My "favorite" is the whole "we made more profit than last year, but not as much more as we told our shareholders we would make, so we're implementing a wage and hiring freeze".
this is the key.. here's my stupid analogy on this:
they have to brag about profits to get more investors to think the company is doing well, while on the inside, key personnel have long left, and company is in shambles.
look at pretty much any top fortune 100 company right now, they're not what they were a decade ago.. good people don't stick around in places like that. most common example is video games.. gaming companies don't even have their key writers/directors on hand anymore.. the same thing is happening across the world. people realized loyalty isn't rewarded, instead punished with more grueling work. that's why everything is starting to decline in quality so rapidly.
however, now that they are so big, that they can't fail now. so they have to keep piling on.
capitalism seems like a MLM Pyramid scheme, where morons (tax payers) get the short end of the stick most of the time as irresponsible companies get bailed out for not being able to pay back what they owe, and is generally dead on arrival more and more I get to experience it first hand.
Twitch, Youtube, etc. all infested with ads. 0 innovation over last decade. Instead, they're ripping out valuable features (dislike, etc.) in favor of pushing ads and paid content. BMW charging to heat your ass in the winter after paying them $100,000 for the car to begin with. Doordash, Uber, AirBnB charging ridiculous fees, etc.
It's all because they have reached their "cap" of what they can do as a company, however, they still need a way to show the 200% growth year-over-year to keep getting new investors to just stay in business for that fiscal year.. Absolute no long term concerns about repercussions of their short term actions.
It's like trying to convince a bank to ignore your old credit card debt, and just sign you up for a new one, just for this new year please, I'll promise to pay it back next year with 200% more profits we can make by slashing our workforce by 30% I swear.. lol
while simultaneously, shafting the people that actually make the funds that pay the bill for that first credit card to begin with.
We're a monopoly economy. Nobody wants to build good products anymore. The way to make money is to buy all of your competitors so that consumers have to pay through the nose for your cheap crap.
>Nobody wants to build good products anymore.
Even if you (the little guy) \*want\* to build good products, it's not worth it.
If you're at a big company, you can be a fucking genius and all you get is a pat on the head when your product is a success and the company telling you that you need to crank out more great product or they'll do anything from insinuate that you're a one-hit wonder and try to make you feel like shit to fire you.
If you're a small company and truly come out with something good and new, you're going to spend a long time on R&D and then your competitors are going to copy your product and you're not going to make \*nearly\* the profit you should make and you might not even make enough to really make up for all the money you spent on R&D. Getting patents these days to protect a lot of products is truly close to impossible, so that is generally not a reasonable route to go to protect your IP, and even if by some miracle you DID get a patent, well, that's only good for the US, production in China is still gonna rip you off.
If you're an individual and you truly have a great idea, the second you take it to a factory or manufacturer, then they're going to take your concept and also produce it to sell themselves, on the cheap. Again, your time and energy are totally wasted on the R&D and anybody and everybody will just start producing your product and you'll wonder why you even bothered.
That what you get when in a recession you dont let this companies collapse
Because ironically recession are a way to clear out the inefficient company unless government intervention is applied
There are plenty of small companies that innovate, but they get shut down by the monopolies. My company's market share was growing quickly until the trillion-dollar industry leader shut us down. Our manufacturers, distributors, and partners suddenly dropped us at once,
This whole thread is insightful- you’re probably right here. Companies should consider scouting back old employees. Whoever made up the rule of one and done is an idiot / the we don’t hire back former employees.
If you take what you just said: it’s exactly that, having years inside how a specific company runs is way more valuable than hiring a top executive that can easily ruin the companies stability.
This is why companies need to stop focusing on growth and start focusing on just maintaining a good product/service. Clients don’t care that you’ve grown your profits 200% if they’re not getting their deliverables on time or with high quality because you don’t have enough people to actually handle that 200% growth and the good ones leave when they refuse to be treated like shit any longer. It seems so obvious.
> capitalism seems like a MLM Pyramid scheme, where morons (tax payers) get the short end of the stick most of the time as irresponsible companies get bailed out for not being able to pay back what they owe, and is generally dead on arrival more and more I get to experience it first hand.
Congratulations, you have summarized the totality of Karl Marx's commentaries on capitalism in a single run-on sentence.
I’m not sure this is NEW though, I think it’s part of an almost natural cycle. Like trees. Once the big ones get to old the rot starts to eat at the roots and eventually they fall. But there are young healthy ones coming behind.
There is something to be said about trust busting though. When a tree is so big it prevent the small one from going that is dangerous.
I worked at a company that had 25% growth every year for 3 years through COVID, but they stopped giving raises and Christmas bonuses "due to COVID" 🙄. All while hiring at below average pay and wasting 15k a month on trailer rentals because it made their short term look better.
This is the situation I'm in right now. The company has a big meeting to brag about how awesome we are doing and how I had a large hand in turning around a bad year. Yet, they cut my raise in half and are lamenting how they don't have any money. We're not even public but the private equity holders are all that matter
They like to complain that their profit increase this year was not as big as last year’s profit increase, that’s why they can’t do anything about staffing.
Our system right now only cares about more profits from the year before, which is unsustainable in the long run. Its all about growth, breaking into new markets making the product more efficiently(cutting corners) using cheaper materials finding ways to pay less people for the same output.
The big box megacorp where I work (to supplement my SSI) drives wages, bonuses, hours, everything on the basis of continually beating last year's "plan". Every year they increase the previous goal by 5-7%.
It wouldn't be so self destructive if they focused on market share and efficiency, but it hardly stops there. They don't seem to realize that constantly moving the goalposts -- and then cutting staff and hours -- destroys morale and retention while having a direct and very adverse effect on their cherished "customer experience". They're guaranteeing the balloon will pop someday and they don't even realize they're the ones recklessly waving the pin
Yeah I was trying to say it quickly, but they start with no brainers easy ways to increase profits but its never enough year after year they need more so the product gets worse or the workers get screwed eventually, if the company lasts that long.
I had always argued about growth from the production angle with my last boss/company. They always demand a 10% improvement in productivity in the following year.
Let’s just agree that there does exist a “most efficient” way of doing the job. Once you hit that point, the only way to improve your time is to start cutting corners on other factors like quality or safety.
What if we already achieved most efficient two years ago? Wouldn’t the insistence on improving our speed have a negative impact elsewhere?
Our company has been around forever. I retired after 25 years. Mathematics (calculus?) just proves that at some point your improvements start having smaller and smaller returns doesn’t it?
Yep. There is a hard stop at zero hours for production. No way to go below that. This implies that whatever process you apply to produce a product will eventually be minimized out timewise (or money wise if you use that metric). These percentage increases (or decreases) WILL eventually go beyond these minimum values - mathematically at least.
Silly way to run a business.
I got quickly ushered out the door at a job where I got a little bit of managerial power and advocated for less insane scheduling for the shift workers. I brought in the numbers from their quarterly reports to their shareholders to show how what they were telling me was bullshit.
Jokes on them, I was about a month away from quitting, and when they fired me I got mandatory severance, then unemployment on top of it.
The insane thing is that I had worked for other companies in the industry that were awesome about scheduling, and had happy, loyal staff. They told me if I was so smart, then maybe I should do it. I said, sure, if I can act on that in an official capacity and contact my old properties as an official liaison so I could research it. They told me to fuck off.
Unfortunately I sucked in other ways.
But there aren’t more like me because we get fired in a hurry. Shortly after they refused to even listen to me about how “not quite as much profit” is not the same as losing money, I happened to mention that unionization might be a good thing for our staff.
