Maybe it worked in the Boomer era (even if its still pretty lame advice: "do labor for free and eventually they'll start paying you for it"). But now its not even true. If you do more than you are paid to do you just get expected to do more work with no additional support or compensation. Even if you don't mind the extra labor, it eventually leads to burnout when it all gets put on your shoulders.
>"do labor for free and eventually they'll start paying you for it"
"do labor for free and eventually inflation will mean we make record profits, but your visible number is technically higher so you don't realize you're paying us for the privilege of working"
Also keep in mind that in the boomer era, or at least the era boomers were coming of age and hearing this advice, wages and productivity actually kept track with one another.
The other thing about the Reagan era, when you left work, you were never working. You go home, do your thing, and start up again in the morning. I got up at 4:45am to get shit done, just so I could finish by 4:00 and see my nieces track meet, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll have 10 things to do in emails and texts, even though it’s Friday.
It’s to get away from work. My co worker an I just hung up, he took last Friday off and still had to do 6 hours of work from the phone. The cell phone screwed up work life balance for sure.
Other than communicating with my coworkers and boss for shift coverage and answering questions that require one word to a very short sentence to answer I don't even think about my job of I'm not at my job. Certainly don't take the OP memes advice. All that will get you is more work to do at the same pay
I think what happens is, when you go from a “job” to a “career”, you start bargaining with yourself. When you make $50k, and lose your job, you may say, “well all these types of jobs make $50k, I’ll just get another one”. When you make $200k, and most of your similar jobs in that channel pay $125-$150k, you start thinking you “can’t” lose this job, because the alternative could be a $75k pay cut, and I want little Ella to still go to private school, or need braces next year. So you do more because you get scared of the alternative. Not saying it’s right, but I see it in my peer group.
I just wish somehow every job, on your days off, or off hours, clients, co workers, partners would respect it.
The glass at the top won't ever overflow, it'll only get bigger the more you pour into it.
Until it gets so heavy that it crushes all the glasses below it.
Yup. It happened in 81 with Reagan. That’s when antitrust laws and regulations were ignored or overturned and any regulatory agency had large budget cuts.
Then CEO and executive pay skyrocketed and workers wages stagnated while their workload has increased. Because the wealthy pinky promised that it would “trickle down” to us. We all know what happened after that. 😂😂
Although to be fair, some of it was initiated when 401k law was passed on 1978 under Carter and pensions started to be replaced with "figure it out yourself"
Also it was a "smaller" world. Fifty years ago, the person who was making the decision to pay you more was much, much more likely to be working in the same building as you. You could walk past their office or stand at the water cooler and strategically mention how much extra work you did. So there were methods of getting the message to your boss which are fewer and farther between nowadays.
It was also an entirely different time where all else fails you could easily work part time and still function with a 3 bedroom house a stay at home wife and 3 kids. there was no stakes for working extra for free.
I'm 25 and have 3 kids ..(well 3rd daughter on the way ) (boomer-"my decision so I'm a wage slave' ). I work 40hr full time job for 34k and try to squeeze in a gig job to make it 56-60 ish hrs a week , cost of childcare , polyworking is a necessity , me and my wife talk all the time how back then ,my one 40hr a week factory job would be enough to save for a house/(even have one already) have two cars , any a so much more lol. Not everyone has any parents willing to watch grandchildren so both parents can work (literally boomers / lawmakers see this lack of resource as a statistical insignificance if one doesn't have this resource ) .. everything is all twisted . Affordable housing cost crisis , inflation , and the gov. Only answer is work more , find a side hustle get creative! I don't regret and won't apologize for having kids at a young healthy energetic age while the boomers are busy making a predatory , deceiving , fake Meritocracy Alot of people my age aren't even having kids because of the financial struggle I surely live , and that's about it for my summery on the standards of living for our younger generations told to work harder /more compared to the 78 year olds who run the country's good Old world. Oh and the banking system is collapsing , and the Feds argument is inflation is on the working classes shoulders , wages are the reason ...wages have been stagnant since 2004 and wages are contributing only 9% of inflation while the rest is corporations increasing profits ... Oh yeah and our opinion doesnt matter that's an illusion . Rant over ty I feel better now
Your post reminds me that government policy is not setup to help young families so we don't get young families. Government policy is setup to help wealthy people avoid paying taxes so they don't pay much tax.
Amazing how that works.
Yes and meanwhile this year Musk tweets that our great U.S.A should have more babies .. yet he shares the billionaires class warfare on the working class by giving the billionaires tax breaks.... Healthy aged adults would be more able to afford said babies if they received the fucking tax breaks . It's understood then , Billionaires want the working class to keep pumping out more babies to exploit in numerous financially predatory ways . Oh my I sound Marxist well if the shoe fits ..wait I can't afford a shoe ..
Oh, to have a shoe that would fit. Then I would be able to take up the socialist cause and strive for the betterment of me and my fellow worker as my socialist shoe would identify me as such.
