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Corporations Hiring Hooky Hunters
No longer satisfied with your crinkled doctor's note, a growing number of corporations are hiring "Hooky Detectives." Private investigator Rick Raymond says he's staked out bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings and even funerals looking for people using sick days. From the article: "Such techniques have become permissible at a time when workers are more likely to play hooky. Kronos, a workforce productivity firm in Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of salaried employees take sick days when they're not sick — almost a 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008."
These corporate sociopath CEO's have enough money to hire private investigators to stalk us. They can come up with whatever excuse or have no reason at all. These investigators have the power to ruin marriages, friendships, careers.
What can we do about the Gestapo America? BTW this article should be titled "Corporations hire professional stalkers to track employees outside of the workplace."
Gee I dunno, I'd think that getting married or being buried might be a good excuse to not show up to work.
Maybe you should give your workforce a bit more vacation time, 5 weeks enough?
Instead of having to police sick days, a simpler solution would be to combine sick days and vacation days into "earned time off" or similar. Let the employee use the time as they see fit, no policing required, and you probably get better morale in the deal too.
ERROR: Null
But seen another way. Why the hell give only an inch in the first place? :| People obviously want the yard!
Geekism is your _only_ God!
Why are we allowing employers to put us into neo-feudalism? Can't you see these employers are doing what government wants to do but can't get away with?
My brain combined the words hooky and hunters. That would have made for 1) an interesting read, and 2) a more disturbing photo.
It still counts as a sick day if you're taking the day off for your mental health, right?
Of course, if American employers would just provide a reasonable number of vacation days, this wouldn't be an issue; unfortunately it seems like the company has to squeeze you for every last ounce of productivity, even when squeezing less might make you more productive.
I don't get it. Work is not school.
They put all the days off in one pool. Sick, vacation, and personal. You mismanage and run out you don't get paid. You are allowed to carry quite a bit so there is no fear of being short of days when needed IF you plan well.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because I'm sure they're not doing the same thing.
i was going to make a snide joke: how can a private eye spy on a guy in a dark basement room with no windows, who doesn't eat, sleep or use the bathroom (real WoW payers use Depends!)
but then i thought: if you are playing WoW instead of going to work today, you really are suffering from a kind of sickness, aren't you?
and therefore, you are using your sick day appropriately
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The only examples provided were of employees suspected of fraud while on medical leave.
I see ZERO examples of a private dick being dispatched because someone took a sick day.
Exactly how much do these PIs cost? One organization "charges $75 an hour per investigator." How is that worth it? If you don't pay that to the falsely-sick employees, it's not like they're being paid 75 clams an hour. Or is it cheaper to fire them and hire someone else who isn't rattled by being spied on? Why is paying more than you're losing to find out how much you're losing good?
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Your boss wants to own you literally. Like a plantation owner owns his slave.
If you try to run away from your owner you'll be declared "mentally ill."
Employers want to use their power as employer to politically enable themselves to take moral control over our lives. Next they'll be tracking us to make sure we aren't cheating on our wives and husbands. To make sure we don't reveal corporate secrets, or to just to target the subversive workers who try to form a union.
Employee longevity has dropped from 30-some years to about 3. Maybe corporate hiring policy should take that into account when doling out vacation time. I may not have been with the company for long, but I do have 20 years behind me and would like a new position to start out with something more than 2 weeks off.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
How does it accomplish anything? These detectives won't be able to tell the difference between staying home and watching TV/playing games and being sick and staying home and watching TV/playing games...
If we're overworked, the environment sucks, the work itself sucks, or any combination of those, then companies shouldn't be surprised. The idea of a "mental health" sick day shouldn't be seen as absurd. It's one reason why the best and smaller companies offer more vacation even to new hires.
Unfortunately some companies (and the US work environment in general) really dont give a shit about their employees well being. Oh how I wish we had European workplace rules. At least we're not Japan.
One of my co-workers was off sick today. I think it's the third sick day taken in the three months they've been there. I normally wouldn't give a shit but when I have to cover their duties and deal with all the crap I can't help but get angry about it. I'm still fuming and the work day's over. Let's hope they're back in tomorrow because I'm going to have a fucking coronary otherwise. I can't wait until death when this shit will end. Rant over.
Ruin marriages and friendships? Are you taking the controversial stance on PIs finding out you're screwing your wife's coworker?
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The cellphone with twitter and facebook so they know where you are at all times and can contact you at all times. GPS tag on your car, in your phone. And now private investigators so they can monitor our behavior?
When those private investigators gain state of the art surveillance technology they'll be able to do a lot more than this article is describing. You piss off the boss and he can ruin your life literally.
How about this: US corporations can go fuck themselves. I dropped out of that rat race 7 years ago and I've never been the slightest bit sorry.
The U.S. Military, which is known for working people a lot harder than most corporations, still gives 30 days a year of paid leave. No 'Sick Days'. You could not take days off and build up 60 days if you wanted to. Anything over that was just paid back to you at end of year. It was the best policy I have ever worked under.
Now you couldn't always take your leave when you wanted to, for obvious reasons, but it worked and it's good for morale.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
These corporate sociopath CEO's...
I'm beginning to wonder if the best solution might be a law mandating that certain jobs require a psych evaluation before hiring. Confidential, of course. The specific criteria being conditions likely to lead to abuse of power, like antisocial personality disorder (aka psychopathy or sociopathy, two terms now out of use).
Put another way, "sociopaths" assume leadership positions in business precisely they aren't held back by conventional barriers, like empathy or ethics. They can out-compete regular folks by lying, cheating, and generally screwing over their fellow man, giving them an edge over any competition that won't stoop to their level. Screening them out would level the playing field for people who aren't complete and utter bastards.
Jobs that might benefit from such screening include corporate executives, senior government bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, law enforcement officers, lawyers and possibly others I've overlooked.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
...on the Sunday morning when I'm on an eight hour outage call starting at 4AM...
or the Monday night when I stay at the office until 10 working on a time sensitive launch...
do they turn the "hooky" clock backwards in that case?