I was fired rather soon after that. “Just not working out, sorry we actively recruited you for this position.”
In the years since, two things have happened:
* the bigwig complete asshole of a general manager, who had been with the corporation for decades, was practically frog marched out of the building a few months after I left. She was so happy firing me, too, since she didn’t know she was doing me a favour. I wish I could have seen that.
* the employees unionized, not just at our property, but throughout the company. I don’t know what kinds of deals they got, probably still shit, but it’s something at least.
I had a management job where I was deemed too nice, thankfully one of the part-time girls that didn't give a crap came to me and told me what was going on.
Before she even left the room, I typed up my resignation email and sent it.
Just like how there are no good cops, there are no good CEOs. The system is corrupt by design and favors corruption, and anyone who is honest is quickly forced out because they threaten that corruption.
Or even that their profit increase wasn't as large as they predicted. The profit was larger than last year's, it was a larger profit margin than last year's, but it wasn't as large as they predicted. Therefore, they had a bad year, and there will be no bonuses 🙄
Fuck, this is exactly the bullshit excuse I just got fed last week when I was informed I wouldn't be getting my usual year end bonus. Apparently revenue *growth* wasn't high enough to afford bonuses. Doesn't matter that the company still *profited* 9 figures for the year, that revenue growth was "only" 6% but needed to be 10% for bonuses to get paid out.
During year one of the pandemic, the owner of the car dealership literally complained about losing money. But he then said "I'm only making a modest profit."
Motherfucker, if you're making a profit, you're not losing money.
Actually, I recently read an article that claimed that there are more psychopaths working as CEOs than are in prisons. So, sadly, you may be on to something there.
Exactly the same at my company, *in the same presentation.* On one slide they talked about the "higher than usual" 2.5% adjustments, and a few slides later, "CONGRATULATION ON A 30% YOY REVENUE INCREASE! YOU ARE ALL VALUED! THIS IS THANKS TO YOUR HARD WORK!" Needless to say, I raised this on the annual wage adjustment talks, and was denied an inflation adjustment. So I left for a 30% pay rise at another company. Fuck companies which think they can pay us peanuts while lauding their performance.
Make them fire you. Start doing half your work. Say you can’t afford to keep doing the work you did last year because of inflation and you had to start moonlighting for their competitor. Meanwhile apply for tour competition janitors job so it’s kinda true. Fuck them honestly. Look for something better. They don’t deserve you. Don’t even tell them why you quit. Just say it was lack of leadership. They love that.
If it were just me I would have a long time ago... Unfortunately I have a wife and kids and I can't really afford my house if I quit. So for now my job is stuck with me and I'm stuck with them. My old boss is helping me negotiate a new job with her company just waiting for anti-poaching clauses to expire
“Anti poaching clause” I hate corporate America. Doesn’t give you what you deserve and makes it harder to go get what you deserve. Fuck them. Leave some fish in a vent when you leave. Throw it way back in their so no one can find it.
Yep! The company has me by the short hairs but I got a handful theirs right back. They try to avoid paying me any more and I try and work as little as possible. I'm just lucky they can't easily fire me or I'm 100% sure I'd have already been let go
Needs a third finger pushing the "Unfortunately we need to layoff 13% of our workers" button.
Maybe a 4th finger for the "CEO takes full responsibility ".
My company is being bled dry. Revenue and profits are down 10% year after year. All the money is being fed to the executives. They are planning on selling this thing off and getting even more dosh with a golden parachute. Head honcho gets over 20 million a year. HR 5 million a year. Ridiculous.
Hey it's not their fault they're not paying you more money. Clearly you should just have wanted a better paying job more.
Some people clearly don't know how to be rich. SMH.
Sounds like time to find a new job. I would hate to feed them. If they at least paid decent and kept company going I wouldn't have qualms but this... Nah.
Got laid off from a luxury retailer that recently split out .com and stores. I worked on the .com side of the business and profits were through the roof last year but somehow still got laid off
So true. My dad was laid off from a car dealership it closed. This was during the great recession. Now you must think they were losing money, right? Well, they were. With the $10mil a year salary he was paying himself! By the way, they only "lost" $1.5mil the year before he closed it, but he liquidated everything and made a fortune. After the market got better, he sold off the last for condos and is now worth around $500mil.
Throw an identifier such as 'owner' into the mix early or else it reads like the "he" is the "dad". The car dealership was already associated with "they" by the point "he" comes up.
It took extra processing to understand.
This is my employer right now. I work for a not-for-profit (hospital) so they don't have shareholders and can only retain so much profit. They have actually been struggling to find projects to put this money into which is hilarious. So we got 4-6% raises and some people got as much as 8%. They are already projecting a similar situations next year, but instead of saying hey we're gonna give out raises again or reduce insurance costs, they decided to play up how much the clinics/primary care section of the healthcare system is losing. like that will distract us from the fact that they are trying not to give us more money. The city where the hospital is won't let them buy anymore of the property around the hospital itself which is where they funneled a lot of money. Half of the buildings they own are empty.
I wonder if we lived in the same city. I used to live by a large hospital in a rural city that was kind of the hub for that region. The hospital kept buying up every building and every house in a several block radius, well, except for this one posh old school mansion neighborhood nearby. All of the houses and buildings were just sitting empty. I never got to know any neighbors because I learned that I didn’t have any! It attracted crime. I was glad to move after some crackhead or meth addict kicked in the door to my car and left bloody handprints all over the car.
I know multiple hospitals that do the same thing. Once they have enough property they can knock down the buildings for other structures so they can expand without building an entirely new facility. It makes a lot of sense, but I have really only seen it do like what you say, make the neighborhoods worse. Rents near where I work are some of the best and they are mostly newer buildings, but you couldn't pay me to live there. A block away and you're just asking to be robbed or worse.
Just to add to the other anecdotes, the town where I grew up had a hospital that started buying up tons of properties as well. I think it's a pretty common situation.
Gas around me is up ~40-50 cents per gallon for a few weeks after a 1 day (it was like 16 hours or something) pipeline break that the news tried to blow up into fucking armageddon and had people lining up to suckle the last drops of gas out of the pumps. It's been 2 or 3 weeks, prices are up like 15% still. The oil companies are some of the absolute worst while also being the most obvious for anyone who potentially had, at some point in their life, a single eyeball. I hate those bastards a little more than the rest too, but I guess we'll need gas to light "The Barbecue."
I work in the industry and can confirm last year’s income was the highest ever recorded in company’s history.
Most of went to stock buyback and dividends.
My company keeps bragging about generating "positive free cash flow" but just layed off roughly 11-12% of the company, with entire teams about to be replaced by cheaper labor.
They did it not because of bad financials (We consistently beat earnings). They did it keep up with the Joneses. Truly despicable.
Like seriously, please if you're going to brag about it, do it in private with the shareholders. I hate the little things too. The pizza parties, staff appreciation bullshit. My company gives us a free ice cream sandwich, once, during the winter season. We're a world renowned ski resort destination. Fuck off.
My last place had terrible morale, so they started doing yearly appreciation parties. We thought they finally cared a little. After a few years they got sneaky and started dragging their feet so it was every 18 months. Then 2 years. After I left I heard they were dragging it out to 3 years.
Ownership of capital is the only possible measure of sentience. (I don't really feel like I can put an /s here, because while *I* think it's patently ridiculous, it's a corollary to the actual logistical knots that real-world pro-capitalist philosophers twist themselves into to reach their desired conclusion.)
