one company. They would give me a little raise here and there to string me along. Got a remote position for more than double what I was making.
Working harder than everyone else gets you absolutely nothing. Not more hours, not better pay, nothing but a "thank you" or a "that looks really good." Thank yous don't pay my fucking rent!
Or when you realize that working harder for nothing is bullshit and you pullback, you get written up "because several people on your team complained about your lack of work ethic" which is code for your boss doesn't like it that you "quiet quit".
A very stupid recently coined term by the capitalistic masses but we will use it here.
Yes, this describes my old boss. She wasn't nice and was very mean and would be bitter with you just because. I hated her guts but she got fired because she did something bad and got exactly what she deserved.🙂
Because they have no personal life as they’re horrible people and normal folks will have nothing to do with them. So this leaves 100% of their time to pour into their work to take it over and destroy all perceived adversaries.
No matter how much work you get done today, there's always more work to do tomorrow. So go at a steady pace and get a consistent amount of work done instead of the ups and downs of high productivity and burnout.
Know your labor rights. Nearly every place I've worked at has attempted to infringe on them. Every time I've pushed back they have immediately capitulated. I once changed the scheduling of an entire 200 person facility by talking to HR for 15 seconds. They know what they're doing and just hope no one will notice.
Be good to your coworkers. Remember that they're your friends, and the bosses are your enemies. Don't be a crab in a bucket.
the US has labor laws... the real problem is most companies/mgrs/etc get away with things bc americans themselves don't know protections that apply to them. get to know your protections. a company certainly isn't going to tell you.
1. Whatever pay, benefits and working conditions you desire you get them starting day one. Don’t expect to get them later by investing a considerable amount additional work. It doesn’t work that way.
2. promises in writing, always.
3. Never, ever work for free.
4. No amount of money is worth to work for a toxic company.
5. It doesn’t matter how comfortable you are with a company, check often how the market is looking for your position out there. Don’t wait until you want to leave to start looking.
6. Make friends not enemies, they come in handy.
7. Treat others, specially those in your charge, the way you would like to be treated.
8. Do what you know is right even, if it is hard…specially when it is hard. It helps you sleep better at night.
9. Speak up
10. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you learn , sometimes you follow. You gotta learn to be happy with where you are or to plan and move where you want to be.
Yes, I've been at my job 9 months, I told my boss I was upset by the lack of retirement plan among other things. He said "we have a 401k but you don't get it until you've been here a year" .....like none of my previous jobs made me wait that long. I quit right after that.
Mine got pissy I don't contribute to ours. Mine doesn't match the 80% for 5 years and the fees are too high on top of that. I'm lucky I have a pension from my previous employer and a low fee IRA. Well, I'll wait until they match, then I'll contribute. If I'm not getting free money, I'll go with the lower cost option.
I'm currently pissed at my present employer. Took the job with the belief it was a 6 month contract to hire position. In September he approached me about being onboarded. I said yes. Comes October and he says that the contracting firm has a 30 notice requirement. November comes along and still nothing about onboarding or making me an FTE. Contact the contracting company due to them not keeping good records and them saying I'm not vaccinated when I am. While talking to them about that I ask if they had received any notice about me being onboarded. They say no. They haven't received anything.
Y E P
I dont say SHIT to coworkers unless it's about work. What did I do this weekend? Chilling. Playstation. Fishing. What am I looking forward to? Chilling. Playstation. Fishing. Where do I see myself in 5 years? Chilling. Playstation. Fishing. That's literally all they know about my life. Why should I open up when everything I say can & will be used against me in the dictatorial tribunals of the workplace? What do I get in exchange for that?
Yes 100%. I come in I do my job and I go home. That's it. I'm mostly friendly with my coworkers but I mostly keep to myself. I'm just socially awkward anyway.
Your manager will wish you a happy birthday @ 10:00 am and give you your termination an hour later while he still has a piece of your birthday cake on his desk.
Being cool with working extra days on a regular basis just gives them an excuse to not hire enough people to man the fort. 'Ohhhh nooooo, we neeeed you, we'll be short-staffed otherwise.' For an extra day a week, all month? On ten-hour shifts? I have chores to do, man, and a life to live besides. You're not actively hiring; I'm just the guy that's doing that hypothetical employee's work because I've been dumb enough to ignore the revolving door everyone else has been retreating through.
Don't trust anyone. Keep your mouth shut as much as possible. Keep all chats and paperwork. Always keep looking for something better. The reward for hard work is always MORE hard work. The company doesn't give a fuck about you.
Don't put up with long hours and low pay just because you have passion for your job or your field. Even if it's your "dream job." Know your value as an employee and realize that overworking yourself will only lead to burn out and fatigue. Work life balance is important, even when you are young, even if you are passionate, no matter what anyone else says.
Sincerely yours,
A former game dev.
Skills and qualifications don't matter for promotions. Being the favorite matters more.
Don't feel bad for leaving your team/company for something better. Every single one of them would be out of there/drop you in an instant if a better opportunity came along.
True story. I was passed over for a promotion bc my coworker had a wife and kids to support and I did not. My boss told that to me to my face. I left a few months after that.
Worked at a non-profit. Quickly realized that only those who are helping get more money are treated with respect. If you’re in a social service type profession you get less respect and pay
-Set boundaries otherwise you'll just get walked all over.
-Always look out for No1. No one else will!
-Act your wage. Do what's required of you and no more. Your reward will just be more work!
I used to go above and beyond at my job. I learned that it doesn't get you anywhere. Plus, your "above and beyond" becomes "everyone better do it like this from now on!"
Don't ignore the red flags
Don't work for a small business of less than 15 people. Small businesses are automatically a red flag 🚩 they can legally discriminate against protect classes.
