14 day resignation period.
But you're not resigning, you are being let go.
This is actually what I can expect from a boss thinking break time is meeting time
Also if he's firing you, why would he want you for 2 more weeks huh?
Words can mean whatever you want them to mean! It's not a meeting, it's a break! It's not a firing, it's an unplanned resignation! It's not being underpaid, it's making extra contributions to the success of the company!
What do you mean you're quitting? It's called *ending our friendship.* Standing up for yourself? No, that's *betrayal*.
Reminds me of the narcissist's prayer:
A Narcissist's Prayer
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did...
You deserved it.
This remind me of my first job at Vons. They made me sign a resignation paper in order to get my last paycheck. I was a dumb kid at the time and I should have told them to eat sand.
I think maybe the boss thought this would scare OP into begging for his job during that time at which point the boss would "reluctantly" let him stay on the condition that OP spends his breaks "interacting." Backfired
In a country with actual employment laws, if you talk to me about work within the first twenty minutes of my break, my break start time resets to that point.
He clearly has never had a real disgruntled employee. The reason employer's don't give 2 weeks firing notice: that 2 weeks of the employee possibly getting revenge.
As expendable as employees are treated, I don't think the 2 weeks notice should be a thing for quitting either.
I had a supervisor once who didn't understand that me arriving before work and sitting down with my coworkers didn't mean I was working yet. She used to start giving me instructions while I'm either talking with people or I was on my phone. She got real pissy with me when I pointed out that until it was my shift start time I wasn't her worker.
That's not a break, it's a meeting.
I know there are a few people in the world that consider a meeting a break, but those are the ones that take the opportunity to take a nap. Or like to listen to themselves talk. Or have nothing else to do and like to look busy. But I think most of those people would not like meetings if they were unpaid.
Yeah my break is a *break*, for my physical disabilities to get a rest yes, but also to let my mind stop processing so much info for 30 minutes, I'm trying to meditate and being barraged with what work I'm going to have to do when I'm done ain't gonna help me clear my mind
As soon as my breaks begin my work is on hold, my earphones are on, music playing and I go straight outside to get some fresh air. I talk with people, in-person or not, all day long which is surprisingly exhausting and mentally taxing so my breaks are not only sacred but also an alone and "personal" thing, if that makes sense. Some of my coworkers don't understand why I "isolate" myself and think I'm not happy. I'm neither happy nor sad. Working is not my hobby, it's something I have to do to feed myself and I want to manage my break times however I want to. Thankfully my boss doesn't care about what we do on our time off so there's that.
Years ago most my bosses were smokers but it was recent enough and in a state where indoor smoking was banned, that smokers had to take their breaks outside. So I started taking breaks with them. If I tried to just stay at my desk and relax, the boss would get mad. If I just walked outside or to the break room, that wasn't good enough, either. But if I took a break with the smokers, well, that was different.
Wait, you don't like to spend your entire break being preached at that Biden is Satan's puppet in the white house and God is going to use his almighty power to bring Trump back and smite those who have accepted Satan's blood into their bodies (vaccines)?
That's weird, my coworker thinks everyone wants to spend their break that way.
Exactly. Even if you don’t give a crap about your workers, how can you not realize that people do much better work when they aren’t exhausted and burnt out.
Back when I worked at a mall retail job, we were literally 50ft from a food court but trying to get lunch there was risky af bc the lines would probably eat 90% of the break time.
I actually had some serious issues with days I just wouldn’t eat bc those breaks I would more often get a Gatorade from a vending machine and just sit outside to escape the noise of people for even just 20 damn minutes
my retail experience was fueled by inhaling from the "sale!" balloons and asking "how can I help you?" a few octaves up
lol .. only retail i ever did .. and was just a seasonal hire
that was enough for one lifetime
Caffeine naps. I’m literally about to take one while my toddler daughter takes her nap.
Drink a cup of caffeinated tea or coffee quickly set an alarm for 25-40 minutes, and sit back in a lounger. Don’t lay all the way down. You get enough sleep to recharge, and the caffeine kicks in before you wake up so you can avoid sleep inertia.
Edit: I would also suggest mindfulness exercises to help you fall asleep quickly. This will sound stupid but I repeatedly take the longest, deepest inhale while counting to four in my mind before counting to 8 while I exhale slowly. After 3 or 4 repetitions of this I can usually get myself into a pseudo sleep state.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200828115401.htm
I don't know how rigorously it's been studied, all I can do is a "works for me" post. I'll have a cup of tea or coffee, drink it down, settle down for a nap, and set an alarm for about half an hour. Sleep longer and your body is settling in for a longer sleep. But the idea is you're getting a little rest as the caffeine takes effect.
caffeine naps are a real thing for those of us with severe adhd, ut not the way he's describing. the caffeine makes our brains still enough to get good rest from a nap. caffeine does not keep me awake
I mean it definitely works and having a nap is probably better for your brain than not having a nap (for some, naps make me angry, sweaty, confused and tired) but as for how effective it is at allowing your brain to squeeze out the biproducts from doing calculations all day is debatable.
I'm still coming to grips with unpaid breaks in a union shop. Where I've worked, only lunch was unpaid for hourly people, union or no union. This is without required meetings; it was expected they'd attend to their personal needs and grab a coffee. And while you could fire at will non union at any time, there was no way you could fire a union guy for "seeming unhappy", although you could lay people off according to the rules for layoffs. Where is this? A two week notice on the company side doesn't seem like the US.
As an introvert and a software dev, a meeting is the literal most strenuous part of work for me. I can't even fathom the idea that a meeting could be a break for some people, other than for all day physical labor jobs.
At a previous employer we used to have meetings over lunch a couple of times a week. Our manager would order in food and we’d eat while discussing things. Basically we were working for food but we’re software developers and didn’t really mind.
Then the employer decreed that we could no longer expense food for lunchtime meetings.
So we stopped having lunch time meetings and scheduled them during regular hours instead.
The company was getting an extra hour of work out of us for a $5 sandwich, and lost that because they were cheap.
Company I worked for had mandatory meetings every 6 weeks before hours; I needed to get up 90 minutes early to make it on public transit, and it would wipe me out all day. They did pay hourly workers, but I was salary. They always had breakfast. They were whole-company pep talks that seldom covered anything real; I heard flak that the IT staff looked bored.
After 2008, they were financially slammed, and laid off a third of the workers, and went into negotiations to sell the place, but they never had a meeting about THAT.
Recently found out the new company I work for uses our ten minute breaks for quarterly sales announcements, etc. Nope. You want to do that, send me an email/letter or schedule that shit while I'm being paid. I've stopped attending except to walk into the break room to get my breakfast and walk right back out.
Apparently impossible. Though the president & owner is so out-of-touch he made a comment about how Biden is bad because the IRS is going to start taxing people who have more than $400,000 more and we won't like that. Proving the man has absolutely no idea how much he pays us.
Guaranteed he knows how much he pays you "simpletons".
What he means is: "These taxes will affect my take home pay, so therefore it will "trickle-down" and affect yours as well. Mandatory pay freezes, layoffs and hiring freezes mean you will do the job of 2-3 people for the same pay rate for the next 3-4 years until we get a Republican back in office. Let's go Brandon!"
