Month: May 2023

I worked a 6 month internship as a product designer at a very popular fashion and home goods retailer in my city. It’s basically the only design company in my city, but it employs about 25k people, and anyone who does anything creative in this area currently or formerly works here. In my time there, I single handedly designed 200 products, 90% of which are slated for production and will reach shelves later this year. Tables, sofas, chairs, accessories, toys, etc. I worked over time frequently. My team and adjacent teams loved my work but didn’t really care much for me, as I apparently did not fit the “image” of the brand. I heard some particularly mean/ignorant comments about me, my looks, and my medical condition from team members. I only made $15 an hour but outworked half of my team, most of whom arrived late, left early, casually skipped…

There are teachers, police, and fire fighter unions that I first come to mind. I'm seeing store like Starbucks and stuff unionize. Why don't office workers unionize? Wouldn't that take a much larger hit to the economy and therefore help get fair wages, pto, insurance, etc for all? I'm American, I was in a union at 17 while working at Safeway, but now at 30, I've spent 6 years in the corporate sector. It seems crazy we wouldn't have unions.

I left my job in the pharmaceutical industry. I was working as an inventory specialist, then my boss said, “ hey a position opened up as a shipping and receiving associate, you should take it” awesome, and it was a 1.50 pay increase. Little did i know, they werent filling the inventory specialist position and just combining the roles of both jobs into one…. Needless to say i quit that job pretty quickly. Got hired by a food manufacturer in supply chain. Supply chain account management. Good pay, manageable work load. Then they fired someone in the same position that managed other accounts, and gave me the accounts they were managing as well. No pay increase… been doing my accounts and the new accounts for about 8 months. Im totally swamped. Well the business is expanding and picking up 6 more accounts. They expect me to manage 3 more accounts…

Got my employment contract for the upcoming year (staff at private k12) and my hours have been increased while my hourly pay has gone down. Right now we work 7.25 hrs plus 45 min lunch. Next year they want us working 8 hours plus a 45 min lunch for a lower hourly rate. I asked HR for an explanation as to why my time is suddenly less valuable this year, and was told since we got 4% COLA raises (COLA in my state is 8% this year) I am still making more annually than I did this year. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills trying to explain to them that if I’m working LONGER days for the SAME paycheck, I am indeed getting paid less.

My company recently organized a conference and had to hire audio-visual (AV) services company to provide mics and such. They billed us $170/hour for labor costs (in addition to equipment rental charges, etc) but are actually paying the AV techs on site a small fraction of it. I don’t know exactly how much but one of the AV techs I discussed it with was outright shocked when I told him how much their company was billing for labor. His exact words were “even if you take away that 1 in $170/hour I’m still not getting that much”. I thought it was pretty outrageous but I’m reluctant to bring it up because I don’t want to get the guy in trouble (I know it’s his legal right to discuss his salary but it could still have negative consequences for him and that has to be his choice rather than me “outting”…

I put in for PTO for 5/28, and I requested it on 4/22. they had a whole month to look at it, figure out scheduling, etc. turns out nobody ever looked at it until I checked today to see it hadn't been touched. I ask around about it, and I only find out at the end of my shift that the other person who does my job during the weekend had requested off the same day before I did, so I couldn't take the day. they had a month to notice this and talk to me about it, but nope. I'm still not coming in on Sunday, but now I'm losing money from it. this, on top of a 60¢ raise for this year, has me really hoping the interviews I've been doing lead to a call back! this is the least of the problems here, this place is a…

So I got a little story about my new workplace (not even mentioning the industry because I'm scared of being detected and have an unfair disadvantage later). I started this Monday at the company. Everyone (including both of my bosses) were really welcoming, the learning experience has been going well and I had no problems with anything up until this morning. I noticed that my ear started to hurt which is a reccuring problem in my life, has been for quite a while but it always needs a trigger. Some sort of infection or some unclean thing that was on my head for a long time. Then I realized, the company gave me someone's used headphones which I wore for at least 4-6 hours each day since Monday. They were probably not disinfected by IT or anyone, this might have even been the first time they've been used since COVID…