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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."
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.
You could try being faithful to your wife . . . .
As much as I hate the canard about "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide", there is a valid corollary: "If you've done nothing wrong, you won't get caught".
www.wavefront-av.com
>> Tell me how this can be avoided.
Well one way would be for the average worker to get a clue and stop living hand-to-mouth, spending every dollar they make to buy shit they don't really need...
In money there is power, but the average worker does not see that. If all workers had enough saved to tide them over for a few months, then workers could call the shots on how they should be treated and stand up to their a-hole bosses and corporations. I've done it and so has my wife, to the betterment of our lives and careers.
But seeing as the average worker is saddled with so much debt they need their weekly paycheck just to stay afloat; they have essentially placed all the power in the hands of a-hole bosses and shitty corporate environments who, believe me, realize this fact and take full advantage of it.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
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.
No, the real question is why are they so STUPID!!!
I agree that there is a strong neo-feudalism movement afoot. I don't think it's any sort of conspiracy, it's merely that class of people doing the type of things that they are prone to do, and neo-feudalism is the logical end-game. But I still assert that it is STUPID, because serfs don't buy the company's products. Each company seems to have this idea that they can drive THEIR employees down into the dirt, and "somebody else" will buy their products, presumably other company's employees. But when all of the companies are doing this, the pool of "somebody else" dwindles. It's just not a sustainable model.
I suspect that in the modern globalized world US companies expect that the growing middle class in the Far East will buy their products. But even if they can either eliminate every US worker or drive every US worker's pay down to 3rd world levels, their products will STILL have the overhead of an astronomically overpaid executive suite. What's worse is that the executive suite has generally grown addicted to cost reduction as the means of profit improvement. Most of them aren't worth spit in terms of bringing truly innovative products to market, improving the revenue side of the equation. (Reality distortion field aside, and though from everything I've heard he's a real prick, I have a strong sense of respect for Steve Jobs for just this reason.)
Congress isn't doing spit about it because:
1 - They won't cross their big donors.
2 - Republicans tend to believe that the wealthy are that way because they deserve it, and therefore they have the recipe for success, and need to be left alone to continue fostering success. (Particularly in the current situation, I believe that the "recipe for success" is short-term, a catastrophe in the making for the rest of the country and only a cushy retirement plan for those execs.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
As much as I hate the canard about "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide", there is a valid corollary: "If you've done nothing wrong, you won't get caught".>
Of course that's tempered by:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
You can easily get caught on things you didn't do. Not having done them is a useful defense, but these days the accusation is as damaging as the conviction. Just ask anyone wrongfully accused of sexual harrassment or child abuse.
What I find strange is how the working and middle classes feel entitled to so much more than they did only a few years ago in the 1980s. I had two college-educated parents with jobs, and I still had to share a room with my sister until I was ten. We had a small 19" TV and an antenna, because, according to my dad, it was 'absurd' to spend $20/month for cable. We crammed our family of five into a tiny Mazda when the station wagon was in the shop. The heat never came on until mid-November, and it never went above 62F.
Now it seems that even welfare moms feel entitled to cell phones, cable TV, mid-range sedans, 70-degree apartments, and endless subsidized premium cereal for their already obese children. Seriously, try restricting any of the above for the people who are collecting government assistance, and watch as you are made out to be a corporate villain.
There was recently a news article about how the local groceries have to staff-up for the first of the month. The (stay-at-home) mom (of five) complained how the benefits weren't enough, since she had to ration the cereal or it would run out and the kids would have to eat oatmeal for the rest of the month. My eyes bugged-out. Of course you have to ration 'sugar pops', I got one bowl a week, oatmeal was the standard breakfast of the middle class.
We need a hardcore reality check and fiscal literacy like no other culture in history.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails