I understand that not everyone is fortunate to have money saved to be able to have the leeway to leave jobs whenever they feel like it and so forth. But I just feel like people have lost their sense of self-respect when it comes down to employment.
I am a firm believer that if you are working at a toxic place and are being harassed or bullied, to stand up to that behavior and tell them that you’re not going to take their shit, and if they continue you fucking quit and never look back.
I have known people who have not had a savings who have done this in the past and they end up finding a decent job that doesn’t treat them like shit. Do you feel like job Seekers don’t defend themselves anymore?
Unionize. Get union jobs. This helps with stopping what you’re talking about.
You’re right. That’s why most big companies tell people not to unionize, or that it’s not necessary. It means they can continue to pay people terribly and treat them poorly. Knowing it’s happening next door means less flight risk of those treated poorly.
Sounds like your background is very different to others. Most people have their entire lives tied to their job, through no push of their own. Especially in the US where your very healthcare and family healthcare plans rely solely on keeping your job. Not to mention food in their mouths, education, car and you might even have a house to lose whether mortgage or just rent. Leaving your family homeless, especially when so many are already just making it week to week, month to month, without any opening for rest.
Don’t get it mixed up, people don’t stay in shitty situations because they enjoy it. And corporations has put lots of lobbying around ensuring you are dependent on them so that they have the power.
Why do you think they freak out of unions or free health care or anything that gives power back to the employee.
But, like, there are multiple jobs in the world. The alternative to working for Company A is supposed to be instead working for Company B, not being evicted from society.
I know and that’s what bothers me. It’s the fear. I feel we need to fucking unite
In my field I see lots of people taking shit for no good reason. Of course there are those with little choice, but many could just easily tell their boss to go fuck himself and still… they rather eat shit.
Fucking why !?!? This God like complex needs to be stripped away from. Assholes
I make healthcare related calls on the clock, because I am forced to get healthcare through my employer, so to me, it is a work related matter.
I like my boss though, he gets it.
In a lot of cities there just aren’t any opportunities. All the businesses have banded to together to abuse employees. So you can suck it up, or you can be a really proud homeless person.
Or you can move, you know.
Sometimes people can’t do that for reasons like family members. For instance I’ve lived away from my hometown for years, but now my parents are getting older and I don’t want to be 800 miles away currently. Or say your spouse has a job they’re satisfied with.
I did, but a lot of people can’t, or won’t.
I have been homeless and I have been well-paid while taking shit from my employer. Taking shit while well paid was way harder on my mental and physical health. Homelessness was uncomfortable and scary, but taking shit while being highly paid degraded me, made me weaker, made me less happy, made me slowly but steadily think less of myself.
Wow I’m sorry you had to experience that man. I know better things are on their way to you.
From what you’ve said, what would you say to the ppl who think taking shit from an employer is ‘fine’ ?
Either it’s not shit they’re taking, or it’s not fine.
The mismatch between respectful treatment and non-respectful treatment will cause a constant drain on energy and health, and it will recalibrate one’s own sense of self worth via the mechanism called “cognitive dissonance”.
How does cognitive dissonance come into play here? If a person says their being treated in an unacceptable manner, but they behave as if it’s okay for people to treat them that way, the difference between these will cause cognitive dissonance. Given the brain works to reduce cognitive dissonance over time, if the person doesn’t quit then it will alter their sense of boundaries and what is acceptable. In short their self image as to their level of dignity will fall. They will come to view themselves as someone to whom it is acceptable yo act abusively.
And a person it’s “okay” to abuse is a low thing indeed.
It will manifest in some way. Likely there will be a reduction in self-care (why take care of someone not worthy of being taken care of?). It can manifest as resentment and hatred toward others. A person can become really touchy and self-righteous, as a compensation for the creeping subconscious belief that they are worthless.
Because the cognitive dissonance operates on other levels too. If they try to maintain their self worth, sometimes they’ll try by tearing down others. They’ll distract from the feeling of unworthiness by seeking to establish that others aren’t worthy. This can be attacks on others’s character, arbitrary abuse of others.
It can manifest in a desperate attempt to gain respect through people pleasing. That can lead to overpromising, which eventually becomes broken promises, low performance reviews, and termination.
And the cognitive dissonance operates in the mind of the manager as well. Let’s say a manager is exhibiting two conflicting beliefs:
- I’m a good person who treats people fairly (mental thought), VS
- I’m treating this person poorly.
How does the manager’s mind resolve this conflict to reduce cognitive dissonance? One way is it finds excuses to punish the person. In order to create congruence between “I’m a good a manager” and “I’m treating this person poorly”, one way to bridge that gap is to add in “They did something wrong”.