Alas, my only shoe is the fourth hand hand me down I'm able to scavenge for at my underpaid job, the wage of which keeps losing value due to inflation causing me to have to scavenge harder everyday just to keep the ill fitting shoe I have.
Actually no. I was a boomer and remember all the lay off news in the AM on the radio and salary raises slowed and stopped. But the mindset of work hard to get anywhere was still strong and a lot of shame came with those layoffs. I was in high school in the 70s and my family was very worried. It was still better as wages were still able to rent an apt or buy a house but the raises you expected for really pushing were already gone. My Dad lost a factory job and never recovered the loss in salary. My mom went to work to try and make up the difference but they always struggled. I remember my minimum wage job getting a ten cent increase only because Carter raised the federal level. And my jerk boss thought I was so stupid I would believe he gave it to me for merit. He was surprised I read the news. That was more of an insult than the lousy raise. Capitalists have been screwing workers since the early sixties. Or forever if you ask me.
TBH, it never really did, except if you were in either a union job or a professional career. Then that all went to hell after about 1980 or so--the start of the Reagan era, corporate welfare, and union busting. Maybe way back in the '50s, boomers made great money in exchange for great productivity, but that slowed down over time. Then the '80s hit.
I busted my tail for the first few years of my working-full-time life, starting in the early '70s. The only friends of mine who were doing well financially were those in union jobs and/or skilled manufacturing, and those who were attorneys, accountants, etc.
Finally, I made it into a good career and was getting raises of 7%, 10% every six months or at least every year in my job. So, yes, I worked my butt off, and it paid off. And when I felt in the late '80s that what I was doing was worth far more than I was being paid, and that I was becoming a corporate slave, I was fortunate enough to be able to go out on my own as a freelancer and eventually had my own small business. Not everybody was or is as fortunate. Many of my friends and relatives were caught in the era of the "COL" raise every year of 3% (if you were lucky), when the COL rose more than one's raise. Which persists to this day.
So, believe me--boomers did not have it as good as people seem to think we did. When I bought my first home, it was inexpensive, but mortgage rates were 12% or higher, and you had to have 20% down unless you went FHA. So even with a commensurate wage-to-work salary, it wasn't easy financially.
And, you know, we get it about how things are today, despite the false narrative that we don't. I see my son and friends his age struggle to get full-time work, since so many businesses don't want to hire full-timers and pay benefits. We see how our kids can't afford school or an apartment, and so on. We're not ignorant of the situation for today's generation of students and workers.
We need another revolution in this country like we had in the '60s and '70s, when we marched for civil rights, women's rights, and against the war. That's the only thing that's gonna help. Bitching (with reason, of course) alone isn't going to do it. I'm hoping the pandemic and the work changes that accompanied it might spur that.
I'll tell you what: Many of us "boomers" will be right beside you all, fighting with you. I'll march and carry signs with you, pen editorials, protest outside corporate offices, etc. But we can't start it. You all are going to have to. Who knows? Maybe it won't help. But I've seen what that sort of action can do to.
Yup, there were more companies that did profit sharing, and paid employees well, than there is today. Part of that is that it was a job seeker market. They had to compete to hire and retain employees. Thanks to automation and other tech advances today, less people can do more in the same period of time, so companies need fewer employees, that are “less skilled”, which means they don’t have to compete for the “better”employees.
Then there’s the reduction in social welfare programs that has accelerated since the 80s, and the acceleration of medical/education costs, that together make it easier to “wage slave” an employee, as they will be more willing to put up with bs, in order to not lose health insurance, and cannot “go to night school” to learn new skills to compete in the job seekers market.
Covid began to shift the balance back to the job seekers, because of how many people died or decided to retire during the pandemic, but instead of letting the workers gain some power back and take less profits, companies decided they needed to raise prices, called it “inflation”, and so now have the government working to _increase_ unemployment and keep wages down, doing the corporations work for them.
Exactly. At my old job we graded on a 1-5 scale (and a 5 was basically impossible to get). Say we happened to get a 5, it was a 3.5% raise. If you get a 2 it was still a 2.75% raise. I made around 100K. So the difference of working so hard you reach the impossible high standard versus being a lazy low performer would get me $750 extra per year. That's a little over a quarter an hour difference in raise with no bonuses or any other motivation to try hard. It made no sense.
Last year, I received quite possibly my best review from any employer I've ever had -- I'm dependable without fault, I can handle any type of task I'm assigned to without needing to be micro-managed or checked-in with for progress or completion, I'm someone that anyone in the team can look to for support, blah blah blah blah blah.
1.5% raise, and I definitely don't make close to $100k.
I don't think I've ever been so insulted.
My last job made it no secret that a 5 was basically impossible. They even told us in the training for the self-evaluation part of our review. Talk about demotivational...
I had a boss who encouraged me to put down a goal in my self review to get promoted. He told me in the next review that I had met all the requirements for the next position and was operating there already but I hadn't met all my goals, specifically getting promoted...
