Work ethic never went out of fashion. Many, many people work very hard everyday. Always have. Work is a part of life, always has been, always will be. It’s the incentives that are the problem. Paying people just enough (or not enough, in many cases) to just keep their heads above water, for taking on more and more work, so that owners, investors, and executives can make ever increasing profits, just doesn’t motivate people to work very hard. Much of the hard work in the current system is motivated by fear. That is not positive or sustainable.
Hard work feels great when it benefits you, your community, folks you care about, or even just real people.
It feels fucking awful to work hard when the only people who will benefit are some rich assholes who exploit you.
Nice and succinct and 💯
a great round up of the difference between work versus toil.
Super well said!
First, don’t get stuck in the mindset that hard work is only worthwhile when making money. You can work on things that directly enhance your life and those of the people around you and skip the medium of exchange entirely.
Then, upgrade to the understanding that hard work to only benefit others can be the most rewarding yet.
I agree with you, but this is an “anti work” community, and there’s a substantial part of the movement that is techno-utopian and is actively arguing for the dissolution of work in general.
I understand, but until the technology necessary for a transcendentalist, post-scarcity, post-work society is developed (assuming said technology is even possible), work will remain absolutely necessary.
Gosh, I hate to disagree with you, but it seems like multi-generation inheritance might affect the necessity of work for some. Currently.
There is a real chance that a great change is coming. If most of the problems with AI can be overcome (though that’s far from certain) there will be a change in the job market of dimensions never seen before. A gigantic loss of jobs and a booming market at the same time.
If that happens and the politicians drop the ball this can be a time of great human suffering and a divide between the rich and the poor worse than ever before.
On the other hand an implementation of general basic income and social redistribution of wealth could lead to a golden age where working is a choice not a necessity.
I know which one I would be betting on. I’m not sure if changes to the current system will be even possible without a violent revolution.
Shit when im the first one in, i leave the lights off. Then i get mad at the person who eventually turns them on. If i have to be in that early, i dont also want to be miserable from the bright lights
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
Uhh, my computer is lit up and I can hear the damn fluorescent lights when I’m sitting there alone, piss off and let me drink my coffee in peace.
I’ve learned to be the one to turn the lights off. It pisses the boss off but ensures everyone knows the shift is over
Having a work ethic is a fine thing. Just don’t let sleazy employers take advantage of it, because you’ll get nothing in return.
“In this company we’re like family.”
If you pride yourself on being a hard worker just know that everyone else is in a group chat without you.
Repeatedly devalue workers through layoffs and never promoting
Workers give up trying to climb the corporate ladder and do the bare minimum
surprised pikachu
They taught me this shit as a kid when my dad got laid off. “This quarter” thinking can have very long-term consequences.
Fuck you. Pay me.
So you turn on the lights, get your coffee and read your newspaper/browse your phone until someone else is actually there.
Then you do the same thing once you are the only person left.
Congratulations. Flipping on and off lightswitches is the shittiest metric a company can seek and is evidence of bad management.
Congratulations. Flipping on and off lightswitches is the shittiest metric a company can seek and is evidence of bad management.
There’s an economic i enjoy reading names Richard Wolfe who bemoans the capitalist mentality of counting towards on productivity.
You clock in and you count up the hours. You get on the factory floor and you count up the widgets you’ve made that day. You check your portfolio and count up all the money you’ve made.
There’s no concept of an upper bound. No idea how much you actually need or benefit from. One more is always desirable.
But what if, instead of counting up, we counted down? Know we need 10 widgets every day, so we count down until they’re finished. Know we need 10 tasks done so we count down until they’re completed. Know we need $100 to pay our bills, so we count down until we’ve earned it. Then we go home and enjoy our lives, rather than grinding endlessly at the millstone to build a surplus nobody asked for.
Even if you are productive from the minute you walk in to the minute you leave… who does that even benefit? Are you doing anything genuinely useful or just doing bullshit jobs to look busy? Are you reducing the workload of your peers or creating extra work for other people?
Because in the latter case, you’re not a hard worker. You’re a ballooning expense. Everyone behaving like you would be a disaster for your employer and your community at large.
