Interesting comment from a friend today

[Orrex]

I managed a fast food restaurant in the early 90s, owned by a very wealthy family that bought a franchise in the expectation that it would be a money maker requiring no further commitment from them.

During one staff meeting a supervisor pointed out that our employees, who busted their asses for $4.25 an hour, were disheartened when they saw a mini-mart employee with his feet up on a chair and earning $6.00 an hour.

The out-of-touch employers said, basically, "Well, some people have a bad work ethic no matter what you pay them."

Fast forward to this week, when a friend (not a coworker) lamented that she can't get people to fill job openings at her company in large part because the bosses refuse to let people work from home, even in jobs well-suited to remote work.

She reports that several applicants stated outright that they'd be willing to work for less in exchange for working from home, but the employers won't budge.

The out-of-touch employers said, basically, "Well, some people have a bad work ethic no matter what you pay them."


I submit that the problem is not--and has never been--the employees.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

1. I'm here for the "Kids these days" responses.

[Orrex]

2. LOL I'm there with you!

[LoisB]

9. .Okay. "Kids these days are smart enough to understand that their time is worth more than

$7.25/hour.

[lostnfound]

25. That's one of the many encouraging things about the next generation

Not sure if it’s millennials or Gen Z but they are more sophisticated about exploitive practices in our society

[progressoid]

11. Ha!!

[Solly Mack]

3. Some employers define "bad work ethic" as workers demanding a living wage,

expecting safe work conditions and that employees should not be threatened with their job every time they need time off.

They don't want employees; they want subservient minions.

[FakeNoose]

30. They want robots

Robots never complain, they never need a break, they never ask for a raise. Robots never need a day off, and they don't expect paid maternity leave. They require an initial investment but after that they cost almost nothing to operate.

[CrispyQ]

4. IMO, it's about control, mostly. Bosses want to control the people under them.

They tell themselves it's because if employees are not at their desks, they aren't being productive, in spite of evidence that we can waste time just as efficiently at our desks as we can anywhere else, & yes, even before the internet. It's why the whole telecommute thing never took off before the pandemic. We could have done all this Zoom stuff a long, long time ago, but never did, cuz your boss wants to control you. It makes them feel big & important.

In my decades long career in corporate, I had 4, maybe 5 really good bosses, and probably the same number of really awful bosses. The rest were mediocre of varying degrees, although generally, at the lower end of the scale of competence than the upper end.

[murielm99]

7. My son and his staff had to work from home

for a long time. He noticed something interesting. He was putting in longer hours at home. He would notice that he had not done something, or that he could finish a task in a short time, even if he had put in a full day. He just sat down and did the work. He discovered that his staff, for the most part, was equally overzealous. Of course, there were some people who had a harder time. They had to share work computers. They had children underfoot or trying to go to school remotely. He helped them adjust their schedules.
But most people were conscientious, working more than they had to.

He talked to his staff and made sure they were not overdoing it.

He went to his worksite every ten days or so, to check servers and make sure things were all right. When the shutdown was over, he was given recognition and a very small honorarium for keeping computing on track during that difficult time. He was smart enough to say that it was a team effort.

Many employees need guidance. I might be in that category myself. But most employees resent control, and do not thrive under that type of system.

[CrispyQ]

26. Your son sounds like an excellent manager, the kind I would have liked to work for.

When I worked IT, I almost always had access to log in from home. I'd often work on coding problems on my own time, at home, where it was quiet & I wasn't interrupted. Office environments are not always conducive to stepping through code.

[murielm99]

35. He has a boss.

He has had his budget cut, and has not been able to buy all the toys (as his sister refers to them) that he wants. When he received his most recent promotion, he had to be reminded to come in on time. Previously he could come in late and work late. Now he has to be there when everyone else is around. I guess most of us have a boss. He does not complain about his.

His sister tells me that they are still mostly working online from her workplace. The are supposed to go back to face-to-face Feb. 22. She and her husband are tested regularly and are negative. She is in the L.A. area, and the pandemic is raging.

[ProfessorGAC]

31. Good For Your Son!

I was a manager for a long time. All staff were technical professionals.
I never made any effort to control. It was more coaching & encouraging, delegation & empowerment.
I never had anybody transfer away, except for those that completely left the company for a fantastic opportunity, or family related relocation. (I had one engineer leave to become the engineering manager for a much smaller company. Hard to blame him.)
People in management who feel a need to control are doing it wrong.
Your son appears to know that.

[oldsoftie]

15. Exactly what it is. Some bosses just HAVE to have you under their thumb

My former company; Pitney Bowes, started tracking field employees movements all day by their cell phone. Does it make the company any more money? No. Does it make any customer happier? No. But it sure pisses off the workers!
So then WHY spend the money on it? Control

[SWBTATTReg]

5. We got to remember that a lot of so called bosses, only being made 'bosses' from their

work proclaiming them as such, aren't really bosses, never were qualified to be 'bosses'.

Too many people are in this category and IMHO, there should be a course or degree that states that one isn't a boss until they finish a degree or course in 'being a boss', but unfortunately it won't happen for the most part, being that being a dictator seems to be the only way bosses know how to operate. No wonder there's so much complaining about workers not returning to work, etc., when in fact, fingers should be pointing right back at the owners and 'bosses'.