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
This is such BS. If my company did that I would try to organize a massive Hooky Day! I am not a big fan of the union scene but this is just the sort of crap that causes people to get together and create them. Corporations simply need to understand that running on a skeleton crew is what makes them less productive!
Overworked employees make more mistakes, hate their jobs more, have overall poorer health which affects productivity, and facilitates the installation of a revolving door at the front. No matter how cool your technology, processes, or systems become... people will forever remain your most powerful asset. If you treat them well, give them perks, pay fairly, and maintain flexibility you will have a crew that can perform as well as another crew with twice as many people under a punk boss!
This is all fairly common sense, yet a common sense that is lost on most supervisors as they continue to strain the credulity of their efforts to minimize cost, and squeeze the last ounce of productivity out the lifeless worker drones!
J. Edgar Hoover approves of your comment.
Don't be fooled. This is a power play by employers to take even more power from the deunionized employee base. They want to destroy the middle class once and for all and the best way to do that is to reduce the employee to utter powerlessness and promote only the obsequious.
If the boss gets pissed off, a team of investigators can permanently neutralize you. If you think the Union leader can protect you then they'll neutralize him too via investigation. It's a new way to find dirt on people, and it's creepy.
So the PI uses the honey trap on you, you flirt with this new woman and now the PI gives that information to your boss. If you piss off your boss you can lose both your career and your marriage? Tell me how this can be avoided.
Investigate any of my employees for $100,000 a year.
That's why it's called "flexible time off," not "sick days" you fucking fascists.
If they're sick enough or they have sick kids, most people where I work stay home and work some from home. Otherwise, they come to the office sick and spread their germs. That way more people get sick.
Businesses used to give most workers paid sick leave. I suppose that's another disappearing benefit.
I'm sure there are those who would abuse it but this hooky detective stuff is nothing but intimidation.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Corporations Hiring Hooker Hunters.
Yes, with all the corruption from Criminals-In-Congress, Corporations need more Hookers For Congress.
Yours In Odessa,
K. Trout
I've said this in front of management where I work, its my time and ill use it how I want. The only thing they warn about is if you run out of time and get sick, but then there is fmla (if you don't mind not getting paid)
if I don't get sick very often, its not fair that I can't still use accumulated benefit time just as much as someone who is of lesser health.
And by it, I mean the corporate machinery, which includes the leadership of many corporations who see their employees as means to an end rather than the end itself.
Corporations also are trying to take on the role once held by government. This conveniently will allow Sarah Palin to team up with Mitt Romney and Rand Paul to bring moral values into the workplace while at the same time forcing us to be in that place for longer and longer hours. And if we get sick of it then we have to deal with an investigation?
And if you blog about it then you get called crazy like Joel Harris.
Their timekeeping software seldom works, seldom stores punches correctly, and is a general all around hassle to administrate. Can we trust any statistics they generate?
Generally speaking, vacation time is roughly, somewhere around 3-4 weeks per year. If a company offers you that much, people tend to be happier and more honest. If a company offers less, morale falls and people take the remainder as fake sick leave, because they feel they deserve it. It leads to disrespect for management. And since people value their sick leave to use as vacation, they're much more likely to come in to work while sick, spreading illness and decreasing productivity throughout the company. Too little vacation is a false economy for a company. (Yes, there are naturally exceptions.)
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Yeah, right! Like, I'd waste a day off going outside.
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
If any of y'all bothered to RTFA (madness, I know), you'd have found that they aren't talking about random one-off sick days. They are investigating people on long-term disability leave. Taking a sick day because your job is stressful is not the issue here, and frankly would not be worth hiring a private dick. These people are on extended periods of paid leave for what are supposed to be debilitating health issues - the whole point of being off work is because you're not in any shape to do the work. If you throw out your back, and they give you 6 months of paid leave to rest and recover, it sort-of looks bad if you start major renovations on your house the following week. It also constitutes insurance fraud, something a tad more serious than a few I.T. guys taking the day off to play Cataclysm.
Given that I know of a bunch of people who are exploiting the system right now, shafting their fellow coworkers, driving up the premiums, and of course sticking the honest ones with overtime to make up for it, well I feel no sympathy for the hypocrites and I whole-heartedly endorse these investagators. Hell, we just outed one a few months back. Not only did this person have a long history of feigning chronic pain and stress, but she was doing it twice! When she was on leave from one job, she'd work at a 2nd, and vice versa. Once the taxman is done tearing her a new one, she gets to defend herself in court against two insurance firms. Not that I like the insurance racket any, but someone needs to punish these socially defective crooks.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
On both levels. You've got people using their sick days when they aren't sick while we've got near-record unemployment levels. I had a job from July 2009 to June 2010, never took a mental health day, worked overtime when requested, and got laid off in June thanks to NY state cutting funding for state-funded private agencies. These people have (presumably) good paying jobs and are willingly wasting their SICK DAYS to go do whatever while some of us have been trying to find a job that doesn't require us to relocate an absurd distance. Go to work you lazy bums. And people wonder why the rest of the world thinks that Americans have no work ethic... Granted, I'm not supporting employers stalking their employees outside of work. Thats just wrong.
Many companies have gotten rid of SICK days and replaced them with personal time off (PTO) They can be used as you see fit, sick days, fake sick days or just didnt feel like coming to work days. I haven't had "sick" days in 10-15 years. This way if your healthy you get a couple extra vacation days, if your not you loose a few. In the long run I have more days than others with sick days and dont have to lie to use them.
There are companies that have virtually unlimited "sick" time off. These are pretty rare today but this does exist. When it does and people take "sick" days as vacation time there is indeed something to complain about, mostly because in theory their sick time policy is a short term disability plan. So if someone stays out for two weeks because of a supposed injury or sickness they are certainly going to be checked up on. It has been common for years (decades, really) to require a statement from the doctor when you come back. This isn't just for abuse prevention, although it works pretty well at that.
When there are no "sick days" but just paid time off (PTO) or "flex time" or whatever it happens to be called then there is clearly no issue and trying to find out if people are really sick is pointless.
