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Antiwork

“incentives are bad”

This is somewhat of an update to a previous post. The post was about the time my boss asked me to make sure the team does extra work with the promise of a pizza party. I told him if he wants people to do extra work, incentivize them with something they actually want, because they don't want pizza. I suggested giving them store credit to buy stuff (pointing out it was cheaper to do that than buying pizza), and he said “no, they'll be happy with pizza”. I had a meeting with him today and our new supervisor (for context, I'm an ass. man., my boss is the man., so this new supervisor is third in charge) The supervisor brought up the extra work, and said he needs something to incentivize the team other than a pizza party. I took this opportunity to say “perhaps we should revisit my store…


This is somewhat of an update to a previous post.

The post was about the time my boss asked me to make sure the team does extra work with the promise of a pizza party. I told him if he wants people to do extra work, incentivize them with something they actually want, because they don't want pizza. I suggested giving them store credit to buy stuff (pointing out it was cheaper to do that than buying pizza), and he said “no, they'll be happy with pizza”.

I had a meeting with him today and our new supervisor (for context, I'm an ass. man., my boss is the man., so this new supervisor is third in charge)

The supervisor brought up the extra work, and said he needs something to incentivize the team other than a pizza party. I took this opportunity to say “perhaps we should revisit my store credit idea?”, and what my boss said shocked me.

“Incentives are bad. If we give people incentives for doing extra work, then they'll expect incentives in the future. What we need to do instead is just tell them it's part of their job and they just have to do it”.

You heard him, folks. We can't reward good work because then they'll just expect it. What's next? Fair wages for fair work? Can't have that, they just need to do extra work for free and be happy about it.

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