Me when I’m “working remote” but actually starting vacation a day early, or just doing my thing as I want because “working” means being available to solve problems, not being in an office.
Sorry, this meme looks like something posted by a non-American who has no idea how things really work.
Of course, this also means being on a support call for 27 hours because of a serious outage. For which my management always offers comp time, and usually some kind of bonus/award.
Been this way since the mid-90’s for me. People appreciate those who are willing to put in the effort. From my perspective I don’t work any more than anyone else. On any given day I’ll be out shopping while on the phone working through a problem, or attending a meeting where I’m requested just in case my expertise is needed.
The culture, especially for younger people these days, is that management constantly “drops hints” that people who don’t let them commit labour violations will be first to get laid off. You’ve been working for at least 30 years and have a senior position but, bud, it ain’t like it was.
My dad’s a very well qualified verification engineer and even he’s finally starting to realize how toxic that environment truly is. If you don’t let people walk all over you don’t have a job. If you complain when execs set unreasonable deadlines you don’t have a job. If you go home at the end of your 40hrs you’re not a team player don’t have a job. Oh you’re complaining about your two yearly sick days and measly two weeks of vacation fine here’s a long vacation and don’t come back.
I got canned in March because “it just wasn’t working out”. I got along with people, did a good job, and was on large projects so what was the problem? I asked for more money in as polite a way as I could. I pushed back against a senior engineer who wasn’t even aware that his building code needed to be updated. I didn’t make the partners feel like special little boys. North American work culture is, for the vast majority of people, incredibly toxic. I’m glad your experience is different.
Similar story at my last job.
I was a beer sales rep in Washington DC, a potentially VERY lucrative market that was already brimming with good product. However, I realized very quickly that the people above me in the organization had no idea what they were doing. It started with small things, like “sales reps have to deliver beer sometimes”, “sales reps need to help do QC at the brewhouse”, and “paper checks this week, payroll is broken”, then started escalating rapidly when they fired the head of sales, a long-time industry veteran, on July 3rd for trying to clean up some of the internal mismanagement.
After that, management started hounding us basically daily to increase sales numbers without actually offering any advice or help on how to do so. It was so bad that I basically ignored any email or text from them unless I had specifically messaged them first. I had one customer tell me that they couldn’t justify ordering anything at that time due to budget constraints, and my boss’s advice was “Sell them more so each case costs a dollar less!”, completely ignoring that that just made the problem worse for the customer. Just completely useless advice.
It was about 3 weeks in before the paperwork problems came to my attention; in DC, if you are importing alcohol or cannabis, and you don’t have a warehouse in DC to supply from, you need to supply a permit with each shipment. Several of my customers got their first orders and asked where the permits were, and I told them I had no idea what they meant. Turns out, management had done zero research into the import laws for DC, and these missing permits could lead to fines more expensive than the actual orders, to BOTH parties, if we didn’t get them filed. I hounded management for WEEKS about this, and they kept saying “We’re working on it, and they should be ready Soon™️!” A month and a half later, they finally started sending the out… is what I’d love to say, but they actually forced ME to write them and send them out. Needless to say, neither me nor my customers were happy.
Meanwhile, staff at the brewery proper were getting absolutely RATFUCKED. In my conversations with staff there, when I had to come up for samples or paychecks or meetings, I learned a shocking amount of things, including:
- They’d fired the delivery team, then tried to hire new drivers, none of which lasted more than a week or 2
- The drivers were working 15 hour days because the inventory system was nonexistent
- The brewers were getting massive orders dumped on them regularly, with zero notice, and incredibly short deadlines, forcing them to work split shifts 20 hours a day just to meet demands
- The brewers were also regularly getting accused of stealing 40% of the beer from each batch, somehow
- The admin staff were being forced to work 70 hour weeks for seemingly no reason
- The kitchen staff were cycling rapidly because the Head Chef “liked to fire people”
- QC issues were through the roof due to overwork, lack of staff, and horrendous space optimization
- Admin staff were regularly asked to “”“assist”“” on canning runs, despite knowing nothing about canning
- Management was trying to supply 5 states with beer at once, without actually having the capacity to do so
- All the equipment was bought at auctions, and none of it worked right
- All the other sales reps were being run ragged as delivery men, because they couldn’t keep drivers around
I could keep going. There were so many issues at the brewery.
Towards the end of my time there, I messaged management that I would be out of town on vacation for a week over Labor Day, and gave them 3 weeks notice for it. They didn’t respond to that message in any way, so I mentioned it in the next meeting, where they brushed it off as ok. THE DAY I LEAVE, I get a text asking when I’ll be back, and if I can call them. I don’t respond because I’m on vacation. They then email me a giant, wildly exaggerated list of complaints with my performance that they could’ve brought up before I left, and DEMAND to know how I was going to fix them. I don’t respond because, again, I’m on vacation. The next day, my boss texts me, demanding I call him later that day. I don’t. I’M ON VACATION MOTHERFUCKER. He texts me that night, saying he “doesn’t enjoy doing this” and then fires me with a text. I don’t bother responding.
