I work for a large privately owned manufacturing company in the Midwest. I started a few years ago and have only heard the other employees who have worked there for decades complain about “how it isn’t what it used to be.” These are a few of the examples of the “good ol’ days” that they have said:
• The founder/owner (who was a billionaire) would drive by houses of prospective employees and judge the condition of their home and use that to help determine whether to hire them or not.
• Perfect attendance was highly rewarded. This meant that some employees would miss funerals of their parents as using a bereavement day would count against perfect attendance.
• Employees would miss the birth of children to not miss out on perfect attendance as well.
• Annual reviews would get docked if shoes were not shiny enough (completely up to the discretion of the supervisor).
• Mustaches couldn’t grow longer than past the bottom of their upper lip. They had one warning and would get fired if it happened again. Same went with stubble and beards. All men had to shave every day.
• Until about 8 years ago, all office employees had to wear suits and ties. There are still shoe shine machines in some bathrooms.
• The company used to never have PTO. The company would shut down for a week in the summer and for Christmas. That’s it.
I could go on and on with things like this. The company has made a complete 180 on these things and now has actually really great benefits. However, I think they had to wait for the founder to die to actually make any changes. The fact that people still work there and complain about simply having PTO and people using it is frustrating.