Generally speaking, abuse transforms the abused person for as long as they acquiesce to it. It also transforms the abuser. Neither person benefits in terms of mental health. Both may be engaging in the pattern out of a mistaken belief it will bring them financial benefit. But long term, abuser and victim are both poisoned psychologically by their two, independent, decisions to allow the abuse to exist.
One might even go so far as to say groups of people have cognitive dissonance acting at the collective level (individually occurring in each mind, but interacting in complementary ways to enable and support each other). At a collective level, a society might proclaim “All people are inherently valuable”, but if that society allows abuse to continue, embedded into its institutions, that conflicts with the stated societal value, and it starts to produce a new unconscious (and therefore harder to grapple with and control) belief that “People are shit”.
I am not kidding, at all, when I say that my health was fine when I was homeless, but my health suffered massively when I put up with abuse at work. These findings are backed up by scientific studies on heart attacks: turns out if you compare heavy workload vs lack of respect, the lack of respect is a better predictor of heart attacks than is the heavy workload.
And in my case I didn’t even keep the job. Those mechanisms I described led to my status within the company falling and falling. I got overloaded with work and not listened to when I had issues. I eventually got fired. So for me at least, trying to sacrifice my dignity for money just straight up failed.
I now make $47k, and my finances are more stable than when I was making $105k.
I don’t know about others, but for me money doesn’t even work right for me if I’m not acting according to my conscience. I saved nothing during that time I tried to sacrifice my dignity.
It’s a real life example of a “deal with the devil”. He promises you great things, but ultimately the terms of the deal are that you lose your soul.
In the words of one of my favorite psychology professors:
If you ignore that thing that’s calling you forth, you will pay for it like you cannot possibly imagine.
That sentence echoed in my head as I wallowed in abuse (a relationship this time, not a job). I was trying to accept it. But a little voice inside me would not accept it. It said “this is wrong. It can be better”, and that quote scared me.
Because abuse isn’t level. It gets worse and worse the longer you put up with it. It only feels level because as the abuse gets worse, your ability to perceive it as abuse is getting worse at the same time.
It’s a pathway to ruin. And there are forms of ruin worse than having to sleep in a homeless shelter, having to carry a knife to defend against psychos, worse than extreme hunger, sleep deprivation.
That’s what I would say, if I thought there was any chance they’d listen.
ACCEPTING ABUSE DOES NOT WORK
"I got overloaded with work and not listened to when I had issues. I eventually got fired. So for me at least, trying to sacrifice my dignity for money just straight up failed.
This is what I feel like people miss. Your dignity is valuable you have dignity as a person, you don’t let people disrespect you. And the more you allow that behavior the more you’re inviting it in. And you will get more of it.
For people who think it’s normal I would have to ask, well where do you draw the line then? If they ask you to get on your knees and kiss their shoes in front of everybody is that okay? They’re not putting hands on you or getting physical they’re just requesting this of you are you going to accept that? That’s humiliating.
Just because somebody owns a company and is your boss gives them absolutely no right to treat you like fucking dirt.
And the more people realize that, and show people that they are not to be disrespected, the better their life will be and the better relationships they will form and have in their lives.
Thank you so much for what you wrote and I’m glad you’re in a better place. You really touched on a lot of important points and I feel like people really need to see this.
Everyone’s circumstances are different. Finding a new job is a huge opportunity cost, typically requiring large amounts of time and money as the search gets extended.
Some people definitely aren’t in a position to fight back. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and barely getting by, your employer might know that you can’t afford to be out of a job for any length of time. Then, they might abuse you because what are you going to do? Fight back, get fired, and then become homeless? Nope. You’ll take whatever your employer dishes out on you.
Other people are in a position to fight back. I’m lucky enough to be one of those people. I watched my father waste his life doing extra work that he didn’t get paid for. He’d go in early, bring stuff home to work on late into the night, and bring extra work home for the weekends. It’s not like he was paid extra. He was salaried and was paid the same if he worked 40 hours or 80 hours.
In the end, he was fired when he was close to 60 - too early to retire, but too old to find a new job because he would likely retire soon. So he retired before he was ready and now lives on a very limited income.
When I got my current job, I was asked to check a generic “info@” email inbox. No problem. I routed the emails to people who could address them. My boss called me in one day to tell me that he expected me to check this inbox at night and over the weekends too.