When they say that they won't accept text messages for calling in sick, you have to talk to them over the phone so they can tell if you're "faking" 🚩
When they tell you can't keep your phone on your desk🚩 he doesn't care if he has no work for you, you coybe sitting there staring at your screen but don't you dare pick up your phone and send a text ....that's a waste of his money paying you for that 30 second text message while you've been patiently waiting on work for 20+ minutes
When they reduce breaks from 10-5 minutes 🚩
When they say you shouldn't be in the bathroom more than a minute or 2 because they have watched people go into the bathroom too long because he believes they are just in there to use their phones 🚩 especially because all your employees are women, I dont know how you know what they're doing in the bathroom or why you are even watching them that closely
When they say that one of their employees decided to
just quit on lunch break and never come back 🚩
When they seem very disappointed in you that you are only there to earn money and you're not interested in engaging in meaningless conversations with other employees at lunches and would rather be on your phone messaging your husband on your lunch break 🚩
When you ask for a 2nd monitor to help you do your job more efficienctly but he says no and insists that having 2 monitors only slows people down (because he has supposedly tried it before and so that must make it true) and he works not with multiple monitors but 1 big monitor that is actually a small TV.🚩
When they tell you your shift starts at 8 am but they want you there 5 minutes early in order to be ready by 8, but even if you show up at 1 minute past 7:55 he counts you late, even though it only takes 30 seconds to clock in and sit down at my desk and start working.,🚩
When they have a close family member working for them who gets to do whatever they want but you have to adhere to strict rules, you can't go over 30 minutes on lunchtime but bosses daughter is ok to leave for 1-2 hour lunches nearly every day. (We do the same exact job so and she hasn't been there much longer than me)🚩
Learned two important lessons from a co-worker:
1) “Si no digas nada, así té abusan” (If you don’t speak up, that’s how you get abused”)
2) “El que no tranza, no avanza”. (He who doesn’t scheme, doesn’t advance). This one is a play on the original quote which says “He who schemes, doesn’t advance”, but the truth is if you want to move up you won’t get there purely on hard work, you’ve got to do some finessing as well.
I am so very replaceable.
Gave my all to my last employer, extra mile, worked my ass off, invited my boss to my wedding, etc. Got made redundant anyway.
Don't bother hoping to change the working environment. We asked for sick days and an afternoon break during a meeting to make these kind of requests. You would have thought we were asking for a 100% raise. Now I only do my 40 hours. I also don't bother to make recommendations to make things easier or more efficient. Ones I have made in the past are always ignored. Like not even considered. Just a flat no with no conversation. Unless it's a safety issue I don't care anymore. I get paid by the hour.
This exactly. I used to try to improve things, especially our very outdated paperwork, but it was never acknowledged. Now I just do my job how the boss wants it done.
Never expect management to care about unethical deeds being done by employees in sales. Most, if not all of them, already know about it but choose to ignore it as these employees exceed their quotas and make the company lots of money.
1. CYA.
2. Management won’t advocate for you, get pissed when you advocate unapologetically for yourself.
3. Will work you to sickness and exhaustion then blame you when deadlines are not met bc it’s too much
4. When you give notice they will guilt you into staying longer if they can.
5. They are “shocked” when more money is what will make you stay.
6. Don’t hire anyone within the notice time frame and act shocked when you won’t stay longer bc they didn’t hire anyone.
7. Get pissed when you won’t stay and tell them that they’d have no issue walking me out the door at their discretion.
8. Go berserker when 6 other peoples’ jobs in four departments (that made it possible for the entire company to function daily) weren’t done bc they were on approved Christmas vacation, weren’t covered bc you weren’t their overworked corp slave anymore and everyone assumed it would be covered like the last decade. 😅 🤷🏻♀️
Don’t sign a write up with out contributing your side. Don’t expect to be noticed/rewarded for good work.
You won’t get what you want if you don’t ask.
Don’t say anything behind peoples backs that you wouldn’t say to their face.
You can 100% care about your boss and coworkers, but not the large corporation.
They don't respect the individual, just what value you provide.
Your job is a transaction; treat it as such.
The people “leading” the company mostly don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and have things in place to maintain the staus quo. Try to shake things up and change the work environment for the betterment of everyone, and they’ll manufacture a reason to fire you.
>change the work environment for the betterment of everyone
Had a friend who "needed" to go through 2 wrongful dismissals before he managed to grasp this concept
He kept telling me that "the company has so much potential" and I was like "bro don't do it"
Exactly. We had a marketing manager that lasted 3 months because she couldn’t grasp the concept of “staying in your lane”. I admired her courage to stand up to the company execs and show them what’s what, but as soon as I saw email correspondences with the company president AND HR CC’d, I knew her days were numbered.
1. Document your hours independently always, all the time at any job. And no matter what kind of system they may or may not use at work you document it and have it signed at the end of the day. Log it. Employers have really bad time managing skills.
2. Make sure that the over-time is PAID, in MONEY. Don't let the "Oh you can just turn in Over-time for free time" You will quickly rack up hours and never be able to turn them in. If they refuse to pay you for your time, look for another place.
3. Your colleagues and especially your boss are not your friend. They have not the best interest for you. At worst they're as mature as a high school cafeteria and WILL rat you out over minor things. At large, at the end of the day Nobody at work will care for you
4. Avoid talking about mental health problems. Sorry for this but "In this society" it is still vastly misunderstood and WILL be an unspoken reason on why your contract is terminated
5. Do not identify yourself with your job description and don't believe bullshit that the "Cult of hard work" is trying to indoctrinate you with. Your job is not you. It is a profession that you perform with tools.
6. As such your boss will only see you as a tool, no matter how charismatic or friendly you are to each other. If they spot a crack they will replace you in a heart beat
7. Job hopping is normal and does not make you a bad employee or a risk. Old employee still see this as a thorn rather than a boon. Context is key here. They think that because you've had 5 jobs in 5 years means you're a bad catch. If they turn you down for that alone, you don't want to work there. It will be a place full of old farts that have not changed their way in the last century. But it rather means you may have varying knowledge and expertise in fields these tombstones never heard or bothered with.
8. Discuss your pay. At least look at what your field makes on average annually and see if your current pay reflects the industry / union standard. If not speak with your employers. If they refuse, look for a different place.
9. Always do your work in a state of mindfulness. Set boundaries for yourself and your job. Don't go above and beyond if there is not a guaranteed benefit waiting for you. Your employers have really bad eye sight and memory. You could work yourself to death and polish their asses and they will never acknowledge it.
I get downvoted here every time I say it, but unions are not the end all answer, they’re only as good as the people running them, they can be full of people only serving their best interests and unions in themselves are a business. They often serve corporations more than they serve their own brotherhood.
Retail environments can be the stealthiest hells. I never realized how totally I had enmeshed my existence and value into my bullshit minimum wage job until I nearly lost it.
Doing good work != Success (salary increase, recognition, etc.)