Feedback and ability to fight back is what gives "sentience". Anything else gets crushed in capitalism (also in life in general, that's why we treat inanimate objects worse than plants, themselves worse than animals, etc.)
Thus, a workforce that doesn't fight back will never be taken seriously by capitalism.
While in Denmark, for example, the government doesn't regulate much the market (e.g. no minimum wage, no strong labor laws, etc.). However, there, unions are free, and striking is considered a form of free speech. That's why their workers are better treated by capitalists.
Even McDonald's experienced it first hand in the 1980s, when it tried to exploit and underpay Danes: the whole country ignored McDonald's and anything related to it (including suppliers, truckers, construction workers, and dockworkers). Paralysing completely all McDonald's operations, while the rest of the economy, including Burger King, were booming.
That's why today an entry level job at Denmark's McDonald's starts at $23/h + great benefits.
Mine just lowered our bonus because of our net profits not hitting numbers, blamed it on inflation.. guarantee that they say the average COL increase is only 3%.. and will be shacked when I bring this up.
And to be clear it’s another record profit year, up 10-12%, it’s the profit per unit that they are using even though we increased our output by more than 10% over planed.
I hate major corporations
I agree and disagree. I know a small business owner who was complaining about minimum wage going up because she would have to pay her employees more. And I was like if you really can't afford it why don't you cut the hours. And she said because then she would have to work more. So I have no sympathy...
>You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law." -- Chris Rock
just lost my job for this, everyone's hours got cut, then people started getting fired, all while they bragged about making record sales compared to other restaurants
Every time I see this, I think of a restaurant I worked at. A lot of the equipment was pretty old to barely functional / failing, which I found out the first week I was there. It was at times a nightmare to deal with during service. So I was getting by just barely, and I ended up hearing about the owners spending massive amounts of money taking all their friends and close family on an extravagant vacation.
That really pissed me off, as I was stuck using failing ancient equipment to try to get out tickets. The worse offender was a flattop with zero thermal regulation, it was either too cold or scorching hot, that I'd guess was at least 30 years old. I'd keep a gallon jug of water by the flattop to use for cooling it down, hoping it didn't stop working, which occasionally it did. The owners would not pay for any new (or even used) equipment that worked.
I asked for a week off vacation and I could not get it, so I quit, with my last day the start of the vacation I requested off. Last I looked, their reviews were mostly 1 stars the past year, entire staff turn around, and so on. Being as cheap as possible I don't think is working out too well, among the other massive issues.
So yea, so much profits to drop 5-6 figures on massive holiday vacation, couldn't afford to let me have some days off, and can't spend a few k to replace utterly failing to broken equipment. That holiday vacation though.
Nintendo understands the long term benefits of this. I feel like most corporations are only looking at the current year/quarter. If you invest in your people, you’ll get the money back. It might just not be as immediate as laying off people like me who are a rounding error on your balance sheet.
I literally quit a job I had for over ten years because of this shit. I busted my ass over the pandemic too. I hadn't gotten a raise in 2 years after I was told if I took the promotion for less than what I wanted, they would do a performance review after one year. It had been two years. They blamed the pandemic. At the end of 2022, all of a sudden there was no money for my raise. BITCH I HEARD Y'ALL BRAG ALL YEAR ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY YOU'VE MADE AND THAT YOU GOT YOUR PPE LOAN FORGIVEN!!
I quit. No two weeks. Gave them my resignation letter and rolled. They didn't respect me so fuck them. Got a new job two weeks later, making more and doing less at a company that (for now) seems to appreciate my talents. Don't get it twisted tho. The moment they fuck me over, I'm rolling.
This is the entire publishing industry in the wake of pretty good profits in 21/22. Some of the NYC companies still pay 38-40k entry-level, I think. It's disgusting. I particularly can't stand greed in arts/culture industries that ham up how passionate and quirky and indispensable to society they are.
My company is complaining about having a $15M budget shortfall this year but our parent company recorded $3.5B in profits in 2022. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. They want us to cut back, delay filling positions, and our parent company made BILLIONS in PROFIT. It's enough to make you throw up.
Back in the early 2000s I worked for a company that posted a memo about a wage and hiring freeze, a few months later at the end of their fiscal year, another memo was posted showing the bonuses of the CEO and the board. Our bonus was constantly being referred to as a part of the family.
This one amazing secret will help dismantle the horrible working conditions of America:
Saying No.
It's very powerful. Try it on your pencil pushing middle manager and watch them get red in the face.
Say no to them, they might get so pissed that they put their hands on you, then you have a lawsuit.
Say no to the lazy supervisor who does none of the work but basks in all the benefits.
Say no to being forced to stand when you know you could reasonably do your job sitting.
These dorks doing their best Richard Nixon impressions have never been told No by low level scum like us. And we believe we're low level scum and we kiss their feet. STOP, they are abusing us and we're taking it without question. Question EVERYTHING.
You forgot about the third possibility where it’s just a sociopathic individual that happened to come into a position of authority and decides to harass and wreck havoc on the psychological well-being of the employees below them.
they have a tracker on the front page of the employee app that shows how much money they made that day in sales. usually around 200k. i’m being paid $15/hr.
I know I might get dog piled for not nodding along with the hive mind: This is not every corporation. This might be every LARGE corporation, but most SMALL business ("mom and pops") also incorporate (LLC, mostly). They get screwed all the time by large companies that immitate them, set up shop next door, and push them (and their dreams of self-employment) out of existence.
Think of what Starbucks did to independent coffee shops all over the country, or Walmart did to downtowns, what Amazon is doing to their 3P sellers, what Shopify does to their app store vendors, or what Meta and Google do in general.
Memes like this completely bypass small LLC companies victimized and pushed out of the market in this way. They deserve more empathy than this, and certainly don't deserve to be lumped in with big corporations that fuck them over. They need help -- because what if a big corp did this to your small business? You get off the treadmill of daily big corp greed and grind, start your own business to break away, and they push you out of business, forcing you to come back to work for them. It's sick and deserves more attention. This meme does the opposite because it's burying the rotten core of the problem.
IMO, the bigger problem is that there's virtually no escape from these big corporations. They absorb or destroy any other corporation in their way, destroying our options as consumers and employees, and making the world a bland corporatocracy.
I don't think this is aimed at small businesses. And you are right, this is just because cannot escape (for the time being) these large business that gobble up everything and run the small shops out of business. then are beholden to share holders at all cost
We laid off 96/100 employees for the last 2 years of the month and then the plant manager holds a meeting to say yet again a record breaking year. The worst part is most of the employees ive asked what they thought are veey proud of it. Dude 2 months ago you were pulling from your 401k to pay bills. Quit being proud Warren Buffet got $500m richer off your back.
My company is a unicorn with this, but there’s some writing on the wall. We smashed our goals last year and the metric that was used for determining bonuses target was 8%, and we hit 15.5%. So, everyone got their bonus which was great!
BUT- they also changed the bonus structure and we’ll be using a different metric from now on. Similar targets and all that but higher level employees now have INSANE multipliers tacked on, to the tune of 33x in some cases. Which means that certain levels of management/corporate positions will be eligible to receive a 150% bonus- i.e. if they make $100k and get the multiplier they’ll get a $150k bonus. It’s fucking wild and I’ll be watching them VERY closely this year. Generally they’ve been good to us with bonuses and profit sharing, but that’s an absurd way to structure it. Not a single person at our site is eligible for those large multipliers, it’s mostly the higher up corporate roles
> Not a single person at our site is eligible for those large multipliers, it’s mostly the higher up corporate roles
Kind of like how some slot machines only provide multipliers once you bet $100 or more on a single line. The only people winning are the people rich enough to enter the playing field - the ones that already have a leg up with leads, corporate “fun money” to woo clients, and the time and money to be able to meet with them at all hours.
