Take This Job and Shove it!
We’re finally seeing the end of the crappy job era, good riddance
I visited the local Taco Bell drive-thru recently because it’s my guilty pleasure and has been a long-standing staple of escapism in my life but along with my nachos bell grande and my chicken quesadilla was also a free side of a job application. Just in case someone was interested in a job at Taco Bell, missed the large “now hiring” letters on the marquee or the plastic job tent sitting outside the building, an application was casually inserted into my food.
This is the story everywhere. If you have a heartbeat and can count to ten you can get a low-level job literally anywhere you’d like. Hell, even some mid-level professionals like hairstylists have their pick of the proverbial litter these days when it comes to jobs. I go to one place and have one person cut my hair but the place is dead, a total ghost town and when I asked her about it she told me that all of their stylists have quit, taking jobs elsewhere for better pay and frankly better treatment.
I’d rather get hit by a bus than go to work
The whole situation just reminds me of those days when I dreaded going to work more than anything, even going to the dentist and I would contemplate stepping in front of a bus and a myriad of other things if it meant I didn’t have to go to work. I’ll never forget the day when I was on the interstate in rush hour traffic on my way to work when I passed a car accident and when I saw one of the cars on its roof I said out loud to myself, “That lucky bastard doesn’t have to go to work today.” That’s when I was certain that something had to change. And soon.
There’s honestly never been a better time, at least since I’ve been alive, to find your way into a high-paying job that you’re not really qualified for with plenty of on-the-job training that might usher you into a stable profession. This phenomenon has gotten so extreme that the internet is littered with signs at Burger King or Wendy’s stating that the place is closed because they don’t have enough employees willing to put up with the shitty pay and abysmal treatment. Okay, I may have added a little bit in there myself but let’s be honest, the bad treatment and bad pay is a big part of the equation.
We’ve never seen this before in America. We used to be able to just go to any drive-thru, order any low-quality crap at any time of day and now we are being forced to bypass Burger King and move onto McDonald's. Oh, the oppression.
I for one welcome this shift in culture and values. I’m old enough and have been around long enough to become jaded and cynical about our traditional work and labor culture. Even just five years ago many of us were taking jobs from greedy employers that were more than happy to treat us like crap and pay us even worse and expect us to thank our lucky stars for the opportunity.
Oh, you got a new salary job you say? Well, have fun trying to cram 60 hours of work into a 40 workweek because now you’re doing the job of two and a half people. By the way, you’re going to need to get it all done between two and a half-hour meetings that could have been an email.
“Personal time off? Better put the necessary paperwork in weeks in advance. Whoops, looks like your request has been denied.”
“Christmas bonus?! Oh, you mean the raffle that we’re going to draw while you eat cafeteria food?”
“It’s 4:50, not 5, where are you going?”
“Sick days?! You’re not really sick! If you can make a phone call to tell us that you can’t work then you can definitely work! Are vomiting every five minutes? No?! Are you bleeding out somewhere?! No?! Is your broken leg poking out of the skin?! No?!!? You can still stand up? Great, then get your ass in here.”
“We couldn’t help but notice what a good job you do so now you get to do everybody else’s job too!”
Enough is enough. Employers need workers just as bad, if not worse than people need them and it’s refreshing to see the collective workforce finally calling their bluff.
“Seriously, what planet do you live on think that people like their job enough to put up with this type of stuff?”
We’re going to need you to get a vasectomy if you want to keep your job
And now, apparently, some companies have decided that they have some seriously massive balls and they are requiring their employees to get a certain controversial vaccine under the threat of people losing their jobs. I don’t care where you stand on the vaccine debate, when employers start trying to make medical decisions for us, they’ve finally gone too far, this is unacceptable.
Seriously, could you imagine a world where you had something like arthritis and your job told you that you had to take a certain medication for it or they were going to fire you? Or what if someone became pregnant and the employer told them they had to abort the child if they wanted to keep their job? I hope, truly hope, from the deepest reaches of my soul that any crappy boss that tries this nonsense sees a mass exodus of employees that is keeping their business afloat. Have fun going out of business and good riddance. Seriously, what planet do you have to live on or what ass-backward dimension did you fall out of to think that people like working for you enough to put up with this? How can business owners be this delusional?
An end of an era
We’re seeing the end of an era. An era in which employers treat their employees like high-paid slaves that aren’t entitled to a personal life. As a therapist, I’ve had many clients that needed that clinical support but were struggling to break away from work to take care of their mental health. Too many of them had unfortunately landed in the laps of some overbearing boss that needed to know why you have a medical appointment before giving you permission to attend it. It’s none of their business and heaven forbid when a person puts their foot down and goes to their medical appointments anyways they are then forced to absorb the passive-aggressive hostility from the people above them.