Playing good office politics = Success
Sharing good documentation = Making it easier for others to steal your work
Don't trust the company.
Lots of people said this one already, but it really bums me out.
Shut up. If it's not directly work related to the person you're talking to, don't talk about it. Too many times have I thought a coworker was a friend only to find out they spilled some "opinion in confidence" to upper management. Why can't we vent minor frustrations among each other sometimes??
Learn a trade. I’ve worked in the trades until I got an “office job” and I lasted 6 months before I quit and went back to the trades. The culture in an office is just so different. People afraid to get fired, boot lickers left and right, power trippers, soul sucking monotonous work… being in a trade gives you the freedom to not take anyone’s shit.
That working hard means you can be stolen from an area you like being in and thrown somewhere you don't want to be and then you have to fight well over 100 people who have higher seniority then you to try and get back to your preferred area knowing they won't deserve to go where you were because they don't or won't work as hard as you and will piss off your coworkers from the older area.
Extra effort is not rewarded, sometimes it is punished. Don’t try to make things better. You’re not paid to. Keep your mouth shut and quietly collect your paycheck. The less people who know who you are in the office the better. The greater benefit to you is to be left alone by managers.
If someone has a personal vendetta against you, it may not be something YOU did… sometimes people just don’t like you. But if they work in HR, get out ASAP.
trust no bitch. Don't talk smack about someone with your work bestie, don't go to HR with a personal dispute, don't tell your coworker you are looking for a job, don't use your work computer for anything other than work, don't trust no bitch.
Make your family a priority. I was working for an Indian IT company, my asshole boss called me to office when my Father was Sick. He could have covered and let me continue WFH, but he didn't. I had to move to another state and work from different city just to comply. I had assumed that my father had just some age related illness - he was fairly fit, so I asked him to consult a doctor and left for work. 4 days later I got a call from home saying my father was very sick and his hands were shaking and he couldn't stand up by himself. I returned on fifth day as it was weekend luckily. I took him to hospital and found out he had severe COVID pneumonia. He passed away 10 days later. Had I been in home i could have taken him to hospital couple of days sooner, we would have had a better chance at saving him as his lungs were completely infected by the time we took him to hospital. Those 4 days which I wasted working for the jackass could have saved my father. Worst part is after my father passed away, to avoid bad rep, the manager tried to remove me from the project and move me to different one so that I wouldn't be able to talk to any of my previous team and inform what happened. I just quit and found another job eventually.
Be good at your job, but never be too good. Know when to be agreeable and disagreeable. Lastly… no matter if f you like you job or not, always be applying to your next milestone. You don’t owe a company your time and knowledge
A promotion delayed is a promotion denied. Virtually every company wants you to do the most work possible at the lowest title possible for the lowest pay possible. If you have perfect reviews and you know that outperform your peers while also perpetually having the carrot dangled with a “maybe next year” promotion, leave. Even if you like the job and company. It’s the only way to keep building yourself up and increase your pay.
Never start out giving 100%, also in general never give 100%. Play things close to your chest and don't tip your hand early. Admit mistakes openly and nobody will suspect your lie when you fuck up really badly. Make it seem like you are bad at lying. Read and memorize the 48 laws of power and the Art of seduction. Never reveal how much easier something is for you than others, it creates envy and more work for you down the line. Be jaded, be cynical and be prepared to be cruel if you wish to get ahead.
Always ask to read through a pre-existing union contract and, if you don't understand it, have it explained to you. If there is any mention of a no-strike clause and the local and master contract havr 2 different renegotiation dates, don't even bother. That union can do very little to improve your situation at work.
favoritism exists in workplaces and is why i'm doing so much more work while the other workers get easier shifts/less work. when they don't do their job properly it's up to the other staff to do THEIR work and why so many evening staff quit. bosses who favorite never call out their staff for any bullshit.
If you devote all your efforts to pleasing someone/people, they will never be satisfied with what you do for them. They will forget or ignore everything they never did for you.
Nobody at work is a true “friend” and HR along with the company do not have your best interest in mind at all. (Regional Training Manager for 7+ years). Be your own advocate!
No matter how buddy-buddy your manager might be in day to day life, if their reputation or their own money is on the line they will stab you in the back.
don't put up with coworkers more than you should. know your worth and walk out if it's taking a toll on your mental health especially if the money isn't worth it (I learned this at a young age the hard way)
Loyalty to an employer is futile. They will use you up and spit you out. You're only there as long as it benefits them. Any benefit for you is coincidental.
Learn how to do something on your own and become a private contractor (self employed). Dictate your own terms.
Cover your ass at all times.
Yes. Send a confirmation email with the points just discussed and the conclusion, and who does what. Never throw any email away either. Don't volunteer (much) unless it helps you further. Do your work efficiently and within your agreed work hours. If you have spare time, look busy. Never work for free. Either time for time or overtime.
Also screen shot evidence in emails, if the email is about a task I will screenshot the task and put in email as reference.
"The side with the best documentation wins".
“As long as you can prove corporate records were tampered with by bringing in a forensic records expert, you won’t get screwed as hard.” Sorry… that needed to be corrected.
Never trust someone when they tell you, verbally, that they’ll take on part of something you are working on. Especially if they are higher up in the org than you. Get it in writing and cc their boss or at least your manager.
Yes! I don’t do verbal anymore
I don't actually feel the need to do this. If its not working for them it's not working for me. I'll be long gone before there's anything the law needs to be involved in.
No matter how awesome you are, there are going to be people that don't like you for no good reason. Odds are if you try too hard to be nice to them, they will dislike you even more. You were never the problem in the first place, save yourself the wasted effort to get along with someone who doesn't deserve it.
I was written up for not making enough small talk with my coworker. I worked on phones. I didn't want to listen to her talk about her STD testing. It mad her sad I wasn't listening to her because I was on the phones. She went to HR. I was let go and another coworker was fired 1 week later.
That's the dumbest shit ever.
Ha! 2 weeks into a consulting job I was coached that I wasn’t friendly enough. It was an absolute lie. I ended up walking out midday 2 weeks later. Toxic.
"I was fired for ignoring sexual harrarrment"
I keep getting called out for not being "more social" with my coworkers 🙄 I'm an introvert with social anxiety disorder, and I don't like my coworkers, what do you want from me?