Of course, both sorts of plans can be abused. If you are an unreliable employee that just doesn't show up some days it will certainly be noticed and recorded. You will be penalized for this either in lack of raises or lack of promotion. Or just canned. Any organization that doesn't do this is just fostering an environment where nobody cares and that will be noticed by everyone as well. So both management and the employees have to care about stuff getting done and not having a "What? Me care?" attitude about the work environment.
I've treated my sick days as personal days, but I consider them to be mental health days. After all, my mental well-being is as important (if not more so) to my job performance as my physical health.
"Sick" days? That's, like, you're sick, you do no work, you're unproductive, but you still get paid?
Nice gig.
It's always a kick to see how cube-dwellers squeal when one of their work "rights" is threatened; the same cube-dwellers who want to preach to artists, writers and musicians about how they should be earning their keep in "the digital age" and when/when not to expect payment for what kind of work.
This doesn't have much to do with being a cube-dweller, it has to do with being a salaried employee.
Hourly employees are paid for the hours they work. Don't show up to work, don't get paid. Work 50+ hours in a week, get paid for 50+ hours that week.
Salaried employees get paid a fixed wage largely unrelated to the number of hours they work in a given week. This is because it is assume that there are occasions that they'll work significantly more than 50 hours in a week. Sick leave, personal leave, vacation time, etc. are all ways of compensating salaried employees for that extra time they put in but don't get paid for.
I used to work at Electronics Boutique. During the holidays we'd put in some very long hours. 10+ hour days became the norm. You'd see some very nice paychecks for a while there. But if I got sick and couldn't make it in to work I didn't get paid anything at all.
I now work in IT at a hospital. I'm a salaried employee. I get sick leave and vacation time. Last week I put in 11 hours on Monday, 15 hours on Thursday, and then another 2 hours at 4:00 AM on Sunday - in addition to the normal 8-hour days in-between. I wound up with 52 hours last week. I'll get paid the same as if I worked 40.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Hire some PI's who work with psychologists to investigate individuals for sociopathy? Is that what you are advocating?
Companies are asking for it by having "sick time" and not offering incentives not to use it. the whole sick days idea is counter productive. offer extra paid time off instead of sick days then people who are healthy can take advantage (maybe it leads to a healthier workforce? lower medical expenses?). If they don't want to go that route, then they should offer a large portion of the pay you would have received for the unused sick days at the end of the calendar year. i didn't feel bad taking off a sick day when i wasn't sick just the other day (i was interviewing for another job too, i did feel some what bad about that).
When one stopped getting paid for lunch hour.
It's good to have a few sick days on the books but not too many. I can't speak for every company in the world, but it's been my experience without exception that if you leave a company you will be paid for unused vacation time. You will forfeit unused sick time. In the last 20+ years I've been sick for longer than a week only once (and it may not have been even that long). I keep 5-10 sick days handy (sometimes the kids get sick too) and use the rest from time to time. If I know I'll be leaving a company I'll take a day here and a day there to slowly bring down my balance to 0. No, I don't feel bad about doing this...sick days are a benefit that I accrue and the company used as an enticement to work for it. I'm just cashing it in, and as I said in another post, mental health days are important too (aka "I'm sick of my job").
You don't think most of the people at the top aren't sociopaths?
The sad fact is that to reach those high levels, it's not only not a hindrance, it's practically a requirement. It's not an indictment of successful people, but rather the way "the system" works. Sociopathy is ultimately rewarded, while honesty, thrift, efficiency... all those things we were taught are good are often impediments to rising through the ranks.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
What are you talking about?
Steve Jobs is a very normal man! He's a pinnacle of normalcy!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sounds like a modern interpretation of the iron law of wages. If your belt can be tightened, someone should tighten it for you because you owe it to your company. If you aren't getting sick, you don't need days off because you owe that time to the company, and you'd just fritter it away having babies or something which would only decrease your productivity, or relaxing which might make you care less about the company's success. Rather than give you that time or give you the money spent on these stalkers, it's in everyone's best interests if the company keeps an eye on you.
What, now we have to read the articles?!? What's happening to this place?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
mod parent up!
If you're out 1 day, they aren't going to send someone after you. But if you make a habit of being out (like always being sick on a Monday or Friday), they have a right to be suspicious. I know someone that would call in sick at least 1 Friday a month. The manager confronted ther person and asked them to bring in a dr. note from then on. Amazingly no more Friday sick days.
If that type of behavior is tolerated, the company will lose much more in lost productivity.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
"Sick" days? That's, like, you're sick, you do no work, you're unproductive, but you still get paid?
It's also where I don't come to work, get very little done (because I'm sick, right?), and infect all my co-workers so that they, too, spend days getting very little done.
Sometimes paying a person to go away temporarily is actually the smart capitalist's response.
Are you a company robot?
actually, they probably don't do such things.
this just in: corporations want you to be afraid to go outside of the square box they put you in. this article is a fearmongering of the exact same, as shown that they have interviewed a single private investigator.
also just in: corporations look into when people are stealing shit from them!
news at 11.
If any of y'all bothered to RTFA (madness, I know), you'd have found that they aren't talking about random one-off sick days.
Really? I RTFA, and it mentioned several people who took two and three days.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
And that anyone who takes a sick day is stealing from the corporation?
These corporate sociopath CEO's...
I'm beginning to wonder if the best solution might be a law mandating that certain jobs require a psych evaluation before hiring. Confidential, of course. The specific criteria being conditions likely to lead to abuse of power, like antisocial personality disorder (aka psychopathy or sociopathy, two terms now out of use).
Put another way, "sociopaths" assume leadership positions in business precisely they aren't held back by conventional barriers, like empathy or ethics. They can out-compete regular folks by lying, cheating, and generally screwing over their fellow man, giving them an edge over any competition that won't stoop to their level. Screening them out would level the playing field for people who aren't complete and utter bastards.
Jobs that might benefit from such screening include corporate executives, senior government bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, law enforcement officers, lawyers and possibly others I've overlooked.
Good, so there is a test, and we can confirm that they are ALL clinically deranged... What then? Fire every last CEO in the nation just because they are good at lying? I am not choosing sides here, just pointing out the problem.
