WORK SUCKS

Or, at least, jobs suck, for most of us, as they are currently configured.

Courtesy of Eschaton, Balloon Juice quotes the New York Times:

But here’s the surprise: the main factor in workplace discontent is not wages, benefits or hours, but the boss… The survey said there was consistent anger at management types who failed to so much as ask employees about their opinion of the job….

Then she quotes a response to the Times article from a blog called Gin & Tacos:

Business schools have spent 30 years churning out people who believe in motivation by intimidation – work hard or else we will fire you, replace you, move to Mexico, and so on. And yes, an employer certainly has a right to expect employees to fulfill their obligations. This is where we see the large gap between fulfilling the requirements of a job – i.e., doing the bare minimum – and doing a good job. “Work hard and you will get promoted / get a raise” is the natural response, but in many of our workplaces I think we discover fairly quickly that the raises aren’t coming no matter how hard we work (or they come, but with a truckload of additional burdens that vastly outweigh them).

Click here for the rest.

This dynamic is TOTALLY in play for me with my job as a restaurant server.  Indeed, when a manager is verbally abusive toward me, I generally slow down, pull back, and focus solely on my tables, and nothing else.  My thinking is "why should I give a shit about anyone except the people who are actually paying me?"  But then, this is within a context where management, as per the linked blog post, really does see their labor as totally replaceable.  It doesn't matter how good I am.  It doesn't matter that they get a college graduate, indeed, a worker with an advanced degree, for only $2.13 per hour.  It doesn't matter that I could probably do their jobs better than they could.  My opinion in the workplace is irrelevant to them.

And they could get so much more out of me, for free, if only they made an effort to make me feel like I'm an insider there!  I mean, c'mon, after five years, day in and day out.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that.  One of the three front-of-house managers with whom I deal I actually consider to be a good friend, and on the shifts when he's in charge, it's a totally different environment for me.  I do, in fact, work harder, go the extra mile, take on tasks that I don't have to take on, just because this guy makes me feel like I'm a valued member of the team.  The pay rate stays the same.  But my psychology toward the work is wildly different.

It would be easy to dismiss this dynamic as being individual or personality driven, or perhaps even as a failure of management technique.  And all that may very well be true.  But it cannot be denied that a dehumanizing attitude toward workers is part and parcel of how capitalism functions in this country.  We have the "labor market," where people are reduced to the status of capital asset.  We have the "race to the bottom" in terms of wages, where workers are pitted in economic competition for jobs against Chinese slave labor and Bangladeshi boys who work for pennies an hour.  I've been telling people for years, when the subject of "two weeks notice" comes up, that because we work in a "right to work" state, a sinister euphemism if ever I've heard one, which allows summary dismissal of any employee, at any time, for any reason, that workers don't owe "two weeks notice" to any employer at all.  That is, if, as workers, we're supposed to be these little capitalistic entities instead of humans, we might as well play the part.  Screw you, buttholes!  I'm out the door!

But really, I'd much prefer to be true to my own values: go to work and be excellent on a regular basis.  It's just that doing so makes me feel like such a stupid f'ng chump.

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