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Ever met the Employee who does the Bare Minimum at work?
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I missed if they also got rid of the stupid "Computer worker" exception as well. I suspect not.
Also, I'd recommend if you are salaried to have an employment contract set up that includes detailed compensation for overtime. Make it legal and make the employer stick to it.
I've said it before, if they can't afford the extra compensation for the productivity you provide in overtime, then perhaps they should reconsider the business and employment model.
You and me both, brother.
~University admin power fist-bump~
*return fist bump*
I think this has more to do with the places you worked hourly than a reality of salary vs hourly.
edit:
Also regarding the actual OP... let me rephrase the statement/question to give a shift in perspective.
Have you ever met the employer who does the bare minimum for employees? And still expects their employees to give everything to the company?
Of course you have, this is almost every employer.
That said, this becomes problematic in a professional environment where your business itself tends to mature over time. Unfortunately, while the guy on my team is still performing at the levels he was 5-6 years ago, the needs of the business have matured and become more complex. What that means is the guy no longer presents a benefit for the team and will likely be gone inside of a month or two.
Pretty sure I'm about to echo 90% of the people who read this post.
Is Half Price Books hiring by chance?
Not sure! They are family owned but have stores all around the US (if you are in the US). Depends on where you ask. My experience of applying there and watching people apply WHILE working there is that it is highly competitive. Like, hundreds and hundreds of applications whenever there is an opening. Great company. Would recommend, if you can get in.
Locations: https://www.hpb.com/stores/
This is exactly it. If you're not moving forward, you're going backward.
Interesting. A job i interviewed for about a week ago had their job listing change one week later (i.e. yesterday), same duty description and such, but had upped the suffix of the position from "associate" to "manager," and i was wondering if it had anything to do with the rule change. Guess not. But are 501c3's one of the exempt groups, since any work i do for them could be classed as volunteering?
Is it his business or does he have a stake in the company? No? Then it's not his job to figure out what needs to be done. If they need him to do more than what's in his contract, renegotiate the contract. Or hire more people. People "growing into" multiple roles is how they get overworked, exploited or become too idiosyncratic for the company to go on without them.
Also, every employee should get at least one raise yearly and tied to inflation, regardless of their productivity (well, past a certain level). You shouldn't have to do more just to maintain the same purchasing power, that's not fair. Well, it's not only not fair, as profits go up due to better technologies and so on, getting the same salary year-over-year is just getting less wealth, proportionally, from the company. For the same work! That's devaluing effort.
You're right with this paragraph, except that you forget the options are 1. Renegotiating his contract 2. Hiring more people or 3. Getting rid of the employee who is no longer valuable and replacing them.
Counter argument: Over the last three years at my current job I have ended up taking "ownership" of my role in the unit mostly by saying "well, if this isn't getting done, and we need it to get done to make sure we stay afloat, I'll just do it I guess." Which ends up, a year down the line, of having that task added to my job description without additional compensation. "Growing" your position is buzzword for "take on more for no additional pay" in nearly every job I've been at. It doesn't increase promotional capability (if anything it makes you less likely to be promoted as replacing you over time gets more and more expensive so it's better to just keep you there rather than hire the 2-3 people you would need if you brought in new talent).
This is hardly a one-office problem! My experience here is likely pretty universal in the modern marketplace. While I still believe in taking ownership of your work, in most cases doing so is a self detriment.
I absolutely agree. They should take some level of ownership for their work. But with ownership of the work comes ownership of the fruits of that work, don't you think? Otherwise they're being stolen from.
What I'm saying here is divide the gross profits up and give a fair share of the total to everyone who works there. I would say even more; have the workers take a hand in the direction, the leadership, of the company. Have the workers decide in an assembly what they're going to do for the upcoming quarter/year/whatever.
If you own something, even if it's just a partial ownership, you get to decide, or at least have a say in, what is done with that thing. So I don't see how someone who has no directional control over his labor, who does what the boss wants with the only choice offered to them being obey or get fired, well, I don't see how you can expect them to "take ownership" of their work while enjoying none of the actual benefits of ownership.
Absolutely, it's a 2 way street. I know in the group I manage and with my manager, content flows both ways. Even our Senior VP was honest and said during my initial training "Hey, if employees don't want to do something and the front line managers agree with them, it's just not going to happen".
