TLDR: Mr. Suit shamelessly tried to manipulate the entire workforce during a compensation dispute by saying, “Solar is the best way we can stick it to Putin.”
My coworkers and I often find ourselves walking on a few inches of space on the edge of a roof 20 feet in the air. We also working. with electricity for a living. Both of these tasks can easily kill you. We pointed out we need to be compensated more. We made just enough noise to actually breakthrough our useless middle management. HR was “shocked” by our dissatisfaction. We had a branch-wide meeting, which was tense, but fairly productive. Everyone is eventually cooling down after being told we will in fact be receiving 7% raises to match inflation. And then Mr. Suit arrived.
In the last 5 minutes of the meeting, of the workday, one of our co-founders makes a melodramatic entrance. We are a bunch of green-collar hippies standing in a warehouse with our dirty work clothes on, and this guy takes center stage in his suit and tie, raises his hand, and asks, “Who here dislikes Vladimir Putin?” Being a room full of decent people, we all obviously raised our hands (under duress). Mr. Suit then goes on to say, “Good! Because installing solar is the best way that we can stick it to Putin. It is the ONLY way to take the wind out of his sails.” He then rambled on about something…I stopped listening.
Picking a topic that is abhorrent to ensure everyone has a common ground is one of the oldest manipulation techniques in the book. To have someone use this technique so blatantly to avoid discussing the problem at hand makes me sick.
Anyways, this was roughly 3 weeks ago, and I still can't look past it. I filed for the formation of my own LLC two days later. The paperwork is still processing and there's a lot of work to be done, but I can assure you the health, well-being, and prosperity of my employees is uppermost in my mind.