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Soda or Work? Who do you care about more.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by kuhjäger, Apr 30, 2010.

  1. ghettoastronaut

    ghettoastronaut
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    The only pop that I really drink is ginger ale, and even then, rarely. I drink real ale with far greater frequency, and even then, I pride myself in the variety of bottles I have collected over the last few months.

    I'd rather not say what I do, but I'm far more loyal to my employer than my carbonated beveragery. I feel obligated, however, to point out that me and my fellow employees generally take quite an avid interest in the consumption of alcoholic beverages, so I've got a good bit of synergy going on in my favour. One thing that ginger ale does do that my employer either does not or can not is settle my stomach when it's feeling all messed up. Perhaps I should reconsider my priorities.
     
  2. Jimmy James

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    The first job I ever had, boy howdy. If I wasn't running a retail computer shop singlehandedly while my alcoholic boss was passed out under his desk, I was doing it at the age of 17 and for free. He justified this as free training, nevermind the fact that I had been "training" for close to two years. Internships don't last that long, do they?

    From 2 PM to 7 PM, I'd do everything. Invoicing (learning Quickbooks POS in front of a customer is humiliating enough. Doing it because your boss is too drunk is a fucking embarrassment), inventory, PC building/repair and answering the phones. There were even days the doors would still be locked because the boss was too hungover to open up and didn't bother calling. Naturally, after I left to work for a former coworker (another fucking nightmare), the place closed down.

    It was while I was working for said coworker that I realized that he paid me just enough to squeak by. And by just enough, I mean he paid for essentially my rent and anything we ate while we were on the road. I was forced to still live at home with my mom and step dad. I was only 19, but still. I worked from 9 to 7. I wasn't just a tech either. We didn't have nearly enough PC work to keep the money rolling in. He scrounged swap meets and garage sales and sold whatever he found on eBay. He also sold movies he had downloaded off the internet and burned to CD. It wasn't enough that I was basically being paid by selling illegal media and rhinestone jackets online, it was the fact that we worked out of a studio apartment.

    I'm going to pause here and let you stop laughing.

    His harpy of a wife and shithead of a kid made working there an adventure. Due to my own idiocy and the fact that I was sure I was never getting a job with these two places on my resume, I stuck around for two years, until I finally got a job that gave me health insurance and paid me double to do half the amount of work.
     
  3. Denver

    Denver
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    That's actually a really terrible example. People hated New Coke precisely because they were loyal to the brand. Focus groups and etc. showed people liked the taste of New Coke more than old Coke, but people didn't like them fucking with their beloved Coca-Cola.

    From wikipedia:

    Focus-ish: I've worked at too few places to have built any loyalty anywhere, but honestly I don't see why it's surprising that people are more loyal to soda (or even brands in general) than to their employers. I get a good experience every time I drink my favorite soda (a certain degree of utility, if you will), so of course I'm going to go back again and again. Why would I be loyal to an employer unless they can do the same? Everyone thinks they're overworked and underpaid, and unless an employer can change their employees' perceptions then of course no one will be loyal.
     
  4. villagebicycle

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    Recently, I've been fiercely loyal to my company. I work for a Fortune 100 company, though much closer to the grunt work than the C-suite, and I have been recently put in a position that I am quite happy to work in. It's a test market, and I am genuinely excited to see how it performs (seeing how my major is marketing, and when I graduate in 3 months, I hope to enter category management or some type of marketing) as well as help develop a proper strategy and foster the growth of this new department. I am one of roughly 200 people involved in this program, out of over 150,000 employees, and I am one of about 15 in this region.

    I think another aspect to my loyalty is that for the first time in years, I feel like I have decent, competent management. Not to say they are the greatest in the world, but for the most part, they are good at what they do and decent human beings. They take time to listen to problems, coach you, help with any issues, etc. Not to mention I recently spent no money on a business trip but ended up getting tanked at a baseball game and riding in a party bus with upper/district managers all on their dime. I don't dislike a single co-worker that I directly work with, either. The benefits ain't too shabby. I'm 22, and have had a 401k for 3 years now to which the company contributes a good amount.