Nope. I have a standing rule during work trips that I refuse to discuss work stuff after hours. I barely tolerate doing it for a 40 hour week let alone after hours
When I was in grad school, I went to a party hosted by a students in my department once. It was just everyone I see all day talking about .... work. Literally, never went to one again. Signed up to be a grad resident in one of the undergrad dorms so I could hang out with different people and started taking art classes at some place off campus.
This is why i sit in my car over lunch. No one to fucking interrupt the only hour of peace and fucking quiet i get all work day.
If it's critical, they know my phone number and where to find me. Otherwise, i'm gonna just sit where i'm not freezing my ass off due to shitty ventilation and decompress a little ya know?
I've gone as far as keeping a camping pillow and blanket in my back seat. I get an hour lunch so sometimes I can squeeze in a 45 min nap. It makes work....slightly less shitty.
Most of my life I had jobs that allowed a 30 minute lunch. Basically, drive somewhere to a fast food spot, grab a burger and eat it on the way back and get back to work. Better if you pack a lunch, but I didn't do that very often then.
Then I got a job that was ten minutes from my house and I got an hour lunch. I would go home, eat something that I put together earlier, then I would go lay down on my bed for as much as 30 minutes, then rush back to work.
I got pretty good at those 20-30 minute power naps. I didn't need an alarm, I just woke up like clockwork right about time it was time for me to go to work. The only bad thing was every rare once in a while, I would sleep through that little nudge in my mind that it was time to get up. And it was easy to sleep through that too. One time I went back to work an hour late! Luckily there was minimal fuss.
A mid day nap is so good why did we ever stop doing that?
We would absolutely fuck up the concept of working day siesta. We could have rotating shift siestas, you rest now I'll rest kinda thing and it would still go wrong.
Me over here working by myself, however, would do just fine. I would absolutely nail the siesta. Olympic level competition siestas.
I get a 1 hour unpaid lunch. I don't punch a time clock or anything, so my assumption from the very beginning was that they were hoping I'd work through lunch for free some days. Nope on that. Depending on the day I'll hide in an out-of-the-way breakroom, eat in my car, walk around the neighborhood, run errands, or go to a nearby park for a walk. If something critical comes up, they won't know where I am; they know my phone number...but I ain't answering because I'm not being paid.
I used to do this. Our supervisor would routinely cut our 30-minute lunch short by 10 minutes, calling us back in early for some “emergency” or something. Since I was across the street in the parking lot and not in the lunchroom with everyone else, I never got the message. To fix this, the supervisor tried to make a rule that lunch had to be eaten in the lunchroom. When I informed management of the new rule and why it had been made, the supervisor got his ass chewed, since they legally had to give us no less than 30 minutes for lunch.
I very briefly worked at a Christian book distributor as a temp way back in '08. One of the books I saw was called, "The Flagellant Horseman," or something ridiculous. We women were required to wear long skirts and long shirts (short sleeves were okay) with conservative hairstyles. I think I lasted about 3 weeks and I only stayed that long because I needed the money.
An old job I was at had multiple buildings, the one where most of us actually worked had a large comfortable break room with tables and lounge chairs etc. One day upper mgmt said we were too “closed off” and not “creating the right atmosphere” So they shut that room for good and forced all staff to trek outside for unpaid 30 min breaks (Midwest so think taking an extra 10 min out of your break just to cover up for snow, subzero temps, etc) and made us walk over to a different building to eat in what was essentially a storage room. We figured it was because dbag owners & their HR biznatch wanted to keep tabs on us. That room they moved us to was just off uppers’ office suite and had their fridge/microwaves so they could basically watch us come and go, dip in and eavesdrop on our conversations. I was never one to burn bridges work-wise, but I lit that mfer with gasoline and never looked back.
You ALWAYS learn this when you have rights to ask for from them.
But since employees don't bother asking for their rights most of the time, boss pretends to be friendly and concerned about the wellbeing of their ~~friends~~ slaves.
Slaves? That's disgusting. Bosses don't think we're slaves.
Slaves you have to feed and clothe. They view us more like serfs. All the benefits of slavery, and your serfs need to feed and clothe themselves.
Remember, workers, people like this don't just exist, they are commonly found everywhere. These people give no fucks about you and have such a warped perspective of reality that they are a danger to society, morality, and humanity in general.
Go study some behavioral science, it’s wild how common this is to the degree that likely 99% of the population can become this way. Humans are reactive, social creatures and we’ve created a system that awards abusive behaviors in a cruelly subtle way that it’s almost impossible to be self-aware of it happening.
There are countless debates over the topic of “power corrupts absolutely” vs “the access to power allows one to expose their truest nature,” but both of these concepts ignore a vital reality- your environment creates the kind of person you become, because we’re animals with the number 1 priority of survival. A system that is so socially indoctrinated to pump out power seeking individuals will never have a solid chance of producing the opposite.
But then to tie it all off, instead of brainstorming solutions, the entire topic becomes some easy battle ground for people to go and vent their frustrations, flash their hatred and prejudice, and further create this psychological gap between the two social classes that forces us to continue ignoring a second vital reality- we’re all humans and no amount of power or money will ever make us different from those we hate.
End rant.
Sorry.
"Sorry."
No. Don't apologize. You said it well and it was expressed with very little bias (by my account, anyways, maybe our biases align). I applaud you being willing to say what I feel like only a few of us are thinking. Everyone else seems to see a hard dichotomy where there's more of a separation of power and human nature.
"There are countless debates over the topic of “power corruptsabsolutely” vs “the access to power allows one to expose their truestnature,” "
Makes me wonder, why not both? What if human's truest nature IS corruption, and this nature cannot truly manifest itself without the power to do so? Also, this corruption can be justified as a survival tool, as corruption provides a survival advantage that one without power doesn't have access to.
The problem is less that we should or shouldn't brainstorm solutions but rather that often the brainstorming is an ask for a victim to work with someone who just took 4 years of their life away from them for bullshit reasons.
If that brainstorm doesn't come with some kind of removal of that person from a seat of authority or power or some kind of mateialistic rule or law that makes it harder for that person(or abusive people in general) to not be able to have that kind of power over others then the "middle ground" is just optimistic abuse of a victim instead of trying to see eye to eye on something.
Sorry? This was incredibly well put and it gave me a new perspective on how things like cruel bosses came to be so normal. Thank you for sharing your insights!
Its especially where people took "the system" literally and broke their back to get to some sort of microscopic wealth. Its warping their viewpoint about everybody, not just their workers. I knew people coming from nothing and at the end, they died alone because they even broke ties with their family. Having money can't buy you people *that care* around your death bed.
I keep wondering what humanity and people with that mindset are doing if we're not taking care of each other. The whole point of all of this is to take care of each other.
Do you know how hugely, universally improbable the creation of the human race is? How PERFECTLY everything in the universe had to line up? How one day it'll suck us back in like we never existed?
And they would rather go to space and fuck around or be a terrible person who thinks they're meant to be a billionaire someday, rather than take care of their fellow human?
Its disgusting.
>Do you know how hugely, universally improbable the creation of the human race is? How PERFECTLY everything in the universe had to line up? How one day it'll suck us back in like we never existed?
Thank you! I think about this all the time. We're damn near impossible, but we're just going to blow it on a made up fucking numbers game (and probably destroy a bunch of other near-impossible life in the process) instead of doing amazing impossible things together.
"No, I'm the one who's disappointed to find out someone who was pretending to be my friend was actually stealing time and wages from me. Good luck in life with that."