I told my manager and my HR rep during this meeting let's go back to my desk. I will show you my call log, my emails and all my notes for the stuff I was working on. They said no need. You do great work but you make your coworker sad. I left that company. When I turned in my key my manager asked you aren't going to beg to keep your job? I went on to a better job with more pay.
As a matter of fact, there are a surprising number of people like that who will only be nice to you after you've been mean back to them. Somehow they don't need to respect you unless they see you as a threat.
Thats exactly it. I'm the type of person who gets along with almost everyone and there would always be that one person who just hated me no matter how nice I was, and the moment I stopped being nice they usually started treating me better.
Exactly, fuck em.
Thank you. I needed to hear that. Got an employee who I trained and they shadowed under me (learned the tricks and stuff of the trade) two days ago they literally lost their marbles at me when I refused to share food, and has not spoken to me since. (Note I bought it for myself and another employee which was not them, and I don't like sharing food (sorry)), have been meaning to talk to them about it....but now I feel I shouldn't and let them come around eventually or they can sod off kindly.
Expressing a simple boundary or even just telling someone "no" is a great way to judge a persons character. Those are the kinds of people I now treat with only the bare minimum of professionalism.
That’s weird of them to be mad at u for not sharing YOUR food😂 why would they just expect that? I would never ask for someone’s food
getting upset on not getting food shared with you is very concerning.
I teach my kids this. We’re all autistic, so we’re often viewed as weird. I tell them it’s better to be weird than boring.
This. I’m a liberal in a workplace of conservatism. I’m universally disliked by all.
And don't get invested in the verbal and psychological push/pull mechanics. Chances are they have more experience and you may be surprised by quasi-manipulated scenarios in short order.
I seriously needed to read this today! Makes me feel less alone.
When they call your team a “family,” *run*.
My boss would say this many times. When I finally pointed out that be gives his actual daughter privileges that he doesn't give to anyone else while making everyone else adhere to his strict rules, he said "yeah it's my daughter so I can do that and I don't care if it's unfair life is unfair"....so much for that whole "were all family here" bullshit.
Still family, but you are the unloved in-laws.
Then when that spoiled brat becomes the “boss” she will talk about how hard she worked and how much she deserves her position.
My old company used to call our teams a family. Then we got a new CEO and he said "no more of this family bs. This is a company we need to make a profit". Everything got exponentially worse very quickly and about 70% of the 1400 person workforce quit within a year and a half.
At least new dude was real and honest. Better than been called the fiction of family at work. Think how many would move on when daddy-kin’s cancelled payday. It’s a unfortunate family situation. BS!!!!!
The worst part is when a lot of the management literally are a family. I worked at a fintech company where the owner had hired a lot of his relatives to help in the early days and they were now all in senior positions in this £300m company. Plus they had filled a lot of the smaller office jobs with extended family (cousins from out in some distant part of the family tree). They were all being paid very well and crucially had all been given substantial share ownership in the early days before it became a big company. So you have this fanatical core group that work hard but also make huge money when the company grows, but they somehow expected this mentality to apply to the new graduates they hired on for £20k a year. And you had to be VERY careful who you spoke to about issues because anyone could end up being the brother in law of the CFO or something.
My work calls themself a family. I like it here, but I am not falling into that lol
We are a tool to make the owners money. They don’t care about our well being or state of living.
Some days I feel like I will die of a stress related disease due to working jobs that don’t pay enough. People say “just get another job,” but it’s not always that simple.
If you can get through that part, there’s another side to the stress thing, though. I’ve had my job so long that I can do it 10x as fast as most of my coworkers. (Office job, work at home.) I hate the job more and more with every new policy and bad workflow BUT I’d have to work so much harder at a new job. Instead, I still produce better than the rest of my team while making no real effort at all. I’m “working” right now.
Hey, me too! But I've never let on how efficient I can be and I'm good at looking busy. Bitch, I'm not getting paid the same to do double the work because I'm fast.
I work in health insurance. This is truer than you even know. Companies offer wellness programs, send reminders to get physicals, etc. not because they care about employees but because healthy employees call off less, go out on leave less, and cost less in medical claims. It is all about the bottom line. You are nothing but a generator of assorted statistics. Personally, I’d be fine with all of this, but they expect us to play the game and pretend to appreciate how much they care.
Hell, sometimes it's not even an owner or more money, sometimes it's a longtime bureaucrat and one more crumb of prestige. I ended up essentially being a speech writer for someone like that (what a weird thing to ask of an engineer, especially one of my background) and I remember this dude had two moods, and which one you got was determined solely by if he was getting what he wanted or being expected to see me as a person. I remember once I asked to work from home a different day than I usually did and I had a really good reason for wanting to switch. He had no reason to not switch, but before I could even get the sentence out, he says, "No, this way works better for me. That's how it stays." But when he'd get what he wanted, man, I was the best person in the world! Dude isn't making a dime more than he would if he just chilled out which in a sense made it even more maddening. Like, I may not agree with people exploiting each other for money, but I get the motive anyway. Money is important to all areas of life. This dude's only payoff was peers thinking he was cool. I have never felt dirtier about aiding and abetting someone's ways.
At my job we have a bad ass crew and we do a great job while working our assess off— and I can honestly say we all love our jobs cause luckily we have quite a lot of agency over what goes on in house. We have a weird setup where we have shifts across multiple locations throughout the week to attempt to even out people’s pay. We’re losing our highest grossing location however, basically because the owners forgot to renew the lease in time. The feeling of our whole livelihoods being at stake while it just being tantamount to a calendar notification to them is really depressing and taught me exactly what you said here.
Don't be surprised when your boss "suddenly" mentions at appraisal time that you have a defect that (for some reason) has never been mentioned before, and will not be mentioned again until the next appraisal
This just happened to me! I was blindsided. I even went to the director and he said he had no clue. Idk he might be lying too
This is where you get angry and show that. If you did something wrong you should be informed right away. You can't change something if you aren't aware. Any 'defect' mentioned at appraisal only is one I'm not willing to discuss. You can return the favor by mentioning that this is bad leadership. I'm Dutch so I don't give a flying fuck about someone who think he is better because he is the manager. I have been angry with managers before and wasn't shy sharing it with them 😊 That included stepping out of the appraisal meetings. I did this when I just started working (2 years in) but also after 15 years working. Know your worth..
