Agreed. It’s certainly not a One Neat Trick that would fix it. But the lack of empathy for the have nots from the haves is a major source of America’s problems. It stops people from viewing the decline of the American empire as a shared problem. This isn’t surprising but there is only a vanishingly small probability that the US rescues a soft landing as the global center of power shifts to Beijing. The society wide empathy deficit is a major contributing factor.
Corporate overlords will gain zero empathy from actually doing the grunt work. None. Business executive dudes almost always hate their employees.
Yeah, if anything I see this being more likely to foster contempt and resentment for the little people doing little people things that the corporate types are so much above.
Yes, that’s true. But most corporate employees are not corporate overlords. Most of then are cogs in the system.
1 Like
These things aren’t contradictory. Lots of people like their jobs and their colleagues but are still cogs in a system because they are dependent on their jobs to make their mortgage payments and secure health care. At the same time their employers are constantly looking to do more with less and the most senior officers have direct financial incentives to be sociopaths. There is nothing wrong with your positive attitude but in the US those attitudes are absolutely not reciprocated by employers.
I don’t hate my work situation, but I’m at the end of a dead end. Zero possibility of advancement/raises.
My work situation is mostly great. But I’ve been around enough to know most places suck and to easily relate to people who are frustrated with most workplaces.
1 Like
Bosses are measured as twice as greedy here in the US compared to Germany:
Attitude here isn’t primarily thank you to the worker for getting the job done, it’s primarily credit to the boss for getting you to do the job.
If you did an extraordinarily good job cleaning the toilet, the boss wouldn’t think Zara is so great! He would think I should just fire the janitor since Zara seems be willing to do the job even better for free! I’ll keep half the savings via my bonus and give the other half to the shareholders! Win win for all the people that matter. Obviously soon you would catch on and your attitude would quickly change.
1 Like
Yeah, this. I am in a great spot, and I think I’m incredibly lucky to be here. Not everyone has what I have.
2 Likes
This is true, but in Canada public sector workers never get fired. So they certainly have workplace grievances, bit they don’t live in constant fear of losing their income and other security (health care, pensions). This is night and day vs the stresses faced by private sector workers.
No but I know a guy that once worked for the Census Bureau, and if you believe him he was the only guy that ever actually did any work. What a sucker!
6 Likes
This is the option I don’t have.
I’d either have to:
- Get extremely lucky with an application
- Take a substantial pay cut
- Go back to school in my early 40s
- Move
I like it here, but there are just not a lot of jobs here and the competition for them is nuts.
2 Likes
Macy’s stock is up 235% this year so far, maybe they could, and I’m just throwing things out there for shits and giggles, FUCKING PAY THE MARKET RATE FOR LABOR
2 Likes
I work for a retail company in a corporate role and have had to work in retail numerous times as a way to better understand the business.
I’ve never had a coworker or manager say anything negative about the people that do those jobs or the work that is expected of them. and I’ve talked to hundreds of people who have either come up through retail or our distribution network.
4 Likes
TIL job security is actually a bad thing for a society and the only way to motivate people to do their jobs is to threaten to fire them.
2 Likes
Welcome to America, fuck you!
2 Likes
Stop trying to inject real life into our hypothetical argument.
2 Likes
Let’s not conflate fascist police stuff with labor issues. The problem there isn’t that they can’t get fired easily for doing brutal things, it’s that brutality is their entire raison d’etre.
I just don’t think there’s evidence that government is any more inefficient than private bureaucracies of similar size. And your three hour lunches aren’t really a thing. And some inefficiency is just fine – if that inefficiency means a bunch of people that aren’t in constant fear, awesome, totally worth it.
3 Likes
I’ve worked for 2 municipal governments and once for the Feds. You got lunch breaks, but not more than an hour.
Yeah. Most senior managers I work with are really nice people who care for their people.
Interestingly enough though, we still do horrible things like fire good people in layoffs, lobby for fossil fuel subsidies etc.
Thinking that all the bosses are psychopathic ghouls is an easy explanation. What’s more interesting is figuring out how the system makes good people do bad things.
On the back to the floor stuff. Empathy is a powerful thing. When seniors come and chat to my front line folks, they normally go away with a lot more understanding and sympathy than they started with.
2 Likes