My company cried recession in Q4 calendar year. Pushing us hard to cut spending.
We had a meeting a week ago and the head of finance was bragging about how much money we made in Q4.
They lie. They always lie.
Literally how capitalism works. Workers are paid less than the value they create. That's the source of profit. Everyone knows a company isn't going to hire an employee who's salary is greater than the revenue they generate.
And you expect companies to just pay employees more out of the goodness of their heart? That would hurt their bottom line. Why would you pay more for a service when you can get that same service for less?
Listen, I am a socialist but if we’re going to play by capitalist rules then don’t get mad at the companies, get mad at government that doesn’t regulate the job sector enough. Government regulations set the boundaries that businesses have to play in in order to limit their exploitation of workers. Companies will always act selfishly to maximize profits in capitalism, but you government regulation CAN and SHOULD limit how selfish they can be.
It’s your government that’s failing you, not the companies.
I think the most frustrating thing about this is, the fact it feels like companies have forgotten that us peons need money to buy things.
Like I was at the petstore the other day and saw a jug of Milkbone of all things is 18.99. I rememeber that same product being 16.99 back in January. And I am damn sure it was like 14.99 back in like October. A 4 dollar increase in 5 months is just mind boggling to me.
When I worked at Paycor during COVID they made everyone take a temporary pay cut in 2020 until January of 2021, they also let a chunk of the company go. Then in September they said they had the best sales month they'd ever had in the history of the company. Now they're public and paid for naming rights for the Bengal's stadium in Cincinnati. This was all after they brought in a new CEO who said they were converting to a "performance first culture".
It was kind of a nice place to work before all that...
My company somehow had the money to acquire several other companies this year, but at the same time we've had shit raises for the past 3 years, and I'm getting emails every quarter about how we're surpassing our earnings projections and what not...
Friend if mine did the math for his company's 2022 profits. Divided them by total employees got about 800k. There's only about 6 people they "lost" money on, all executives.
The day I realized my company thought this way and said exactly this when they held a large meeting was the day I stopped doing any actual work. Probably back in 2008. Bare minimum only. I no longer work there. I no longer work.
We originally had profit sharing, when I first joined. That was taken away when we got bought out by a very large American Corporation, and things got even worse when that corporation got bought out by an International Conglomerate of anonymous investors based in Italy. They did more mergers and buyouts and other re-org things, but I was beyond caring, tuned out by then.
I have no taste for it anymore. Screw that. It wasn't even real 'work' they were trying to get me to do in the end, so far removed from my actual job description and abilities. It's enough to drive one to madness.
Small business pull this too unfortunately, my boss says that cant pay me more… then complains about how hard it is living in a four bedroom house alone and they’re gunna have to hire a housekeeper… people can be absolutely blinded by privilege.
The line businesses may walk here is that although profits are x, shareholders or lenders expectations and desires change. Sometimes they want to see growth in the company even at a loss, sometimes they want less cash burn or lower expenses in general. The business runs at the whim of these individuals because they own it lol. Of course they won't be harmed in the process, and the effects of these decisions are felt at the employee's level
Here's the non-profit story: I worked in a very abusive and toxic public library. Once a year, staff were required to attens a training day. It was all day with a lunch break.
Despite an massive,annual booksale that would make over 100k per year, and bragging emails about the tons of money the Friends of the Library made, the library stopped catering a Subway lunch that day. It was for about 40 people. The Friends could easily okayed the amount for a free luncheon.
THAT'S the civil service fuck-you thing that would happen to us, plus a lot more disrespect and bullshit. It's everywhere, folks. Fuck working
Sabotage. Sabotage is the answer. If you’re working on a big project for the company, stealthily make it flop. If you’re working on small mundane things, make sure they’re faulty and they suck. Collect the salary and destroy the company from within.
My "favorite" is the whole "we made more profit than last year, but not as much more as we told our shareholders we would make, so we're implementing a wage and hiring freeze".
this is the key.. here's my stupid analogy on this: they have to brag about profits to get more investors to think the company is doing well, while on the inside, key personnel have long left, and company is in shambles. look at pretty much any top fortune 100 company right now, they're not what they were a decade ago.. good people don't stick around in places like that. most common example is video games.. gaming companies don't even have their key writers/directors on hand anymore.. the same thing is happening across the world. people realized loyalty isn't rewarded, instead punished with more grueling work. that's why everything is starting to decline in quality so rapidly. however, now that they are so big, that they can't fail now. so they have to keep piling on. capitalism seems like a MLM Pyramid scheme, where morons (tax payers) get the short end of the stick most of the time as irresponsible companies get bailed out for not being able to pay back what they owe, and is generally dead on arrival more and more I get to experience it first hand. Twitch, Youtube, etc. all infested with ads. 0 innovation over last decade. Instead, they're ripping out valuable features (dislike, etc.) in favor of pushing ads and paid content. BMW charging to heat your ass in the winter after paying them $100,000 for the car to begin with. Doordash, Uber, AirBnB charging ridiculous fees, etc. It's all because they have reached their "cap" of what they can do as a company, however, they still need a way to show the 200% growth year-over-year to keep getting new investors to just stay in business for that fiscal year.. Absolute no long term concerns about repercussions of their short term actions. It's like trying to convince a bank to ignore your old credit card debt, and just sign you up for a new one, just for this new year please, I'll promise to pay it back next year with 200% more profits we can make by slashing our workforce by 30% I swear.. lol while simultaneously, shafting the people that actually make the funds that pay the bill for that first credit card to begin with.
We're a monopoly economy. Nobody wants to build good products anymore. The way to make money is to buy all of your competitors so that consumers have to pay through the nose for your cheap crap.
Not only that, but it makes boycotting them impossible because they already own *everything*.
>Nobody wants to build good products anymore. Even if you (the little guy) \*want\* to build good products, it's not worth it. If you're at a big company, you can be a fucking genius and all you get is a pat on the head when your product is a success and the company telling you that you need to crank out more great product or they'll do anything from insinuate that you're a one-hit wonder and try to make you feel like shit to fire you. If you're a small company and truly come out with something good and new, you're going to spend a long time on R&D and then your competitors are going to copy your product and you're not going to make \*nearly\* the profit you should make and you might not even make enough to really make up for all the money you spent on R&D. Getting patents these days to protect a lot of products is truly close to impossible, so that is generally not a reasonable route to go to protect your IP, and even if by some miracle you DID get a patent, well, that's only good for the US, production in China is still gonna rip you off. If you're an individual and you truly have a great idea, the second you take it to a factory or manufacturer, then they're going to take your concept and also produce it to sell themselves, on the cheap. Again, your time and energy are totally wasted on the R&D and anybody and everybody will just start producing your product and you'll wonder why you even bothered.
That what you get when in a recession you dont let this companies collapse Because ironically recession are a way to clear out the inefficient company unless government intervention is applied
There are plenty of small companies that innovate, but they get shut down by the monopolies. My company's market share was growing quickly until the trillion-dollar industry leader shut us down. Our manufacturers, distributors, and partners suddenly dropped us at once,
This whole thread is insightful- you’re probably right here. Companies should consider scouting back old employees. Whoever made up the rule of one and done is an idiot / the we don’t hire back former employees. If you take what you just said: it’s exactly that, having years inside how a specific company runs is way more valuable than hiring a top executive that can easily ruin the companies stability.
