Going to sound like an old man...

I agree. Benefits are getting worse and worse and the pay increases haven't kept up with the inflation. Most employers don't give a damm about employees, so why would employees give a damm about the company? When people did give a damm, the companies compensated them for it. Real retirements...real tangible benefit's!

Employees don't care about pats on the back or potluck appreciation dinners. They want better hours, a better home/work balance, more vacation time, retirement matches, longevity pay, sick time buy back, attendance bonuses, Christmas bonuses, etc.

I used to think like the old school thinkers, but I started to realize they were in a different boat than most people today. They had earlier and better retirement and benefits, what people made vs what things cost was far more balanced, and they had a wife/mother at home to raise the kids. They had legitimate reasons to like there jobs and want to go to work. Why would anyone today enjoy a chitty paying job with no benefit's where they are treated like a number?

If people want employees to care and have the desire to work, I think all the things the previous generations received would need to make a comeback.

 

Being the only bread winner in my house, I have to go to work unless I'm so bad off that I can't function. Stuff happens though and people do have legitimate reasons to not suck it up. Last month I had to miss a couple days because I scratched my cornea and couldn't even drive, let alone work with my eyes/hands. There were a few days over the past year where I felt terrible but went in anyway. On those days, I didn't carpool, I wore a mask at work to make certain people feel more comfortable and I kept my distance. I still remember being much younger with less responsibilities and more excuses. When you don't have people at home counting on you, a mortgage to pay, etc. it's easy to blow off a few days for no good reason. One of my coworkers is still in that boat. 32 years old, no kids, no wife, kind of comes and goes as he pleases. He hasn't been back to work so far this year. Each January the clock gets restarted on our vacation time, and he has a fetish for wasting no time in using it (right after the week+ long break around the holidays). If it plays out like it did last year, we won't see him until the end of January. Last year the excuse was "car problems" FOR THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT. I'm tempted to ask him to be my financial adviser from now on.

 

That wouldn't work IMO, many feel so entitled that increased bennies wouldn't change a thing... certainly not their crappy attitude!
My grandparents came through the depression and I remember grandma being shocked at Willie Nelson singing take this job n shove it...she said back then you took ANYTHING you could get for work...the depression changed people. Everybody would just rob n loot now...

 

I think using what desperate people would do in desperate times to survive as a standard or expectation is wrong. If your wife served you stale bread and water every night and said “that’s what they ate during the depression”… be grateful! Would you accept it? Or would you think to yourself…I work full time I’m not eating stale azz bread every night? I deserve better. Some of the jobs done during the depression like the Hoover Dam were blatant disregard for safety and human life. Lots of men died for no reason, and the company didn’t care. That’s not the ideal to point at. I agree there is entitlement in our society, but repeating “they are lazy and entitled and don’t want to work” hasn’t filled any jobs, and I vote Conservative. Employees AND employers need to both give and take. I have a full time job and look occasionally to see what’s out there. Lots of low pay crap jobs. Many won’t even put a monetary figure in the ad. Who’s gonna apply if you don’t know what you’d potentially make? Too embarrassed by the amount I guess.

 

I have been self employed for several years and as Screwloose has said already it’s a different world than going to a job everyday. I don’t work I don’t make any money that day, no sick pay no PTO no vacation time. I just passed up a job for a company doing what I’m already doing, a friend asked why and I gave him 25000 reasons why! I never took a day off since March 2020 except for the weather being too chitty to bother going out or we went in vacation (unpain on my part). Before that I never took a sick day unless I was beyond leaving the bathroom, puking out the truck window has happened. Never one to take vacations so I always just took the money at the end of the year. It’ll never change on my part, I’m too stubborn and get bored easily.

 

I remember grandma being shocked at Willie Nelson singing take this job n shove it...
That was Johny Paycheck

 

Gotcha...I was pretty young at that point...guess I never paid too much attention to it later on.
Kinda ironic...if "Johnny Paycheck" quits his job, then he becomes "Johnny NoPaycheck"!

I'll show myself out now...

 

That's understandable if you're getting payed for it at least if you don't use it.

At my old job you could only carry over "x" amount of vaca/pto hours and what you had over that you'd just loose and not get payed for it. There were a couple guys there that would literally give them back weeks of vacation that they didn't use and wouldn't get payed out for..

 

Same at my job. Use it or loose it.

 

Always had use it or lose it and could carry x hours to the next year - sometimes that x=40 hours, sometimes more. One year I was going to use it for Christmas shut down. I was told at the last minute I needed to work it to create a report for the government that the engineers had made a half-azzed attempt at (literally the Friday before). It was me and one other person at work that week. Yeah, the Engineers thought a two page report covering all testing of a product was going to fly for some reason. That report ended up being 70+ pages, not counting attachments with pictures and graphs and all. I lost those hours because I could only carry 40 over to the next year. Was not happy. I didn't really care for my boss, and the company was just another company to work for - and writing that report was not even part of my job description or anything I had done before.

This job lets us carry way more hours - but I have been losing PTO time the last 6 months or so because it is a total limit at any point in time. At least 1 other employee in my group is in the same boat. I don't really care since I love my boss (who encourages us all to take our time and has never said no - even with no notice) and I have no idea how I've accumulated that much time anyway. I also get a 3 day weekend every other week (not counting holidays). I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I took the time besides the couple of trips I take a year to see my family. It would be nice if they bought the time back, but that isn't their policy and I know that, so it's all good as far as I'm concerned.

 

You’re a better man than me bogieb, if they told me last minute that I couldn’t use my vacation I had scheduled in advance, I’d of told them politely to pound sand and we’ll figure it out when I get back from vacation.

“Poor planning on your part doesn’t necessitate an emergency on mine.”

 

Agreed 100% ^^^

No way in h e double hockey sticks I would loose vaca hours. Well, maybe if I owned the business and something came up.

 

Every now and then this happens to bogieb and she takes it with a grain of salt and laughs!

 

Whoops. Guess I’ll go fix that!

Edit: dang I can’t go in and edit my post again I guess. I should of known better nowadays anyways and put “person” in the first place. (man or woman...)

 

What is this "vacation" stuff y'all talking about?

 

No big, no deal.

 

I don’t know, there is a real shortage of people that want to work. My company can’t barely find people to show up never mind valuable employees.
I think anybody that is a valued employee has the upper hand here. We get yearly pay increases. It’s a decent amount but not necessary in step with the current inflation. I went and explained all that and ended up with a decent raise and more payed time off because “ we know we will have a hard time filing your shoes”.

if you are truly valuable and feel you are being shorted you should speak up. If they don’t step up to the plate there are certainly other opportunities out the for go getters.

 

We get to roll over up to 1 full years worth of PTO. Any more than that you get paid out for at the end of the year. I took 2 weeks off at the end of this past year because I was a full 2 weeks over what I could roll over into 2023 and I'd rather have the time off that I earned vs taking the payout and having to work those two weeks. Although, all that much time off does is remind me how I am ready for retirement.....at age 50. It sure was hard going back to work on the 3rd. LOL

 

Yup it’s just taking a day off for free and having to make it up later!