What the hell is wrong with people these days? When I was growing up, my father told me that if you get paid to do a job, you do your best at it no matter what. IÂ’m trying to install that sense of work ethic into my boys. It just doesnÂ’t seem to be like that for most people. Well most people in my company.

Most of the people there want to know what the company is going to do for them if they do their job. Not if they go above or beyond, but just to do what they were hired for and expected to do. They want things like special certificates for meeting standards, or prizes, or food bought for them or in one person’s words “Paid vacations to someplace exotic” Yea, I kid you not, they wanted the company to buy them an all expense paid trip to Cancun just for meeting standards… to keep their job. They demand incentives and rewards for doing the minimally required for the job.

In other words, their getting a steady paycheck isnÂ’t enough. Now to give you an idea, basic entry for our company is a data-entry position that starts at over $11.35 an hour. With that you get 18 days of Paid Time Off (PTO, which can be used as vacation or sick time), one floating Holiday. Health Insurance, dental, 401K with company match and once a year company bonus if certain goals are met. The insurance while maybe not the best, but still damn good, isnÂ’t badly priced starting at $49 a month for family coverage. Sure our coverage used to be better and prices cheaper, but with the cost of health care itÂ’s still damn good and a might bit better than most out there. As long as you perform to the standard and donÂ’t violate any company policies you will get an annual raise. After five years you get 23 days of PTO, at ten you get 28 days. After five years you have almost 5 weeks of vacation, if you include your floating holiday.

Yet all of that isnÂ’t enough. They continuously want more, Heck these are the same benefits I get. The only difference is that I have to pay more for them because IÂ’m at a higher level of pay. Which is hilarious because everyone in that company thinks that management at my level makes some insanely large amount of money, which isnÂ’t true. In fact I have employees that make more money than I do. The ones that donÂ’t have the potential to make more because they can get overtime, IÂ’m salary. Yet, they donÂ’t feel the company is compensating them enough, they want more.

And when they do get more, they don’t appreciate it. Due to business needs we’ve had a lot of overtime the last three months. We’ve had a lot of people that were coming in on weekends and staying late trying to help us keep up with our customers. The management decided that we were going to do something nice to show appreciation for the employees by cooking breakfast and serving it to them last Saturday. I ran around for two days pricing and buying stuff for breakfast. We served them at their desks Pancakes, Sausages and Orange Juice. Saturday morning I cooked 18 pounds of sausages. I also helped with cooking pancakes. Three weeks in advance we sent out a notice to the employees asking them to fill out an “order form” so we knew how much to buy.

Right off the bat we started getting complaints. “What, no toppings? Can’t you guys get whipped cream and fruit to go on it?” “No Bacon? Can we have bacon instead?” “Can we have French toast instead?” “I’d rather have waffles.” “Can I get eggs instead?” Okay, I can understand some of that, but seriously it’s free food. We were doing it because we wanted to do something nice to say “Thank You.” We choose what we did because it was going to be the fastest, easiest and less messy meal we could make for almost 200 people.

While we were getting ready to cook a person from another department who’s management did their gratitude breakfast the weekend before was complaining that they didn’t come in on that Saturday so he didn’t get anything. The individual then made the comment, “The supervisors should come in every Saturday and cook them breakfast. That’s why they make the big bucks” The individual was rubbing their thumb and first two fingers together in my peers face when they said it. When my peer asked if they were kidding, the response was, “No”. Fortunately I didn’t witness it because I think that would have made me come unhinged.

Then while we were cooking people were complaining on everything from portion size. Three 4-5 inch pancakes, 2 sausage links and a bottle of Sunny Delight. I know itÂ’s not the biggest breakfast but we had a budget and we couldnÂ’t go over. We ended up doing so and I fronted some money out of my own pocket to cover the difference. Some complained about the taste, there wasnÂ’t enough syrup, not enough butter, too greasy, their sausage wasnÂ’t burnt (yes, IÂ’m not kidding. Someone came in and complained that their sausage wasnÂ’t burnt.), they didnÂ’t get their breakfast as soon as they arrived, etc, etc, etc.

There was a ton more today at work of people complaining. I just started to tune it out so I wouldnÂ’t go off on any of the ingrates. Then to make it worse I was in a meeting today where they were talking about the feedback the employees had given on recognition and it was brought up again that multiple employees feel that the management should spend at least $5.00 each week to buy items for their staff. I think that was the last straw for me.

I donÂ’t think IÂ’m going to go out of my way to do anything like this again. IÂ’m done, why should I try to do something nice only to get complained at. ItÂ’s not worth it.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:04 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 You guys are privileged that they chose to work for you. Surely, you could cater to them better. Hell... your breakfast sounds like a damn good meal. Bitchin' about free food. *shaking my head*

Posted by: That 1 Guy at January 28, 2008 08:48 PM (O6lVU)

2 Dude, you're a saint. Speaking of cookouts, are you amenable to coming to Morocco, IN instead of Buffalo range?

Posted by: og at January 28, 2008 09:16 PM (ZR5N4)

3 You should hear of some of the things My wife and her fellow supervisors have heard while working at "Sam Still Lives we are not a Cult" USA and doing the whole be nice to your people thing. Personally I prefer leadership through fear, intimidation and alochol.