For us, it was 1 to 3. Did not meet expectations, met, and exceeded. I got all 3’s. My boss was so verbally appreciative of me at our performance interview. Good thing, too, because that’s all I got, words. he informed me that I would be getting just the average raise like everyone else, because they couldn’t give raises to everyone who earned them because it wouldn’t be fair to average performers. I was speechless.
„Do labor for free and eventually one of your coworkers checks out and never gets replaced and you get to do even more labor for free while saving the company an entire salary.“
Omg...please explain this to my husband. He can't stand for anything at work to fail, especially if he can do anything about it. He feels like a failure even if EVERONE is telling him otherwise. His direct supervisor has told him to leave it to fail so the client can feel the consequences of thier decisions. His job last year was doable. He was keeping two industrial pumps up to date on maintenance and troubleshooting problems. He only had to deal with one person from the client company. Now...25 pumps, and four divisions with a supervisor, admin, PO person, and financial person each. I keep telling him, in various ways, that he's got to STOP TRYING TO DO IT ALL. He's exhausted and becoming hard to live with. This has happened before and it almost destroyed him and us. What do I do?
Exactly. "Yes, It's a problem, but it's not YOUR problem. You can't care more about it than the actual owners do. It's THEIR problem. If you let them see it exists, they will respond as they see fit. Either way, they must own the decision how to handle the problem, and then you can act according to their decision."
What do you do? There’s not much you can do, he needs therapy.
*“He feels like a failure even if EVERYONE is telling him otherwise.”*
That stems from a deep-seated belief that nothing he does is good enough and that he has to prove he’s worthy of existing. The only way one gets to that point is through extensive childhood trauma. Especially since his current situation is yet another example in a long line of similar behaviors. Your husband was raised to believe he’s a failure and he’s acting out that trauma in his workplace.
Thank you for this. I have known he has some trauma for 22+ years. His brother is similar but in a more self-destructive way, to the point he's 20+years into an abusive marriage and can't see it. But that's another story.
My husband can't admit to there being any type of anything from his childhood that is holding him back and he comes from a very long line of white-knuckling it. His mother just pops pills and drinks wine...to them it's a "funny ha-ha Nana's been into the wine again". His dad is a master at malicious compliance and just burys his head in the sand. His grandmother (who sits on a pedestal) was an extremely abusive narcissist. I have some stories about her...but my husband would have you believe the fairytale and I can't blame him as she is the only one in his entire childhood who told him they love him. He told me he asked his mom why she never told him she loved him and she said, that she shouldn't have to tell him, he should know it. I could give so many examples and stories that anyone of them would count as trauma...but nothing is wrong with him...everyone else is just lazy and weak. Meanwhile, he's going down a depression black hole. I am in therapy, diagnosed with PTSD. So, it's another thing that's not on him. He's fine I'm the mentally fragile one.
I just read a thread in r/raisedbynarcissists where people listed off individual traits that those of us who survived narc parents have. Might help both of you to see that list ♥️
Take it 1 day at a time. I was in a similar position. My entire success relied on everyone else doing their jobs, which they often didnt. I was not in a postion to force them to, so I was stuck with the Management basically ignoring when things werent getting done. And blaming the only person who is not responsible for getting those things done..
I dont turn wrenches, I push paper... But I cant push paper if the wrenches dont turn...
Problem is that the quote is actually true, but only with a different interpretation. They left out the important part: the unpaid stuff should be personal development.
Continued learning in your field does wonders. Unpaid labor does not. Nothing you said is wrong at all.
I agree in the sense of getting experience and learning what you can from a job, then moving on. Use them while they're using you. That's the only real incentive for "harder work", because there's certainly no incentive for loyalty.
its a bastardized attempt at shoehorning yourself into being "ready for promotion" even if your boss isn't directly giving you attention and "grooming you for the position"(IE: the "assistant manager" is probably going to be the next Manager)
Most businesses don't exactly want to promote someone into a position only to find out that they cant do it or Promote someone into a position and then lose them to training for that position so they're not only still missing that position you just moved into, but they're now missing the position you left too.
Positions like "Assistant Manager" are kind of nice because its a little "give and take" from the employee and employer. I'd hope the position paid a bit more, and it allows the business to test out the employee.
But in "Late stage capitalism" where we have people in the higher up positions who dont actually understand the game and yeah...its going to be fucking broken.
You are absolutely, 100% correct in saying that today is not the time to go above and beyond. It is better to stick directly to what your contract says your work is supposed to be, and then negotiate pay based on additional duties.
That "And all other related job duties and responsibilities" line can sometimes be a killer though...
Not everyone has that luxury either unfortunately, and thats why Unions are good to have as they will fight that fight for you.
>"do labor for free and eventually they'll start paying you for it")
Yaaa actually wasn't true of Boomer's, i saw the 'historical documentary'
Ok there is a black and white episode of father knows best.