Sociopathy does not work in the long term. It provides short term gain and hence it is the fashion of the day.
In the long term not having empathy is a fatal flaw for a manager. If a manager does not have empathy he does not know how far to turn the screws before the workforce revolts. So he turns them too tight and the team fails to deliver, leaves or outright revolts and tries to lynch mob the management.
I have seen that more than once. In fact, In fact, I have seen that more than once with the same person leading to the same end.
Similarly, vs a background of sociopathy a non-sociopathic company is guaranteed a considerable competitive advantage.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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Will the executives be subject to this also? I can suggest staking out golf courses, marinas (when weather is nice of course), Martha's Vineyard (or wherever the local trophy home location is), and their secretary's apartments.
The title of the article is deceptive though. It isn't about people being stalked because they took a sick day or two off, it is about people abusing long term medical leave. That I have to admit I don't have a problem with them investigating. If you say you are unable to work because you can't walk and they catch you helping your neighbor move a sofa down 5 flights of stairs then I'd agree you should be busted.
Investigating someone for being out 3 days with the flu strikes me as a bit petty though. Maybe the problem at that point is your employees need some vacation time or you just have lousy moral. Firing people left and right won't make the remaining ones any better and won't guarantee you will magically get a flood of super workers to replace them (or that they won't end up as unhappy as the first bunch).
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
..to tell me how many 60 hour works I week, so I can show it to my boss.
On second thought, no. I'll just cut back to strict 40 hour weeks, with lunches, and not a minute past 5pm.
I kid, my boss is great and doesn't care about that shit as long as the work gets done.
It's far more likely that you ruin your own marriage or friendship than it is for a private investigator to ruin it for you.
What's more likely:
A PI catches you're screwing your best friends wife, or
a PI manufactures compelling evidence that you're screwing your best friends wife?
I do agree with you about the CEO hiring a PI. Isn't that money better spent on performance incentives? Seriously, if there were great incentives to be a top performer, wouldn't employees work their butts off to get those incentives?
"Lame" - Galaxar
If you are a sociopath and happen to be a Prince or from a wealthy family, you can get away with murder.
I was going to say that this sounded fishy. A company would likely lose more money paying a "Hooky Hunter" to track down John Smith calling in sick for 1 day than they would lose from John Smith not coming into work and getting stuff done. But someone who claims that they've injured their back and need 6 months to recover and then are spotted riding a rollercoaster 3 months in should be taken to task.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
At the University I work for no one cares except HR. Most of the time I'm taking off for Christmas is sick time and my boss knows and doesn't care.
This space for rent...
Like you said, sick time IS salary for some of us, and we should be allowed to use the money they claim to be paying us.
If I can't use the sick time, then let me cash it out. Reward me for not using it, or let me use it.
You don't think most of the people at the top aren't sociopaths?
At the very top? Hell yes. I'd go so far as to say all but an handful are.
My proposed solution was more a prevention than a cure. Those currently at the top will all eventually die or retire, leaving their posts open to new executives. Screen the ones on their way up to weed out those without empathy or ethics, and the problem is prevented. It won't fix much in the short term, but would work in the long term, provided loopholes were removed (most sociopaths are excellent loophole exploiters).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
iDoubt it.
"But this one goes to 11!"
A couple of the places I've worked at have total PTO days rather than separate vacation and sick days. Instead of starting with 2 weeks vacation to start, you might get 4 weeks PTO. For most employees it works to their benefit in terms of getting more time off, but it disincentivizes taking unscheduled sick days (which tend to be much worse for the employer than scheduled vacation, which can be planned around). Win-win, without a need to hire PIs and such.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
It actually mentions both kinds - serious fraud, such as fraudulently taking disability leave, and one-off sick days to attend a wedding. As far as pursuing the one-offs, I bet that only happens in cases where they want to get rid of somebody and need an excuse. Having been in jobs where I had a lazy, worthless, co-worker or three dragging the entire department down with an ineffectual manager doing nothing until it got so blatant he had no choice but to fire them, it doesn't really bother me if they are using investigators to help get rid of people who they need to get rid of.
That said, I think a better way to handle one-offs is to do it the way my employer does it: you get 20 days of paid time off per year to start (more with seniority). What you use them for is your business. There is no differentiation between sick and vacation time. If you have a great year, you can spend a lot of time on vacation. Or if you have a really bad year, you have 20 days of sick time. Or you can carry it over, until you hit the accrual limit (240 hours IIRC).
And use the benefits of being a part of the workforce group, instead of taking on the corporation with what they have in their pockets.
The downside is everyone would have to learn to speak Russian, USA would have to be renamed to USSA, communists would finally win and everyone joining the union would forever burn in hell along with his/her entire family, godless heathens they all are.
Or whatever it was that was programmed into the minds of Americans during the last century as being the reason why communism, socialism, unions, worker's rights etc. are inherently bad things.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
http://www.mobbingportal.com/topicmobbing.html
How can it be solved?
If it was my job,I would tell them to shove it as I don't need a doctor's note unless I have been out for 3 consecutive days.
Who goes to the doctor if they are sick for 1 day? You have a much better chance of catching something more serious going to the doctor all the time. I would never work for a company that requires a doctor's note for a 1 day absence. Plus who wants to pay an office co-pay, drag your sick ass out of bed, go to the HMO and wait for an hour, only to have the doctor tell you "Yep, you have a cold. Get lots of rest and drink fluids." Wow, really? Thanks doctor. My boss used to tell me I was out too often due to illness. So the next time i was sick, I came in and worked. Got 3 of my co-workers sick, including my boss. She never gave me crap about sick days since that happened.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Precisely what my last employer, a big defense contractor, has done since the Nineties. No more charades.
rj
...these companies also have a guy who watches the copier to make sure you aren't copying your bowling league scores.
rj
I can't remember the last job I had that made any kind of distinction between "sick" days, "personal" days, and "vacation" days. The only threshold was if you were into "short term disability claims" territory.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
" Private investigator Rick Raymond says he's staked out bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings and even funerals looking for people using sick days."
oh sure, when he's at a baseball game it's work, but if I am it's not. At least I had to pay for my own ticket.