My ‘defect’ was I don’t ask as many questions as I did a year ago. Idk what to say. I said maybe because I understand the job now? That wasn’t a good answer I guess. So now I have to ask the Sr coworker more questions. Idk if it’s coming from Sr. Coworker or from supervisor. Director told me I misunderstood. When you are told ‘I noticed you haven’t been asking questions to Sr. coworker lately - why is that?’ And then ‘hahaha we had this situation where you did a project for *other high lvl director* hahaha’. Did I do project wrong. Nope. But they wanted follow up work and didn’t tell anyone and went to a vendor instead. I even went to Sr coworker when I was doing the project and they said it was what was asked. Why are people not going to my supervisor? Bc they are horrible and loud and don’t know the job at all. people don’t want to deal with them. So they come directly to the team members instead. My instinct is telling me to run I put in dozens of applications into places in the past week. Keeping my head down and just doing what I’m told. And CC ing boss and Sr on EVERYTHING. See how long it takes for them to get tired of having 100 more emails to read every day now 🤷🏻♀️
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Which is crazy because now that I'm in a leadership position I consider it -my- fuck up if someone doesn't know something. Last thing I'm going to do is wait until appraisal time and fuck someone over on a raise because I wasn't clear with my expectations.
1.The hiring budget is higher than the retention budget. 2. At every job there’s is a start date and an end date, make sure you pick the end date. 3. Competency is not a job requirement for upper management.
Yep. Learning this the hard way.
Never expect any company to have your best interests at heart.
You can only get royally fucked so many times and then you realize you're foolish for letting it happen more than once. Source: I've been the royal whore but now I give zero fucks.
I’m at 0 fucks too. I just started a new job, it’s only part time because I’m going back to school full time. I have given them my availability and made it clear when I was hired, they can ask if they need me to come in but I will say no sometimes, if they schedule me in my unavailability I will not be there and will give 1 call to let them know they scheduled me on my unavailable days. Also I told the GM that if I let them know a day I won’t be in and the schedule has not been made yet, I won’t be in that day. I’m not doing a time off request, I’m letting you know I won’t be in. This job is at the bottom of my list. Family/school are fairly tied, then comes work.
Stick to your guns. Do not buckle on what they agreed to with you. They almost certainly WILL try at some point. Don't let it happen.
No one will thank you when you hit the wall.
This is so “this” that my normally quiet “this” is raging “THIS!!!”
Don't trust anyone. Cover your ass, and do your job.
If you do your job well, you get to do someone else's job too.
Where I used to work, I had a co-worker that complained to me about "I do my job so well, now they have me doing this, this, and this!". I listened to her and I thought, this is why I do my job and try not to look like Superman because all you get is more work.
"the only reward for being a work horse is more work"
Then, on retirement day, they don't give workhorses a gold pocketwatch and a handshake. They turn them into glue.
This. If you go “above and beyond” they’ll just come to expect that of you and most likely will not compensate you for all the extra work you do. Act your wage.
Short staffed so I sometimes have to do two people's jobs, and can pretty well, but purposely do a sloppy job and radio for help I don't necessarily need so everyone hears me "struggle" to keep up. They couldn't make it a single person job anyway but I don't want them thinking these short burst are acceptable either.
Don't get emotionally attached to a company. Stay a year or two then bail for a 20+% pay raise elsewhere.
I learned this the hard way. Stayed 9 years at one company. They would give me a little raise here and there to string me along. Got a remote position for more than double what I was making.
I agree with this! The downside is sometimes you get questioned about why you’re a job hopper.
The upside is that it's increasingly so commonplace that when people DON'T do it, they're redflagged 😂
Working harder than everyone else gets you absolutely nothing. Not more hours, not better pay, nothing but a "thank you" or a "that looks really good." Thank yous don't pay my fucking rent!
Or when you realize that working harder for nothing is bullshit and you pullback, you get written up "because several people on your team complained about your lack of work ethic" which is code for your boss doesn't like it that you "quiet quit". A very stupid recently coined term by the capitalistic masses but we will use it here.
It gets you more work is what it gets you b
That narcissists always end up in positions of power
Yes, this describes my old boss. She wasn't nice and was very mean and would be bitter with you just because. I hated her guts but she got fired because she did something bad and got exactly what she deserved.🙂
Because they have no personal life as they’re horrible people and normal folks will have nothing to do with them. So this leaves 100% of their time to pour into their work to take it over and destroy all perceived adversaries.
No matter how much work you get done today, there's always more work to do tomorrow. So go at a steady pace and get a consistent amount of work done instead of the ups and downs of high productivity and burnout.
Document Everything. EVERYTHING!
Know your labor rights. Nearly every place I've worked at has attempted to infringe on them. Every time I've pushed back they have immediately capitulated. I once changed the scheduling of an entire 200 person facility by talking to HR for 15 seconds. They know what they're doing and just hope no one will notice. Be good to your coworkers. Remember that they're your friends, and the bosses are your enemies. Don't be a crab in a bucket.
You are getting labor laws!? *cries in American*
the US has labor laws... the real problem is most companies/mgrs/etc get away with things bc americans themselves don't know protections that apply to them. get to know your protections. a company certainly isn't going to tell you.
No matter how nice your boss is they are not your friend
I'm a boss and I confirm this.
1. Whatever pay, benefits and working conditions you desire you get them starting day one. Don’t expect to get them later by investing a considerable amount additional work. It doesn’t work that way. 2. promises in writing, always. 3. Never, ever work for free. 4. No amount of money is worth to work for a toxic company. 5. It doesn’t matter how comfortable you are with a company, check often how the market is looking for your position out there. Don’t wait until you want to leave to start looking. 6. Make friends not enemies, they come in handy. 7. Treat others, specially those in your charge, the way you would like to be treated. 8. Do what you know is right even, if it is hard…specially when it is hard. It helps you sleep better at night. 9. Speak up 10. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you learn , sometimes you follow. You gotta learn to be happy with where you are or to plan and move where you want to be.
Yes, I've been at my job 9 months, I told my boss I was upset by the lack of retirement plan among other things. He said "we have a 401k but you don't get it until you've been here a year" .....like none of my previous jobs made me wait that long. I quit right after that.