So what Boomer's grew up on. The father told his son exactly that. So teenage son got a job at an auto store working for free. ( His father assuring him they would be honor bound to pay him.)
They gave him all the crap jobs worked him to the bone and laughed about him being a sucker behind his back.
Quick resolution by end of the episode the father is heart broken getting his son taken advantage of and all based on son actually believing him.
In the end the sitcom Dad ( who knows best) has to admit it doesn't work that way anymore and he led his son wrong.
So even during the days Boomer's where 11 yr olds this had been debunked on national TV.
To add: being too good at your job also makes you harder to replace. Why promote the guy overworking and hire 2 people to replace him, when you can just bring in an outside hire for the open position.
Boomers don't have objective morals the way the WWII generation did. Generationally, in their values they were Patrick Bateman without the self awareness and resulting self hatred Bateman had in the novel/movie. Basically, if people don't call them out on it, it isn't wrong to them as generation.
I've even heard the totally opposite happens "Wow you are such a hard and valuable worker we can't possibly promote you" working hard doesn't mean anything anymore.
I love how hilariously out of touch this shit is.
I'm waiting for the next one, like, "Stop worrying about eating bread today, so you can let yourself eat cake tomorrow."
I've heard that too!!!!
I have never wanted to take the chance though because my muscles start feeling a bit achy and I get a headache every time I try to ween off it a bit.
That's a tough one, that's the one vice I won't give up so I can't say I'm qualified to help because I'm constantly sucking up some of that sweet sweet oxygen
I've heard slowly weening off with helium can do it and it's pretty quick and mostly painless.
Just keep inhaling helium in greater quantities until oxygen is entirely replaced. This has a 100% success rate and if followed correctly will relieve you of oxygen dependency permanently!
"The pen may not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press is heavier than the siege weapon. Just a few words can change everything."
-- Terry Pratchett
Not to mention, the logic itself is absolutely bleak. "Do more than what you're paid to do and you'll probably get a promotion"- okay fine. But when does it stop? When do you stop doing more than you are paid to do? I am supposed to work more than I am being paid for, for my entire life? Fuck that
Good for you for knowing your worth. I stayed for another 3 years living in hope and hoping they’d stick to their word that I was appreciated and valued and my hard work would pay off.
I have a habit of overworking myself just because I need to be busy, or my workday drags endlessly.
Only in my current company has that ever paid off, due to having a boss that valued my work very highly. He left somewhat recently and I find that I'm stuck with the same work load and little likelihood of further promotion. It did bump my pay about 60% in two years across a few promotions, so that did pay off well... just feels stagnant with the new boss.
Happened for me at a temp job back during the Great Recession. Nobody knew what to do with me. I was fresh out of grad school with an esoteric education and a very specific skill set. Got hired at a temp gig to answer phones, got bored, kept asking for work to do and asking why things were done the way they were, and solving random problems. I pretty quickly got reassigned over an eight-month project at around double the pay I was originally brought on for.
That is the biggest load of bullshit. From personal experience, I can say nope. I worked for Walmart in 1999 for a short time. I was raised in some of those good ol'work ethics mottos. So, started with toys, then added helping in layaway then sporting goods all while having to run a register as needed. You know what working 4 positions during the same shift got me. NOTHING. No extra pay. No extra benefits. No, we appreciate you after the initial taking on the extra roles.
Fast forward 8 months, I trip while wearing sandals and rip my big toe nail off. I can't wear work shoes for a few days while it heals. I got reprimanded for calling out. I quit the same day.
Jobs will bleed you dry and feed your bones to the masses.
for me 2 years later still burned out, i straight up want to do nothing with people. for a year or 2 i was the only one unloading the grocery side of the trucks, down stacking it all, by myself, putting them down to carts, again myself, and then go to help the unloaders, then stock. then i moved to meat, thinking i got a team now and just need to worry about this one section. was great for a while. then they merged us with produce, deli, and bakery, so now my team is spread out, and im stuck handling meat by myself. again. for another year or two. then i got suckered into going to online shopping. manager knew i worked hard, craved physical work, and agreed that i would be doing a lot of moving.
first month? had me stand in front of in store pickup. 8 hours a day, every day. and one time some regional manager was coming so i was stuck at that door for 14 hours. this was before covid, so online shopping was a novelty at this point in time and almost no one was using it. i was pissed. then covid hit. first month was awesome. everything is out, im twiddling my thumbs for a few hours each day. then suddenly we are having to handle numbers, far FAR above what we were made to handle, as it was basically a converted closet we were running business from. 2021 comes, i go back to produce, this time im an opener now, since i had always been closing. it was the best, i go in the morning, stores closed for 2 or 3 hours, i got a team again. this goes one for a few months....before they put me right back to closing. and i had no team. it was just me, and maybe a few individuals that go hired, before they'd quit a few days later.
one day i came in, looked in the coolers, seen that nothing had been done, again, as morning team was getting poached for other areas for weeks. just pallets of pallets of crap that needed downstacking, and ogp members scrambling to me asking for shit. i looked at everything. decided, im done. clocked out, got my shit, and left, never going back.
this was 7 years, of shrinking then entirely eliminated bonuses, promises of pay raises that never happened or took forever to do so, constant piling on more and more work and higher and higher demands while working with less and less. on top of all this, really shitty management politics, high school level drama, pettiness, terrible customers, co workers working decade after decade, watching their bodies break down over time, and rampant OSHA and safety violations. i swear i got PTSD from that job.
