Antiwork

I recently interviewed for a Fortune top 10 company. The first interview was with HR and lasted all of 10 minutes. The second interview was with the hiring manager. I got the call saying “Can you interview today”? So, I stopped what I was doing and did the interview. Two subsequent interviews with the team and the VP were both the same. “Can you interview today”? First you get no time to prepare and then you have to sign out of your current job unexpectedly, which always makes me nervous. When talking to the VP she said “What makes us different is that we really care about people.” What happened next? You guessed it…Ghosted.

I was contacted by the new hiring manager for a delivery job that I applied for and was asked if I was available to interview. I said I was available and set up a time for later in the day. When they were an hour late I sent a message saying I'm going to assume that you're running behind schedule. I understand it happens. No worries. I'm still here. When they were two and a half hours late I said I'm going to leave my electronics and go do other things and I sure hope it wasn't an April fool's joke. Why would a company do that?

So I was at a company for a year and a half. Let's say it rhymes with abacus. Since I had just moves to the country, I didn't know the normal net worth, so they paid me pennies. I worked there for a year while I got my shit in order. Found out they were paying me half my net worth per month. I resigned. They had me hire someone at more than twice my salary. I just kept quiet. I was the only point of contact for all of my clients. Told them I was leaving. Lo and behold, all my client contracts were cut the day my notice period ended. Fuck you for paying me less than half of what I'm worth “abacus”

Did I make the right choice quitting my job? I am a lawyer. I worked at a firm for the past year. I liked the people. The area of law was interesting. I was overall a good fit. But the pay sucked ass. I made $57,000 and no benefits. I asked my boss for a raise a few weeks ago. Fortunately she did, but it was an additional $3,000 pear year. So it was only a 5% increase. That barely covers cost of living. Also, I am not salaried. I am paid by the hour. So, my pay amounted to $28.50 per hour to start, then I was bumped up to $30 per hour. This amounts to roughly $175 take-home pay per day. This is not enough to pay living expenses by myself (fortunately my partner works so we can split). I talked about pay with my other coworkers and…

When I was hired into my current role, I asked for more money than they offered. The manager asked and HR said no. Fast forward a year and I find out there's an actual procedure when you ask for more money…AND the hiring manager never actually asked…so I wasn't afforded the opportunity to go through the procedure. After a while of back and forth, I was told there's nothing they could do. Nobody could give me a straight answer of why I wasn't given the same opportunity that many others had when asking for more money. So the next morning I handed in my 2 week notice to the main manager and explained why. He was floored, he didn't know anything about it. He stated “I could have gotten you more money”. Which only pissed me off because it proved everyone involved, including HR, was full of shit about not…

Similar to many posts here I am the recipient along with others that we are bringing folks back to the office 2x week. It comes also with odd grandfathering policies for some remote work and flex. I have no clue how / if this will be formally tracked. I think it will be more line managers who care to monitor and setup in person meetings as a method to track (my own boss is one of them). My question to you – I have a lot of individuals I will need to communicate this to – and it is not in my control to modify any of the policy. I was thinking of how to tell them my view on this in a respectful way that lets them still choose how they come in the office to prevent attrition but also in understanding they have to choose how they want…