new york state government is weird. we have sick days and vacation days. those would accrue and we had to be paid the balance of them. then we had comp time because we couldn't get overtime money. so any overtime you did you would get hours that you could nominally take off for. the catch was these hours were lost at the end of the year. so, you obviously never took actual sick or vacation days if you had any comp time. also according to the regulations of the ny senate we could only be paid for a maximum of 7 hours a day. they wanted my office open 9 hours a day and i was the only full time employee in that office, everyone else was in the main office where there were 20 people working and could sort of stagger the schedule a bit. this meant every week i was getting a minimum of 10 hours of comp time that i would never get paid for. not to mention going to events at night. i clocked it out once, if they had allowed me to i would have been able to take off a week every month just on comp time. in theory you were allowed to take this time whenever you wanted because it is owed to you, but in my office you were "strongly discouraged." only guy who could get away with it was the senator's son who would take off for 2 months a year to go on vacation. the girl who got laid off took almost all of her time by claiming to be sick and since she worked in the main office and didn't go to as many events had much less comp time. no other office ran like us with the comp time. basically because the senator and the 2 bosses were assholes. but, that is bound to happen when the senator would routinely scream at people "i own you! you're my slave!"(he only did this to me once, and i walked out of the event and left him there alone.) every other office would normally be 1. only open for 7 hours a day. 2. the employees would come in staggered shifts. 3. they would have people specifically to go to events so as not to generate to much comp time, or 4. have a system in place where if you did ot you would get to come in late or leave early in order to balance it out. considering my office was run as a slave labor camp and they viewed overtime as free work from us, we were never given any of the above options.
i understand the logic in this, but on the other hand i was a bit insulted that i didn't get any advance notice my position was being eliminated. i had ten years at that company, and i'm a goddamn professional; i would've wrapped up whatever i was working on to ensure a smooth transition to whoever was going to assume my duties.
it seems that fewer and fewer companies are showing any loyalty to their employees, yet are demanding loyalty from their employees. fuck that. loyalty is a two way street, and i won't work for a company that doesn't practice that.... unless it's for stupid money as a contractor, then i couldn't give a shit.
I find the concept of loyalty in business to be fucking weird. A business is there to make profit. If I'm standing in the way of profit, I'm out on my ass, and the person signing my layoff notice will sleep just fine. Why the hell would I pass up better opportunities for the company I'm working for? Call me mercenary, but I trust loyalty about as far as I can throw the HR personnel. I believe in being professional - good pay for hard work - but as soon as the arrangement becomes non-favorable, I'm outta there.
A culture of loyalty at a company is about long term thinking. As one of many examples; if company A is known to be loyal and company B is not, then when company B offers an employee at A a recruiting raise to switch over, the employee might well say no.
A lot of these companies end up running turnstile operations. Instead of experienced efficient employees the work place is full of people taking other job interviews on their sick days. When I worked at Evaluation Solutions (property appraisal company) there literally wasn't a single non-management person who wanted to be there long term. What was funny is how instead of admitting the problem was that they treated their employees like disposable garbage they constantly bragged about how most people couldn't cut it under their rigorous standards. Since they were always understaffed with so many employees walking out the door, you were encouraged to work 60-80 hours and a week and they were bleeding overtime pay to people that were going to be gone within a few months. I hadn't checked up on the company since I left and I just looked today, and it turns out their Florida department where I was working closed doors two years ago. Good fucking riddance.
So apparently in Maryland...unless you work in a retail establishment of certain kinds or you're under 18, the employer isn't obligated to provide breaks or lunches in your shift. Which...okay. Weird.
Maybe it's a function of age, because when I was younger, something like that would have pissed me off. Now? I couldn't care less. Maybe I'm old, maybe I'm numb. Or, maybe I've learned that you're never going to change people who don't want to change. Sending a response, to me at least, is a validation of their importance to you. Fuck them. Who cares? It don't matter. Sometimes silence is the most painful cut. Especially to folks like that.
"So your contract is up and we're ready for a renewal! As you know we're a charity, so you'll be fine with a 25% pay cut right?" ...