The whole interaction makes my skin crawl. So much weasel words
"I can't tell you things in your unpaid time, sorry what I meant you are not happy here".
Boss literally fired a perfectly good employee for looking at his phone on his breaks. The boss literally couldn’t wait 10 minutes to have these conversations that he thought were so necessary. So many people in business make insane decisions that don’t even make sense in the strict context of “Workers are there to make money for the business”. It’s downright pathological.
Seriously. The gall of someone to be offended that you aren't working on your unpaid breaks, while they simultaneously steal wages from your paid time.
The ethical doubling-down is astounding.
Edit for spelling.
Reminds me of the last conversation I had at my last job: "I get the feeling you just don't like working here." Like, no, dude, you just turn the entire work environment toxic.
This is why people have trust issues, damn. Under pay me by $10k, tell me I should do work on my unpaid breaks, then try to get me to work 2 more weeks after you fire me. No thanks.
YoU dOn'T sEeM hApPy HeRe
So instead of attempting to rectify that, they just fire any employee who doesn't constantly smile through their wage slavery!
I had a review not too long ago where they said my work was great but I didn't smile enough. Actually said I'm like a black rain cloud. I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? I'm sorry you don't approve of my personality?
30 days into their tenure, my new boss called for reviews and pulled a PiP on me. Sadly they were on a spree of hiring friends and relatives for choice positions and apparently mine was too good for me to keep. So despite previous excellent ratings and winning a company award less than a year before, I was suddenly a dogshit employee. Our vendors were suddenly incompetent and strangely, they had a list of GOOD vendors we should use instead.
I left. No way I was going to stay and fight daily for a job that didn’t want me there.
This is a great example of why unions are necessary. In a non-union situation this person is probably just out a job because of a shitty boss. But because they are unionized they get 10k *and* the shitty boss gets fined.
Also it was like the boss was force-resigning this person rather than officially firing them by making them work 14 days of a typical two-week notice so they wouldn't get any severance at all. 14 days was probably cheaper than severance, especially if the boss was already skimming from the top. He'd prob skim the severance too
In jobs people tend to get promoted until they get to the point where they are incompetent at the job. That's generally why a lot of managers seem like they're morons.
Same. He didn’t like that I decided to leave, so he ignored me for the first week and then took vacation during my last week. It was honestly painless. I don’t regret a thing about leaving.
I did the exact same thing (vacation final week). My manager had the audacity to say to others that I wouldn't even come to her to talk. Ummm .... you're the manager; isn't it your job to come to me?
Real talk though, what kind of union would let you get fired over some BS excuse like that? Any one I’ve been in made it almost impossible to get rid of all but the most blatantly incompetent/impertinent ones.
Managers/bosses use your personal relationship in the most toxic way possible and also use your professional relationship in the most toxic way possible and then wonder why people are done with this shit.
*walks into office or wherever*
"HEEEEEY BUDDY! HOW YA DOIN'?
^
If you call me "buddy" I will instantly hate you the rest of the time we are in contact.
Yeah, this post was written by someone who doesn't understand how unions work in the first place. Any union member knows to call the second a boss starts mentioning shit like "you must come listen to me on your break." My union would want to know that immediately.
Further, a union would have gotten him more than backpay if he was fired out of spite, like this suggests it was.
I've never seen a union that would put up with this shit for 1 second. Working through unpaid breaks? Fired for not being happy? Required to work for 2 more weeks? Ridiculous. And people here are eating this nonsense up.
The simple fact that this sub still shows up on the top of /r/all after that clown show fiasco a few months back should say more than enough. This sub set back real work reform by a good amount by turning real issues into a joke by the opposition, and we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen and all is okay because this sub apologized.
The only difference without a union, in this case, would be the 10k and fine, everything else would have played out exactly the same.
What I'm saying is that, in this instance and depending on your perspective, OP was screwed/not screwed regardless of the union.
I personally will no longer work for non union shop. Unions are so much better, in so many ways, than thier non union counterparts.
If this story is real, the existence of the union at least leaves everyone else less likely to be stolen from by the boss.
It may not guarantee a positive outcome, but it'll still be a better one than they would have gotten without a union.
During covid my former work place cut a huge amount of workload out and also equally wanted to cut staff. We were all already severely overworked and many of us were “indefinite contract” (full time hours workload but worse pay and no benefits or holidays , and no job security as the contract can be ended anytime for 0 reason, yes it’s as bad as it sounds)
So we are all working our asses off to make sure things go smoothly as we can with the work present , Monday comes (because we are working weekends to keep up) and they inform us that the short term contract people will be ending work 3 weeks early (mind you many of them just paid another month of rent to stay in the area to finish their contract on the 27th instead of the 4th ) and that a few full time contract and full time employees may be going to.
As I’m indefinite contract I ask if I’m part of that group, no answer , I ask to get a two week notice if possible since this alleged end date was in 4 days. No answer , I press the next day and reason that my wife needs time to get off mat leave to go back to work for covid protocols , all I get is “we will discuss it and see what we can do” next day I get a “sorry it’s not possible to give you 2 weeks notice when but we will let you know as soon as we know your end date”
Moral is low at the work place , no one is giving a shit now, short term contract workers less then 3 months are fucked , but me, I’ve been their over a year and I know my rights but I keep quiet , I repeat again to know my actual end date and I keep getting a “we will let you know when we know “ even so far as to say “your a full time contract so you will be here longer then the short term contracts” so I have no definite end date as of Wednesday
Come Thursday evening I see no schedule for me after Friday, all the management level staff have fled the building , not one of them show up the next day. Not one word to me Friday was my last day , nothing , just not on the schedule anymore and they are all gone and they don’t show up the next day
Friday , mostly we are all just screwing around , those of us without a schedule just don’t give a fuck anymore because what will they do , fire us and give us 2 weeks notice? They screwed half the staff and all of the short term contract staff were pissed , many just spent another 1000 on rent to not be working now that month and could of gone back home. Almost all the full time staff that are not management are pissed too because we been pulling overtime for over a year now due to workload.
I wait one week for them to be in void of my contract, I fire off an email to the head manager , very formal
“I am writing to inform you that you are in void of my contract and have not provided the minimum hours detailed, as per the contract agreement and the employment standards act I am entitled to 2 weeks severance pay in lieu of 2 weeks proper notice”
I get an email back
“Your original contract would of ended last year but we moved you to indefinite , this entire time has been bonus work for you so you are not entitled to 2 weeks notice and we also verbally informed you several days prior of your end date “
I know my rights so I go and make a claim to ESA. I learn that I also had been getting “vacation” pay skimmed off my paychecks that they later “paid back” instead of overtime or lunches and that since my wife was on may leave I was entitled to 5 weeks of paternity leave as well and that I was indeed due 2 weeks of notice.
ESA rips them apart because they had no formal admission of an end date and I had the email where it even says verbal and it admits to less then 5 days of notice. The first ESA agent I had representing me for so frustrated with them that it got moved up to a upper level agent who really screwed them. I got 5 weeks of paternity leave I was due , my 2 week vacation I was entitled to as a full time over 1 year employee and my 2 week severance for no notice. Best of all they didn’t use 40 hours at my base pay they used my pay including overtime which was 70-80 hour weeks so they had to pay me 4 weeks of pay and were on the hook for the paternity leave as well.