My profession isn’t much different. You might look at a therapist and think, wow, they’ve made it. They must enjoy flexible schedules, high pay and first-class treatment. Yeah, I wish. I’ll never forget one time I had thrown myself out of bed, taken a quick shower and shoved some breakfast into my face hole only to scurry out to my car to see that I had a flat tire. My work was a half-hour drive on the interstate so I immediately called my boss, told her I had a flat and I was going to be quite late that day. Was I met with an understanding boss who told me it was all good and just get there when I could? Of course not. That would require common decency. “Well… how late are you going to be?” She demanded. I was confused at the nature of the question or how on earth she could possibly expect me to know that.
I got off the phone, changed the tire to the donut in my trunk and went to the tire shop who got me on my way as quickly as could be managed and I arrived at work about two hours late to find an irate, hostile, boss who wouldn’t look at me, make eye contact or talk to me. When I finally had her alone I asked her what’s up and still without looking at me she said: “I don’t appreciate my therapist not showing up and providing the services that he’s contracted to provide!” When I asked her what she expected me to do, she just re-emphasized how unappreciative she was.
This same boss would later police my Facebook activity and call me on my time off to make demands on how I should conduct myself online. I needed the job badly and so of course I absorbed this bad treatment as long as I could. Inevitably I decided I’d rather live under a bridge than work for this place any longer and walked out, true story.
Honestly, folks, this is the type of shoddy treatment that the workforce has hopefully had enough of and it looks like we’re finally walking away from broken systems and sick cultures. I truly hope and believe that it’s only a matter of time before people know which employers give the shabbiest treatment to their employees because the establishments will be dark and abandoned. It’s only a matter of time before employers either need to adapt and pull their heads out or they’re going to see their businesses fail and thank God. I welcome it. Good riddance to horrible bosses, this is a long-awaited and blessed change.
We’ve also had enough of crazy customers
And let’s be honest, this isn’t just limited to bosses that treat their employees like crap, it also includes the idiot bosses that let nasty entitled customers abuse their employees. We’re up to our ears in bad customers. It’s not just that they are rude anymore, they’re flagrantly nasty and inappropriate. It was bad when I was working retail but now it’s exponentially worse! I don’t know how people in retain tolerate it! I’ve heard so many stories of people throwing their food at restaurant employees that it’s quite disturbing and the worst part is that the owners or managers are tripping over themselves actually APOLOGIZING to these nut jobs and giving them free stuff that certainly guarantees they will be back again.
I don’t know about all of you, but I am more than ready to support businesses that tell entitled customers that they are out of line, need to leave and never ever come back. I would go out of my way to support businesses that stop tolerating horrible customer behavior. These horrible entitled customers have gone too far and if they’ve been banned enough and have to drive six miles out of their way to get a taco or some eggs and milk because they’ve been banned from so many places, they’ll start coughing up a lot of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ pretty quick.
“Nasty customers have also gone too far”
Unfortunately, common decency is just too much to ask from some. Store and restaurant employees deserve to be treated well too and it’s time that employers start supporting them instead of throwing them under the bus. With so many workforce shortages, these customers are getting more and more impatient. The lines are longer and services take more time so people get upset and frustrated faster and if there’s a mistake on their order, watch out for the flying burrito! I don’t understand what the big rush these days is anyways. People want to get their stuff and get out fast so they can go home and stare at their phones for the next six hours.
If you’re as bold and audacious as I am then you might start telling customers in a direct and assertive manner that they are out of line, that their behavior is inappropriate and embarrassing and they need to leave at once. I know, your boss won’t like it but you now have the luxury to tell them to fire you if they don’t like it and can have another job secured by supper time. Hell, you might just get a signing bonus because of how desperate they are to hire people. So go ahead and kick the crazy customers out, it’s okay, just do it.
Survival of the fittest for businesses
The employers that are smart enough to see the writing on the wall and start paying and treating their employees as valuable and irreplaceable are the ones that will survive and thrive. I’m speaking from the perspective of someone that has been a great employee and has gotten treated like crap anyways and I finally realized, what’s the point in being a good employee?! There are just too many places of work that treat you like garbage no matter how good or bad of an employee you are so what’s the bloody point?! There are amazing bosses and amazing places to work, it’s time to give those places our money. They will expand and hire more people, treating them well and paying them well and then continue to expand, meanwhile all the crappy places will become a distant memory.
If your favorite establishment has been closed because they don’t have enough people to work a shift that should tell you something. It’s okay, there are other places that serve latte’s, you’ll adjust and adapt, let nature take its course and let the horrible bosses find their way out of leadership and back into the workforce. There’s a reasonably good chance now that they will have a boss that was way better than they ever were and that’s just the way of things. We are long overdue for a culture where good bosses get rewarded with good employees and horrible bosses go out of business. We are long overdue for a job culture that requires bosses to step up their game and learn how to treat their subordinates. It’s time that they learn that the relationship between employer and employee is a symbiotic one where both need each other.