    Maybe it's the fact that it takes me less than 5 minutes to ride my bike to work, and less than 15 to walk there. Maybe it's the discounts, incentive-packed trainings, accommodations, competitions, philanthropy, volunteer work, community outreach programs, or the fact that this company is carefully expanding into countries I could only dream of working in.

    Or maybe it's because I won 10 free burritos recently from Chipotle thanks to my company business card.

    All in all, it's nice to work for a company that values its employees, provides good benefits and accommodations, and (at least in my experience) has "cool" managers.

    I must note that I highly doubt a career could develop from this job, unless I get to skip middle management somehow or I get placed in a national or international position outside of a chosen location. However, I plan on keeping this job as long as I physically can and would never even consider stealing from the company or quitting without notice, etc.

    Now, there are plenty of people that dislike working here. Someone's gotta do the more mundane jobs, some locations have awful management, and some people are plain-out mismatched with their jobs. I guess I lucked out.
     
  5. Nick

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    The truth is, unless you are highly specialized in a position that is high in demand, but low in workforce supply, you are ALWAYS expendible. I've noticed that most of the complaints on this thread are geared towards un-skilled, relatively low-paying positions. Whether an employer is struggling or not, they KNOW that when it comes to unskilled labor, there are always people that would gladly do your job for less money without bitching, which caters to a work environment where the employer treats its employees like shit and tries to pay them as little as possible. That's just a reality, whether it's fair or not.

    Personally, I have been EXTREMELY loyal to every company I have ever worked for, and despite a number of shitty days/months/years at each, my loyalty has ALWAYS paid off. My jobs:

    1) Bagger at a local grocery store - 3 years during high school until I went off to college. Got a $2,000 scholarship. Not much money in the grand scheme of things, but for a $5.50 an hour part time job, it was a pretty nice gift.

    2) Various internships at the same large heavy equipment company - 3 summers until after I graduated college. Offered a full-time position after graduation. I declined, but they provided multiple references when I was interviewing with other companies.

    3) 1st job post-college in investment banking - 10 years. Was promoted twice during that time. I worked 80-100 hours a week on average during those 8 years. I was yelled at, treated like shit, and in some years made much less money than expected. 90% of the analysts in my starting class burned out and quit during the first few years. I was rewarded in the good years, because I stuck it out during the bad. When I decided to leave, I was given multiple references by both my colleagues and my former clients.

    4) Current job - 2 years so far. Not planning to leave anytime soon.

    In 18 years of being in the workforce, I've literally only had 4 jobs. I interview people all the time. I look at resumes for people who are several years younger than me who have had upwards of 10+ jobs and have never worked for the same company for more than 2 years. That is mind-boggling to me. As far as I'm concerned, you have to EARN loyalty from your company. This bullshit about not being loyal to a company that won't be loyal to you is exactly the kind of attitude you should have if you want to end up laying bricks for a living.
     
  6. JohnQ

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    I originally had loyalty to my employers but have long since lost any after a couple of bad experiences. I'm just gonna talk about the worst of them.

    Initially, I was working at a pretty decent web development company that didn't pay particularly well, but had fantastic benefits, treated us really well, and was a fairly easy job that required little effort on my part. One of my coworkers left to work at a difference e-commerce company, and when they were looking for someone else, she gave them my information. I talked with them twice, and was later offered the job, which would be paying roughly double what I was currently earning and was even closer to my apartment. This was a pretty significant raise, which I would have been really stupid to turn down, but did. In fact, I turned it down twice because I liked the company I worked for so well. After the third call they made, and an even higher offer, I gave in and agreed to come work for them, put my notice in and left.

    A month and a half after I quit my previous job and went to work with them, they decided to lay off half the company(cut from 50 employees to about 25 or so). This was a year ago, and in such a wonderful economy I haven't a lot of luck finding another decent job. How thoughtful of them to beg me so much to beg me to work for them, and then to company layoffs less than 2 months later.

    Fuck them, I'll take my cokes.

    EDIT: Before I forget, one of the reasons I still have respect for the first company I mentioned was that they later dissolved the development part of the company I was in. Instead of getting rid of the 10 people in it, they offered them all pretty crappy data entry positions. It would have sucked to have had to take that, BUT, the company at least knew it was nicer to them to at least leave them with SOME job.
     