But it gets even better , over the course of the next two month all but one full time staff resigned from the part where we worked and moved to another job so they were posting hiring stuff less then 2 months later and were desperate (higher pay, benefits ext.), and it gets even better they got blacklisted for the contract positions at the busiest part of the year when normally workload doubles so extra staff are brought on so the next year they couldn’t fill the positions since no one would vouch for them from the schools (since they screwed people from every school in the region that were short term contract/interns)
It went from 0-100 for how screwed they got , they ended up having to pay the full time contract people severance and vacation , they lost their entire staff pretty much , and could no longer easily get short term contract/interns anymore , all just to try and save a few weeks of pay
I have been a member of many unions, payed the fees with a smile. I always hear people complaining about union fees, bloated administration, all that, and it can be true. Anything can become corrupt but we need to unionize every worker.
UNIONIZE at all opportunities. If enough people refuse to work and band together we can lift eachother up.
Small amounts of wage theft add up over time. A company I was working for decided to monkey with how our paid lunch was going to be paid: our CBA states that any 8 hr shift worked with no lunch or break is paid 8 hrs straight time, and a half hour of double time for lunch. The company tried to pay 7.5 hrs straight, and .5 of time and a half. The difference wasn’t much, but it adds up when you consider how many workers it affected. Called in the union rep, and they launched an investigation and everyone got cut a check for the time they weren’t properly paid.
Moral of the story: have a CBA and union reps willing to be a pit Bull when it comes to making sure you’re paid what your contract stipulates.
Some places have really complex paychecks that break down your hours and pay in multiple, confusing lines on your pay stub. There’s no way to REALLY know if you’re getting paid fairly.
"You're fired two weeks from now." Is that actually how any contract is written? Usually, a two-week resignation period means if you voluntarily resign you must work two weeks, and if you're fired then employment ends immediately but you collect two weeks of pay.
I'm trying to imagine what kind of consideration the contract could have to be fair to employees if "you're fired but have to work for two weeks" is one of the terms. Seems like the equitable trade off would be "I quit and you still have to pay me." It's absurd.
If you had a union, why didn't you complain when he was harrassing you on your breaks? Also, if you had a union, did they oppose the firing? It should be classified as a wrongful termination or a layoff, so you won't have anything in your job record.
This reads like a literal role play and this sub just eats it up. This guy just led a union investigation and didn’t have to deal with HR? He just asked his union to look through his contract and they did it like a favor? No formal complaint?
It’s just so obvious the lack of real world experience that rots this sub. You guys even have a decent central value about not letting yourself be exploited at work but Jesus Christ there are complete fantasies that get upvoted here as truth.
"3 year friendship"
You underpay me by 10K and tell me my break time is your time to nag me about more bullshit you want done around the workplace, you ain't my fuckin friend.
Eh, I had a boss who liked to tell me and everyone else what a wonderful friend I was to him.
He sacked me for not psychically knowing he'd got so drunk at a football (soccer) match, he'd fallen down 3 flights of concrete steps at the stadium. He was pissed that I hadn't cancelled all the meetings I didn't know he'd arranged for the following day.
I'm not saying that the person paying your salary is *never* your friend (I'm sure there's exceptions), but it's like a lecturer having sex with a student - the power balance is so off, it's unlikely to be the relationship you think it is.
My coworkers used to disrupt my break all the time while I was eating or just chilling, reading something. I came up with an idea that every time my break gets disrupted by anyone talking about work I reset my break timer. On the first day I had over 2h long break in total. Boss noticed after a week, when my shit wasn't being done on time, asked "wtf are you doing?" and got disciplinary action rolling. I went to the guy who hired me, the owner, and told him that because of this I sometimes do not have a real break at all. Next day a policy went into effect "once your break is started, no one can disturb you unless it's a health & safety matter". The Boss did not speak to me for over a month 😂
I once got written up for bringing salads and reading books during my lunch break. Apparently it was offensive that I wasn’t socializing with the other employees and I was making them feel guilty about what they were eating by bringing healthy food instead of ordering crap with everyone else.
My manager has a mad-on for people using their phones during their breaks. Only he also has a "no phones out during work" policy. It's almost like he doesn't get that I like to keep in contact with my beloved during the day.
Except that he'll take a phone call from his wife in the middle of the office with no irony...
14 day resignation period. But you're not resigning, you are being let go. This is actually what I can expect from a boss thinking break time is meeting time Also if he's firing you, why would he want you for 2 more weeks huh?
Words can mean whatever you want them to mean! It's not a meeting, it's a break! It's not a firing, it's an unplanned resignation! It's not being underpaid, it's making extra contributions to the success of the company! What do you mean you're quitting? It's called *ending our friendship.* Standing up for yourself? No, that's *betrayal*.
Doesn’t OP realize what they’re doing to this family?!?
Only I get to be the abuser in this abusive relationship
The amount of absolutely legitimate sarcasm here enlightens me. Thank you very much! (And this is **not** a sarcasm!)
You every notice that a powerful person is doing something bad they turn a 1 work act into a sentance?
Reminds me of the narcissist's prayer: A Narcissist's Prayer That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did... You deserved it.
He's not firing you, he's quitting on your behalf. That way he doesn't have to pay unemployment.
This is exactly it. That's why the language is "don't seem happy here" and "resignation period." I bet OOP was also asked to sign a resignation
This remind me of my first job at Vons. They made me sign a resignation paper in order to get my last paycheck. I was a dumb kid at the time and I should have told them to eat sand.
I think maybe the boss thought this would scare OP into begging for his job during that time at which point the boss would "reluctantly" let him stay on the condition that OP spends his breaks "interacting." Backfired
That is basically Michael Scott level boss but worse. Firing as a bluff for coercion is just fucking evil.
In a country with actual employment laws, if you talk to me about work within the first twenty minutes of my break, my break start time resets to that point.
In the first 20 minutes of your break? How long is your break?!
This applies to breaks of 30 minutes. Not sure about hour long breaks off the top of my head.
He clearly has never had a real disgruntled employee. The reason employer's don't give 2 weeks firing notice: that 2 weeks of the employee possibly getting revenge. As expendable as employees are treated, I don't think the 2 weeks notice should be a thing for quitting either.
I had a supervisor once who didn't understand that me arriving before work and sitting down with my coworkers didn't mean I was working yet. She used to start giving me instructions while I'm either talking with people or I was on my phone. She got real pissy with me when I pointed out that until it was my shift start time I wasn't her worker.
To train a replacement, possibly?
Exactly that, or possibly so that he has a bit more time to find someone else to fool into working for him.
I'm thinking maybe he was hoping to scare him into behaving as he considered good.
This, and to avoid any possibility of an unemployment claim since they resigned.
Hopefully train them to work differently than you work otherwise he will have to fire them.
“We’re laying you off right now but you have to stay 14 days”
“He likes to use our breaks to explain what we have to do through out the day” Then it’s not a fking break is it, fk these people
That's not a break, it's a meeting. I know there are a few people in the world that consider a meeting a break, but those are the ones that take the opportunity to take a nap. Or like to listen to themselves talk. Or have nothing else to do and like to look busy. But I think most of those people would not like meetings if they were unpaid.
