Category: Antiwork

I work for a large family owned corporate office that’s generates approx 20 billion dollars a year and we have employees who have to get picked up by someone everyday cause they can’t afford their own car, have to put water in their cars everyday because they can’t afford to fix theirs, people who have chronically sick kids who have used up all their pto and get no (shit) pay when their kids have emergencies, have to work second jobs part time after work, etc, etc, etc. I get second hand embarrassment seeing this. Maybe my talk is cheap and why I’ll never own a business this “successful “, but I would die of shame and guilt if I knew my workers had to live this way. Especially since those are the people who really make us go round while the directors and upper management who are pocketing 6 figures…

This would be like the dumb tv show Undercover Boss, where the CEO goes undercover as a low level employee at his company then at the end he plays hero in an manufactured emotional conclusion where the CEO reveals himself to the employees he worked with and gives them stuff. Even though this show is really just calculated PR for the company, it’s interesting to see how these CEOs have no idea how their companies operate lol. In Undercover Employee, an employee would be an executive and do incredibly difficult executive tasks like sit in meetings, go to lunch, play golf, and work a few days a week. The employees could see how hard the CEO works and why the CEO gets paid millions of dollars.

Can we all agree that tip culture in the US has gotten out of hand? Tipping used to be a way of showing gratitude for exceptional service. Now employers are relying on customers to supplement employee wages with their tips and its time to stop. Businesses have started adding mandatory tips to online pickup orders which simply require putting items in a bag. In addition, businesses like grocery stores and restaurants that coop with DoorDash and Grubhub artificially increase their prices, add fees, then ask for tips on top of those fees. A grocery order that cost $54.95 with tip on DoorDash only cost $13.60 when I picked it up myself at the store. How is this justifiable? We have got to end tipping in place of wages and start paying livable wages. Let’s go back to tipping for exceptional service.

Every 6-ish weeks at my 9-5 job where I am paid hourly because I’m an entry level worker, I have to work on a Saturday morning at 9am to test out an update to our system. This would be fine if I was paid. I have to be ready at my computer at 9, and then wait to get the go ahead from our Systems team. I wait around from like 9-11 sometimes because the system isn’t ready or something. However I am not paid for the whole time I am waiting after 9, I’m only paid/can clock in for when the IT team is ready for me to test the system – which could be 9:30, 10, even 11. So sometimes I wait around at my computer for 2 hours and only get paid for half an hour. Is this wrong, and how can I bring this up to…

Like say you got hired as a waiter but 6 months in they want you to be a waiter and start washing dishes for the same pay, are they allowed to fire you if you refuse unless you get a raise?