Look, a company makes money by not giving you, the worker, the surplus the company made.
There’s no concept of an upper bound. No idea how much you actually need or benefit from. One more is always desirable.
They expect infinite growth.
In biology they call that “cancer” and if not stopped it destroys the host system.
Isn’t this how Japan’s work ethic started?
If I saw one of my employees being the first one in the office turning on the lights as well as the last one turning them off, I’d see that as a problem.
I’d talk to that worker and first ask why they were doing this as I’d be concerned that they may be having trouble at home (and were using work as an escape). I’d want to find out if there was anything they needed to help their home situation. When you manage people, their home problems become your problems. The corollary to this is that a solution for a personal home problem can become a solution to a workplace problem. I had one worker that had difficulty at work because they didn’t have working laundry facilities which affected them wearing presentable clothing at work. I bought them a new laundry appliance for $500 and had it delivered. After that they were always dressed presentably at work. This was a very good worker otherwise, and this fixed the work problem as well as helped them at home in their personal life.
If they communicated they believed the “first in, last out” was their understanding of the work expectation, I’d correct them on that immediately. One of my favorite phrases to use at work are “There are days I might have to ask you to stay later. This is not that day. There’s nothing urgent that can’t wait for tomorrow. Go home early.” (these are salary folks, so they’re not losing money by leaving early).
If they communicated they were overworked, I’d work with them on the tasks to make sure they were only getting assigned a reasonable workload. This may mean hiring another worker, or eliminating tasks that don’t produce a meaningful result to the company to make sure the workload would be reasonable.
Requiring your workers to be “butts in seats” (mine are WFH anyway) simply to be tick a box is the fastest way to lose your best people as it is disrespectful of their skills and their effort. Further, well rested workers (mentally and physically) perform far better than exhausted and stressed ones.
Sorry but this 9 hour comment could have been a paragraph. Your one of those bosses who believes their words are more important than everyone else’s arent ya
Sorry but this 9 hour comment could have been a paragraph.
19 sentences is 9 hours of reading for you?
Your one of those bosses who believes their words are more important than everyone else’s arent ya
Sorry friend, I just care about the people that work for me. Many times that means gaining understanding of their needs and situations, in other words: empathy. I’m not going to make assumptions and then cast judgment on them based on my bad my assumptions. I’m going to ask them so we communicate with one another and each gain an understanding so we can work together on it.
Until we somehow develop telepathy, communications require words. People communicate differently and sometimes that requires more words. However, if you’ve got that telepathy thing figured out, let me know! I’d be interested!
End of year performance review.
“We think your performance this year has been ok. Not great, not bad, just ok. We can’t justify a bonus for you this year with senior management.”
“But I am always the last one out every night and have been nearly all year.”
“Really, I wouldn’t know. I never stick around that late. Now that reminds me, there were those two days last month where you were seen leaving early. We don’t appreciate that lack of work ethic at this company.”
“It was because I had stayed back late the previous days!”
They were never going to justify a bonus anyway. They just want you to feel like it’s your fault.
deleted by creator
*writing on notepad*
struggles… with… time… management.
I’ve had a version of this scenario happen twice. The last time, when I literally closed double the tickets of the next person down, I was only just doing what was expected of me.
Absolute truth! Your boss will forget the dozen days you stayed after hours, the first time you come in late.
Happened to me, didn’t matter to him that 75% of the time I worked through my lunch, didnt matter that 3-4 times per month I either came in early or stayed late to finish up a task.
One day, I came in 20 minutes late, got called in later that week by my manager to, “talk about my tardiness issue.”
I volunteered to take on work at the office while everyone else went to WFH during the lockdowns. I was buying, repairing, and otherwise issuing equipment to people and shipping it to them. Thousands of pieces of gear for thousands of employees. I’m IT so naturally if it used electricity it was our business (and sometimes even if it didn’t), and that meant I was handling everything from monitor stands to standing desks to computers. I handled all of it, repaired tons of equipment, saved us 10s of thousands (likely more than my own salary)…
Performance review: satisfactory.
And with that I switched to WFH. Fuck em.
This made me far more angry than your frying pan, just gotta say.
Aww I’m glad I stir your emotions sweet friend.
