Sweet, Dark and Crazy

Friday, October 2, 2009

Corporate Shills Are People too ... Assholes But People

We worker bees like to talk about The Man and evil corporations, but after hearing the latest round of workplace horror stories, it occurred to me that The Man is a man (or a woman) and that corporations are made up of men and women. Basically, there are a lot of assholes out there and it’s those assholes and not some mysterious Man or corporation that are making heartless decisions. It’s plain old people.

1. I once knew a manager who made her employees come in to make up for any time sick time they used.

2. This same manager had one girl so scared of taking a sick day that she sat at her desk and threw up in her garbage can.

3. A woman who was a great employee and had about 10 years with the company, was let go for responding to a handful of personal emails. This was not a case of excessive abuse of email but simply responding to the emails we all get about what time you are leaving today and what are we having for lunch. Conveniently, since she was fired, they didn’t have to pay her the nice severance package that she had worked for.

4. A coworker of mine and her husband worked for the same company but different departments. They had a toddler who was always coming down with something. When my friend had exhausted her available time, her husband put in to take some of his time off to go and take care of the boy. His boss declined his request. Her reason, as she stated in the email she sent to him, “That’s what your wife is for.”

5. Two former co-workers were called into the boss’s office and told that effective immediately their pay was being reduced by 10%. If they didn’t like it, they could quit.

I could go on and on with real examples of the things these assholes do, but I don’t think I need to. You get the point. People, especially people with a little taste of power, can be incredible assholes.

What these low-level peons don't realize is that it's the branches at the bottom of the tree that are most likely to be cut and pruned. To those I say, "Your time is coming ... and probably sooner than you think."

Labels: Work

posted by SDC @ 11:32 AM

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