Month: March 2022

Some context, I have been an electrician in the Buffalo, NY area for about 4 years now and I currently make $18/hr. For the last year or so, I have been driving past fast food restaurants that have signs out front hiring for $18 or $18.50/hr. What! It is so infuriating that my boss wants me to put in extra effort and work out in the 1° weather or not give any sort of safety briefing after I was shocked and sent to the hospital due to the negligence of a coworker. It feels like a no brainer to quit my life threatening, stress inducing job but it’s what I love the people are just stupid (one coworker told me that he made $18 when he started 10 years ago and I have nothing to complain about) I have always heard from the boomers and people who were never in…

One thing that really bothers me about the modern labour situation is that I've noticed that most of the company's do nothing useful at all for society, like really nothing, the world would probably be better off without them in many cases.

Once, I had a few months just waiting for my bosses to come up with anything for me to do, so my days started by asking if they had anything then played video games quietly at my desk until the end of the day. I felt guilty at the time but these days, I dream of having such a situation again…

We've been losing employees left and right. We pay higher than average, but the work is tough. Rather than increase pay, which I recommended, management decided to sit all employees down and explain to them how much the company pays in health benefits….”Poor us”. Ok, fair enough, not all companies offer health insurance. However, one of the bullet points was that the employer has to pay 7.5% in social security benefits. I immediately told them this was deceptive, since all employers are required by law to split this 15% with the employee, unless they are a private contractor. So EVERY employer pays this as the cost of hiring employees and it's nothing special. The response was met with “Well, it's still a cost we have to burden”.

In my last job summers were the busy season, and with the pandemic we were behind on quota so they were trying to make up for lost time. Trouble is: I was the only guy there qualified to do the work. At first I didn't mind – having a full day made it go by faster, and I'd been at it long enough to feel like I could handle it. But as the weeks went on they started over-scheduling, expecting me to do things in less time than it should ever take me with no breaks and no lunches. Now, the manager and I had developed a friendship over the year or two that preceded this. At least I thought we did. We shared our feelings, developed a kind of mutual respect, etc… So first thing I did when things started feeling a bit overwhelming was take the matter to…

I’m posting about my friend because I don’t know what advice to give her since she lives in Canada and the laws may be different there. She’s 31 weeks pregnant and works as a server. Lately the restaurant has been slow so she’s been getting less and less hours. Then they completely took her off the schedule the same week the hired TWO new people. The problem is she NEEDS the money but they didn’t fire her they just took her off the schedule. And to make matters worse her job called her today and told her she should quite because she can’t handle the job. She hasn’t received any complaints from customers because 1) the restaurant is slow and 2) she’s doing the same as she was before pregnancy. In the US if she were to quit she wouldn’t get unemployment. What’s the next step ??? What should she…