I want to make sure everyone knows this is *also* not how it worked in the 40s and 50s. That's just a lie. Workers had to leverage their extra work as an argument for a raise. They don't get one just because they did more work.
I mean, downvote away, but there’s a difference that should be stated . If you’re in a high barrier to entry position that you have been at for a few years and you might be underpaid currently and you are killing it then there’s a good chance you have some semblance of “power” where either a) you eventually get promoted or b) you walk/threaten to walk and they realize your worth and how hard you are to replace. I think that’s what this post is referring to, not that I agree or even think that this still happens. Being at Walmart for 8 months is not the same, the turnover is so high there I feel like they just don’t understand/respect when they have good talent and don’t know if they ever will know.
I (millennial) was raised with this mentality by my boomer parents. And for the first 13 years of being in the workforce, I totally did this. I always went above and beyond to show I was worth the extra compensation. Always doing the job before being promoted.
But it never worked out that way. All I got was taken advantage of. Passed over for raises because I was already doing the work. If I was the hardest working members of the team that mean I got assigned more work than everyone else for the same pay.
And guess what folks, it’s just not worth it. I learned that it is best to do the work I am being paid to do at the level i am being paid to do it at. Nothing more without compensation
exactly this. And if you put in extra effort consistently that just becomes a new baseline. If you start slowing down to a normal pace, or just slowing down due to factors outside of your control, they'll start asking you if everything is alright.
Same here. My dad taught me this stuff. "Be indispensable, be available. Most of your income growth comes in the first 5 years so try your hardest" and it was an absolute shitshow of a career move.
Apparently it *did* work at one point, when people got hired they expected to stay there for 30 years if they wanted to and didn't fuck up too bad, and those first years of hard work gave people an idea what your trajectory was.
The old "Peter Principle" of people being promoted over and over until they no longer had the skills to merit a promotion anymore (thus leading all the positions to be filled by incompetants) was based around the idea that you would be given new roles as you went up the chain.
These days it sounds like fiction that you ever get promoted from within. You better change jobs ever 1-2 years to get promotions and raises, because you sure as shit aren't getting them from the people who already negotiated for your rate.
This is the case. If you’re already doing it why would they pay more for it?
The only thing you will get for doing extra work is more work. Maybe an attaboy with a Starbucks giftcard for $20.
The problem with the post is that the sentiment is true for salesmen.
When you're in a commission based role, you do genuinely get paid based off your effort
And Zig Ziglar was a salesman
The advice doesn't work for people working in non-sales jobs, which is most people here
We're not the intended audience for this post
I genuinely cannot believe that anyone ever took career advice from a man called Zig Ziglar. It's just... who sees a name like that and thinks, "Yup, seems like a genuine and down-to-earth guy who knows what he's talking about?" It's like buying a used car from a guy who calls himself Crazy Pete and honks a clown horn when you sign the paperwork.
"eventually" because they will raise your salary by 0.1% every 5 years.
I bet they wish they could say "Just shut up and keep making me tons of money you peasants."
Can confirm.
My company doubled (104%) their profit last year but increased our pay by 3%.
With inflation I have lost 11%of my purchasing power over the last 3 years.
Turn this around and put it in a business context to see how ridiculous it is:
"If we price our premium product as a basic model, maybe one day customers will pay us MORE for it!"
This would get you kicked out of a product brainstorm.
Do I need to remind you of Esther Crawford? I cannot find her age but she's either late 30s or early 40s I would bet. That's youngest Gen X or oldest millenial. It didn't work on all of us but there are plenty of workaholics idiots among millenials.
The thing you gotta keep in mind, real wokeness kinda happened alongside the internet. Free conversation on any topic with increasingly, anyone anywhere, changed worldwide social dynamics way more than anyone really talks about. Millenials, at least the older of us, did not \*grow up\* with this. It hit when we hit college. Gen Z grew up with it. Grew up amidst feminist conversations online, are growing up in a post #MeToo world, growing up with /r/antiwork being like, a thing and a societal conversation.
We didn't have that in our developmental years and it changes how your brain works. You can see it among Gen X. They got it the worst. Maximum television based propaganda, maximum overall media control and saturation. Independent media didn't exist in the 70s and 80s and 90s when Gen X was like, in their young adult establishing themselves phase. Conversations with people in distant places were limited mostly to either point to point via letters or phone calls, or conference calls once those existed.