Now, I’m Jewish and observe the Sabbath. My boss said “I can’t tell you to violate your religious beliefs, but I REALLY need you to check this every few hours every day!” I told him that I wasn’t going to check it on nights or weekends. He insisted I needed to because someone might email with a medical emergency. (Without getting into my employer, it was plausible that someone would email us about medical stuff in general.) I told him that if someone was having a medical emergency and, instead of dialing 911, they emailed our “info@” mailbox, they deserved to have their emergency wait until Monday morning. In all the time i monitored the inbox, I only got one email that was even slightly an emergency (and even then, it was more of a safety concern than an actual emergency).
harassed or bullied, to stand up to that behavior and tell them that you’re not going to take their shit, and if they continue you fucking quit and never look back.
In the USA, workplace harassment and bullying are generally illegal. The employer is obligated to do something about it. If they don’t, then don’t quit: sue.
It’s really not that easy to win one of these cases. If you can even get a lawyer to take it, without paying exorbitant fees to them anyway…
You can sometimes use the NLRB to report these violations with less risk. You could also use the IWW for tips on how to get some solidarity with co-workers. Organizing a workplace can be as simple as everyone writing down what the boss or a bullying coworker says.
And then you’re blacklisted by all the other business owners around town, and you’re homeless by the time the case even gets to court. You can do this sort of stuff in a big city, or if you have an in-demand career. You can’t do this stuff in a small to medium sized city with a ho-hum economy.
Great point
Fortunately, here in Germany we have very strong employee laws and regulations. Employers can do much less shit to employees than in the USA for example.
Boss yells at you? Sue them. Boss fires you for no real reason? Sue them. Boss verbally attacks you? Sue them. Boss does not pay you on time? Sue them. Boss makes you do useless nonsense work? Sue them. Boss demands you to do overtime without compensation? Sue them.
You’ll always win AND you will keep your job and get compensation.
I think this is a very American thing. Employers have a lot of leverage over employees because the employees rely on employers for healthcare insurance and there’s no real safety net if they get laid off.
In other developed countries, employees will have access to universal healthcare and you have generous unemployment benefits for a much longer time (often up to 90 percent of your previous salary for a year or two or until you find another job (you have to prove your active job search)).
This all creates more balance between employer and employee.
For most people it would take about one month to find new job. So, you can quit in a month.
[citation needed]
Change it to half a year. My point still stands.
Your point doesn’t stand. The time it takes to get an equivalent job depends on what industry you’re talking about and what level of position.
My point is not about time it takes, but about the fact that you can find the job and quit. In this order.
Not agreeing with MxM’s comment, but you should be interviewing and working your network at all times.
Essentially your current job should be trying to retain you. (Though they aren’t aware this is actively happening)
If another opportunity arises (better earning, better learning), take it. The best time to look for a new job is while you have a job, and no employer will be concerned when you tell them you are interested in their position if you simply say your current role isn’t meeting your career needs.
This approach will reduce the interviewing cycle time, ideally to zero, but obviously layoffs happen that can catch you out.
Then your point is totally right, might take months
Being able to walk out on the spot is a great thing. But most people will have to do some advance planning for that. Find a new job and then find a good opportunity to walk out on the spot.
In the US, the lack of statutory notice makes this particularly satisfying. In the UK (and everywhere else with statutory notice) I recommend saving up some paid holiday so you don’t have to work much of your notice period. Not that you need to get much work done during it anyway.
Bad managers deserve to be left in the lurch as much as humanly possible. Make sure you plant the idea in the heads of all your co-workers.
It depends. You have to make a benefit-risk-downside analysis, such as whether the job pays well, what your other prospects are pay-wise, if another job might have a better or worse working environment in terms of supervisors and colleagues, how convenient the job is (work from home? commute across town?) and how switching jobs will look on your resume, as in, have you been there only 6 months? 3 years? 6 years?
There’s a reason the term “wage slave” exists.
As long as people need to work for someone else in order to eat, this sort of exploitative power inbalance will exist.
Doesn’t that point to the need of better labor laws, where workers have more protection? I feel like that’s the only reason more people don’t stand up to shitty employers/bosses, and why it’s even a question in the US.
Yes that is a worthwhile goal.
Doesn’t change the current situation, though.
And, the cynic in me doesn’t see that goal being achieved in my lifetime, no matter how hard I might be able to push for it.
Very excellent point
I live in an “At Will” State in the US, which means I can be fired at any time. Depending on what is going on, or how the company works (like if HR sucks), I’d rather not fight back hard.
I was stuck with an absolute horrible supervisor in my last job, and it took me 1.5 years of applying to jobs to finally get out of there. It isn’t easy to just get a job.
I can’t imagine not having a job for 1.5 years and paying $1500/mo for a 1 bedroom + utilities + car stuff + food + etc.
I know dude. I’m fucking sorry you went through that hell
