Antiwork

[Swansong]

Awesome! Case Management can be incredibly difficult. I've worked with a ton, in hospital and SNF and rehab center facilities. That is a criminally underfunded role.

[MissThundercat]

HR gave me bits of good news yesterday:

1. The last little bit of my retention bonus ($250) will be paid after 9 months, not the full year.

2. I was also informed Case Management wants my resume and I've been strongly recommended for the position. I'm doing well on the Residential floor, but my arthritis requires corrective surgery and the constant movement has led to crying and exhaustion.

[Kepler]

Yeah that’s why my company won’t allow pto once you’ve given notice, ouch

I zeroed my PTO because before giving notice.

[Deutsche Gopher Fan]

Yeah that’s why my company won’t allow pto once you’ve given notice, ouch

[wolverineTrumpet]

All this talk, my employee is taking full advantage of time off, good for him, crap for me. He put in his 2 weeks notice and is now going to take 4.5 days off. He's already used up more than half his vacation time this year, but our company gives all the hours at the beginning of the year (and then doesn't let us roll over any). If it were prorated he'd be out of time, but it's not, so now I have 5 more days of my engineer here and then I hope they let me hire a replacement.

[MichVandal]

The rest of us are either prisoners (cube slaves, engineers, guvvies, retail, laborers) or parasites (managers, owners, sales, marketing, and finance).

On that note, the underlying story behind the article I posted is that people are GIVING free work to their employer. Willingly.

Sure, some people can carry over vacation from one year to another, but unless you use is before it gets eliminated, those lost hours are free work.

Swan, my wife was in your situation, too (sort of- the ability to roll over vacation)- in the end, thanks to the pandemic preventing us from taking normal vacations, she ended up right at the upper limit of vacation at retirement. Which was a pretty darned nice payout. I resisted taking all of my vacation in my retirement year, and also got a decent paycheck- but I couldn't carry over year to year- it was use or lose.

Still, I really question how the US got into this position- as a society, we literally live to work, and in spite of the "hustle culture"- we are not even close to the most productive working society in the world. Just like how our healthcare system results in lower length and quality lifespans. And as an example of that, one of the worst abusers of his employees is celebrated as some kind of hero- Musk.

[Kepler]

I wish that were the case for me. As a manager of a "critical system", I am second alert for very escalated issues. Fortunately, by the time I'd be notified - and that could happen at any time - there'd be a team working on the problem already, and my job would mainly be to interface with external resources as needed.

But, still, technically on call 24/7. Good thing they pay me well. And I have a great team that does their job well.

People who have meaningful work (doctors, teachers, therapists, social workers, fire and rescue) are different because without them people suffer. Which is why you should be the highest paid professionals, be the best staffed, and have the best benefits, vacations, and retirements. You, scientists, artists, and researchers are the only heroes.

The rest of us are either prisoners (cube slaves, engineers, guvvies, retail, laborers) or parasites (managers, owners, sales, marketing, and finance).

[Swansong]

I don't take enough vacation. Particularly because when I went from 16 years tenure to zero I lost 3 weeks of PTO a year. However, the instant I leave work, work ceases to exist. It occupies exactly 0% of my mind until I go back in.

Work is an impingement on life, like waiting at the DMV. It is a temporary necessity as we amass the technology and political power

I wish that were the case for me. As a manager of a "critical system", I am second alert for very escalated issues. Fortunately, by the time I'd be notified - and that could happen at any time - there'd be a team working on the problem already, and my job would mainly be to interface with external resources as needed.

But, still, technically on call 24/7. Good thing they pay me well. And I have a great team that does their job well.

[Kepler]

I don't take enough vacation. Particularly because when I went from 16 years tenure to zero I lost 3 weeks of PTO a year. However, the instant I leave work, work ceases to exist. It occupies exactly 0% of my mind until I go back in.

Work is an impingement on life, like waiting at the DMV. It is a temporary necessity as we amass the technology and political power to be rid of first drudgery and then the management and ownership classes.

Slave whips were big business once, too.

[Swansong]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpUO...b_channel=CNBC

Yea, vacation is important. I was one of the oddballs that bought vacation time and fully and utterly disconnected when I left. But I know many people who didn't take all of their vacation time. No idea why, as we did the exact same thing.

