I'm going on a rant; I apologize for the wall of text. Management at my company keeps progressively piling on work for me to do, and I can't take it anymore. I just can't. None of my co-workers can either. Work is piling up on everyone. When I look around my office, all I see are depressed, forlorn faces because of all the tasks we are trying to do. The emails come in every minute like rapid fire and the phones ring incessantly off the hook, and all the time, my boss is micromanaging me and the rest of the staff about tasks he has no idea how to complete. In short, we are so understaffed and mismanaged, it's not even funny, and when we apologetically say to our clients and our bosses we are slow at our jobs because we are understaffed and are trying to do thirty-nine million things at once, that puts the onus on the worker, not the company. It's the company's way of shifting the blame. The company needs to hire more people, but they won't and don't. So, they tell us to say we are “understaffed.” Yes, yes we are. Staff us! I want more people at work so I don't have to work all freakin' day.
Do you want to know why the new hire at our company quit within a year of being hired? It's because the company down the road offers a four day work week. Four days on, three days off; that schedule gives the employee an extra fifty-two days a year at home with his/her/their families and the opportunity to take three-four day vacations on any week of their choosing. Want to be even better? How about a cap at thirty hours? Employees are most productive at thirty hours or less. Let's make it happen. This is the year we change the workforce.
Do you want to know why no-one wants to work for the company? The pay is low. We literally can't afford to pay rent on what we are paid. Let me say it again, but louder and slower so that you hear and understand me: WE CAN'T AFFORD TO PAY RENT. If rent doesn't go down, and wages don't come up, a lot of landlords are about to go bankrupt because they won't be able to pay off the mortgages because they have no tenants. We are this close, folks. Where I live, I am seeing jobs starting out at $12.00-15.00 USD an hour. A person who takes those jobs would probably qualify for WIC. They can't afford basic human necessities.
Why do I job hop every three years? It's not immaturity; it's for the money. I work for money. I want more money. Show me the money. I work faster and better for lots of MoNeY. I can get more money if I don't stay with your low-paying ass and find somewhere better. I see you paid Rupert a three dollar/hour bump over me when you hired him and I was more qualified than Rupert. I want those three dollars, and by you giving Rupert those three dollars, I'm incentivized to accept a new job for more money and not your $1.15/per every third year or whatever meager amount in longevity pay.
Speaking of other things I want. I want more time. I want to have HOBBIES. I want to have time to go exercise. I want to walk around in sunshine. I want to have time to unwind and spend with my significant other. I'm not happy with your company if you aren't flexible enough to let me do that.
By chance, do you want to know why John in data management rage-quit last week? You can't figure it out? It's because of organizational churn. Workers retired, and instead of hiring a new employee to help John, you dumped all of Emily's work on John, and when John rage quits, you will dump all of John's/Emily's work on someone else and consolidate job titles and responsibilities to save money. That's why no one is qualified for these bullshit entry-level positions. Look at your own job descriptions you are posting! READ. You want someone skilled at underwater basket weaving, have five years of progressive experience studying frogs, and a J.D. with a cognate in elder law? WTF? What happened to training people on the job for what you need them to do? All of the white-collar jobs are nigh impossible to get into nowadays either because no-one is hiring or they can't meet the insane criteria set forth with or without a degree. You want ten years of experience for a programming language that was invented seven years ago? Do you even hear yourself?
Oh, and you, yes you, obnoxiously critical interviewer person who asks the most difficult, irrelevant, aggressive, pedantic question so that you know it will make the job-seeker look flustered, you want me to come work for you? What is wrong with you? Asking questions like that doesn't make me want to work for you. In fact, I will run the other way and tell other people not to work for you.
And another thing, this bullshit trend of writing up an employee for issues that could have been a conversation? What is your issue? Do you have a screw loose? Do you know how many great employees I have seen leave in three years because of stupid stuff like that. Have you forgotten how to put on your counseling shoes? If you have, I'll help you find them. You talk to your employees instead of immediately resorting to discipline over something minor. Otherwise, your employees will loathe you.
Folks, corporate America is running the system into the ground, and this all makes me want to scream.
I will. Excuse me for a moment. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!