I know money is not the end all be all, but when you are working for large companies, so many of the cool "perks" become standard and money is that differentiating factor. For example, I work for a large, Fortune 100 CPG company. Culture is laid back, hours are good, I like the people I work with, however, having friends in similar positions at similar companies, I realize its not completely unique. It was the best opportunity for me to break into the industry from the agency side where I was before, so I was happy to take it, but I got boned in negotiations because of existing salary level (recruiter/HR came from a similar agency before the CPG, knew my pay grade without me telling her, structured offer accordingly). So even though I got a HUGE raise from my previous position, I was still about 15-20% below similar market rates. The company is also notorious for lagging behind competitive pay scales once you've been there for awhile. So its fine now, but once I get promoted in the next 9-12 months, I'll likely be 25-30% below market. So still being at a level where I'm just a number to the overall organization, and knowing the politics that come with a company like this, my loyalty won't be super intense. Also, I feel the culture of loyalty, for my generation at least, has shifted. I remember coming out of school 6-7 years ago and hearing that its a red flag if a candidate has been with more than 1-2 companies in their first 5 years. But now, with companies looking to skimp on pay for cost efficiency reasons and always being aware of potential downsizes, its much wiser to be proactive about your place in the job market then to just be a happy little soldier. I'm not advocating jumping on a yearly basis, but after you've been somewhere 2 years or so, its always good to keep your ear to the ground, even for just education purposes. Also, I make a habit of never blowing off recruiters with legitimate offers. I may not be looking, I may not like the position, but I want them to still be reaching out when I do decide to make a move, and not have to source everything on my own. Funny how my friends who bitch about getting emails or calls from recruiters now are the ones who want to leave their jobs but not being able to find anything.
I get what you're saying, but it's not really the perks I was thinking of. It's things like transparency, communication, training, support, retention in hard times, and so on. It's not a perfect example, because my job isn't a normal employee relationship, but the company I am affiliated with demonstrates a lot of loyalty to its agents/advisers that keep us from switching over to competitors. Things like working with us if we have a hard time in our lives and letting us suspend our contracts or reinstate them, insane levels of support and training, giving us a ton of opportunities to determine which career paths we want to take, lots of development trips, conferences, and awards, an overall culture of genuine nurturing and cooperation, and so on. We have some of the best retention rates in an industry of extremely high turnover. Sure, the money is good, but it's not just that. We have agents get scouted by competitors who offer signing bonuses and crazily enhanced commission structures and yet the agents stay with us because of the commitment our company has to us vs. competitors who treat their agents as disposable. Though I 100% agree about not burning bridges, particularly recruiters. It's always better to have to turn down opportunities than not have them anymore.
I also just realized maybe a simpler example: If you work in customer service you may not leave your current company if you know that they back you up against unreasonable customers vs. a competitor who won't.
Is it obnoxious if I derail back to the focus: have you ever received something in a professional or personal setting that was so inappropriately brazen that you were, literally, at a loss for words? did you ever find the words? In the glamorous world of foster care, I am frequently left at a loss for words. Believe it or not, I am not a baby-snatching bitch from hell, and I try really hard to treat everyone with respect, even when they make it hard. I do case management for kids after they've come into care, and that includes dealing with their biological parents and families. A few weeks ago, I had a bio dad in my car who was screaming at me for disrespecting him, and calling me an asshole. I failed to hold my tongue and (surprisingly calmly) said "I really don't think I'm the one being an asshole in this situation." Pretty sure my social work professors would not approve, but I confessed it to my supervisor and she laughed, so I think I'm ok. More recently I had an even crazier bio dad say he could beat the parenting time supervisor at a foot race, then tell me to go to hell for saying his visits had to be inside because of it (she is pregnant and, according to him, not fit to do the job). He also told me in a meeting today that he hates me, then demanded to know how much the agency gets per day his child is in care, and said I was holding his kid hostage. He also made a not-so-funny joke about taking me hunting and burying me in the woods. Who says shit like that? And to the person making recommendations to the court about your custody and parental rights, no less.