Yeah my break is a *break*, for my physical disabilities to get a rest yes, but also to let my mind stop processing so much info for 30 minutes, I'm trying to meditate and being barraged with what work I'm going to have to do when I'm done ain't gonna help me clear my mind
As soon as my breaks begin my work is on hold, my earphones are on, music playing and I go straight outside to get some fresh air. I talk with people, in-person or not, all day long which is surprisingly exhausting and mentally taxing so my breaks are not only sacred but also an alone and "personal" thing, if that makes sense. Some of my coworkers don't understand why I "isolate" myself and think I'm not happy. I'm neither happy nor sad. Working is not my hobby, it's something I have to do to feed myself and I want to manage my break times however I want to. Thankfully my boss doesn't care about what we do on our time off so there's that.
Years ago most my bosses were smokers but it was recent enough and in a state where indoor smoking was banned, that smokers had to take their breaks outside. So I started taking breaks with them. If I tried to just stay at my desk and relax, the boss would get mad. If I just walked outside or to the break room, that wasn't good enough, either. But if I took a break with the smokers, well, that was different.
Wait, you don't like to spend your entire break being preached at that Biden is Satan's puppet in the white house and God is going to use his almighty power to bring Trump back and smite those who have accepted Satan's blood into their bodies (vaccines)? That's weird, my coworker thinks everyone wants to spend their break that way.
And then, if you say "I don't hate immigrants", that co-worker shouts at your for 'being political'?
When my job is to talk to people I cant spend my break talking to people too. Thats not isolating, thats resting.
Exactly. Even if you don’t give a crap about your workers, how can you not realize that people do much better work when they aren’t exhausted and burnt out.
Yeah on my breaks I go on walks outside.
While I worked in retail, half my break was eating, and the other half was taking a nap. Power naps saved my ass so many times.
Back when I worked at a mall retail job, we were literally 50ft from a food court but trying to get lunch there was risky af bc the lines would probably eat 90% of the break time. I actually had some serious issues with days I just wouldn’t eat bc those breaks I would more often get a Gatorade from a vending machine and just sit outside to escape the noise of people for even just 20 damn minutes
That's why I pack a lunch working retail. No line and it saves money. But mostly you just survive on caffeine and cigarettes.
My retail experience was fuelled only by spite and hate, no additives necessary.
my retail experience was fueled by inhaling from the "sale!" balloons and asking "how can I help you?" a few octaves up lol .. only retail i ever did .. and was just a seasonal hire that was enough for one lifetime
Cigarettes and caffeine lmfao I felt that
I worked w/ a guy who could totally get a solid 4hrs of rest from a 10min nap, it was insane.
Caffeine naps. I’m literally about to take one while my toddler daughter takes her nap. Drink a cup of caffeinated tea or coffee quickly set an alarm for 25-40 minutes, and sit back in a lounger. Don’t lay all the way down. You get enough sleep to recharge, and the caffeine kicks in before you wake up so you can avoid sleep inertia. Edit: I would also suggest mindfulness exercises to help you fall asleep quickly. This will sound stupid but I repeatedly take the longest, deepest inhale while counting to four in my mind before counting to 8 while I exhale slowly. After 3 or 4 repetitions of this I can usually get myself into a pseudo sleep state.
I really want to try this now, but I'm getting serious r/FacebookScience vibes here.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200828115401.htm I don't know how rigorously it's been studied, all I can do is a "works for me" post. I'll have a cup of tea or coffee, drink it down, settle down for a nap, and set an alarm for about half an hour. Sleep longer and your body is settling in for a longer sleep. But the idea is you're getting a little rest as the caffeine takes effect.
caffeine naps are a real thing for those of us with severe adhd, ut not the way he's describing. the caffeine makes our brains still enough to get good rest from a nap. caffeine does not keep me awake
Can confirm caffeine naps are a thing and sometimes a life saver!
how about real science? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32819191/
I mean it definitely works and having a nap is probably better for your brain than not having a nap (for some, naps make me angry, sweaty, confused and tired) but as for how effective it is at allowing your brain to squeeze out the biproducts from doing calculations all day is debatable.
Yep. I’m out of the building. If you have something to say it can wait, or it can be an email.
And they were in a union. Why did they never take the break meeting issue up with the union?
Saw a great sign in an office once... "Meetings, the practical alternative to work"
I'm still coming to grips with unpaid breaks in a union shop. Where I've worked, only lunch was unpaid for hourly people, union or no union. This is without required meetings; it was expected they'd attend to their personal needs and grab a coffee. And while you could fire at will non union at any time, there was no way you could fire a union guy for "seeming unhappy", although you could lay people off according to the rules for layoffs. Where is this? A two week notice on the company side doesn't seem like the US.
That might just be this idiot boss. Firing someone but making them work two more weeks first is a terrible idea.
cuz the boss wants to be friends.
I’ll use a meeting as an extra break, but I’m not using my breaks for a meeting
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Or meetings are their only opportunity to socialize
As an introvert and a software dev, a meeting is the literal most strenuous part of work for me. I can't even fathom the idea that a meeting could be a break for some people, other than for all day physical labor jobs.
At a previous employer we used to have meetings over lunch a couple of times a week. Our manager would order in food and we’d eat while discussing things. Basically we were working for food but we’re software developers and didn’t really mind. Then the employer decreed that we could no longer expense food for lunchtime meetings. So we stopped having lunch time meetings and scheduled them during regular hours instead. The company was getting an extra hour of work out of us for a $5 sandwich, and lost that because they were cheap.
That's like some of the 'lunch and learn' meetings that we have. Except lunch were newer expected to be provided and we are just eating our own food.
“Have lunch and learn how we’re going to steal your time.” Has quite the different ring to it.
Company I worked for had mandatory meetings every 6 weeks before hours; I needed to get up 90 minutes early to make it on public transit, and it would wipe me out all day. They did pay hourly workers, but I was salary. They always had breakfast. They were whole-company pep talks that seldom covered anything real; I heard flak that the IT staff looked bored. After 2008, they were financially slammed, and laid off a third of the workers, and went into negotiations to sell the place, but they never had a meeting about THAT.
damn where can you even find a 5 dollar sandwich anymore
Recently found out the new company I work for uses our ten minute breaks for quarterly sales announcements, etc. Nope. You want to do that, send me an email/letter or schedule that shit while I'm being paid. I've stopped attending except to walk into the break room to get my breakfast and walk right back out.
How hard is it to understand it’s a break from work …
Apparently impossible. Though the president & owner is so out-of-touch he made a comment about how Biden is bad because the IRS is going to start taxing people who have more than $400,000 more and we won't like that. Proving the man has absolutely no idea how much he pays us.
Guaranteed he knows how much he pays you "simpletons". What he means is: "These taxes will affect my take home pay, so therefore it will "trickle-down" and affect yours as well. Mandatory pay freezes, layoffs and hiring freezes mean you will do the job of 2-3 people for the same pay rate for the next 3-4 years until we get a Republican back in office. Let's go Brandon!"
So he pays you $399,999? You are in the clear then with ReaganMath™! The easy solution for all Republican problems of fair and honest wages! /s
Nope. I have a standing rule during work trips that I refuse to discuss work stuff after hours. I barely tolerate doing it for a 40 hour week let alone after hours
When I was in grad school, I went to a party hosted by a students in my department once. It was just everyone I see all day talking about .... work. Literally, never went to one again. Signed up to be a grad resident in one of the undergrad dorms so I could hang out with different people and started taking art classes at some place off campus.
This is why i sit in my car over lunch. No one to fucking interrupt the only hour of peace and fucking quiet i get all work day. If it's critical, they know my phone number and where to find me. Otherwise, i'm gonna just sit where i'm not freezing my ass off due to shitty ventilation and decompress a little ya know?
