Employment

Just a quick note to those of you who are in charge at your places of employment:

Figure out how you want to run the place! If you work with a structured level of management, don't bicker about who needs to do what in front of the people at the next level down, and don't take out on your underlings the fact that you aren't getting your way with the next level up. You don't like being treated that way, neither would you accept that behavior from the people that work for you, so don't treat your workers that way!!!!

This is my rant for the day from the box place. If you want to know what it's like to work there in front-line management, just repeat that 10 times a day, every day. I go to work, do what the boss tells me to do, then get yelled at by one of the other bosses for doing what I was told. This is not just me, but several people at my level. This leads to low morale, bad attitudes, and people working at the bare minimum of their job requirements. What do you think this does to profitability? How about turnover? Customer service? In too many of corporate cultures, all we really care about is money. The stages I've seen in the last two years have been that our people aren't putting out enough to keep our profits over $1 billion a quarter, we should yell and scream at them, threaten their jobs. Then we went to our profits still being only $1billion a quarter (we're a transportation company, maybe fuel prices are hurting...), so we cut jobs (nobody got laid off, but we just didn't replace turnover). Now, we're still not lining the upper level management's stock bonuses, but now we're concerned about people? We are now trying to figure out how to retain the same people that were told six months ago that could all be replaced?

I know that businesses exist to make a profit. But that's not their only function in society, and banking money for shareholders shouldn't be the first priority. The people that work for the company ought to be the first recipients of what the company profits, and then the shareholders. And other than supergenius scientists or the original inventor of a product, no CEO is worth a seven-digit salary when their company doesn't pay living wages or has outsourced American jobs overseas. It's ridiculous that we uphold some of these great turn-around CEOs who basically put people out of work so that they can raise stock prices. What is so great about the first person who figured out that people in India can answer customer service call for 10% of the cost of Americans? We aren't in an economic crisis because of bad loans or housing issues or too much or too little government spending but because we have given our jobs overseas to boost our stock portfolios. We have lauded companies with double-digit returns that have put people out of work. Now, we're left with lower-paying, lower-benefit jobs in America, and the bite is spreading. Eventually, we'll be left with fast-food and Wal-mart jobs, and we won't be able to afford to eat or shop where we work. The only people left with financial means will be our beloved government officials. Sound great, doesn't it?