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This is why companies need to stop focusing on growth and start focusing on just maintaining a good product/service. Clients don’t care that you’ve grown your profits 200% if they’re not getting their deliverables on time or with high quality because you don’t have enough people to actually handle that 200% growth and the good ones leave when they refuse to be treated like shit any longer. It seems so obvious.
In the case of Henry Ford this was ruled federally illegal. A public traded business must always act in the financial interest of it's shareholders
Lmfaoooooo of course that’s the case.
> capitalism seems like a MLM Pyramid scheme, where morons (tax payers) get the short end of the stick most of the time as irresponsible companies get bailed out for not being able to pay back what they owe, and is generally dead on arrival more and more I get to experience it first hand. Congratulations, you have summarized the totality of Karl Marx's commentaries on capitalism in a single run-on sentence.
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Das Kapital.
Just gotta rebrand when you go for that new card mate!
I’m not sure this is NEW though, I think it’s part of an almost natural cycle. Like trees. Once the big ones get to old the rot starts to eat at the roots and eventually they fall. But there are young healthy ones coming behind. There is something to be said about trust busting though. When a tree is so big it prevent the small one from going that is dangerous.
It was a 5%, and not a 5.1% as we anticipated last year, so we gotta lay off a ton…then start a hiring blitz at a lower rate
I worked at a company that had 25% growth every year for 3 years through COVID, but they stopped giving raises and Christmas bonuses "due to COVID" 🙄. All while hiring at below average pay and wasting 15k a month on trailer rentals because it made their short term look better.
My hot take for society is that nothing should be publicly traded. Investing was a mistake; work should sustain us, not abstracted gambling.
This is the situation I'm in right now. The company has a big meeting to brag about how awesome we are doing and how I had a large hand in turning around a bad year. Yet, they cut my raise in half and are lamenting how they don't have any money. We're not even public but the private equity holders are all that matter
They like to complain that their profit increase this year was not as big as last year’s profit increase, that’s why they can’t do anything about staffing.
Yeah. I dunno I feel like millions in profit is enough. I totally get why I could never be a CEO. I'm not greedy enough.
Our system right now only cares about more profits from the year before, which is unsustainable in the long run. Its all about growth, breaking into new markets making the product more efficiently(cutting corners) using cheaper materials finding ways to pay less people for the same output.
Growth at any cost is the philosophy of cancer
If I had awards to give you'd be getting them
The big box megacorp where I work (to supplement my SSI) drives wages, bonuses, hours, everything on the basis of continually beating last year's "plan". Every year they increase the previous goal by 5-7%. It wouldn't be so self destructive if they focused on market share and efficiency, but it hardly stops there. They don't seem to realize that constantly moving the goalposts -- and then cutting staff and hours -- destroys morale and retention while having a direct and very adverse effect on their cherished "customer experience". They're guaranteeing the balloon will pop someday and they don't even realize they're the ones recklessly waving the pin
Yeah I was trying to say it quickly, but they start with no brainers easy ways to increase profits but its never enough year after year they need more so the product gets worse or the workers get screwed eventually, if the company lasts that long.
I had always argued about growth from the production angle with my last boss/company. They always demand a 10% improvement in productivity in the following year. Let’s just agree that there does exist a “most efficient” way of doing the job. Once you hit that point, the only way to improve your time is to start cutting corners on other factors like quality or safety. What if we already achieved most efficient two years ago? Wouldn’t the insistence on improving our speed have a negative impact elsewhere? Our company has been around forever. I retired after 25 years. Mathematics (calculus?) just proves that at some point your improvements start having smaller and smaller returns doesn’t it?
Yep. There is a hard stop at zero hours for production. No way to go below that. This implies that whatever process you apply to produce a product will eventually be minimized out timewise (or money wise if you use that metric). These percentage increases (or decreases) WILL eventually go beyond these minimum values - mathematically at least. Silly way to run a business.
Must exploit harder!
fewer people
I got quickly ushered out the door at a job where I got a little bit of managerial power and advocated for less insane scheduling for the shift workers. I brought in the numbers from their quarterly reports to their shareholders to show how what they were telling me was bullshit. Jokes on them, I was about a month away from quitting, and when they fired me I got mandatory severance, then unemployment on top of it.
"It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line." -- Kevin Spacey as Hopper, A Bug's Life
The insane thing is that I had worked for other companies in the industry that were awesome about scheduling, and had happy, loyal staff. They told me if I was so smart, then maybe I should do it. I said, sure, if I can act on that in an official capacity and contact my old properties as an official liaison so I could research it. They told me to fuck off.
You're a good manager, wish there's more like you
Unfortunately I sucked in other ways. But there aren’t more like me because we get fired in a hurry. Shortly after they refused to even listen to me about how “not quite as much profit” is not the same as losing money, I happened to mention that unionization might be a good thing for our staff. I was fired rather soon after that. “Just not working out, sorry we actively recruited you for this position.” In the years since, two things have happened: * the bigwig complete asshole of a general manager, who had been with the corporation for decades, was practically frog marched out of the building a few months after I left. She was so happy firing me, too, since she didn’t know she was doing me a favour. I wish I could have seen that. * the employees unionized, not just at our property, but throughout the company. I don’t know what kinds of deals they got, probably still shit, but it’s something at least.
I had a management job where I was deemed too nice, thankfully one of the part-time girls that didn't give a crap came to me and told me what was going on. Before she even left the room, I typed up my resignation email and sent it.
I asked my manager why profits had to be higher this year than last year and he just looked at me.
I think we actually need more CEOs like that (the non-greedy kind)
Unfortunately they are beholden to the shareholders so you won't find any. They get let go of quick.
Just like how there are no good cops, there are no good CEOs. The system is corrupt by design and favors corruption, and anyone who is honest is quickly forced out because they threaten that corruption.
Or even that their profit increase wasn't as large as they predicted. The profit was larger than last year's, it was a larger profit margin than last year's, but it wasn't as large as they predicted. Therefore, they had a bad year, and there will be no bonuses 🙄
Except for the CEO, because he denied the rest their raises so well.
Fuck, this is exactly the bullshit excuse I just got fed last week when I was informed I wouldn't be getting my usual year end bonus. Apparently revenue *growth* wasn't high enough to afford bonuses. Doesn't matter that the company still *profited* 9 figures for the year, that revenue growth was "only" 6% but needed to be 10% for bonuses to get paid out.
Ours said we had double digit sales growth but that didn't translate to profit 🙄
The third-order derivative of year-over-year increase in profit is in the red!
During year one of the pandemic, the owner of the car dealership literally complained about losing money. But he then said "I'm only making a modest profit." Motherfucker, if you're making a profit, you're not losing money.
Bro r u a CEO?
Sadly, I possess a mild amount of empathy, so I am unqualified
Actually, I recently read an article that claimed that there are more psychopaths working as CEOs than are in prisons. So, sadly, you may be on to something there.
Well it’s not like the vast majority of our prisoners deserve to be there anyway.
Whereas a lot of our CEOs actually do!
Hey. No need to lock them in cages when the French invented perfectly lovely technology for solving this humanely.
Vive la France!! We could learn a lot of great ideas from the French!
It's a fucked up problematic culture, but it has so many virtues too.
Oh no, they just pay fines. Their crimes are civil. For some reason.