So yeah, lots of crippling mismanagement and toxic bro culture, leading to a horrendous work environment and ultimately getting fired for not playing their petty power games. I’m happier now though, since I don’t have to deal with them breathing down my neck all the time, and I can pursue other interests in the alcohol industry.
Overall, what a fucking disaster of a business. I don’t see them lasting another year, now that everything is falling apart and the staff are leaving.
Jesus H Christ that’s wild.
Good on you for standing your ground, though. I think if more people said “wow you should have planned that better then, huh?” we’d be in a much better place. I’ve done longer days only to still get bitched at and so I decided that I will only ever work overtime if I feel as though it was a personal failing or a promise I failed to keep that someone is relying on.
I seriously don’t get how these people get themselves so much power and money. Well, I do, and that’s that they get there on the backs of others who let them do it for one reason or another. If we just stopped taking their bullshit they’d have nothing since they have no real skills on there own. They aren’t fuckin’ archmages who’ll bend us to their will, they’re dweebs with no real skills and their power is only as strong as the people willing to enable them.
gave them 3 weeks notice for it. They didn’t respond to that message in any way, so I mentioned it in the next meeting, where they brushed it off as ok. THE DAY I LEAVE, I get a text asking when I’ll be back, and if I can call them. I don’t respond because I’m on vacation. They then email me a giant, wildly exaggerated list of complaints with my performance that they could’ve brought up before I left, and DEMAND to know how I was going to fix them. I don’t respond because, again, I’m on vacation. The next day, my boss texts me, demanding I call him later that day. I don’t. I’M ON VACATION MOTHERFUCKER. He texts me that night, saying he “doesn’t enjoy doing this” and then fires me with a text.
This is insane. And in any country(except USA) this will fuck them much harder than not having permit. Even firing on vacation is illegal. And “wildly exaggerated list of complaints with my performance … and DEMAND to know how I was going to fix them” on vacation likely will bring even more trouble.
Since the mid-2000s, most companies expect everybody to be pseudo on-call at all times without any additional compensation thanks to cell phones and the internet making everybody reachable at any time. Your boss calling you after work, on the weekends, or while you’re on vacation to talk about work is normal and they expect you to be accessible at all hours of the day. At shittier jobs like retail, you can even expect to be called on your days off and asked to come in if somebody doesn’t show up or something, even in the middle of the day, and if you aren’t available or “flexible” you can expect it to negatively impact your job.
At my first job for a small business, I didn’t take a vacation (not even a single day) in 10 years because the boss didn’t give us vacation days and instead said that anybody could take days off at anytime and he’d make the schedule work, but we were always understaffed and he’d make you feel guilty for taking days off. That’s closer to the norm these days in the US than the 6 weeks of vacation time that is the norm in Europe. Large companies are required to give you 2 weeks plus a handful of sick days, and that’s it.
I really wish that Americans didn’t lump an entire continent with their own laws, cultures, and customs together.
Yes, the American attitude towards work sucks, but comparing Germany and the UK is like comparing New York with Kingston…
I’m gonna guess the meme was made by a European, to make fun of us Murrikans.
is like comparing New York with Kingston
EU has delegated (?) acts mandating that every EU country transfers to local laws the “right to disconnect” with which every company needs to have a policy that prohibits them contacting their employees outside of work time (which ofc includes vacations) … except “in emergencies” (along with communication channel sequence) … which arent super defined but should be along the lines of preventing/avoiding damages in extraordinary situations.
And that employees can’t be punished for ignoring any communication outside of work hours in any case.
There is a delegated act on the way that may find its way into law, but it’s likely that it won’t get that far (like many EU laws) because they move a lot slower than local laws, and because not all countries agree (or agree to a larger extent). It’s also worth noting that the EU != Europe, so there will be several counties in and out that will have their own vested interests in passing/not passing this as law. Ireland is a big one, as they heavily rely on tech investment, whereas France will likely go above and beyond anything the EU will cook up. I believe Belgium in particular beat everyone to this.
No, delegated acts are law for all EU members directly, directives have to be implemented via local laws.
But EU bureaucracy works, it’s a process but it does the job, they work via public consolations with member states & private sectors (companies) on legislations, and it really shows (in amendments too - especially once in force practices show which areas need more considerations & which simplifications).
And the right to disconnect is what most countries had as some base legacy laws, but now it’s setup up in a common way.
via iuslaboris.com/laws-on-the-right-to-disconnect … seems updated, tho iirc Canada also has at least some form of this … eastern Europe is just way behind in lawmaking generally (it’s still work even if they don’t have opposition), not sure what’s with Germany.