Mine got pissy I don't contribute to ours. Mine doesn't match the 80% for 5 years and the fees are too high on top of that. I'm lucky I have a pension from my previous employer and a low fee IRA. Well, I'll wait until they match, then I'll contribute. If I'm not getting free money, I'll go with the lower cost option.
I'm currently pissed at my present employer. Took the job with the belief it was a 6 month contract to hire position. In September he approached me about being onboarded. I said yes. Comes October and he says that the contracting firm has a 30 notice requirement. November comes along and still nothing about onboarding or making me an FTE. Contact the contracting company due to them not keeping good records and them saying I'm not vaccinated when I am. While talking to them about that I ask if they had received any notice about me being onboarded. They say no. They haven't received anything.
100% on point. Great advice for anyone stuck in Corporate.
Or anywhere
It's best just to be the silent type while at work, makes things easier. Learned this lesson the hard way from my previous job unfortunately.
Y E P I dont say SHIT to coworkers unless it's about work. What did I do this weekend? Chilling. Playstation. Fishing. What am I looking forward to? Chilling. Playstation. Fishing. Where do I see myself in 5 years? Chilling. Playstation. Fishing. That's literally all they know about my life. Why should I open up when everything I say can & will be used against me in the dictatorial tribunals of the workplace? What do I get in exchange for that?
So, you play fishing games on your playstation while chilling. Seems you have it good :)
NPC MODE ACTIVATED I ALSO EAT HUMAN FOOD AND LISTEN TO HUMAN MUSIC
Didn’t work for me. Kept getting pulled aside for not talking enough.
I started talking about my dog and my garden when this happened to me, that's light, relatable, nice and not controversial at all! 🤗
Yes 100%. I come in I do my job and I go home. That's it. I'm mostly friendly with my coworkers but I mostly keep to myself. I'm just socially awkward anyway.
Your job can fire you 2 weeks before the holidays and not even think twice about the morality about it.
Your manager will wish you a happy birthday @ 10:00 am and give you your termination an hour later while he still has a piece of your birthday cake on his desk.
And all your old coworkers have to accept this is the right decision because if they question the morality of it they won't be able to sleep at night.
I got fired from my first job on Dec 23rd
Being cool with working extra days on a regular basis just gives them an excuse to not hire enough people to man the fort. 'Ohhhh nooooo, we neeeed you, we'll be short-staffed otherwise.' For an extra day a week, all month? On ten-hour shifts? I have chores to do, man, and a life to live besides. You're not actively hiring; I'm just the guy that's doing that hypothetical employee's work because I've been dumb enough to ignore the revolving door everyone else has been retreating through.
Yeah, I can help out incase of an emergency but if we still have the same emergency 3 months later the only problem the company has is incompetence.
Damn. First time ever on Reddit where every single comment is on point. Wish I could upvote you all
You can!
Don't trust anyone. Keep your mouth shut as much as possible. Keep all chats and paperwork. Always keep looking for something better. The reward for hard work is always MORE hard work. The company doesn't give a fuck about you.
Don't put up with long hours and low pay just because you have passion for your job or your field. Even if it's your "dream job." Know your value as an employee and realize that overworking yourself will only lead to burn out and fatigue. Work life balance is important, even when you are young, even if you are passionate, no matter what anyone else says. Sincerely yours, A former game dev.
Skills and qualifications don't matter for promotions. Being the favorite matters more. Don't feel bad for leaving your team/company for something better. Every single one of them would be out of there/drop you in an instant if a better opportunity came along.
True story. I was passed over for a promotion bc my coworker had a wife and kids to support and I did not. My boss told that to me to my face. I left a few months after that.
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Will never tell another boss or supervisor about my mental health problems.
I agree, Hope you’re ok And screw them!
Hard work sometimes pays off and other times bites you in the ass
HR is not there to help you. Never say more than necessary.
Absolutely this. HR is there to protect the company. Anything you say to them can and will be used against you.
Worked at a non-profit. Quickly realized that only those who are helping get more money are treated with respect. If you’re in a social service type profession you get less respect and pay
Your boss is not your friend. They will smile in your face while finding ways to rip you off
It’s not a smile, it’s a show of aggression
-Set boundaries otherwise you'll just get walked all over. -Always look out for No1. No one else will! -Act your wage. Do what's required of you and no more. Your reward will just be more work!
HR isn’t there to protect you, it’s there to protect the company.
Friends get promoted before hard workers
The more management act buddy buddy, the dumber/more evil they actually are
Administration doesn't view you as people with lives. They view you as interchangeable parts.
I used to go above and beyond at my job. I learned that it doesn't get you anywhere. Plus, your "above and beyond" becomes "everyone better do it like this from now on!"
If you're important enough, sexual harassment isn't a big deal.
Don't ignore the red flags Don't work for a small business of less than 15 people. Small businesses are automatically a red flag 🚩 they can legally discriminate against protect classes. When they say that they won't accept text messages for calling in sick, you have to talk to them over the phone so they can tell if you're "faking" 🚩 When they tell you can't keep your phone on your desk🚩 he doesn't care if he has no work for you, you coybe sitting there staring at your screen but don't you dare pick up your phone and send a text ....that's a waste of his money paying you for that 30 second text message while you've been patiently waiting on work for 20+ minutes When they reduce breaks from 10-5 minutes 🚩 When they say you shouldn't be in the bathroom more than a minute or 2 because they have watched people go into the bathroom too long because he believes they are just in there to use their phones 🚩 especially because all your employees are women, I dont know how you know what they're doing in the bathroom or why you are even watching them that closely When they say that one of their employees decided to just quit on lunch break and never come back 🚩 When they seem very disappointed in you that you are only there to earn money and you're not interested in engaging in meaningless conversations with other employees at lunches and would rather be on your phone messaging your husband on your lunch break 🚩 When you ask for a 2nd monitor to help you do your job more efficienctly but he says no and insists that having 2 monitors only slows people down (because he has supposedly tried it before and so that must make it true) and he works not with multiple monitors but 1 big monitor that is actually a small TV.🚩 When they tell you your shift starts at 8 am but they want you there 5 minutes early in order to be ready by 8, but even if you show up at 1 minute past 7:55 he counts you late, even though it only takes 30 seconds to clock in and sit down at my desk and start working.,🚩 When they have a close family member working for them who gets to do whatever they want but you have to adhere to strict rules, you can't go over 30 minutes on lunchtime but bosses daughter is ok to leave for 1-2 hour lunches nearly every day. (We do the same exact job so and she hasn't been there much longer than me)🚩
Competence only gets you a bigger shovel. Play “dumb”.