Posted by: BloodSpite at January 29, 2008 07:41 AM (pOo0j)

4 Sounds like they thought they were at a Denny's rather than at their desk getting a special treat from the management. Bah. I'm sure most if not all of them still ate it though even in it's non-perfect form, which I suppose in a way is a form of appreciation even if they didn't come right out and say it. Hell, it actually sounds good to me - I'm getting hungry reading your post

Posted by: Shadoglare at January 29, 2008 08:28 AM (m6q/K)

5 Tell those freaking ingrates to come work in Michigan, where the employees kiss managements ass just to keep their measlely, underpaying jobs with no benefits or extra's. When the recession hits the rest of the US maybe people will see how good they have it at their jobs.

Posted by: Quality Weenie at January 29, 2008 08:38 AM (uHRYR)

6 You sure hear the bitching and moaning on the IAFF union boys at my fire station. Us lowly part-timers get paid loads less, no benefits, cut hours and NOTHING from the district for doing the same exact job they do. Yet they complain, whine, piss and moan more than anyone I have ever heard of. You are a saint....

Posted by: P_G_S at January 29, 2008 08:42 AM (xhm5o)

7 I recently entered the office environment and i have to tell you that none of this surprises me. I work for the State of Indiana right now and it just makes my brain hurt. The staff here spends more time discussing their diets and the activities of their respective cats than they do working. Let's take right now for example. I am at work and blogging...not because i am lazy or just choosing not to do my job, but because my boss failed to tell me she wouldn't be here today so i came in and have literally no idea what i am supposed to be doing. After making several inquiries with said staff and finding them to be entirely useless i decided to edit the memo i finished last time...again, blog, and head home. Gotta love efficiency.

Posted by: Sari at January 29, 2008 10:07 AM (YMTtc)

8 You are a SAINT!!! I would've taken the food away from them if they bitched like that. (act like a 3 year old - be treated like a 3 year old!) Good grief I can't believe people. Well, I can, I just don't want to... *sigh*

Posted by: Teresa at January 29, 2008 03:04 PM (rVIv9)

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Blew a gasket at work again. I think I kept it pent up way too long. There has been a series of incidents that really pissed me off, but instead of blowing up, I rolled with the punches and just tried to be a team player. Maybe my personality isn't one that should do stuff like that, or maybe I should try more stress relieving activities. Unfortunately I can't get to the range as often as I liked, even I am starting to worry about my drinking and I think Ktreva is annoyed by how many times a day I try to give her a ride on the ol' love rocket.

Most of the problems started two months ago when I went to Tennessee with Bloodspite. While I was away my peers volunteered my people to handle a project that not only would take forever and a day to complete but would tie up at least 2 people a day, every day until it's finished. Than one of my highest producing employees gave birth taking her out of the office for 2 months. A lot of my people had vacation time making me even more short staffed. We had to give up people to help other areas and there was no one to assist me. There were days that I actually had 3 of the 17 people that work for me working on our daily work.

Then my grandmother died. While I was out of the office then a decision was made that three of my people would assist another arena everyday until they get caught up, be damned what my workload was. Rumor has it that it was stated that the decision was made while I was out of the office because "Contagion wouldn't go for this if he was here." Then they didn't even have the common courtesy or respect to advise me of the situation when I returned. I had to learn it from my employees and when I asked about the plan I was blown off.

Yet, I kept rolling with it and doing my best to keep everyone appraised of my situation and what I'm trying to do to correct it. Right now I'm back logged so badly that I'm in violation of state law and the company is paying fines. No matter what I said, no one else seemed to listen. Until today that is. I finally got them to understand that my unit can't handle everything dumped on them, I can't get assistance for them and I need to start pulling resources back to correct the situation.

Well one of my peers whom had the assistance I was providing pulled got upset and sent me a nasty e-mail stating that I wasn't looking at the big picture and taking care of our customers. The is the peer that had the assistance pulled from my area when my grandmother died.

I came unglued.

I responded with a rather lengthy e-mail explaining how I took offense to what they implied and I felt they were out of line. I explained the entire situation so she could see the big picture. It took me an hour to type it. Not because it's that long but because I had to re-write it three times. I was so mad the first three that it was really nasty and insulting. Even the copy I sent was pretty bad, but I couldn't make it any nicer. I wouldn't make it any nicer.

I'm fully expecting to get called into an office tomorrow, but I'm sticking to my guns. Even after cooling off I still want to go throttle the bitch.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:35 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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