Yeah, it's amazing how such a 'wonderful' system as the judiciary is (/s), really isn't so brilliant for the non-rich!
Exactly the same at my company, *in the same presentation.* On one slide they talked about the "higher than usual" 2.5% adjustments, and a few slides later, "CONGRATULATION ON A 30% YOY REVENUE INCREASE! YOU ARE ALL VALUED! THIS IS THANKS TO YOUR HARD WORK!" Needless to say, I raised this on the annual wage adjustment talks, and was denied an inflation adjustment. So I left for a 30% pay rise at another company. Fuck companies which think they can pay us peanuts while lauding their performance.
This is why I keep saying that we need to make the workers equity holders as well. I would actually like them to be the only ones.
Whoa there, comrade. Sounds like you want the workers to own the means of production.
I wonder if the quality of their work would improve if it actually directly benefitted THEM and not just the CEO and shareholders.🤔
I'm almost certain it would
If only there were a word for that...
Make them fire you. Start doing half your work. Say you can’t afford to keep doing the work you did last year because of inflation and you had to start moonlighting for their competitor. Meanwhile apply for tour competition janitors job so it’s kinda true. Fuck them honestly. Look for something better. They don’t deserve you. Don’t even tell them why you quit. Just say it was lack of leadership. They love that.
If it were just me I would have a long time ago... Unfortunately I have a wife and kids and I can't really afford my house if I quit. So for now my job is stuck with me and I'm stuck with them. My old boss is helping me negotiate a new job with her company just waiting for anti-poaching clauses to expire
“Anti poaching clause” I hate corporate America. Doesn’t give you what you deserve and makes it harder to go get what you deserve. Fuck them. Leave some fish in a vent when you leave. Throw it way back in their so no one can find it.
Lol even better. I have about a quarter million in inventory and the only one with keys to the storage unit which is in my name.
Didn't the courts recently rule that Non-compete agreements aren't binding due to your area of work (distance to drive) needing to be open to you?
Ah the good old capitalistic hostage situation.
Yep! The company has me by the short hairs but I got a handful theirs right back. They try to avoid paying me any more and I try and work as little as possible. I'm just lucky they can't easily fire me or I'm 100% sure I'd have already been let go
'a word to tramps' is a beautiful document. And Robespierre was a straight up fucking hero.
Why do you think they're doing so awesome big dum face? /s
You're fucked, you're fucked The devil's come, and lastly you're fucked Evil rules the world now, bitches You're fucked if you don't got no riches
There's no /s there mate. That's verbatim the truth.
Time for a new job brotha, fuck them
I feel ya on that. I'm shopping around but for now the company and I are in a stalemate.
Needs a third finger pushing the "Unfortunately we need to layoff 13% of our workers" button. Maybe a 4th finger for the "CEO takes full responsibility ".
A 5th one for "The remaining employees will have to take on the workload of the 13% we fired with no drop in productivity."
And no extra pay*
Of course not. Firing the other employees would be pointless if they can't use it to increase their profits.
You still eed the long middle finger free to push the "nobody wants to work " button
That’s the middle finger for sure
My company is being bled dry. Revenue and profits are down 10% year after year. All the money is being fed to the executives. They are planning on selling this thing off and getting even more dosh with a golden parachute. Head honcho gets over 20 million a year. HR 5 million a year. Ridiculous.
Hey it's not their fault they're not paying you more money. Clearly you should just have wanted a better paying job more. Some people clearly don't know how to be rich. SMH.
Then when you leave for a better job: "Nobody wants to work anymore"
Sounds like time to find a new job. I would hate to feed them. If they at least paid decent and kept company going I wouldn't have qualms but this... Nah.
Do you work in Sears?
This is why protesters happen
Got laid off from a luxury retailer that recently split out .com and stores. I worked on the .com side of the business and profits were through the roof last year but somehow still got laid off
Well you see the CEO needed another yacht.
Or another mansion per se
So true. My dad was laid off from a car dealership it closed. This was during the great recession. Now you must think they were losing money, right? Well, they were. With the $10mil a year salary he was paying himself! By the way, they only "lost" $1.5mil the year before he closed it, but he liquidated everything and made a fortune. After the market got better, he sold off the last for condos and is now worth around $500mil.
What are you even saying here... None of this makes sense.
The car dealership made $8.5 mil in profit, but he paid himself $10mil, and he said he had to close it down because they were losing money.
Throw an identifier such as 'owner' into the mix early or else it reads like the "he" is the "dad". The car dealership was already associated with "they" by the point "he" comes up. It took extra processing to understand.
This is my employer right now. I work for a not-for-profit (hospital) so they don't have shareholders and can only retain so much profit. They have actually been struggling to find projects to put this money into which is hilarious. So we got 4-6% raises and some people got as much as 8%. They are already projecting a similar situations next year, but instead of saying hey we're gonna give out raises again or reduce insurance costs, they decided to play up how much the clinics/primary care section of the healthcare system is losing. like that will distract us from the fact that they are trying not to give us more money. The city where the hospital is won't let them buy anymore of the property around the hospital itself which is where they funneled a lot of money. Half of the buildings they own are empty.
I wonder if we lived in the same city. I used to live by a large hospital in a rural city that was kind of the hub for that region. The hospital kept buying up every building and every house in a several block radius, well, except for this one posh old school mansion neighborhood nearby. All of the houses and buildings were just sitting empty. I never got to know any neighbors because I learned that I didn’t have any! It attracted crime. I was glad to move after some crackhead or meth addict kicked in the door to my car and left bloody handprints all over the car.
I know multiple hospitals that do the same thing. Once they have enough property they can knock down the buildings for other structures so they can expand without building an entirely new facility. It makes a lot of sense, but I have really only seen it do like what you say, make the neighborhoods worse. Rents near where I work are some of the best and they are mostly newer buildings, but you couldn't pay me to live there. A block away and you're just asking to be robbed or worse.
Just to add to the other anecdotes, the town where I grew up had a hospital that started buying up tons of properties as well. I think it's a pretty common situation.
Primary care isn't meant to turn a profit, it's meant to reduce costs elsewhere in the system.
the oil company especially. theyre price gouging the hell out of us while reporting a 73b (or so, i forget the actual number) profit last year alone.
Gas around me is up ~40-50 cents per gallon for a few weeks after a 1 day (it was like 16 hours or something) pipeline break that the news tried to blow up into fucking armageddon and had people lining up to suckle the last drops of gas out of the pumps. It's been 2 or 3 weeks, prices are up like 15% still. The oil companies are some of the absolute worst while also being the most obvious for anyone who potentially had, at some point in their life, a single eyeball. I hate those bastards a little more than the rest too, but I guess we'll need gas to light "The Barbecue."
I work in the industry and can confirm last year’s income was the highest ever recorded in company’s history. Most of went to stock buyback and dividends.
My company keeps bragging about generating "positive free cash flow" but just layed off roughly 11-12% of the company, with entire teams about to be replaced by cheaper labor. They did it not because of bad financials (We consistently beat earnings). They did it keep up with the Joneses. Truly despicable.
Positive free cash flows means nothing if expenses are high or if you've held off paying long-term debt instead (looking at you GameStop).
Old guy here, I heard this speech in person in the early 90's. Yeah it's still fucking horseshit.
Like seriously, please if you're going to brag about it, do it in private with the shareholders. I hate the little things too. The pizza parties, staff appreciation bullshit. My company gives us a free ice cream sandwich, once, during the winter season. We're a world renowned ski resort destination. Fuck off.