Also, why would he stake out a baseball game, just stake out their house.
I have found a solution.
1. Quit your job.
2. Become a private eye who tracks down workers playing hooky.
3. Get paid to go to the same bowling alley you were going to before.
4. Profit!
Didn't even need the ???
...corporations hiring hooker hunters. at first, I was think, "Oh man, how do I get a job there", but then was very disappointed when I realized I read it incorrectly
The world is how you make it
... Spy games are multiplayer by definition. They can play it, we can play it. Then we'll find out who's the better snooper, and who has the most to lose. Don't think for a millisecond your boss stands to lose LESS than you do if his closeted skeletons are outed.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
This is why I think Julian Assange will have even more problems when he releases those Bank files.
May the Maths Be with you!
There wouldn't be a problem, now would there be. What a concept, no shit.
These comments from people that claim the government is dishonest. Again, the double standards of /. Don't do as I do(being dishonest), do as I say(be honest).
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
He's insanely normal.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
What can we do about the Gestapo America? BTW this article should be titled "Corporations hire professional stalkers to track employees outside of the workplace."
Shouldn't the OP be modded funny? - didn't anyone look at the link?
According to Daniel Pink, who wrote the book (Drive) on motivation, that's not a great idea either. According to a number of scientific experiments conducted on motivation, performance incentives cause people to work harder, but less efficiently. Additionally, once the incentive is removed, the employees motivation and enjoyment of the job has been permanently reduced.
Of course, if a company is hiring PIs to follow employees around, most likely everyone hates the company and hates working there already.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
...what are those? Who actually HAS sick days anymore? Everyone I know has to use vacation days when they're sick (except they renamed them PTO now in the hopes that no one would notice)...
Well I would say more than %57 of salaried employees work WAY more than the 40hours of work they are paid for. So fuck this practice.
It's easier just to hire your own doctors for your employees.
People will want to take them whether they're sick or not. If you're reasonable, and just tell your employees to stay home when they're sick, they'll mostly do just that.
PHB protip: 40% of all sick days are taken on Monday or Friday! FORTY PERCENT!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
God the mods are gullible sometimes, all you have to do is call everyone stupid and say RTFA and the mods are like "oh yeah, they really should *mod up*".
"Raymond investigated an employee at a Florida health organization who called in sick with the flu for three days."
"In 2009, four firefighters in Haverhill, Mass., were suspended after a private investigator, hired by the mayor, caught them attending hockey games and engaging in other blatantly non-sick-day activities."
And then there's the 'easy' solution, just track all your employees, all the time.
"Ahearn once had a client who issued each of his employees a mobile phone with a GPS tracking system."
Hiring a $200/hour private investigator on the off chance they will catch a $20/hour employee playing hooky. Brilliant!
"But this one goes to 11!"
While this is a nice theory, nothing in my experience seems to bear out your conclusions. By your theory, corporations should become less sociopathic over time. I've seen just the opposite. For your theory to really work, all workers would have to have the realistic option of leaving any employer that demonstrates sociopathic behavior, at any time. The elites have done everything in their power to ensure that as many working class people are as desperate as possible, and unable to effectively resist sociopathic actions by their employers. Also, it seems to me that capitalism, as a system, seems supremely uninterested in anything but the short term.
In fact, I would postulate an alternative hypothesis, that in any area dominated by sociopaths, even non-sociopaths must adopt sociopathic behaviors to compete.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Actually, I did read the article. It mentioned one employee abuse of calling in with the flu for 3 days in a row (she was caught at an amusement park, apparently by a PI). I have had flu's this bad before, but apparently the company thought this implied fraud and acted upon it.
Sociopathy does not work in the long term. It provides short term gain and hence it is the fashion of the day.
In the long term not having empathy is a fatal flaw for a manager. If a manager does not have empathy he does not know how far to turn the screws before the workforce revolts. So he turns them too tight and the team fails to deliver, leaves or outright revolts and tries to lynch mob the management.
Does this work long enough for the manager to become filthy rich?
Does the inevitable failure of this model prevent the manager from finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew? Or prevent them from leaving before the chickens come home to roost, finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew?
We engineers and other practical-minded people often take to broad a view when discussing what "works", considering things like the long-term health of the company etc. This is why we are often caught off guard by the seemingly irrational actions of sociopaths that when considered from the viewpoint of who the sociopath actually cares about -- themselves and themselves alone -- the strategy is almost entirely upside.
The enemies of Democracy are
i think there actually is some reward to honesty, thrift, and efficiency.
you'd be surprised how well you can live on a modest salary if you don't waste it on dining out, expensive suits, leased luxury sedans, club memberships, let alone multiple alimony and child support streams and the occasional civil judgement from treating people like dirt.
Slashdot overhyping editors strike again!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'm a salaried employee. I get sick leave and vacation time. Last week I put in 11 hours on Monday, 15 hours on Thursday, and then another 2 hours at 4:00 AM on Sunday - in addition to the normal 8-hour days in-between. I wound up with 52 hours last week. I'll get paid the same as if I worked 40.
I'm salaried as well. It pays to know your contract. My contract states 35 work + 5 hours break every week. Not bad, and I hold my supervisor to it. I basically told him you don't pay me enough to work the hours you want me to work, and consider that I don't smoke so I'm not taking multiple smoke breaks during the day, and I'm not one for having non work related conversations with coworkers, so I'm actually one of your most productive employees. Pay me enough so that my wife doesn't have to work as well and we don't feel stress when it comes to money and I'll work those extra hours for you up to a reasonable limit. This arrangement has worked out well enough for the past six years.
From the referenced article:
>This summer, Middletown, Pa., schoolteacher Leslie Herneisey -
>a three-time Teacher of the Year nominee - was arrested and
>charged with lying to colleagues about having an inoperable brain
> tumor so she could take extended sick leave.
I love journalists. Since when is lying to colleagues an offense you can be arrested for?