As far as being the "go-to person" problem. It's good in that you get a lot of exposure, bad from a time management standpoint. First of all, your management should be moving the stuff off of you if you have too much. Second, take it somewhat upon yourself to document and push it off to the group. If it's fully documented and portable, there is no reason you have to do it. To be irreplaceable is to be unpromoteable.
It's interesting. Some people in my department probably think I do the bare minimum and indeed, I'm not here 40 hours a week at my desk. But I'm working a lot more than that and even when I'm just walking around, I'm often thinking about work (not in an intrusive way, just puzzling out a problem to solve which I enjoy).
So if someone is like ugh where's castle it's 9:30 that guy... well, they aren't my boss because my boss knows god damn well the value I'm bringing.
That's why I got a huge promotion today, ding. And also why a passive aggressive person in my department yesterday said "no one thinks you work but *I* know" in the smarmiest way possible.
Is his pay level still at what it was 5-6 years ago? Because if the needs of the business mature and the employees need to do more, they should be paid more.
If the needs of the business change and the employees just need to do something DIFFERENT, not necessarily MORE, then that's on you to make that happen.
Isn't that...like...already the law? What the hell is wrong with the uSA?
In, like, uh, California I think? Most states it's owed to you unless the company policy says different and you've been informed of that. Typically if you quit without notice you don't get it but if you do the two weeks notice thing you do.
To your other question: Lots.
Yeah not the law at all.
Some states mandate it, most don't.
Employment is stupid in the US.
Whatever strange Puritan work ethic this country was founded on can fuck right off. My employer isn't "doing me a favor" by hiring and paying me. They're making money off of me and giving me a small portion of that as wages. I am essentially a perpetual motion engine they harvest for profit.
If you do your job well you're not doing the minimum. Doing the job slightly half-assed is doing the minimum.
That would be below the minimum. Lack of clear expectations and accountability is the managements problem. If everyone stops covering for someone who is lazy, they will get fired.
I believe it depends on how the vacation/PTO is accrued. If it's earned (e.g. for every X amount of time served, you get N amount of PTO) then you are entitled to have unused PTO paid out. If it's granted by contract (e.g. you get 4 weeks of vacation per year) then employer is not obligated to pay for unused time: this can cut both ways though.
That's how it is at my job. We had been on an accrual model, but our new corporate overlords front load PTO at the beginning of the year. In the current model you could sell back PTO if you were approaching the cap, and when we switch in December any unused PTO is getting paid out. On the new model it's use it or lose it and cannot be paid out.
This.
"Excelling at your job", in my experience since entering the work force in the 90's, has almost exclusively been usurped to mean, "Doing extra work they don't want to hire other people to do for the same money as we were paying you to do just your initial job".
EVERY company I've been at has been in the habit of firing people, or watching them quit, and then telling the remainder to spread out the remaining work. They never backfill the position anymore unless it's something they absolutely cannot do without.... which is rare.
And the pay of the person(s) who left? Yeah, that never gets spread out.
Can you blame someone for "doing the minimum" when the minimum probably includes their duties + either another FT persons, or several parts of other FT employees already? All without any additional compensation at all?
Nope. His pay is significantly higher now. Not to mention benefits, etc.
My point to OP was really that you'll always come across people doing the bare minimum. They eventually kinda weed themselves out. I prefer to try to up my game as there's less competition at that level.
It's kinda made me insane, it almost feels like if you can decipher the three posts just right, there's the actual question or something hidden in there, but I can't crack the code!
Upping your game basically means devaluing the work of everyone else by doing extra stuff without pay. This is the reason places assign more than FTE hours worth of work then suggests they better finish it, but they "better not get overtime" *wink* *wink*.
I am so glad I'm not the only one who was thinking this.
I disagree with what you're saying but understand your point.
The thing people need to realize is that you're competing with everybody in the job market. If you want to potentially stymie your own development for the sake of the broader working force that is absolutely your own prerogative. That said, there will be somebody else out there willing to put in the time in order to get ahead.
And the odds that the person in questions actually gets ahead by putting in more time is unrealistic in the modern workforce. That person would be better suited becoming drinking buddies with the manager of their manager. It would be more likely to resolve promotion than any amount of work.
Depends entirely on the sort of place you are employed in. If you're in the sort of place where the culture is advancement for the manager's drinking buddies then maybe GET THE FUCK OUT.
Employment is a two way street, if your job has shitty circumstances then fire them by going out and finding a different one. Matching an employer to your preferred work style is very important in having a fulfilling work life.