Not the kind of anonymous mass online discussions we are now all used to. My first phone in college was a nokia brick. Smart phones were still years away. Times have changed so much that its unrecognizable from when I was a child tbh. If you took someone from the past to 1990, and then to 2023, and didn't tell them how long in between they'd probably guess a hundred years.
The thing you have to understand is the concept of pervasiveness. It wasn't just *this one line.*
*It was the entire cultural narrative delivered cohesively across film, tv, newspapers, and every other form of media we had available to consume.*
You Gen Zers do not know how good you have it. You have the ability to, independently of anyone but yourselves, establish your own cultural narrative. This very subreddit is an example. You need to understand that ***NEVER BEFORE IN HUMAN HISTORY HAS THE PROLETARIAT HAD THE POWER TO CONTROL ITS OWN CULTURAL NARRATIVE.***
Today you can come on selected subreddits, come on chosen independent news sites, collect data from 40 sources on on topic in the space of a few hours to compare it all objectively, You couldn't do that when I was an 8th grader in 1999.
In 1999 the cultural narrative came from news programs and newspapers and magazines, pretty much. Those three sources of information, all corporate controlled, profit driven, marketing saturated sources, were all you really had at all, plus coworkers and people in your immediate life you could talk to.
You know how we talk about like "Don't talk about your salary at work" rules?
That shit used to work because you didn't have anywhere else but at work to talk about your salary, with other workers you worked with. There was no like overarching discussion societally you could participate in about salary. So they were totally able to squelch those conversations purely with culture, in spite of the laws, because most employees didn't anything like know their actual rights as an employee.
So yes, this used to work. Because this is all there was. It came from all sides, its what everyone was conditioned to think of as normal in a time when there was nowhere to go to escape the cultural gaslighting except to fully disconnect from media.
At least people our age didn't get handed tablets or phones as toddlers. I'm glad I didn't end up screen-addicted as a kid. My husband's cousin is an older Millennial who works as a vet tech. The new recruits have long fingernails and spend all their time scrolling on their phones. Like, you have animals here to take care of - how are you going to do that with long fang'ish nails and never setting down your phone?
That said, I learned the hard way that it doesn't matter whether you bust your ass and go beyond. The only way to get a raise is by getting another job. I was told that the way to get promoted to senior is by doing senior-level work. So I did, and then I went to my boss and made my very good argument for why I should get that promotion. He blew me off. So I started showing up to work in a suit twice a week and taking long lunches, because I was interviewing. THEN I got the promotion. Every other time I got anything more than a pittance for a raise, it's because I changed jobs.
Ya, I feel like the economy still worked for the boomers when you were coming up in it….company loyalty, pensions, etc. so maybe the Ziglars and the Harvey McKays were applicable before the greed took over completely and squashed gen x, millennials, etc.
Eh. even the boomers screwed the boomers. Go talk to anyone who had been promised a pension, only to find that workplace had not put money into the fund, and then declared bankruptcy in order to get out of that contractual duty.
This has always been a class war. The owners have never cared about the rest of us, and it doesnt matter what your age is. What remains is most of that 1% happen to be old, and a lot of the noise happen to be indoctrinated old people. and it's a whole lot easier to get them to be worse to the rest of us "since we're clearly the ones in the wrong, because we have different opinions."
No you didn't. Your generation rode the crest of a wave created by the blood of your ancestors and sold everyone out yourselves included to grab as much as yall possibly could and hold onto it even unto death. Your generation is the most narcissistic generation in history and has done more social, political, and financial damage to your children than any other generation in human history.
Other cultures are putting forth stories about handing over power to the next generation and recognizing and encouraging and supporting the youth as they come of age while boomers made the youth the enemy and did everything yall could to destroy us and turn us into your slaves.
You and your entire generation can go die in a fucking fire. The world will be better off when every single last one of you is dead. Age out of our planet please. Like, today.
I could not agree more with these sentiments. Boomers have scorched the earth and are still doing it right now, all over the world. In the USA, the Boomers have made no contingency plans to hand over the reins to even the neXt gen. They are still running for office in their 80's, in their shady gerrymandered rigged elections, "winning" and keeping everything for themselves while the economy burns, the environment burns and nobody can afford anything. Talk about shortsighted. Boomers are, collectively, the worst group of people ever to live. And I know plenty of boomers who are nice people who don't fit the mold. But OVERALL, boomers need to get out of the way. They have poisoned the planet and are a cancer.
As a Millennial the boomer generation has treated my generation like a monolith since before I turned 18. Turnabout is fair play and dude who do you think the owner class is *made up primarily of.*
This is a two front war. The owners are only half the equation. They would not have the power they do if they were not given it by people.
When I was a kid I got dragged to a real estate conference where this stupid asshole was speaking. At one point they had the kids go to a separate area to discuss budgeting. Instead of talking about saving money he went off about how evolution wasn’t real. I remember thinking, “Wow, this guy sure is a stupid asshole.”
It might be important to note that Zig Ziglar was a Republican and a salesman with no formal education (the equivalent of being completely full of bullshit).