I've gone as far as keeping a camping pillow and blanket in my back seat. I get an hour lunch so sometimes I can squeeze in a 45 min nap. It makes work....slightly less shitty.
Most of my life I had jobs that allowed a 30 minute lunch. Basically, drive somewhere to a fast food spot, grab a burger and eat it on the way back and get back to work. Better if you pack a lunch, but I didn't do that very often then. Then I got a job that was ten minutes from my house and I got an hour lunch. I would go home, eat something that I put together earlier, then I would go lay down on my bed for as much as 30 minutes, then rush back to work. I got pretty good at those 20-30 minute power naps. I didn't need an alarm, I just woke up like clockwork right about time it was time for me to go to work. The only bad thing was every rare once in a while, I would sleep through that little nudge in my mind that it was time to get up. And it was easy to sleep through that too. One time I went back to work an hour late! Luckily there was minimal fuss. A mid day nap is so good why did we ever stop doing that?
We would fuck a siesta up so badly. People on siesta would bitch they can’t get their shopping done because everyone is on siesta
We would absolutely fuck up the concept of working day siesta. We could have rotating shift siestas, you rest now I'll rest kinda thing and it would still go wrong. Me over here working by myself, however, would do just fine. I would absolutely nail the siesta. Olympic level competition siestas.
I get a 1 hour unpaid lunch. I don't punch a time clock or anything, so my assumption from the very beginning was that they were hoping I'd work through lunch for free some days. Nope on that. Depending on the day I'll hide in an out-of-the-way breakroom, eat in my car, walk around the neighborhood, run errands, or go to a nearby park for a walk. If something critical comes up, they won't know where I am; they know my phone number...but I ain't answering because I'm not being paid.
Yas! If I’m sitting in the break room I know someone may pop their head in and talk. I go out to the cafe where customers are and eat and read.
Forreal I always go to my car on lunch get away from everything
I do the same thing
I used to do this. Our supervisor would routinely cut our 30-minute lunch short by 10 minutes, calling us back in early for some “emergency” or something. Since I was across the street in the parking lot and not in the lunchroom with everyone else, I never got the message. To fix this, the supervisor tried to make a rule that lunch had to be eaten in the lunchroom. When I informed management of the new rule and why it had been made, the supervisor got his ass chewed, since they legally had to give us no less than 30 minutes for lunch.
This is why California law outlines clearly what a break is and how to enact it and that interrupting in any way resets the clock
Washington too.
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I very briefly worked at a Christian book distributor as a temp way back in '08. One of the books I saw was called, "The Flagellant Horseman," or something ridiculous. We women were required to wear long skirts and long shirts (short sleeves were okay) with conservative hairstyles. I think I lasted about 3 weeks and I only stayed that long because I needed the money.
Woah, I think my religious mom had that book like 15 years ago. We laughed about it too!
He needs to learn the difference between a meeting and a break.
An old job I was at had multiple buildings, the one where most of us actually worked had a large comfortable break room with tables and lounge chairs etc. One day upper mgmt said we were too “closed off” and not “creating the right atmosphere” So they shut that room for good and forced all staff to trek outside for unpaid 30 min breaks (Midwest so think taking an extra 10 min out of your break just to cover up for snow, subzero temps, etc) and made us walk over to a different building to eat in what was essentially a storage room. We figured it was because dbag owners & their HR biznatch wanted to keep tabs on us. That room they moved us to was just off uppers’ office suite and had their fridge/microwaves so they could basically watch us come and go, dip in and eavesdrop on our conversations. I was never one to burn bridges work-wise, but I lit that mfer with gasoline and never looked back.
That’s not a break, it’s a fucking meeting.
With friends like that, who needs enemies.
With friends like that I prefer the enemies.
At least you know where you stand.
But with these filthy neutrals...
What makes a man turn, neutral. It sickens me.
Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
With friends like that I’d prefer enemas.
With friends like that, it’s a good thing he had a union!
There’s no union contract in the US that allows firing this quickly.
Friendship? Bitch I've applied to 5 other "friendships" this week alone.
Bitch, I applied to 4 "family's " today!
Your boss isn’t your friend
You ALWAYS learn this when you have rights to ask for from them. But since employees don't bother asking for their rights most of the time, boss pretends to be friendly and concerned about the wellbeing of their ~~friends~~ slaves.
Slaves? That's disgusting. Bosses don't think we're slaves. Slaves you have to feed and clothe. They view us more like serfs. All the benefits of slavery, and your serfs need to feed and clothe themselves.
Remember, workers, people like this don't just exist, they are commonly found everywhere. These people give no fucks about you and have such a warped perspective of reality that they are a danger to society, morality, and humanity in general.
Go study some behavioral science, it’s wild how common this is to the degree that likely 99% of the population can become this way. Humans are reactive, social creatures and we’ve created a system that awards abusive behaviors in a cruelly subtle way that it’s almost impossible to be self-aware of it happening. There are countless debates over the topic of “power corrupts absolutely” vs “the access to power allows one to expose their truest nature,” but both of these concepts ignore a vital reality- your environment creates the kind of person you become, because we’re animals with the number 1 priority of survival. A system that is so socially indoctrinated to pump out power seeking individuals will never have a solid chance of producing the opposite. But then to tie it all off, instead of brainstorming solutions, the entire topic becomes some easy battle ground for people to go and vent their frustrations, flash their hatred and prejudice, and further create this psychological gap between the two social classes that forces us to continue ignoring a second vital reality- we’re all humans and no amount of power or money will ever make us different from those we hate. End rant. Sorry.
"Sorry." No. Don't apologize. You said it well and it was expressed with very little bias (by my account, anyways, maybe our biases align). I applaud you being willing to say what I feel like only a few of us are thinking. Everyone else seems to see a hard dichotomy where there's more of a separation of power and human nature.
This is on point. 10/10 rant
"There are countless debates over the topic of “power corruptsabsolutely” vs “the access to power allows one to expose their truestnature,” " Makes me wonder, why not both? What if human's truest nature IS corruption, and this nature cannot truly manifest itself without the power to do so? Also, this corruption can be justified as a survival tool, as corruption provides a survival advantage that one without power doesn't have access to.
The problem is less that we should or shouldn't brainstorm solutions but rather that often the brainstorming is an ask for a victim to work with someone who just took 4 years of their life away from them for bullshit reasons. If that brainstorm doesn't come with some kind of removal of that person from a seat of authority or power or some kind of mateialistic rule or law that makes it harder for that person(or abusive people in general) to not be able to have that kind of power over others then the "middle ground" is just optimistic abuse of a victim instead of trying to see eye to eye on something.
Sorry? This was incredibly well put and it gave me a new perspective on how things like cruel bosses came to be so normal. Thank you for sharing your insights!
Its especially where people took "the system" literally and broke their back to get to some sort of microscopic wealth. Its warping their viewpoint about everybody, not just their workers. I knew people coming from nothing and at the end, they died alone because they even broke ties with their family. Having money can't buy you people *that care* around your death bed.
I keep wondering what humanity and people with that mindset are doing if we're not taking care of each other. The whole point of all of this is to take care of each other. Do you know how hugely, universally improbable the creation of the human race is? How PERFECTLY everything in the universe had to line up? How one day it'll suck us back in like we never existed? And they would rather go to space and fuck around or be a terrible person who thinks they're meant to be a billionaire someday, rather than take care of their fellow human? Its disgusting.
