Author: Olivia

Just for some information, I’m a multi-skilled maintenance engineer that includes electrical, mechanical, programming and fabrication. My one rule for my career was I would never work on toilets, no matter how small or trivial the job was. I recently left my job because I was asked (quite rudely) to fix a toilet. I declined multiple times because my job is to maintain the machines, it does not state in my contract I have to do facility work, plus I’m not a plumber and I have no idea what I’d be doing. He told me that it would be a problem, I simply said if it was then I would pack my tools and leave there and then, he backed off and told me I would have a formal meeting about it. Turns out that formal meeting was a disciplinary. Just to clarify he had asked other engineers and they…

I work in insurance, claims to be specific. I have been with my current company over three years. I put in my two week notice after I accepted a much better role with a 30% increase in pay at a competitor company. My boss asked who I was leaving the company for, out of her curiosity, and went on to say that at her last company, employees were not allowed to continue for their last two weeks if they were leaving for a competitor. I lied and said I was going to be leaving the insurance biz indefinitely. Who knows what would’ve happened if I told her the truth, but I’ve got one week left at this place

So I work for a company that builds gaming pcs and repairs electronics and I'm like 90% sure there is a tech here that just kills time walking around the building throughout the day. He is in a different department, doesn't talk to anybody, has his hood up all the time and my coworker and i see him in different parts the building multiple times a day. We've taken to calling him “laps” because all he does is walk laps around the building all day. Good for you laps, may you never be caught.

Small businesses can rarely pay a living wage. And there are a lot of them. So many of them in fact, that their inability to pay living wages actually suppresses the average wages. Large corporations will (sometimes) pay more, but the floor is so low due to the economic non-viability of most small businesses that they don’t have to pay much more than a living wage. Small businesses are touted as a way to fight back against corporations, yet their continued existence lowers the value of labor as a whole in the market. If capitalists really believe in “the free hand of the market” they will agree that any small business that can’t afford to pay its workers a wage they need to survive SHOULD close. We need to stop giving our money and labor as charity to the petite bourgeois if we want this dynamic to change