Tom Toles for March 25, 2013

Go to college and be the boss then. Or start your own company. OR, be an excellent worker and get promoted.

PianoGuy, I’m not sure you live in reality (rather than some weird right-wing fantasy land)

My position used to have 3 people working in it, now one retired and another got promoted. I’m the only person with the knowledge to be as efficient as I am, and I get an apprentice on a one-month overview (and it takes about two weeks to get them up to speed on basics). I also make less than the guy I replaced when he was here.

In the 8 years I’ve been in my current position, the amount of data we handle has increased over 8000%, and we have gone from 35 servers to 657 servers. Promotions are few and extremely hard to get, as new management positions are filled by hires from externally, generally people the current managers know and like from their own past histories. Employee wage increases have been below the rate of inflation for the last four years, and just at the rate of inflation previous to that. Senior officer wages increase at 13.5% per year.

Yeah, this cartoon nails it.

I know, I know, it’s pointless to reply to Ima, BUT—- I work for the Postal Service, and we have a group of young black females we refer to as the “Barker Babes”. They sucked up to (and I am not implying sexual favors) an older black male area manager, and got promoted. They are, with one or two exceptions, the most obstreperous and incompetent supervisors we have in our area. My experience with those who worked a craft situation tells me that they were too lazy or disinterested in actually WORKING, but were always on the lookout for the easy way out. It’s interesting that few males, of ANY color, were picked for promotion during this time.

Neither fairness nor achievement are what drives the corporate world. It’s all about upper management padding their bank accounts. Period.

Actually, onguard, achievement is often stymied in the current system by lack of reward for the people actually doing the work.

Once you hit a certain level of management, though, you can operate ineptly and fail spectacularly, and still be well-rewarded for it.

Care to SHOW us those advertisements?

>le sigh< It’s not actually as bad now as it was when I started. Back when I first started in the computing field, I found out later, I was getting precisely 60% of what my male co-workers were, for exactly the same job with exactly the same qualifications.

It took me 13-14 years, but I finally caught up. Not by internal promotions or raises, but by job hopping to better places.

Sadly in the current climate, there is not so much of that going now.

To all of you people bashing my comment of the first post: I have no college degree. I worked tirelessly at too many dead-end jobs. In your views I had no chance…right? Well, who SAYS you HAVE to stay in your current profession? I found a way out of the mill that you guys complain about. I became an apprentice for a piano technican and learned the trade and have been a self employeed piano technician for 14 years now. Doing well. Never looked back! I’ve BEEN that guy in the cubicle in this ‘toon. So if I can do it, I have no sympathy for people that just COMPLAIN about their job situation but won’t do anything about it!

See today’s “Non Sequitur” for another illustration of the same issue:http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2013/03/25

ROF!

Ohhh, this is sooo typical of you,l HOWWWWWW-dee!

You refuse to back up a post that YOU put up…and then you call ME lazy.

Could it be that you just made that up. or that you’re only parroting back something you ‘heard’ on right-wing radio?

Shut up and stop complaining. You’re lucky to have this job. They’re people in the street that would be glad to have your job.You’ve no idea what it takes to make a company go.I heard all these sad whines from a boss as he was trying to cheat employees out of what they had earned.

Robert Landers: It wasn’t the kindness of industry that made that period look good, it was strong unions.. Germany is prosperous today because federal law says workers must elect two of their members to the company’s board of directors, giving them access to the real financial books. With both sides having the power of facts, negotiations can be fair.

The current executive management mentality in North America is, if the profit is high enough, do nothing, and if it is not high enough, fire somebody.

We are back to where we were a hundred years ago: laissez-faire capitalists sopping up the wealth while the working people are getting crushed. Let’s follow that with what happened a hundred years ago: the actual working people get really, really pissed off and demand their fair share, or we tear it down. Who thinks that’s a good idea?

Just because someone said that a long time ago and it stuck does NOT mean that anyone CAN be president. Not everyone can be successful. Not everyone has the ability to be more than what they are now. Everyone does NOT have the same abilities as every other person! Now let’s talk about the people that DO have the potential to be pretty much anything they set their minds to. They make their own choices. They can succeed or can stay in a rut and never go anywhere. No one is in a place that they didn’t choose to be. In a job where you hate your boss? Well, YOU put him in charge of you. No one held a gun to your head to keep you at that desk or in that dead end job. You made your OWN decisions that put you in that spot. Either stay there or LEAVE! Some people have more advantages, some don’t. But don’t hold yourself down to your current level because of someone else! Be your OWN person!

Fairness and achievement are not exclusive of one another.What is more fair then to justly compensate some one who achieves, and in many cases exceeds the goals set by his/her employer?We have entered a new mentality among conservatives, where workers of all kind are viewed with contempt.This started with government workers: leaches off tax payers.Then it was unionized workers in the private sector: overpaid high school educated assembly line workers. Making us less competitive with foreigners.Now it is anyone who depends on someone else for employment, a sales clerk, a call center worker, a bank teller; you should be grateful for whatever we pay you! Now grovel.The fact that not everybody starts their own business or has industry changing idea make them or their work something to be scorned.

I notice you didn’t deny what I said, so I must be telling the truth.

Ever watch “Undercover Boss”? Most of the bosses don’t have a clue about how “their” business works and what their employees actually do.

Wow…you have the ability to downplay my work without even KNOWING how much I charge, and then saying someone could do it for less. What arrogance, AND an insult. And that’s the beauty of finding a job/skill that pays well. Find a void, and fill it. What you call a luxury, I call a living. I could say the same for you, but I’m not going to presume what you do, and then call it unneeded. Bet you have a tin-ear anyway.

it is the built in self destruct mechanism for capitalism.

working “smarter not harder” has always just rewarded me with more work and the same hours.

…and you haven’t been right, yet.

Here is how the GOP standard bearer treated his campaign workers, many of whom moved away from their families and worked 7 days a week for over a year, on election night. BTW, this is from Forbes Magazine:-Mitt Romney’s Campaign Cancels Staffers’ Credit Cards In The Middle Of The Night

The next time you have the misfortune of hearing a Wall Street titan or other one-percenter whine about how their trickle-down contributions are not appreciated by the masses remember this tidbit, courtesy of Garrett Haake at NBC:From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.-No warning, no consideration. They are mere workers, and now that the election is over, we don’t need them. The Romney workers just became part of the 47%.

“Dear Comrasde Toles: Explain where he would work and earn a wage without an employer.”Please explain how the employer would operate without employees.