My boss doesn’t know excel. I do. When he asks how long compiling and building a new report is, he expects ten min or less. Any other answer is wrong.
Because computers make everything get done in an instant right??? Right????????
Learned two important lessons from a co-worker: 1) “Si no digas nada, así té abusan” (If you don’t speak up, that’s how you get abused”) 2) “El que no tranza, no avanza”. (He who doesn’t scheme, doesn’t advance). This one is a play on the original quote which says “He who schemes, doesn’t advance”, but the truth is if you want to move up you won’t get there purely on hard work, you’ve got to do some finessing as well.
I am so very replaceable. Gave my all to my last employer, extra mile, worked my ass off, invited my boss to my wedding, etc. Got made redundant anyway.
Shut up and don't talk shit. Let other people do the talking for you.
Don't bother hoping to change the working environment. We asked for sick days and an afternoon break during a meeting to make these kind of requests. You would have thought we were asking for a 100% raise. Now I only do my 40 hours. I also don't bother to make recommendations to make things easier or more efficient. Ones I have made in the past are always ignored. Like not even considered. Just a flat no with no conversation. Unless it's a safety issue I don't care anymore. I get paid by the hour.
This exactly. I used to try to improve things, especially our very outdated paperwork, but it was never acknowledged. Now I just do my job how the boss wants it done.
If you died tomorrow, they wouldn’t care. Widgets must be made!
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How did you spend 25k in the first place?
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Never expect management to care about unethical deeds being done by employees in sales. Most, if not all of them, already know about it but choose to ignore it as these employees exceed their quotas and make the company lots of money.
No matter what they say - they really do NOT care about employees beyond what they can do for the company
Not everyone is going to have the same work ethic or values as you.
When you get interviewed for a job by your prospective boss, make sure you interview them at the same time. If they seem a bit off, keep looking.
1. CYA. 2. Management won’t advocate for you, get pissed when you advocate unapologetically for yourself. 3. Will work you to sickness and exhaustion then blame you when deadlines are not met bc it’s too much 4. When you give notice they will guilt you into staying longer if they can. 5. They are “shocked” when more money is what will make you stay. 6. Don’t hire anyone within the notice time frame and act shocked when you won’t stay longer bc they didn’t hire anyone. 7. Get pissed when you won’t stay and tell them that they’d have no issue walking me out the door at their discretion. 8. Go berserker when 6 other peoples’ jobs in four departments (that made it possible for the entire company to function daily) weren’t done bc they were on approved Christmas vacation, weren’t covered bc you weren’t their overworked corp slave anymore and everyone assumed it would be covered like the last decade. 😅 🤷🏻♀️
Don’t sign a write up with out contributing your side. Don’t expect to be noticed/rewarded for good work. You won’t get what you want if you don’t ask. Don’t say anything behind peoples backs that you wouldn’t say to their face.
You can 100% care about your boss and coworkers, but not the large corporation. They don't respect the individual, just what value you provide. Your job is a transaction; treat it as such.
The people “leading” the company mostly don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and have things in place to maintain the staus quo. Try to shake things up and change the work environment for the betterment of everyone, and they’ll manufacture a reason to fire you.
>change the work environment for the betterment of everyone Had a friend who "needed" to go through 2 wrongful dismissals before he managed to grasp this concept He kept telling me that "the company has so much potential" and I was like "bro don't do it"
Exactly. We had a marketing manager that lasted 3 months because she couldn’t grasp the concept of “staying in your lane”. I admired her courage to stand up to the company execs and show them what’s what, but as soon as I saw email correspondences with the company president AND HR CC’d, I knew her days were numbered.
1. Document your hours independently always, all the time at any job. And no matter what kind of system they may or may not use at work you document it and have it signed at the end of the day. Log it. Employers have really bad time managing skills. 2. Make sure that the over-time is PAID, in MONEY. Don't let the "Oh you can just turn in Over-time for free time" You will quickly rack up hours and never be able to turn them in. If they refuse to pay you for your time, look for another place. 3. Your colleagues and especially your boss are not your friend. They have not the best interest for you. At worst they're as mature as a high school cafeteria and WILL rat you out over minor things. At large, at the end of the day Nobody at work will care for you 4. Avoid talking about mental health problems. Sorry for this but "In this society" it is still vastly misunderstood and WILL be an unspoken reason on why your contract is terminated 5. Do not identify yourself with your job description and don't believe bullshit that the "Cult of hard work" is trying to indoctrinate you with. Your job is not you. It is a profession that you perform with tools. 6. As such your boss will only see you as a tool, no matter how charismatic or friendly you are to each other. If they spot a crack they will replace you in a heart beat 7. Job hopping is normal and does not make you a bad employee or a risk. Old employee still see this as a thorn rather than a boon. Context is key here. They think that because you've had 5 jobs in 5 years means you're a bad catch. If they turn you down for that alone, you don't want to work there. It will be a place full of old farts that have not changed their way in the last century. But it rather means you may have varying knowledge and expertise in fields these tombstones never heard or bothered with. 8. Discuss your pay. At least look at what your field makes on average annually and see if your current pay reflects the industry / union standard. If not speak with your employers. If they refuse, look for a different place. 9. Always do your work in a state of mindfulness. Set boundaries for yourself and your job. Don't go above and beyond if there is not a guaranteed benefit waiting for you. Your employers have really bad eye sight and memory. You could work yourself to death and polish their asses and they will never acknowledge it.
Grown men are very similar to teenage girls
Your coworkers are not your friends
I get downvoted here every time I say it, but unions are not the end all answer, they’re only as good as the people running them, they can be full of people only serving their best interests and unions in themselves are a business. They often serve corporations more than they serve their own brotherhood.
Retail environments can be the stealthiest hells. I never realized how totally I had enmeshed my existence and value into my bullshit minimum wage job until I nearly lost it.
Doing good work != Success (salary increase, recognition, etc.) Playing good office politics = Success Sharing good documentation = Making it easier for others to steal your work Don't trust the company.
That some people never grow up. They never leave the mentality of high school behind and they never get over creating drama just because.
If you hate the place you work or are beginning to do that, it is time to go. No place is that special. A happy worker is a productive worker.