And I knew some of those people who seemed rather resentful that I used so much time off. As if they could not do what we did.

Work to live, people, not the other way around.

So I work for a hospital system and all of our time off is in one bucket - vacation, sick, personal, holiday, everything - but at the moment I have over 400 hours available. During 2020 and 2021 I took almost no time off save for holidays and some long weekends and it really piled up. This year I'm definitely taking more time, but I'm running into a 450 hour max, where it stops accruing and moves to a short-term disability pool (that hopefully I'll never use).

But i'm taking 2 weeks off in August, almost a week off in June and then will do more in the fall. 2020 and 2021 were busy and I felt good about what I was working on so didn't want to stop. Now? Yeah, crisis over, time to enjoy some of that banked time.

[MichVandal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpUO...b_channel=CNBC

Yea, vacation is important. I was one of the oddballs that bought vacation time and fully and utterly disconnected when I left. But I know many people who didn't take all of their vacation time. No idea why, as we did the exact same thing.

And I knew some of those people who seemed rather resentful that I used so much time off. As if they could not do what we did.

Work to live, people, not the other way around.

[RaceBoarder]

If it is abused terribly it would be interesting to try a class action suit of everybody who wasted their time applying. Force the company to prove there was a job that was awarded.

The government can't just float an RFP, collect proposals, and then say "kidding!" This is that behavior, just targeted at (vulnerable) individuals.

I've heard stories of companies offering internal transfers, then firing the employees who apply as "malcontents." IINM that is now illegal.

It's a way to collect resumes and information. If someone who truly stands out comes their way they can offer something. But mostly its a way to "keep their eyes open" for something that would benefit them.

[St. Clown]

Bringing this back. The day I posted this, we had a huge, in-office event for which I was responsible for making it actually happen. Had to work with my team, our agency who came up with the creative idea, all their production partners, our conference center, facilities and security teams in order to get people in the building, the OK to set up everything, etc. Got over my initial whining about them taking a team picture after the event without me.

Today I go to our online recognition site as I was asked to submit a comment to a co-worker hitting his 10th anniversary. We have these things call Spark cards, which are digital cards you can send to any employee in the company. There are a bunch of different options, mostly to say thank you or congratulations, etc. even happy birthday. The worst thing they did was to have a feed of people who you work with and cards they get. Every person in my department, not just my team, but department (people I didn't even know that had anything to do with this event) got a thank you Spark card from the main stakeholder whose program it was we were promoting except for me. This woman knows me, knows me well, saw me at the event, sees that I was on every status call (for the most part). I'm going to wait for a couple of days to see if she sends out any more (like maybe she had a list and only got thru half yesterday when she sent them) before I bring it up. But I don't know to whom. And if I should at all. Do I mention to my manager who was responsible for bringing me into the project? Do I say something to this stakeholder's co-worker who was also very involved and is also a good friend of mine? Or do I keep my mouth shut? Thankfully it's not a monetary thing, otherwise I would really be annoyed. I'm just getting frustrated that I constantly get forgotten.

I would ask my manager if there was some distribution list published for the event, and if your name was missed for whatever reason. I’ve found my name included on things that I never did any work, which I took for a laugh, but it would be annoying if I had put a bunch of work into something to then have a higher up thank some guy who just put in 10 minutes on the project.

[Kepler]

If it is abused terribly it would be interesting to try a class action suit of everybody who wasted their time applying. Force the company to prove there was a job that was awarded.

The government can't just float an RFP, collect proposals, and then say "kidding!" This is that behavior, just targeted at (vulnerable) individuals.

I've heard stories of companies offering internal transfers, then firing the employees who apply as "malcontents." IINM that is now illegal.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Just read a survey of hiring managers. More than half deliberately list non-existent jobs:

But, yeah, "nobody wants to work anymore..."

When I look at open positions on LinkedIn, I suspect this is happening in my niche realm a lot. My firm is closing deals left and right, and in theory a downturn is a good time for companies to invest in IT automation so they can trim payroll (especially in pure overhead departments like HR where employees can be trained to use a portal to serve themselves). However, some of our GSI competitors just laid off a bunch of staff. I think there's more acquisitions and consolidation to be done in the partner consulting space over the next few years.