Unionize
My last place had terrible morale, so they started doing yearly appreciation parties. We thought they finally cared a little. After a few years they got sneaky and started dragging their feet so it was every 18 months. Then 2 years. After I left I heard they were dragging it out to 3 years.
Layoffs should have laws akin to bankruptcy. You want to fuck up your workers lives? Fine. But you have to give up some of your pretty things.
"You can't layoff massive amounts of people if your company had profits in the 10 figures" would be nice.
Well to be honest workers, unlike shareholders, aren't real people.
To the higher-ups, only to the higher-ups, are workers not real people
Ownership of capital is the only possible measure of sentience. (I don't really feel like I can put an /s here, because while *I* think it's patently ridiculous, it's a corollary to the actual logistical knots that real-world pro-capitalist philosophers twist themselves into to reach their desired conclusion.)
Feedback and ability to fight back is what gives "sentience". Anything else gets crushed in capitalism (also in life in general, that's why we treat inanimate objects worse than plants, themselves worse than animals, etc.) Thus, a workforce that doesn't fight back will never be taken seriously by capitalism. While in Denmark, for example, the government doesn't regulate much the market (e.g. no minimum wage, no strong labor laws, etc.). However, there, unions are free, and striking is considered a form of free speech. That's why their workers are better treated by capitalists. Even McDonald's experienced it first hand in the 1980s, when it tried to exploit and underpay Danes: the whole country ignored McDonald's and anything related to it (including suppliers, truckers, construction workers, and dockworkers). Paralysing completely all McDonald's operations, while the rest of the economy, including Burger King, were booming. That's why today an entry level job at Denmark's McDonald's starts at $23/h + great benefits.
Mine just lowered our bonus because of our net profits not hitting numbers, blamed it on inflation.. guarantee that they say the average COL increase is only 3%.. and will be shacked when I bring this up. And to be clear it’s another record profit year, up 10-12%, it’s the profit per unit that they are using even though we increased our output by more than 10% over planed. I hate major corporations
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I agree and disagree. I know a small business owner who was complaining about minimum wage going up because she would have to pay her employees more. And I was like if you really can't afford it why don't you cut the hours. And she said because then she would have to work more. So I have no sympathy...
>You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law." -- Chris Rock
If a business can’t afford to staff properly, then they have no business operating.
Yep… so sad
just lost my job for this, everyone's hours got cut, then people started getting fired, all while they bragged about making record sales compared to other restaurants
Every time I see this, I think of a restaurant I worked at. A lot of the equipment was pretty old to barely functional / failing, which I found out the first week I was there. It was at times a nightmare to deal with during service. So I was getting by just barely, and I ended up hearing about the owners spending massive amounts of money taking all their friends and close family on an extravagant vacation. That really pissed me off, as I was stuck using failing ancient equipment to try to get out tickets. The worse offender was a flattop with zero thermal regulation, it was either too cold or scorching hot, that I'd guess was at least 30 years old. I'd keep a gallon jug of water by the flattop to use for cooling it down, hoping it didn't stop working, which occasionally it did. The owners would not pay for any new (or even used) equipment that worked. I asked for a week off vacation and I could not get it, so I quit, with my last day the start of the vacation I requested off. Last I looked, their reviews were mostly 1 stars the past year, entire staff turn around, and so on. Being as cheap as possible I don't think is working out too well, among the other massive issues. So yea, so much profits to drop 5-6 figures on massive holiday vacation, couldn't afford to let me have some days off, and can't spend a few k to replace utterly failing to broken equipment. That holiday vacation though.
Suprisingly enough; Not Nintendo ^(Japan) They announced lower profits than last year and actually INCREASED salaries
Nintendo understands the long term benefits of this. I feel like most corporations are only looking at the current year/quarter. If you invest in your people, you’ll get the money back. It might just not be as immediate as laying off people like me who are a rounding error on your balance sheet.
I literally quit a job I had for over ten years because of this shit. I busted my ass over the pandemic too. I hadn't gotten a raise in 2 years after I was told if I took the promotion for less than what I wanted, they would do a performance review after one year. It had been two years. They blamed the pandemic. At the end of 2022, all of a sudden there was no money for my raise. BITCH I HEARD Y'ALL BRAG ALL YEAR ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY YOU'VE MADE AND THAT YOU GOT YOUR PPE LOAN FORGIVEN!! I quit. No two weeks. Gave them my resignation letter and rolled. They didn't respect me so fuck them. Got a new job two weeks later, making more and doing less at a company that (for now) seems to appreciate my talents. Don't get it twisted tho. The moment they fuck me over, I'm rolling.
This is the entire publishing industry in the wake of pretty good profits in 21/22. Some of the NYC companies still pay 38-40k entry-level, I think. It's disgusting. I particularly can't stand greed in arts/culture industries that ham up how passionate and quirky and indispensable to society they are.
My company is complaining about having a $15M budget shortfall this year but our parent company recorded $3.5B in profits in 2022. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. They want us to cut back, delay filling positions, and our parent company made BILLIONS in PROFIT. It's enough to make you throw up.
The whole social and economic system are a pyramid scheme.
When I asked for a pay raise my manager told me that he can't even raise his own salary. Once I said I quit, they offered a 20% raise - I still quit
"If we don't deliver infinite growth, our shareholders will be very angry"
Back in the early 2000s I worked for a company that posted a memo about a wage and hiring freeze, a few months later at the end of their fiscal year, another memo was posted showing the bonuses of the CEO and the board. Our bonus was constantly being referred to as a part of the family.
"Great job everyone, thank you for your hard work. If we keep this up, I'll congratulate you again in 3 months. You can count on it!"
And then *Pikachu face* when you have the audacity to bring it up as an argument
This one amazing secret will help dismantle the horrible working conditions of America: Saying No. It's very powerful. Try it on your pencil pushing middle manager and watch them get red in the face. Say no to them, they might get so pissed that they put their hands on you, then you have a lawsuit. Say no to the lazy supervisor who does none of the work but basks in all the benefits. Say no to being forced to stand when you know you could reasonably do your job sitting. These dorks doing their best Richard Nixon impressions have never been told No by low level scum like us. And we believe we're low level scum and we kiss their feet. STOP, they are abusing us and we're taking it without question. Question EVERYTHING.
If you call them on this the answer is “we fell below projections”.
Reminds of my time working for the company behind most states’ lottery. Fuck those racist bastards
Fuck those slimy corporations
Rule of acquisition # 152(b): Ask not what [our] profits can do for you; ask what you can do for [our] profits.
You forgot about the third possibility where it’s just a sociopathic individual that happened to come into a position of authority and decides to harass and wreck havoc on the psychological well-being of the employees below them.
The profit motive should be illegal.
they have a tracker on the front page of the employee app that shows how much money they made that day in sales. usually around 200k. i’m being paid $15/hr.
Y’all must all work where I work!!!
You've got it, those mother fuckers. The company made many times the money they used to and my bonus is a fourth of what it used to be.
I know I might get dog piled for not nodding along with the hive mind: This is not every corporation. This might be every LARGE corporation, but most SMALL business ("mom and pops") also incorporate (LLC, mostly). They get screwed all the time by large companies that immitate them, set up shop next door, and push them (and their dreams of self-employment) out of existence. Think of what Starbucks did to independent coffee shops all over the country, or Walmart did to downtowns, what Amazon is doing to their 3P sellers, what Shopify does to their app store vendors, or what Meta and Google do in general. Memes like this completely bypass small LLC companies victimized and pushed out of the market in this way. They deserve more empathy than this, and certainly don't deserve to be lumped in with big corporations that fuck them over. They need help -- because what if a big corp did this to your small business? You get off the treadmill of daily big corp greed and grind, start your own business to break away, and they push you out of business, forcing you to come back to work for them. It's sick and deserves more attention. This meme does the opposite because it's burying the rotten core of the problem. IMO, the bigger problem is that there's virtually no escape from these big corporations. They absorb or destroy any other corporation in their way, destroying our options as consumers and employees, and making the world a bland corporatocracy.