  7. Misanthropic

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    I see where you are going here, and with all due respect, there is a difference between taking pride in your job and being loyal to your company. In 20 years of professional life, I've had 3 jobs. Count them - 3. I have been in my current job 15+ years. Loyalty has nothing to do with it, and the pride and pleasure I take in doing my job well has everything to do with it.

    Fuck, when I was 21 I had had the same job for 6 years. Do the math - how many people do you know who had the same job all through high school and most of college? Think again about why you have the track record you do.. Is it really loyalty, which, honestly, is foolish, or pride in your work, which will serve you well no matter where you go? They are not the same thing.

    And if you have a degree in the sciences, PM me.
     
  8. The Beer Baron

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    Hear hear. I've been at my current place for 4 years now. The people I work with are lazy as fuck and dumb as a bag of hammers, but my regular customers more than make up for it. Oscar brings me a 'tall boy' once in a while. Antonio brings me bottles of his home made wine. Granville brings me packs of smokes. David has done technical work for me for free. Hell one of my customers tips me in cash.. and I'm just a CSR at a parts counter.

    Focus: Fuck company loyalty. Fuck pop. There's no alcohol in pop. I have more loyalty in treating my regulars well then I do making the company money, because my regulars will treat me well back while the company continues to not give a shit.
     
  9. slippingaway

    slippingaway
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    Since I wrote this, I've realized a couple things.

    1) I'm not loyal to the company as a whole at all. There has been a lot of shit happening in the last week, and I now realize that the vast majority of people in the company don't give a shit about me at all. All that they care about is how they look to their bosses, and the guy in charge of this project only needs me as long as I keep busting my ass on projects he can take credit for. The only people in this company that I feel any sense of loyalty to are a few of my co-workers who are in the same shitty spot I am, my boss who always has my back and fights to make sure I'm being treated well, and his boss, the National Sales Manager, who does the same. Nobody else gives two shits about me, unless it's because they think I'm doing something wrong.

    2) I'm loyal to my customers. With the way the guy from my company who's in charge of this project has been treating me, I should have walked off the site long ago. I'm only here because I gave the customer my word that I'd get the project done, and get it done correctly. Most of the customer engineers are getting the same type of shit from above that I am, we're all burned out, and we just want to get this thing over with. I can't abandon them, and break my word. I feel the same way about all my other customers as well; if they weren't buying our stuff, I wouldn't have a job.

    3) Just like it's easy to confuse taking pride in your job with company loyalty, it's easy for people above you to confuse "taking pride in my job" with "supporting them and the way they're running things." I'm doing a good job on this project because that's what I was taught to do, it's what I owe the customer, and I just can't let myself purposely do a bad job. I'm not doing it because I want to make anyone look good, or because I'm part of their "team." If I could figure out a way to do my job well, and make them look like the incompetent assholes they really are, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Luckily, it looks like they might finally be doing that all on their own.

    Fuck, my raise in July better be good.
     
  10. lust4life

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    First layoff I experienced came after the agency hired an ex-IBMer who thought it would be a good idea to outsource my whole department. He took his "golden parachute" 6 months later.

    Next layoff came the day I returned to work after neurosurgery on my pituitary gland. Pink slip instead of a get-well card.

    that's when I became an independent sales contractor. Companies have no loyalty to their employees, so why should I have any to them?

    Graduate degree, 4 years in a state agency, then private practice. And I will continue to pay the premium for Charmin.
     
  11. untouchable

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    For the past five summers I've worked as a cook and a bus boy for my best friend's dad's family-owned restaurant. My bosses ranged from my friend's grandparents to his older brother. They put up with my clumsiness and the fact that I came in hungover all the time and in turn I never slacked off (when I wasn't too hungover). At the end of every summer I thought about getting a less stressful job but as time went on I would miss the place. My coworkers were hilarious and loved to drink, and some of the waitresses were hot.

    Unfortunately I'm getting an internship this summer. If I didn't care about money I would honestly be happy working there for the rest of my life.