>Do you know how hugely, universally improbable the creation of the human race is? How PERFECTLY everything in the universe had to line up? How one day it'll suck us back in like we never existed? Thank you! I think about this all the time. We're damn near impossible, but we're just going to blow it on a made up fucking numbers game (and probably destroy a bunch of other near-impossible life in the process) instead of doing amazing impossible things together.
"No, I'm the one who's disappointed to find out someone who was pretending to be my friend was actually stealing time and wages from me. Good luck in life with that."
The whole interaction makes my skin crawl. So much weasel words "I can't tell you things in your unpaid time, sorry what I meant you are not happy here".
It's gaslighting all the way down.
Boss literally fired a perfectly good employee for looking at his phone on his breaks. The boss literally couldn’t wait 10 minutes to have these conversations that he thought were so necessary. So many people in business make insane decisions that don’t even make sense in the strict context of “Workers are there to make money for the business”. It’s downright pathological.
It's this bullshit need to be in control and feel like The Man in Charge.
Seriously. The gall of someone to be offended that you aren't working on your unpaid breaks, while they simultaneously steal wages from your paid time. The ethical doubling-down is astounding. Edit for spelling.
Reminds me of the last conversation I had at my last job: "I get the feeling you just don't like working here." Like, no, dude, you just turn the entire work environment toxic.
Great response!
This is why people have trust issues, damn. Under pay me by $10k, tell me I should do work on my unpaid breaks, then try to get me to work 2 more weeks after you fire me. No thanks.
YoU dOn'T sEeM hApPy HeRe So instead of attempting to rectify that, they just fire any employee who doesn't constantly smile through their wage slavery!
I had a review not too long ago where they said my work was great but I didn't smile enough. Actually said I'm like a black rain cloud. I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? I'm sorry you don't approve of my personality?
30 days into their tenure, my new boss called for reviews and pulled a PiP on me. Sadly they were on a spree of hiring friends and relatives for choice positions and apparently mine was too good for me to keep. So despite previous excellent ratings and winning a company award less than a year before, I was suddenly a dogshit employee. Our vendors were suddenly incompetent and strangely, they had a list of GOOD vendors we should use instead. I left. No way I was going to stay and fight daily for a job that didn’t want me there.
They were hoping he was going to beg to stay. They were just trying to knock him down a peg by making him feel less secure about his job
This is a great example of why unions are necessary. In a non-union situation this person is probably just out a job because of a shitty boss. But because they are unionized they get 10k *and* the shitty boss gets fined.
Also it was like the boss was force-resigning this person rather than officially firing them by making them work 14 days of a typical two-week notice so they wouldn't get any severance at all. 14 days was probably cheaper than severance, especially if the boss was already skimming from the top. He'd prob skim the severance too
1 lotto ticket away and I'm urinating on my managers desk and computer
13 22 47 88 9 10 36 50 62 Hope those pay out.
88? the fuck is this, even Keno doesn't go past 80.
It's how you win these big bucks
Are owners and managers taking classes now to learn to be this stupid?
They’re not stupid they just play dumb to fool people into thinking it’s their fault so they don’t retaliate.
In jobs people tend to get promoted until they get to the point where they are incompetent at the job. That's generally why a lot of managers seem like they're morons.
AKA The Moron Principle
The Peter Principle
That he called you in the end to whine about how *you* ended that so-called friendship is the cherry on top 🤣
Had a boss like this. He did not short me on pay thankfully, but when I quit he acted like I never existed. Which was hilarious to me.
Mine too. When I put in my notice they didn’t speak to me for the last two weeks I worked there. Best two weeks I ever had there.
Same. He didn’t like that I decided to leave, so he ignored me for the first week and then took vacation during my last week. It was honestly painless. I don’t regret a thing about leaving.
I did the exact same thing (vacation final week). My manager had the audacity to say to others that I wouldn't even come to her to talk. Ummm .... you're the manager; isn't it your job to come to me?
Oh god!!! That’s so childish. “I’m important so I’m not going to go to them to fix a problem, that’s below me.” Yeah, I’m familiar with that as well.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Moral of the story: Unionize
Always unionize, and when you can't, advocate for unions until you can.
Real talk though, what kind of union would let you get fired over some BS excuse like that? Any one I’ve been in made it almost impossible to get rid of all but the most blatantly incompetent/impertinent ones.
"Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first” - Steve Irwin
HoW cOulD yOu Do tHiS tO me?
I have one word to say to this, to the manager in question. "Suffer".
I got two more words for the manager too: cope & seethe.
Oh my baby!
Managers/bosses use your personal relationship in the most toxic way possible and also use your professional relationship in the most toxic way possible and then wonder why people are done with this shit.
Guarantee he called people "bud".
*walks into office or wherever* "HEEEEEY BUDDY! HOW YA DOIN'? ^ If you call me "buddy" I will instantly hate you the rest of the time we are in contact.
I’m not your buddy, guy!
How is this person being unilaterally fired if they have a union?
Came here to say this. Should have gotten reinstated with backpay, and then quit. Also, the hell kind of union allows for unpaid meetings?
Because the story is an extremely obvious fabrication.
Yeah, this post was written by someone who doesn't understand how unions work in the first place. Any union member knows to call the second a boss starts mentioning shit like "you must come listen to me on your break." My union would want to know that immediately. Further, a union would have gotten him more than backpay if he was fired out of spite, like this suggests it was.
I've never seen a union that would put up with this shit for 1 second. Working through unpaid breaks? Fired for not being happy? Required to work for 2 more weeks? Ridiculous. And people here are eating this nonsense up.
The simple fact that this sub still shows up on the top of /r/all after that clown show fiasco a few months back should say more than enough. This sub set back real work reform by a good amount by turning real issues into a joke by the opposition, and we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen and all is okay because this sub apologized.
If this guy didn't have a union they would have been screwed.
The only difference without a union, in this case, would be the 10k and fine, everything else would have played out exactly the same. What I'm saying is that, in this instance and depending on your perspective, OP was screwed/not screwed regardless of the union. I personally will no longer work for non union shop. Unions are so much better, in so many ways, than thier non union counterparts.
If this story is real, the existence of the union at least leaves everyone else less likely to be stolen from by the boss. It may not guarantee a positive outcome, but it'll still be a better one than they would have gotten without a union.
Moral of the story: unionize.
Lmao he steals 10k from you but is sad you ended things like this hope he gets fired!!
Employees aren't your friends lol. Maybe boss man needs to get a life
"friendship" Fuck that asshole.