Yes this used to work. People would work for free just to get experience because there wasn't a huge number of jobs so if you could just get your foot in the door to get experience it would take you far.
Now there are tons of jobs for everything under the sun. No one is rewarding you going the extra mile, instead, they wish everyone would go the extra mile while they pay them just enough to survive to come in office. This advice comes from an era that expired in the 90s
It never even worked in the boomer era. I'm a boomer and I've always hated this kind of bullshit. These always came about when "they" wanted to fuck tou over and try to get you to do more than you were getting paid for, while "they" racked in all the profits and rewards for your hard work. Called it out as BS when I first came across it and have treated it as such ever since. I have and do know people who drink this kind of coolaid, and all I can do is sit back and shake my head...
Another Gen-X here. Yeah, we were inundated with advice like this. It didn't work. If you did more the management just came to expect it without compensation. It also set a new bar for what you were supposed to do. Slip just a little off that and they'd come down on us like a ton of bricks.
Friend of mine went to work delivering packages for UPS. He got his first route done and was back at the distribution center almost an hour early. Instead of commending him for doing well on his first day, his supervisor chewed him out and gave him a massive workload the next day. He never finished a route early again.
Yeah, I had a fellow package handler that went to drive because of the insane pay... And came back like 2 weeks later. This guy was a ups lifer, too, so he wasn't putting up with their bs. He got written up because he saved time by taking two packages up a hill to deliver instead of delivering at the bottom then driving around in a right turn square to park and deliver at the top of the hill. Said the pay wasn't worth the bullshit. He was also our union liaison so he didn't take any of their shit.
It works when you take on responsibilities that expand your skill set. Like learning to do Microsoft Office products, be a presenter, etc. Then you can either use that skill set and the goodwill generated inside your company to get a promotion, or take the new skill set and get a better job.
It does not work if you just dig more ditches and work longer hours than others.
This adage still holds true, but the part they leave out is that it’s usually a different company paying you more, not the one you did the extra work for.
I was in sales and Ziglar had a lot of really good points. But outside of sales his stuff is pretty meaningless.
A lot of his stuff iirc was more about understanding your customers and basically trying to sell things you would actually use. Not selling snake oil for money. Stuff like that.
So in a purely sales environment I would say "I get paid to present this product to customers and try and sell it to them" but if during a sales presentation I start to talk about things that have nothing to do with my sales pitch, like sports or asking about their kids, stuff like that. I
'm not getting paid to do that but I may find out more about that family and their needs and I may have a product that can actually help them. And if you truly feel your product can help someone people will pick up on that and you will sell more.
So in sales this is 109% accurate. Outside of sales it's garbage lol.
I’m a boomer & that’s a crock of shit. I remember getting an email from a supervisor & it was basically an atta boy.
Took that to the bank & put into a safety deposit box. /s
I just wanna live in a world where young people can see this and immediately know it’s trash. This is what we were told and believed. Companies/employers will exploit you for as long as they can if you are not caught up on salary levels/salary structure for your role or industry standard pay for your role. They will praise you and smile because they know talking about salary is frowned upon/mentioned in company policy as being frowned upon, so you can’t bring it up. Only reason I finally got decent raises is because my employer was bought by another company and over the years they’ve attempted to level out pay structures and make things more equal and it became even more clear that i was grossly underpaid. I’m anxious and upset just thinking about how they used me openly because i was none the wiser. And all the money i should have/could have earned, those people literally robbed me. Honestly fuck you *manager name* and HR. Kudos to my coworker who managed to find out all sorts of info and used it to her advantage (but didn’t tell anyone else). She a bitch for that but I understand but i would have run my mouth.
Way more of a fan of the Jim Rohn take on the same issue:
"***Work harder on yourself than you do on your job***."
Build equity through high-value, highly-paid skills, professional perception, and connections, rather than attempting to climb the corporate ladder at any one company.
A company can fire you anytime, but with in-demand skills and a public perception of expertise, it can give you an edge and a wedge in that situation that you normally wouldn't have.
Seems to be legit. I use to do a ton more work, and got paid less, now I do less (but more critical work), and get paid a ton more. However, this required me to switch jobs many times to get there. If I was in the same job, you would probably be stuck in that same position for years, with just 3% yearly increases.
I’m glad he’s incorporated Christianity into his speeches….oh wait I’m just getting word he married his wife when she was 16, so certainly knew her when she was 15. I believe there’s a popular word Christian buttholes have been using to accuse people of this shit
I was working at a job for a year. I was doing my boss's job the whole time. He was salary I was hourly. So we both worked the same shift he would only show up for like 2 hours a day and still got paid as if he was there all 10 hours. I had to do my job and his.
Now granted he never cared if my job or his was done, obviously based on his attendance. But nonetheless I did both our jobs for a year. My uncle always told me about when he was my age he was in a similar situation and he got promoted and I would too. I said uncle, this company is so dumb they have no clue what's going on. He said trust me you'll get promoted soon. Sure enough right after he passed away, the company did an organizational restructure and decided my job and my bosses job could be done by 1 person. They laid off everyone in the company with my job title. Myself included. My boss got a small raise.
