My entire professional career post-college has been moving from small business to small business. Not knowing any better I assumed all office jobs were like these – They're understaffed, they're disorganized, you get paid just enough but never good enough, you have no growth opportunity, you have no benefits and possibly no PTO, the company operates on razor thin margins and is always in danger of tanking, etc.
Last year I got a dream job at a major company. You've probably heard of them. I'm a faceless individual in a sea of thousands. And it's amazing!
The first thing that blew me away were how good the salary (Not hourly wages!) and benefits were. We also get commuter stipends and money to furnish our home offices since we work hybrid. If I need new equipment to do my job they just order it.
Last month I thought I was going to get fired. I dropped my work laptop at home and broke the monitor. I flashed back to every small business I worked for, how any little inconvenience to them could lead to bankruptcy. I remember making a $200 mistake at one job and getting chewed out, being told it would be taken out of my paycheck and I'd be canned if I messed up like that again.
When I had to go back into the office a couple days later I was dreading it. Absolutely dreading it. This was a costly repair, if the laptop didn't need to be replaced outright. I was wondering if my pay would be docked. I tried hiding it from my department boss, but he saw it. “That looks bad, go to IT and see if they can fix it.”
My heart pounded. I walked into the IT office. “Uh, so this happened.” The IT guys looked at it, said the screen cracked, and then one of them walked away. Fuck, he was going to rat me out!
Then a couple minutes later he comes out of a storage room with a cart carrying 5 unopened laptops in their original boxes. “Pick one, we'll send yours out for repairs. If you like the new laptop you can keep it.”
That's it. No threats, no freakouts, no worries about the owner finding out and canning me. They just had dozens of unused laptops in storage.
Just to work for a company that has an extra laptop was mind blowing for me. But to have dozens of extras???
I can't go back to the anxiety of feeling like I would tank someone's business by fucking up a simple email or losing a piece of paper (I can't tell you how many small businesses rely on paper documents in their workflow rather than being all digital).