As many have stated, paying a lump sum to possibly catch someone playing hooky is saddening. When you hire employees you normally try to hire those that you can trust and enjoy seeing around the office, at least in certain industries. When you plan your budget you also take into consideration that every employee will use up their available personal days (and projected new personal days), days off, and holidays that year. This should for the most part be considered as a bonus incentive for the employee to work with you if you say you are offering X amount of paid days off per year. Most people probably save up a few extra days every year to add to the eventual "bonus vacation" but that doesn't translate with sick days so at the end of the year, most companies will say "if you didn't use it, you lost it". When people come to work at my company, I expect them to use up all of their sick days and I don't care if they are or aren't sick, and quite frankly, I would rather they not be sick and use a sick day so they can have a rested day than to have them come to work and be miserable. Happy employees create happy products and overall, your business shouldn't be a place of torture, we should all enjoy each other's company (ideally), just don't use up all your sick days and come to work sick because that won't fly with me at least hahaha. Some corporations just need to get their head out of their own ass sometimes and realize that humans are humans, not money-making robots.
Back when I was in the Crops, we also had 30 days per year. But if I were to take time off that including a weekend I was docked 'off days' for those weekend days as well as the weekdays, making the value of 30 days less then what it would seem to most people. On the bright side I was deemed mission critical and the vast majority of my leave request were denied. Once I got over 60 days, they started dumping my 'excess' leave time. Fortunately I was able to get the time restored by showing that I had requested leave that was not granted. This allowed for a longer period of time for terminal leave...
This penalizes those who stay healthy and don't get sick!
I wish and hope that some day companies will start to address mental health as well as physical heath, specifically related to sick days. If you have a sniffle, they tell you not to come in to work, you'll make someone sick, but if you're stressed out, unable to sleep, on-call for weeks, going through a breakup/divorce, have sick parents etc, and can't handle the mental strain, then you're SOL. Work on a salary? you know all those extra hours you put in for free for the company? Want to get something *back* from them? yeah, right ...
"Mental Health" days are widely recognized by non-management types as beneficial, but you don't see companies promoting them. 'take a vacation day' is the common line, but when you're only provided with 10 of them a year , it's awefully 'expensive' to take one because your boss has had you working 12 hour days for 2 weeks and you just need 1 freakin day off to sleep, do laundry, maybe buy some real food for a change.
But seriously, mental health, when you work in a job that is focused on mental performance (as much of IT/geekery is), is just as, or more, important as physical health. I can sit and read documents/manuals, catch up on email, update a few spreadsheets etc with a cold, but if I'm tired/stressed/"out of it", I'm next to useless.
Taking care of employees isn't a concern of companies any longer, if it ever was, despite the fact that giving a little can get them a lot. Policy, process, executive bonuses are all worked around 'you must be in your desk working from x to y and always being productive, or else', instead of the realization that we aren't machines and our brains are more valuable when they're functional than not.
$0.02.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Oh come on now, nobody's pointed out that his wife is a cop in a K-9 unit, and it's not really fair to insinuate that he's fucking a dog. I mean really, despite the fur that's an OFFICER OF THE LAW you're talking about.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Yeah, then again maybe it's time salaried employees strike back. Just because you are on salary does not necessarily mean you are not entitled to overtime pay, etc... if an employer wants to play that game and use such things as calling in sick to goto a funeral or maybe they're just overworked and need 24 hours to themselves to relax.
Studies have also shown that employees to take more days off tend to be more productive with their 'on' days because they destress more often.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
No, 40% should be. In most places it's more like 60% are.
Just don't tell management that 40% of all sick days are on Mondays and Fridays. They'll freak out.
I'm certain that despite breakin a federal law here and there he is a swell guy who "does try to do right by his employees", disregarding an occasional attempt at blackmailing them to give up their rights.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Even if I'm "out sick" for a few days, but you can find me at the mall, shopping, or whatever, doesn't mean I'm not sick. If I'm on a roller coaster, maybe, but running some errands seems perfectly legitimate. Anything from buying cold meds to merely doing things to get some fresh air to hopefully improve my condition that is still impairing me from putting in an honest day's work. (You know, like this ailment called "slashdot addiction"...)
Unionized workers would turn United States of America into United Socialist States of America.
And by "socialist" I of course mean Russian.
And then the KGB would go door to door confiscating all guns, beer and bacon.
And American Football would be canceled and the stadiums would be plowed over into turnip fields.
And it would perpetually snow.
Is that how the programing goes? I'm not an USian and as such I've never received that particular programing so I'm just guessing here.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Companies hire you for a 40-hour work week, and then feel no compunction about working you twice that. I know of more than one company that refuses to allow employees to take vacations -- always "too busy now, try again in a couple of months" -- and then institute "hour caps." effectively screwing workers out of their vacations. I know of others that refuse to allow legitimate comp time to be taken.
Once upon a time, after working three 70-hour weeks back-to-back-to-back, and then being asked to put in a fourth week of the same, I came down with a good solid, three-day case of the "flu." To be honest, I actually did feel like hell.
Workers start faking sick days when companies fail to honor their agreements on reasonable work weeks, vacations and comp time.
Now, companies have started hiring private detectives to shadow workers outside of the job. Welcome back to the bad old days of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency
During the labor unrest of the late 19th century, businessmen hired Pinkerton agents to infiltrate unions, and as guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories. The best known such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to enforce the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad; the ensuing conflicts between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to several deaths on both sides. The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
The private detectives aren't there just to enforce sick days. They're also there to quash the unions you advocate as a solution.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
By your theory, corporations should become less sociopathic over time.
Actually, on the outside, they have.
Consider that the earliest corporations waged wars against nations and took slaves. As recently as the Carnegie era, companies would have striking workers' wives and children killed.
Now they just gut themselves and whine to their bought representatives to save them. Whatever they do to the rest of us seems to be limited to trying to figure out new ways to pump us full of estrogen and corn syrup.
You seem to be looking at the robber baron era through the great depression, then mysteriously skipping fifty years or so when more worker friendly government regulations and programs like the new deal gave workers more power to negotiate, and corporations were forced to act more responsibly.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hiring a PI to stake out a funeral is probably the scummiest thing I've heard of in a while. There really is no fucking excuse for that.