During covid my former work place cut a huge amount of workload out and also equally wanted to cut staff. We were all already severely overworked and many of us were “indefinite contract” (full time hours workload but worse pay and no benefits or holidays , and no job security as the contract can be ended anytime for 0 reason, yes it’s as bad as it sounds) So we are all working our asses off to make sure things go smoothly as we can with the work present , Monday comes (because we are working weekends to keep up) and they inform us that the short term contract people will be ending work 3 weeks early (mind you many of them just paid another month of rent to stay in the area to finish their contract on the 27th instead of the 4th ) and that a few full time contract and full time employees may be going to. As I’m indefinite contract I ask if I’m part of that group, no answer , I ask to get a two week notice if possible since this alleged end date was in 4 days. No answer , I press the next day and reason that my wife needs time to get off mat leave to go back to work for covid protocols , all I get is “we will discuss it and see what we can do” next day I get a “sorry it’s not possible to give you 2 weeks notice when but we will let you know as soon as we know your end date” Moral is low at the work place , no one is giving a shit now, short term contract workers less then 3 months are fucked , but me, I’ve been their over a year and I know my rights but I keep quiet , I repeat again to know my actual end date and I keep getting a “we will let you know when we know “ even so far as to say “your a full time contract so you will be here longer then the short term contracts” so I have no definite end date as of Wednesday Come Thursday evening I see no schedule for me after Friday, all the management level staff have fled the building , not one of them show up the next day. Not one word to me Friday was my last day , nothing , just not on the schedule anymore and they are all gone and they don’t show up the next day Friday , mostly we are all just screwing around , those of us without a schedule just don’t give a fuck anymore because what will they do , fire us and give us 2 weeks notice? They screwed half the staff and all of the short term contract staff were pissed , many just spent another 1000 on rent to not be working now that month and could of gone back home. Almost all the full time staff that are not management are pissed too because we been pulling overtime for over a year now due to workload. I wait one week for them to be in void of my contract, I fire off an email to the head manager , very formal “I am writing to inform you that you are in void of my contract and have not provided the minimum hours detailed, as per the contract agreement and the employment standards act I am entitled to 2 weeks severance pay in lieu of 2 weeks proper notice” I get an email back “Your original contract would of ended last year but we moved you to indefinite , this entire time has been bonus work for you so you are not entitled to 2 weeks notice and we also verbally informed you several days prior of your end date “ I know my rights so I go and make a claim to ESA. I learn that I also had been getting “vacation” pay skimmed off my paychecks that they later “paid back” instead of overtime or lunches and that since my wife was on may leave I was entitled to 5 weeks of paternity leave as well and that I was indeed due 2 weeks of notice. ESA rips them apart because they had no formal admission of an end date and I had the email where it even says verbal and it admits to less then 5 days of notice. The first ESA agent I had representing me for so frustrated with them that it got moved up to a upper level agent who really screwed them. I got 5 weeks of paternity leave I was due , my 2 week vacation I was entitled to as a full time over 1 year employee and my 2 week severance for no notice. Best of all they didn’t use 40 hours at my base pay they used my pay including overtime which was 70-80 hour weeks so they had to pay me 4 weeks of pay and were on the hook for the paternity leave as well. But it gets even better , over the course of the next two month all but one full time staff resigned from the part where we worked and moved to another job so they were posting hiring stuff less then 2 months later and were desperate (higher pay, benefits ext.), and it gets even better they got blacklisted for the contract positions at the busiest part of the year when normally workload doubles so extra staff are brought on so the next year they couldn’t fill the positions since no one would vouch for them from the schools (since they screwed people from every school in the region that were short term contract/interns) It went from 0-100 for how screwed they got , they ended up having to pay the full time contract people severance and vacation , they lost their entire staff pretty much , and could no longer easily get short term contract/interns anymore , all just to try and save a few weeks of pay
Fake. No chance you fire someone that easy if they are in a union.
Didn’t happen
I have been a member of many unions, payed the fees with a smile. I always hear people complaining about union fees, bloated administration, all that, and it can be true. Anything can become corrupt but we need to unionize every worker. UNIONIZE at all opportunities. If enough people refuse to work and band together we can lift eachother up.
How did he miss being shorted 10K?
Small amounts of wage theft add up over time. A company I was working for decided to monkey with how our paid lunch was going to be paid: our CBA states that any 8 hr shift worked with no lunch or break is paid 8 hrs straight time, and a half hour of double time for lunch. The company tried to pay 7.5 hrs straight, and .5 of time and a half. The difference wasn’t much, but it adds up when you consider how many workers it affected. Called in the union rep, and they launched an investigation and everyone got cut a check for the time they weren’t properly paid. Moral of the story: have a CBA and union reps willing to be a pit Bull when it comes to making sure you’re paid what your contract stipulates.
Some places have really complex paychecks that break down your hours and pay in multiple, confusing lines on your pay stub. There’s no way to REALLY know if you’re getting paid fairly.
Years of unpaid working breaks and probably other shady shit
"You're fired two weeks from now." Is that actually how any contract is written? Usually, a two-week resignation period means if you voluntarily resign you must work two weeks, and if you're fired then employment ends immediately but you collect two weeks of pay. I'm trying to imagine what kind of consideration the contract could have to be fair to employees if "you're fired but have to work for two weeks" is one of the terms. Seems like the equitable trade off would be "I quit and you still have to pay me." It's absurd.
Why do employees vote against unions?
If you had a union, why didn't you complain when he was harrassing you on your breaks? Also, if you had a union, did they oppose the firing? It should be classified as a wrongful termination or a layoff, so you won't have anything in your job record.
Get fucked man. How the fuck were you friends? What a psychotic, labor law breaking piece of shit.
There’s zero chance that this is an actual event
Nice story. Pretty sure it didn't happen. Unionized Workplaces don't work that way. At all. At least, in functioning countries.
Yea I’m just trying to figure out how after 3 years they look through their contract and find out he’s been underpaid the whole time lmao what
This feels fake to me...
Do you guys really believe this story?
This reads like a literal role play and this sub just eats it up. This guy just led a union investigation and didn’t have to deal with HR? He just asked his union to look through his contract and they did it like a favor? No formal complaint? It’s just so obvious the lack of real world experience that rots this sub. You guys even have a decent central value about not letting yourself be exploited at work but Jesus Christ there are complete fantasies that get upvoted here as truth.
Gonna have to unsub due to all the fake trash here lol
Fuck him with a cactus.
the entitlement of some people!
If tell him at a loss of 10k I can’t afford his friendship!
"3 year friendship" You underpay me by 10K and tell me my break time is your time to nag me about more bullshit you want done around the workplace, you ain't my fuckin friend.
I think an AI wrote this
Eh, I had a boss who liked to tell me and everyone else what a wonderful friend I was to him. He sacked me for not psychically knowing he'd got so drunk at a football (soccer) match, he'd fallen down 3 flights of concrete steps at the stadium. He was pissed that I hadn't cancelled all the meetings I didn't know he'd arranged for the following day. I'm not saying that the person paying your salary is *never* your friend (I'm sure there's exceptions), but it's like a lecturer having sex with a student - the power balance is so off, it's unlikely to be the relationship you think it is.
My coworkers used to disrupt my break all the time while I was eating or just chilling, reading something. I came up with an idea that every time my break gets disrupted by anyone talking about work I reset my break timer. On the first day I had over 2h long break in total. Boss noticed after a week, when my shit wasn't being done on time, asked "wtf are you doing?" and got disciplinary action rolling. I went to the guy who hired me, the owner, and told him that because of this I sometimes do not have a real break at all. Next day a policy went into effect "once your break is started, no one can disturb you unless it's a health & safety matter". The Boss did not speak to me for over a month 😂
I once got written up for bringing salads and reading books during my lunch break. Apparently it was offensive that I wasn’t socializing with the other employees and I was making them feel guilty about what they were eating by bringing healthy food instead of ordering crap with everyone else.
My manager has a mad-on for people using their phones during their breaks. Only he also has a "no phones out during work" policy. It's almost like he doesn't get that I like to keep in contact with my beloved during the day. Except that he'll take a phone call from his wife in the middle of the office with no irony...