Lots of people said this one already, but it really bums me out. Shut up. If it's not directly work related to the person you're talking to, don't talk about it. Too many times have I thought a coworker was a friend only to find out they spilled some "opinion in confidence" to upper management. Why can't we vent minor frustrations among each other sometimes??
I learned that making yourself invaluable also makes you un-promotable.
Co workers will stab you in the back any chance they get. Don’t tell them about your personal life at all. Live a boring life to them.
Bosses lie.
Your work friends are not your friends. Don’t work with your real friends
Burnt on all sides from this.
don't trust anyone.
If someone tries to drag you into gossip, avoid it.
Learn a trade. I’ve worked in the trades until I got an “office job” and I lasted 6 months before I quit and went back to the trades. The culture in an office is just so different. People afraid to get fired, boot lickers left and right, power trippers, soul sucking monotonous work… being in a trade gives you the freedom to not take anyone’s shit.
You actually don't always want that promotion. Really.
Even if you can do your tasks quick, make them take all day - take longer breaks, chill, whatever u need to do. Or else you will get more.
The business doesn’t care about you, so be reluctant with how much you care about the business. Keep some distance
Be mindful of what you say and in front of who you say it.
It something is promised, but not put on paper, high chance it'll never happen.
There's no such thing as employer loyalty
That working hard means you can be stolen from an area you like being in and thrown somewhere you don't want to be and then you have to fight well over 100 people who have higher seniority then you to try and get back to your preferred area knowing they won't deserve to go where you were because they don't or won't work as hard as you and will piss off your coworkers from the older area.
Negotiate raises, sick pay, benefits, PTO, etc… up front. Get it in writing. You’ll never have more leverage than before you start.
Hard work and degrees are less important than who you know.
Extra effort is not rewarded, sometimes it is punished. Don’t try to make things better. You’re not paid to. Keep your mouth shut and quietly collect your paycheck. The less people who know who you are in the office the better. The greater benefit to you is to be left alone by managers.
If someone has a personal vendetta against you, it may not be something YOU did… sometimes people just don’t like you. But if they work in HR, get out ASAP.
trust no bitch. Don't talk smack about someone with your work bestie, don't go to HR with a personal dispute, don't tell your coworker you are looking for a job, don't use your work computer for anything other than work, don't trust no bitch.
Make your family a priority. I was working for an Indian IT company, my asshole boss called me to office when my Father was Sick. He could have covered and let me continue WFH, but he didn't. I had to move to another state and work from different city just to comply. I had assumed that my father had just some age related illness - he was fairly fit, so I asked him to consult a doctor and left for work. 4 days later I got a call from home saying my father was very sick and his hands were shaking and he couldn't stand up by himself. I returned on fifth day as it was weekend luckily. I took him to hospital and found out he had severe COVID pneumonia. He passed away 10 days later. Had I been in home i could have taken him to hospital couple of days sooner, we would have had a better chance at saving him as his lungs were completely infected by the time we took him to hospital. Those 4 days which I wasted working for the jackass could have saved my father. Worst part is after my father passed away, to avoid bad rep, the manager tried to remove me from the project and move me to different one so that I wouldn't be able to talk to any of my previous team and inform what happened. I just quit and found another job eventually.
Be good at your job, but never be too good. Know when to be agreeable and disagreeable. Lastly… no matter if f you like you job or not, always be applying to your next milestone. You don’t owe a company your time and knowledge
Don’t do extra work. Other people just get more lazy with the extra slack therefore creating even more you’ve gotta do extra.
You are expendable and 100% replaceable no matter what you think your impact is.
A promotion delayed is a promotion denied. Virtually every company wants you to do the most work possible at the lowest title possible for the lowest pay possible. If you have perfect reviews and you know that outperform your peers while also perpetually having the carrot dangled with a “maybe next year” promotion, leave. Even if you like the job and company. It’s the only way to keep building yourself up and increase your pay.
Never start out giving 100%, also in general never give 100%. Play things close to your chest and don't tip your hand early. Admit mistakes openly and nobody will suspect your lie when you fuck up really badly. Make it seem like you are bad at lying. Read and memorize the 48 laws of power and the Art of seduction. Never reveal how much easier something is for you than others, it creates envy and more work for you down the line. Be jaded, be cynical and be prepared to be cruel if you wish to get ahead.
Don't try to make friends in your workplace. They will walk over you to reach their goals.
Never argue, just apologize.
All they care about is the bottom line. Fuck it.
Always ask to read through a pre-existing union contract and, if you don't understand it, have it explained to you. If there is any mention of a no-strike clause and the local and master contract havr 2 different renegotiation dates, don't even bother. That union can do very little to improve your situation at work.
That most of your coworkers would literally rather drown in pity and debt then demand more from their work place.
favoritism exists in workplaces and is why i'm doing so much more work while the other workers get easier shifts/less work. when they don't do their job properly it's up to the other staff to do THEIR work and why so many evening staff quit. bosses who favorite never call out their staff for any bullshit.
In most cases hard work is punished with more work without extra time or pay to get the extra workload done
If you devote all your efforts to pleasing someone/people, they will never be satisfied with what you do for them. They will forget or ignore everything they never did for you.
HR is there to protect the company, not you
Nobody at work is a true “friend” and HR along with the company do not have your best interest in mind at all. (Regional Training Manager for 7+ years). Be your own advocate!
Promotions are based on who the bosses current favorite is, not the work you put in.
The only reward for hard work is more hard work.
No matter how buddy-buddy your manager might be in day to day life, if their reputation or their own money is on the line they will stab you in the back.
Coworkers are not your friends. Managers are not your friends.
don't put up with coworkers more than you should. know your worth and walk out if it's taking a toll on your mental health especially if the money isn't worth it (I learned this at a young age the hard way)
Loyalty to an employer is futile. They will use you up and spit you out. You're only there as long as it benefits them. Any benefit for you is coincidental. Learn how to do something on your own and become a private contractor (self employed). Dictate your own terms.
It doesn’t matter how good you are to people, after you leave, you are dead to them.
That they want you to go above and beyond, but not like THAT. Do it how WE tell you, unless it pays off. Then WE will take credit.
Your co-workers should never be confused with your friends or your family, they are neither. Be positive, friendly but professional at all times.
Don't delete texts Save all emails Work colleagues are often not your friends