"We had better fire Jones! He used one of his three sick days this year to go to his aunt's funeral! What a terrible employee!"
I wonder what they would do about me. I have epilepsy (2 seizures at work in 1 month) and 4 deaths within 2 weeks (1 my wife). My problems are nerological not classic physical injuries. I am already under investigation by my company to see if I can return to work. I do not disagree with people being investigated for abusing long term disability. However, they need to be investigated by competent professionals.
Why on Earth would they do that? You're already busting ass at your current pay rate; clearly you are happy. There's no problem to solve, here's your 3% annual raise.
Sorry, Japan labor laws mandate 10 days of paid leave, not 20.
I've taken no more than 5 personal days a year for the past 4+ years now... and 1 true sick day (as in, I didn't work). Other illnesses I just work from home. Truthfully, when I look at most of my friends and relatives... I'm still a slacker. I know people who have done several years without more than company holidays off. Then I look at threads like this and I wonder... maybe work ethic does have more to do with the recession than we let on. Everyone wants a 2 car garage, 2 cars, pool in the backyard, etc. etc... but only a handful of people in this country (mostly business owners) are willing to actually work for it. Perhaps the "stimulus" we need is nobody gets time off until the economy improves.
isn't it cheaper just to let them have their fake sick days?
It was a scare tactic to get the guy to stop calling off work on Fridays when he was obviously not sick. In my office we don't have sick days... if you're sick, you're sick. You stay home and are expected to log in to your laptop and at least be checking email every few hours. The guy was abusing the trust the employer has in us, calling in 1 or 2 Friday's a month so he could drive up to his hometown in a neighboring state for a longer weekend. I'm glad someone said something to him, I don't want them to create a policy with a fixed number of sick days or being forced to not get paid for when I'm out sick. It only takes 1 bad apple to ruin it for everyone else.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Great use of resources. Why don't we cut back on the 100 million+ salaries and stop with the crazy expenditures and pay our people a bit better and maybe through in a few "personal" days.
I do not play in the middle of the road
People get paid disability for shit like bipolar disorder and depression - often pre-existing, but not disclosed. Short term disability fraud ruins it for others with legit issues. It's also hard to fire people. A PI is cheaper and would help move out these douche-bags faster.
I'll get that lazy bastard now... always slipping out of the office, taking breaks, calling in "sick"... yeah, I'll see to it that he... what? Eh? Oh.
Never mind, I've just been informed that I'm self-employed.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
My employers have usually called them "personal days", that were able to be taken off for any personal reason -- not just being sick...
Mod this one up. I read the article and it's what was in there. PIs being hired to investigate people who are taking only a few days off. Maybe the employees in question have a habit of taking lots of sick leave, but TFA doesn't mention it if they do.
Who needs to RTFA when helpful people like billcopc are around to summarize. Thanx billcopc!
Of course he's right, and what's really odd about this story is that using PI's to investigate disability fraud and insurance fraud is about as old as the idea of disability or insurance. So...
Nothing to see here. Move along
-- QED
Any boss stupid enough to engage in incremental escalation like this, can blame noone but themselves for what happens next.
I make $8.65 an hour.
I can't will myself more money.
My computer is 10 years old.
My car barely runs in the winter.
I eat ramen noodles for lunch.
I don't have an iPod or cellphone.
I don't have health insurance.
I don't have time to go back to school for a degree because I already work 50-60 hours a week.
I also do all the shit work that your precious paper pushing hands are too good for.
FUCK. YOU.
And that sociopath is likely still a manager, just with a new crew somewhere. What's your point? It failed and he lost his job, or...?
+++OK ATH
Yep. As a person who rarely gets sick I really appreciate working for a place that does it all as just one big PTO blob. I budget to leave a few days in the kitty into the end of the year in case of actual illness. Some people would carry it over for years until they put a cap on it.
+++OK ATH
Bull. I started my own business based on honesty, thrift, efficiency and customer service. I did so without investing a single dime in start-up cash. Within 2 years I have built a 6-figure company with zero debt am steadily growing. Additionally, I have done so with only the aid of a high school diploma and a few college courses. Sure, some of my success is contributed to knowing some people who could give me warm leads, but its been my own hard work that has sealed the deal on all my accounts. The problem with so many people in our society is they are not resourceful enough and, as cliche as it may sound, they don't think outside the box.
There's a lot of money out there to be had. We've just bred ourselves to be whiny, lazy idiots who are on the verge of flushing our global leadership down the proverbial toilet through arrogance and ignorance.
Teach your children to think for themselves. You don't need to follow the institutional process - you just need to use your fucking brain.
fuck off to north korea hippy.
You ever run a business?
I thought not. You think you have some god given right to a salary at someone else's expense, while you sit on your sofa watching TV?
Fuck off.
Indeed, the key ingredient, is low unemployment. If most competent workers can leave, and the worker has an easier time finding a new job, than the employer has finding a new worker, then you don't really even need very strong worker-protection laws.
This is, the case here, and it's been the case for atleast a decade. When both my boss and I *know* that he needs me more than I need him, it puts very strict limits on what bullshit he can get away with. And since he's aware of that, he typically does not even try it.
(and leaders who -do- try tricks which cause the most-competent-half of the company they lead to jump ship, tends to either learn, or end up not having a company to lead anymore)
Unemployment, 3%, or about average for the period 1970-2010, peaks at 5-6%, lows of 1%. long-term (6 month+) unemployment: 0.8%.
I'd say, most leaders here either are not sociopaths, or IF they are, they've learnt how to hide it well. They must, because the alternative is to have nobody competent to lead.
...unionists were parasites who would "eat up" the company and then move on to the next one, instead of workers working FOR the company, creating the profit and thereby being entitled to the part of it - and who would be jobless if they should "ruin the company" by their "crazy" demands.
Then, your "unjustified pay raises and unsustainable benefits" might hold water.
I guess you prefer the "popular" option - where employer sacks the workers and then rewards himself and his circle of CEOs with dividends cause stocks just went up due to their "saving measures" causing the increase of profit in the last quarter.