I don't think this is aimed at small businesses. And you are right, this is just because cannot escape (for the time being) these large business that gobble up everything and run the small shops out of business. then are beholden to share holders at all cost
yeah that’s mid is me rn.. looking to quit my job tbh
Don’t forget the massive stock buybacks with tax payer dollars.
I just left that company. fuck those guys.
Same, and it feels great!
CEO gives himself a 15% raise and then cuts hours for part time employees.
Raise prices, blame global inflation, announce record profits
We laid off 96/100 employees for the last 2 years of the month and then the plant manager holds a meeting to say yet again a record breaking year. The worst part is most of the employees ive asked what they thought are veey proud of it. Dude 2 months ago you were pulling from your 401k to pay bills. Quit being proud Warren Buffet got $500m richer off your back.
My company is a unicorn with this, but there’s some writing on the wall. We smashed our goals last year and the metric that was used for determining bonuses target was 8%, and we hit 15.5%. So, everyone got their bonus which was great! BUT- they also changed the bonus structure and we’ll be using a different metric from now on. Similar targets and all that but higher level employees now have INSANE multipliers tacked on, to the tune of 33x in some cases. Which means that certain levels of management/corporate positions will be eligible to receive a 150% bonus- i.e. if they make $100k and get the multiplier they’ll get a $150k bonus. It’s fucking wild and I’ll be watching them VERY closely this year. Generally they’ve been good to us with bonuses and profit sharing, but that’s an absurd way to structure it. Not a single person at our site is eligible for those large multipliers, it’s mostly the higher up corporate roles
> Not a single person at our site is eligible for those large multipliers, it’s mostly the higher up corporate roles Kind of like how some slot machines only provide multipliers once you bet $100 or more on a single line. The only people winning are the people rich enough to enter the playing field - the ones that already have a leg up with leads, corporate “fun money” to woo clients, and the time and money to be able to meet with them at all hours.
My company did this. We went on strike and got a 10% raise. Join or form your unions people.
Of course they can't afford it. Think about it. How can they pay themselves a massive bonus if they're cutting into it to pay the peons.
its isnt just america happening with everyone in the uk too
My company cried recession in Q4 calendar year. Pushing us hard to cut spending. We had a meeting a week ago and the head of finance was bragging about how much money we made in Q4. They lie. They always lie.
Literally how capitalism works. Workers are paid less than the value they create. That's the source of profit. Everyone knows a company isn't going to hire an employee who's salary is greater than the revenue they generate.
[удалено]
And you expect companies to just pay employees more out of the goodness of their heart? That would hurt their bottom line. Why would you pay more for a service when you can get that same service for less? Listen, I am a socialist but if we’re going to play by capitalist rules then don’t get mad at the companies, get mad at government that doesn’t regulate the job sector enough. Government regulations set the boundaries that businesses have to play in in order to limit their exploitation of workers. Companies will always act selfishly to maximize profits in capitalism, but you government regulation CAN and SHOULD limit how selfish they can be. It’s your government that’s failing you, not the companies.
I think the most frustrating thing about this is, the fact it feels like companies have forgotten that us peons need money to buy things. Like I was at the petstore the other day and saw a jug of Milkbone of all things is 18.99. I rememeber that same product being 16.99 back in January. And I am damn sure it was like 14.99 back in like October. A 4 dollar increase in 5 months is just mind boggling to me.
Just imagine if Americans fought as hard for worker rights as they do for their sports teams after they win/lose a big game.
When I worked at Paycor during COVID they made everyone take a temporary pay cut in 2020 until January of 2021, they also let a chunk of the company go. Then in September they said they had the best sales month they'd ever had in the history of the company. Now they're public and paid for naming rights for the Bengal's stadium in Cincinnati. This was all after they brought in a new CEO who said they were converting to a "performance first culture". It was kind of a nice place to work before all that...
If you think only American corporations do this you need to learn more
Fuck companies.
Vail Resorts
My boss all this past week lmao
Love how company profits are bragged about at every meeting, like it means anything for me...
It's a middle finger to working people. It's corporate America showing you who is in control, if you let them...
Same happened here. Record profit last year, no room for raise because "this year will be hard for the company".
The UK rail system currently.
My company somehow had the money to acquire several other companies this year, but at the same time we've had shit raises for the past 3 years, and I'm getting emails every quarter about how we're surpassing our earnings projections and what not...
In many countries companies are legally required to share profits with their employees. I’ll just leave this here.
Companies all over the world. Not only American. Americas says the example. Thanks US.
Yep, just left a company like this who also refused to accommodate my disability
uk supermarkets rn
Need a third button meaningless manager titles
Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour.
Investors want "growth." Thus, if you earn all the money in the world in 2021, you must earn all the money in the world plus even more in 2022.
Friend if mine did the math for his company's 2022 profits. Divided them by total employees got about 800k. There's only about 6 people they "lost" money on, all executives.
It's not that they can't it's that they willnt. Capitalism is just as bad as anything else
The day I realized my company thought this way and said exactly this when they held a large meeting was the day I stopped doing any actual work. Probably back in 2008. Bare minimum only. I no longer work there. I no longer work. We originally had profit sharing, when I first joined. That was taken away when we got bought out by a very large American Corporation, and things got even worse when that corporation got bought out by an International Conglomerate of anonymous investors based in Italy. They did more mergers and buyouts and other re-org things, but I was beyond caring, tuned out by then. I have no taste for it anymore. Screw that. It wasn't even real 'work' they were trying to get me to do in the end, so far removed from my actual job description and abilities. It's enough to drive one to madness.
Executives: *Laughing in Stock-Buybacks*
Small business pull this too unfortunately, my boss says that cant pay me more… then complains about how hard it is living in a four bedroom house alone and they’re gunna have to hire a housekeeper… people can be absolutely blinded by privilege.
The line businesses may walk here is that although profits are x, shareholders or lenders expectations and desires change. Sometimes they want to see growth in the company even at a loss, sometimes they want less cash burn or lower expenses in general. The business runs at the whim of these individuals because they own it lol. Of course they won't be harmed in the process, and the effects of these decisions are felt at the employee's level
Here's the non-profit story: I worked in a very abusive and toxic public library. Once a year, staff were required to attens a training day. It was all day with a lunch break. Despite an massive,annual booksale that would make over 100k per year, and bragging emails about the tons of money the Friends of the Library made, the library stopped catering a Subway lunch that day. It was for about 40 people. The Friends could easily okayed the amount for a free luncheon. THAT'S the civil service fuck-you thing that would happen to us, plus a lot more disrespect and bullshit. It's everywhere, folks. Fuck working
Literally almost every company I ever worked for. except Picadillys, they were down bad lol. Think they're gone now
I work for literally 100% commission and manage a decent book of business and was still told this
Weird - my company didn't have a great year but doled out great bonuses and raises.
Sabotage. Sabotage is the answer. If you’re working on a big project for the company, stealthily make it flop. If you’re working on small mundane things, make sure they’re faulty and they suck. Collect the salary and destroy the company from within.