I’m just one of countless victims of the launch of the cell phone in North American IT. This shit kills. Figurative and literally.
24 hour reachability is 24 hour work. Shit accumulates and all of a sudden you haven’t actually relaxed in 20 years and you get phantom phone vibrations.
Funny enough I wear a pager for 1/4 of my life now. But it’s totally fine because there’s on then off. Work days and not work days. Day and night. Work and life.
Yup, worked enterprise IT for a global call center, and I was expected to answer my phone at a moments notice. Even if I was in bed with my wife, I was expected to stop and answer. All while being paid 50% below market. Since the overseas IT teams were worthless, getting called at 2am was common.
I was on call 24/7 for years. It’s been a long time since I had to deal with that (with a slide into a related career rather than changing careers) but I will never forget how terrible it was. I wasted what should have been my best years on that shit.
Now there’s only one person at work who has my number. He doesn’t call except for the one time I forgot to put my day off on the calendar. My work apps are paused at 5pm and all weekend. I only get alerts on my computer. However, I still twitch sometimes when my phone goes off after hours because it was a learned and deeply reinforced response for so many years.
European cell phone adoption was about on par with the US. I don’t think the technology is completely to blame here.
Cell phones and wall street yuppies became a thing at relatively the same time, yuppy culture really threw work life balance out the window and changed US working culture. There was no European equivalent to the wall street yuppy.
Oh yeah we’ve got them. They’re called “young managers”.
I went on a business trip a couple weeks ago with 3 of them. Those mfers were working on the planes and in the airports, went straight to the remote office when we landed, worked until 7pm, and started their next day at 7:30am. The grind is real.
I’m a senior software developer. If I can’t fit everything I need to do in a regular work day, I either suck at my job or the job is managed by idiots.
I work as an electrician on a construction site, and one of the greatest perks of the job is that you leave it there. It’s not like you can work from home in the first place, and we don’t really have shifts. Everybody comes in at the same time and leaves at the same time, so you don’t have to bother with covering extra shifts.
That isn’t to say it’s a dream job of course, the perks are great, but the work itself will probably bite me in the ass later with health issues…
The biggest reason to knock off working on vacation or after hours is that it creates a false expectation on the the workload. If you can’t get it done during regular office hours, than that means your company needs more people or a process improvement.
If you are working these extra untracked hours, you are the problem. If you get rewarded for doing so, your company is toxic and will only expect more as you move up the ladder.
I told a manager that, if you work 60h a week, you don’t know how to do you job. I slipped in that hourly payment isn’t terrible either if you do so.
He never bothered to try to make me work “for free” ever again.
No one on there deathbed will say they wish they worked harder. They will regret all the other moments they missed because they were working too much.
Time is more than just money, it’s your life.
I’ll put my hand up and say that I will wish I worked harder. My job is simple and i work remote. If I was willing to work harder, I could either move up in the company or move to a competitor. That would get me more money. More money would help me to pay rent on a nicer place to live. And then with the new nice place, I could get the rest of my head in order. So I will absolutely go to my doom wishing I worked harder, put in more hours, and showed a high degree of dedication.
I’ve worked at plenty of places which have made it fairly clear that the only way you can progress up in the company is to work out of hours. Extremely illegal business practice but they did it anyway.
One of the places was a law firm, because lawyers always think that they know how to break the law.
I felt even more like I was getting a raw deal when I realized the Germans and French were largely taking the entire month of August off.
I never take august because of this. EVERYONE and their mothers take august so everything is crowded and extremely overpriced.
I prefer getting some time in september and then spread the rest of my days the rest of the year.
Best to spend vacation in April and October. You want 6 months(or less) between your vacations to not hate your job. Summer is already good, winter also has it’s charms and you don’t want to contrast to much. But it’s not the season in my favourite resort! Well it’s a bad resort, go to Asia, spend a bit more on the tickets, much less on the ground, enjoy foreign culture. Doesn’t work for Asians though.
They what? Why didn’t any of my fellow Germans tell me?
Most jobs, at least the better paying ones, include 6 weeks of vacation. However, you can use them all at once.
It feels unreal for me to know that some countries have not even 3 weeks of holidays. How can you relax and stop thinking about your job? People aren’t exhausted?
Germans and French vacations are a lot more spread out than this.
In Italy instead it’s pretty much mandatory to take vacations in August, as whole industry sectors close down for 2-3 weeks. Factories go on a hiatus beginning from the second week of August to the start of the fourth week, or the end of the month.
Sometimes it’s surreal when you stay home in August and the whole city is deserted, no one to be seen, no traffic, no noise, just scorching heat. At least in the North, in the south it’s the exact opposite, with everyone going to the sea and the population doubling overnight at the start of August.
June and July instead are pretty much taken by the Germans, especially around the lakes of the North.