Repeating that until they fire that last quantum of skilled workers, tipping the company into loss, then debt and finally into bankruptcy - and then just selling it up or simply jumping the ship to another company.
Unless the company happens to be "to big to fail" in a "1st world" country that can afford to "bail them out".
So not only do they get awarded for ruining companies they run, lives of workers they employ and sending the economy to hell - they get to directly steal the money from the taxpayers too.
Brilliant that. Much better than giving the workers power to control how their company operates. At-will employment FTW.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Some places I worked at had sick days, and every now and then someone would call in sick and go to the movies or beach or something. As far as everyone was concerned, it was a mental health day, they were sick of work and needed some time to decompress. Funny how weekends tend to be filled with the stuff you've been putting off doing the rest of the week, like laundry, among others, especially when you don't have a stable schedule.
Other places had Personal days instead of sick days, so it didn't really matter what your reason was most of the time.
I agree that any company that has the money to waste on a 'hooky detective' and to actually think it's a necessary thing really needs to re-evaluate their employee relationship situation because they've obviously screwed up somewhere.
>>The sad fact is that to reach those high levels, it's not only not a hindrance, it's practically a requirement.
This just isn't true. My family has built a pretty solid model, and while people occasionally do really unethical things to us, we pride ourselves on always acting ethically ourselves.
Will we sue someone if they don't live up to their end of a contract and fail to pay us? Sure.
But you don't get very far in life if people know you're a shyster. Believe it or not, behaving honestly and forthrightly with your partners works better in the long run.
Productivity is usually defined as stuff done / time taken. Why do you think reducing the divisor will cause the result to go down?
Why?You can employ six guys, each doing forty hours a week instead of four doing sixty.
Aren't they two totally different things?
Software developing isn't like shovelling shit, where the more time you spend the more shit you shovel. You claim to have how many years experience?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Outside of the workplace maybe but also on work's time, presuming they receive paid leave for time off sick.
I've never had a sicky in my working career, or much sick leave for that matter (11 days in 16 years - minus one appendix), so I welcome efforts to eradicate selfish lazy-ass cock-masters who leave their shit for conscientious workers such as myself.
They make me glad that I don't live in the Land of the Free (to be a serf)
I get 24 vacation days per year, 8 public holidays per year and as much sick leave as I need to look after my health. And I've been griping lately because at my last gig it was 30 days leave a year.
I suspect in recent decades, corporate life in America has not remained the same. It's gotten uglier. Hard to really know, but from quizzing old and young about their employment experiences, collecting dozens of anecdotes, I think there is a trend that direction. There really has been in increase in cutthroat competition. More fighting over less. Today, working in most corporations is edgy, like being a member of a starving wolf pack.
And why? The US is in relative decline, even as expectations have moved the opposite direction. "Chicken in every pot" is so 1950's. We've been straining to maintain an ever higher level of comfort, wealth, and power, and we're slipping. Now the American Dream, carefully upmarketed steadily, is a McMansion, a Lexus, and a college education. Takes a hefty pay package to afford that.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Meh, if employees are violating the terms under which the employer gives them time off (for being sick), then the employer has an interest in identifying that, and taking action. I don't have any sympathy for people who sneak off under the guise of illness when they should just honestly talk with their manager about needing the time.
And for people who feel they can't do that in their company, well, they're just working in the wrong place, and should leave.
This is not an issue in any of the companies I've worked at in the past 10 years, because they lump a few extra days in with vacation, and call it personal time. Their attitude is, "Enjoy your time off - go on vacation, be sick, whatever. Just don't take more time than this if you expect to remain employed." Yep, it's a great time to be a corporate worker in the U.S.!
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
Oddly enough, our per capita GDP has gone up. We are not 'slipping' if by slipping you mean going backward. At least not in terms of overall productivity. What has happened is that all the increases in GDP have gone to the top 10%, so the rest of us have not moved forward, and in fact, the poorest twenty percent has fallen behind. It is outright class warfare, and the owning class is winning.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I've never met anyone who is content to stay at the bottom. Thats why most people at the bottom who aren't working are miserable and addicted to drugs.
Also if there is no way out of that situation (if they aren't able to educate themselves or have a criminal record), what else can they do that is any better? You can only expect them to take their best option which is not to wok if working at McDonalds for their whole life is all they can have.
When theres enough jobs so that people can have a better quality of life by hard work then you can complain about the people who don't work, but not while theres 9.8% unemployment and low skilled jobs are being shipped overseas.
The poor who want to work hard for a better life have to rob the rich people and take a better life.
Or go on welfare and be satisfied with the lives they have.
Hard work wont improve their life as cited by the fact that median incomes are not positively correlated with the hard work of generations. So what this means is it's smarter to take what you can get than to work hard.
If you don't like it here - why don't you just leave is an ultimatum. Not choice, nor guarantee.
And if we are going to talk "deserved" pay grade - what would be the fair wage for corporate drones for leading the company into ruin?
Gee, maybe the UAW should've thought of that.
Right. Sure.
UAW workers are guilty for the fact of trusting their management that they know what the fuck they are doing.
The management that kept churning out gas guzzling SUVs and trucks despite the price of a barrel of oil going over $200.
And then while losing the sales war to Toyotas in a down-spiraling economy - complaining that foreign car manufacturers are losing less because they are paying their workers less.
Sure - it's the workers' fault they were told to build unsellable products.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
First off, I'm guessing your family business is on the small side. Not like Microsoft or GM, etc. That's not a criticism in any way. I would certainly prefer to do business with a company like you describe.
Furthermore, I'm not condoning this kind of behavior. I'm with you. You should be honest in your dealing, fair to people you work with and treat everyone well.
I can believe it's possible to be hugely successful and be a decent person, I just don't believe it happens a lot.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It sounds to me like you are doing it the "right way" and I wish you well in your endeavors.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
you're an idiot.
NOT Hooky Hunters!! ....it was a typo, a complete error in well established corporate hiring policy.
Doesn't being sick of work count as an illness.
Wait, no the only place I've worked that did something like this WAS unionized.