The newcomer: Oh, I don’t have to work here? Thanks for reminding me!
Me: Nobody wants to work! Sorry for our slow service, Covid these hard times 9/11
Throwing my hands up and saying "Covid these hard times 9/11” is going to be my new favorite way of ending a conversation or apologizing to somebody.
Also supply chain, egg prices, Biden “I did that!” sticker. Damn lazy avocado toast is killing diamonds with tiktok.
The other thing I always tell people is every year you don’t get a raise that’s at least equal to inflation you’re getting a pay cut. Finding a job that does cost of living increases every year is a huge benefit.
Isn’t this the norm? I’d quit if my company didn’t do this.
Sadly no, my company does, but many companies see employees as resources, not assets.
Ugh. At the place I worked for a long time pre-covid, fairly often I heard the word “resource” being used in place of “human being.”
Can we put a resource on this problem? Who is the resource assigned to this? We won’t have an available resource until next month.
You actually have to quit periodically and demand more money upfront at a new job.
In a span of like eight years, I did this 4 times to go from $11.25/hour to now $52/hour. All with a gen ed associates degree from a community college. The best time to look for a job is when you already have one. It’s your safety net. It enables you to walk away from the table when negotiating after crushing the interview. You are also interviewing them to see if they’re worthy of your valuable labor. They have no revenue without workers like you, and they have no profit if they pay you what you’re actually worth, so understand that technically every offer they extend to you is a lowball offer. Having the confidence of knowing this makes you appear competent enough to merit higher pay. They will look at candidates and remember that you were the one who had the sauce and stuck out.
Tell me your secret! I have a gen ed associates degree and I still haven’t figured out how to make it more valuable than a high school diploma. Everyone seems to want a four year degree.
If you’re any good with STEM stuff, look into power plants. I had to be a basic laborer to get my foot in the door but shifted to water chemistry. It took a lot of effort, but eventually I got in as an operator and have since gotten a couple of raises and a promotion. The downside is the schedule of rotating shift work, but that’s why they pay so well. On nights and weekends, it’s just me and two other guys running the ~750MW power plant, sometimes running our asses off to keep it running on the grid, but usually just keeping up with general preventive maintenance, minor upgrade/replacement projects, calibrations, and responding to alarms.
Another option especially right now is to look into data centers. Learn refrigeration cycles, UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), and refresh your mind on chemistry 101 and physics 101. I interviewed at and got an offer from one but turned it down because they were offering $40/hour plus up to 4% bonus while I was at $42/hour plus up to 10% bonus, all while HR was kinda being shitty with me during negotiation. So I walked away and contacted the supervisor and manager I interviewed with and thanked them and let them know that I thought they were great and that it was the money and disrespect from HR that made me reject the offer.
Your raise schedule should be outlined in your union contract! :)
But if I join a union, then I might have to pay union dues!!! Getting a 20% raise isn’t worth losing 2% to dues!!!
On a similar note, paying 10% of my total income to health insurance is absolutely worth it, because they partially pay for 3 doctors visits per year and tell me to go fuck myself when I need antidepressants or Advil.
The typical high deductible health plans these days only seem to work well for people that need like no healthcare, or people who need a ton of it.
My secret trick is to have an incurable condition where the medications to hopefully stabilize you or slow progress of the disease are so hilariously expensive that the pharma company will pay all of my out of pocket costs. It’s like my employer pays me my salary, then my insurance company pays an entire separate yearly salary to the pharma company.
You need to phrase that differently.
It’s not 20% raise, it’s 1/5 more. And it’s not 2% dues, it’s 1/50 less.
See the dues are definitely worse!!!
The sad thing is, there are people who wholeheartedly agree with that reasoning…
One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.
Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray.
Have you considered how many video games you can buy using all that money you saved on union dues?
We talking full priced or steam summer sale?
