So when we switched over to the unlimited PTO scam, there was an option to get paid out for the PTO you had accrued. Naturally I was like two hours short of the threshold, so at the end of the year, around December fifth or so, I was like, "later bitches! See ya in January!" and there was nothing they could do about it. It was beautiful.
While it's not the area I ended up working in, I learned in accounting school that the employees who never take vacation are held as highly suspicious. People who are in a position to skim off the top tend to never take days off so nobody gets opportunity to see what they're doing.
As to me personally, I remember one year taking all the PTO that was due to me and getting shit on in writing at evaluation time for doing so.
The following year I took zero PTO and got shit on in writing at evaluation time for doing so.
I went to management with copies of both evaluations and said, "since you're gonna shit on me in writing at evaluation time regardless of what I do, you can expect me to take every minute of PTO going forward."
They were at a loss for words and just found other reasons to shit on me in writing at evaluation time.
I spent five and a half years in that environment.
This thirty something an hour assertion has been going around for years. I’ve long since stopped bothering with the inflation calculators.
I was born in the early seventies, and witnessed that financial struggle existed even back then.
Yes, getting a house was more realistic (double digit mortgage interest rates notwithstanding). If you could snag a good job. The biggest difference I can remember is that a whole lot of blue collar jobs were good jobs.
Just about all of us in my age group remember food stamps and watered down frozen orange juice to stretch the food dollar and only getting five dollars of gas because filling the tank was way too ambitious.
The rose colored glasses of past financial wellness are heavily focused on the post war white new middle class that lasted what, twenty years?
I should note that I spent the seventies sharing a bedroom with my sister in a two bedroom rented duplex unit. Sharing a bedroom was quite common at the time. Even middle class houses were generally in the 1,100 square foot range, not the 3,000 square foot behemoths we’ve come to view as normal today.
If fifty an hour became minimum wage, I’d get the hell out of my soul crushing accounting gig and go become a parking lot attendant faster than you can say, “cash or credit?”
It’s three o’clock in the morning and I’m just leaving for work. I got home after eight last night. This won’t stop until late October. I spend those hours getting yelled at by rich people. I’d LOVE to downgrade my profession.
Double down. I’m not sure what happened after. I left about six months later.
The few people who stuck it out have since ascended to great heights. At the time, our regional had been absorbed by a national. I think the regional guys were trying to play tough to show off to their new overlords.
I don’t know, but I suspect that the national was the lesser of those soul crushing forces.
Regardless, you’ve got to be a ruthless sociopath to make it big in that industry. Step on your mother’s grave in Jack boots to get one rung higher type of stuff.
I’ve been playing down in the minors for five years now for about one third the money I could’ve had by now if I had stayed. I regret nothing.
At the last big boy firm I worked at, they set the metrics for getting a bonus so unrealistically high that it disincentived staff from even trying. It had a negative effect where everybody purposely did just enough to not get fired rather than killing themselves to come up short and get nothing.
They wanted something stupid like 2,500 billable hours which do not include meetings, continuing education, mandatory volunteer time, etc etc etc.
The biggest rock stars in the industry struggle to hit 2,000.
So we all dropped down to the 1,500 range because fuck that shit.
I’m putting a generator on my house as we speak and learning very quickly that the “contractor” an otherwise reliable source referred me to doesn’t seem to know what the ever living fuck he’s doing.
I’m gonna end up so far out of code it’ll be laughable, but I’m kinda stuck as I’m already in for three grand that I can’t get back.
Fortunately, I’m in one of “those” neighborhoods where police are extremely reluctant to bother, and the generator itself will be well hidden behind fencing when code enforcement drives by.
Still, I’ve got a sick feeling that I’m either going to burn my house down in a good faith effort to stay alive or I’m gonna end up with a bajillion dollars in fines that I’ll only be able to get out of by surrendering my deed.
Either of those two scenarios come to fruition, and I’m out of this God forsaken shithole of a third world state the very next day.