I could even recycle my comment from there:
https://lemmy.world/comment/14109469Sometimes you have to use some pot as meat tenderizer…
Lemme put my work ethic in the dishwasher first
Hahahaha talk about corporate propaganda. I feel sorry for the poor schlub that reads this and is like “yeah, I’m gonna do that”.
It is, unironically, good advice for new hires because it signals enthusiasm and work ethic. Getting in early let’s you talk to people before they’re swamped. Coffee room chatter is a good way to meet people and build relationships. Beating the traffic means less stress through your day.
But once you start having a real life, this doesn’t work. Dogs need walks. Kids come first. You’re not a 20 year old with lots of free time anymore, so you can’t indulge your boss with the fantasy that you exist exclusively for the benefit of the firm.
Capitalism promises everybody can be above average. In reality, a big majority of people is putting in an above average effort, but earning and owning way below it. Because some slobs in top positions vacuum up the doe while mostly stalling.
I turn the lights on in the morning and make coffee. Because I’m the only one that knows how to make coffee that doesn’t taste like dirty water. Has nothing to do with work ethic and everything to do with coffee.
I turn the lights on in the morning because “lmao I’m off at 3 to beat the traffic, suckers”.
Thank thee for thy works, thou serv’st our Dark Lord well.
Fresh filter, water, and more than 3 kernels of coffee grounds?
I managed an auto parts warehouse with a small fleet of delivery drivers, I was the one with the code to the alarm and they keys to everything. Sometimes if I had trouble sleeping or was a bit hungover from imbibing too much I’d sleep in and roll up to the shop around 9-10 instead of 7. Not a single one of my employees ever had an issue with starting the day later and I didn’t care about them leaving early to pick up kids or whatever. Long as you show up and shit gets done I’m putting the same hours on all your paychecks anyways
We work a lot of hard, long hours in my field. Occasionally I get a fuck off easy job but that’s only when business is slow. I’m the lead tech on every job. I also have a bad problem waking up in the morning. Despite being fully sober and getting at least 7 hours of sleep, I sleep through my alarms which are incredibly loud and annoying, and they’re set 5 minutes apart for two hours. Guys who know me know that they can go in, do their work, and if I’m late I let them go early by the amount of time I am late. I’m often finishing the job by myself at night.
That’s ok though. That’s the way the world should work. I’m not a morning person. Waking up is literally the worst thing that happens to me every day barring tragedies or serious injuries. It’s so much worse in the winter too.
I would rather sustain the injuries than to wake up half the time, regardless of how much or little sleep I’ve gotten. I feel your pain. Genetic night watchmen unite! Whichever morning person decided the world should exist 9-5 should be dragged into the street and shot.
I once took a programming / analyst job specifically because it was at least partially a night shift. I had to be free to work alongside a team on the other side of the planet for a few hours a day. Best job I ever had, I’d still be doing it if they hadn’t run out of projects for us to do.
I can stay up all night if you need me to, but fuck waking up early.
Gus Catlson: US based company consultant who writes for right based Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail. Also was a director at that newspaper. Was in charge of communications for the Thompson Reuters merger. Has a Pulitzer from 1992, but beyond that its all business reporting and opinion pieces.
Everything in his background tells me he hasn’t had to work insane hours in decades. He hasn’t had a boss ask him to work 10 - 20 extra hours just to have a 2% increase at the end of the year. He was in charge of a Canadian major newspaper, which aren’t known for paying a proper wage. So he knows he’s lying, he’s just annoyed people want to have lives.
He has dozens of these ass licking headlines.
Globe and Mail is a sensationalist rag with no ethics. They put footage online of a fourteen year old girl being stabbed to death in a school before the cops made them take it down. Don’t give them clicks.
I just screen shot from Bluesky
Bill Carroll from CFRA (talk radio) is constantly going on about how we need to get people back to the office 5 days a week to save downtown businesses.
He broadcasts from his home well outside the city.
Canada’s rightoids and libs have a long history of being incredibly hypocritical.
Yeah, its troll shit so managers repeat it and then we all suffer. I wish someone would force them to go through it, but they’d probably learn nothing in the end.