As we all know, being a good, responsible boss takes a lot of work and effort, 24x7, and way too many 'bosses' never pass the test, didn't or don't deserve to be a 'boss', and abuse the whole concept of what it takes to be a good boss.

Employers need to realize that these highly unqualified bosses are literally costing businesses and their owners billions of dollars in wasted efforts to retain good employees, bad bosses mouthing off covering up their mistakes, etc. Serves them right, as they are getting the payback they deserve (the bad bosses and bad owners).

[zipplewrath]

20. The worst of the "Peter principal"

I avoided moving into middle management for years, truly to my detriment. But when I finally did, I found myself among a group of similarly positioned people that had no idea how to lead a team, much less a department or a project. If you find that their subordinates are worried that their people won't produce, the real question is why have they not incentivized them to do so? People are put into positions of authority often because they are either good at impressing their bosses, or because they are good at what they do. Either way, when it comes time to be the person that has to be impressed, or working with people to make them use their talents to help you with what they do well, so many people suck at it.

I made a late career out of identifying poorly managed talent. I'd sit through employee evaluations of individuals and when they got done with bad mouthing them, I'd often offer to "take them off their hands". It was amazing how often they didn't want to take my offer. I'd even offer them my weaker staff in replacement, but they understood the bad deal I was offering. The underlying reality was that the talent they were managing were so much more talented than their bosses that they intimidated the bosses so they felt the need to demean their subordinates. I remember on annual review in which I had finally been able to rate all of my staff as high as I could and someone else said, "so your whole staff is that good?" and I said "yes, I took the best of who the rest of you couldn't manage and built this team". Fortunately, I had a sympathetic, department manager who was a bit grateful for me taking "the apparently difficult to manage" off of his hands.

Look, yes, I had to work with self entitled people, I worked with those that though their talents were misunderstood or under valued. The worst were those that thought I wasn't worth of managing them. But with a bit of manipulation and a dose of false praise, they would produce. Ultimately, twice a year I would be forced to sit with them and explain the extend to which they were a pain in the ass to manage, despite their brilliance and abilities, but to them that was praise, not criticism.

I did find a bit of joy in their despair when they got into a supervisory or management position and had such troubles achieving their goals because they didn't understand how I had manipulated them into producing. I'd often try to explain it to them, but it was hard to them to believe that they had been manipulated. A few however took the lesson to heart and decided getting results was more important that demonstrating their own superiority.

[area51]

28. +1 n/t

[Mr.Bill]

6. All the wealthy people I have known in my lifetime

seem to have one thing in common. How ever they came to be rich, by inheritance, luck, hard work, etc., they all think they are smarter and work harder than anyone else who is not rich.

[Johnny2X2X]

17. So true

I actually know a billionaire family. They think god blessed them for being so virtuous. They think poor people are poor because they are sinners.

[Mr.Bill]

18. I had forgotten about the religious angle,

but you are right.

[Patterson]

8. Businesses should look at profit sharing mixed with work at home.

[calimary]

10. Yep. If there were ever a time for creative problem-solving,

THIS is it!!!

[demigoddess]

12. my first job was as a car hop at a drive in restaurant. My pay was 50 cents

per hour. this was in the 60s.

[Evolve Dammit]

13. The "wealth gap" is widening big time. The pandemic has accelerated it.

[Skittles]

14. and beware judging employees by slack moments

almost ALL workers have had the experience of busting their ass, only to be spotted by a supervisor the moment they are in a state of, er, relaxation......it's part of the Murphy Laws.

[oldsoftie]

16. Getting the work done for LESS money & HAPPIER employees seems like win/win

Turnover will probably be lower too.

[Orrex]

23. We did the math on a couple of points

Letting all of the phone-based employees work from home would likely save between 1500 and 2000 toilet flushes a day, not to mention the amount of company-provided coffee they go through each month, or the electricity that they use in the building, or the cost of renting a facility big enough to house them.

Another friend works for a company that went work-from-home when the pandemic started and thereafter closed the office permanently. On the rare occasion that they need to hold a meeting, they rent a facility for the event, which it tons cheaper than monthly rent of office space.

[Wounded Bear]

19. I don't think there has ever been a time when employees had too much power...

[TeamProg]

29. Gawd you're right. Even union contracts are negotiated with the employers having the upper hand

with a bit more fairness for the workers, but still no real long term power.

[DENVERPOPS]

21. For decades and decades

I have heard the employers scream from the Roof tops: "I can't get workers"........

Their sentence should be: "I can't get workers, FOR WHAT I WANT TO PAY THEM".............

[I_UndergroundPanther]

22. Control freak bosses

See low wage workers as lazy. They wanna crack that whip and make sure.

Cant keep eyes on those shifty employees if they are at home...

[Orrex]

24. I've worked placed where the supervisors' entire job was to count bathroom breaks

And to make sure that people weren't using too much "idle" time between inbound phone calls.

[Coventina]

32. I will never, ever work in a phone bank environment again

been there, done that as I worked my way through college.

I would rather scrub toilets.

[Orrex]

33. You would definitely be dealing with less shit in that job

[Coventina]

34. No kidding. The shit involved in cleaning toilets is also much easier to deal with.

To this day, I refuse to wear any kind of headset while on the phone.
I claim PTSD!!!

[BeckyDem]

27. +1