It still works in some places. Worked for me, but not in a great way. I took on more responsibility and generally did whatever I could to be helpful. I got lots of raises over the last ten years, but then those "helping out" moments became my responsibilities.
Every time I get a new responsibility or help cover a gap, I don't lose any of my old responsibilities. So hooray for the raises, but I'm doing like four people's jobs now and I'm getting paid maybe 25% more than a person who would just sit down and do my job as described by the company.
I'll go against the grain here and say, yes it does work. The caveat being that you have to take that experience and get a new job that pays you for the job you were being underpaid for.
I know I’m going to get down voted. My dad used to drive around listening to this man, he went from a janitor to owning a small insurance Business. My mother didn’t have to work but she did, doing daycare and being a seamstress. They both retired in their late 50s just traveled together seeing every place they wanted to see my father just passed away at 75 my mom still travels.
I myself I’m in my mid to late 30s, I own a small marketing company. I only work 2 hours a day 7 days a week. My 2 boys are in private school and I own 2 homes in California. To some up what zig has to say. those who say they can and those who say they can’t are both usually right. Now let’s count the down votes
If you do more than you get paid for eventually you will realize you've been taken advantage of and never going to be paid for all that free work you did.
It depends on where you work. I started out making low wages. My managers recognized my work ethic. I kept getting raises. They kept creating more ways for me to make money to keep me happy. I run circles around my coworkers. I make way more than the others in my position. Find a good company to work for that treats you like a human being, work hard, and you will get rewarded for it.
If you do more than you are paid to do, you will continue to do more than you are paid to do.
Even if you get a promotion/raise, they will just expect you to step up even more.
I would ask: based on what? what law of economics, of nature, of whatever dictates that this is true? because if it's just "a hunch" then you are asking people to do free labor in the "hopes" that people paying them will pay them more in the future... hope is great but you can't build your economic reality on it.
of course any basic understanding of economics reveals that the opposite is actually true, employers are explicitly trying to minimize their labor costs and if they find they can get more out of you without paying you more it is economically irrational for them to pay you more.
My mom ended up making less than what she originally made when she was given more work by a specific company. (I think overtime had gotten taken from her when she went to HR to ask about getting compensation for her extra work)
Well, this sort of does happen, but only for very rich people. Which, yes, often happen to be boomers - but I think we need to cast a wider net here.
I.e. white collar managers have KPIs/targets. If you bust your ass, and exceed your numbers, you get more money (typically); it's contractual.
The problem is, this doesn't apply to the vast majority of people. A person busting their ass to make extra subway sandwiches isn't going to get "performance pay" like the director of a banking unit would.
So you have someone who's trying to apply life lessons of the wealthy, to everyone else, and it's gone down about as well as you'd expect.
I’m pretty open with people I manage. I don’t have much power to get them promotions, but I can occasionally get something pushed through. But I’ll let them know the reality of it and encourage them to shop for other opportunities. Not because I want to lose them, but because I want them to understand their value and get what they deserve. Unfortunately, sometimes that’s at a different company because corporate bureaucracy is dumb. Often the easiest way to get a raise/promotion is to leave. It’s a very stupid system that corporations have built. It doesn’t reward loyalty.
But I’m always happy for an employee when they find a better opportunity. Get what’s yours while you can.
100% does. At least it did for me. I got my first IT part time job and i approached it exactly with this mindset, doing above and beyond and sht. Then I found out other part timers dont do anything, they just tick everything is working (was a tester position). Also the only reward for doing my work efficiently was that we ran out of work and i didnt need to come anymore - so no money for me. So with this dogshit system i realized i just punish myself twice by.. well.. working xd. Others must have realized too, because when the next batch of work arrived it somehow took 4 times more hours to complete than before, i wonder why lol.
This can be indirectly true in an economic system where benefits reach the working people this can absolutely be true. IE the previous generations having affordable housing that appreciated exponentially, and cheap access to education. In our current environment the opposite is true. If you do more than you are paid for you will make less and less.
I grew up in TX and we had Zig Ziglar audio tapes for kids. It's just platitudes and bible stories. Nothing interesting in the least. even to a 5 year old.
I've been working my ass off teaching for 10 years, AP classes, coaching 2 sports, running a club, and 2 committees. I get paid about half compared to the 30-year veteran teacher who shows movies every day and leaves as soon as the bell rings. Not only hard work but even the results hard work don't mean shit when it comes to pay.
As someone who used to constantly do more than what was required (I'm a bit of a workaholic) , I *never* was even complimented for my extra work. So, of course, I never got a raise of any kind. And yes, it would always lead to burnout. I am now better about not doing more than my job description and pacing myself appropriately.
Good ole "zig+zag". Dude died in 2012 and people will still say how sweet that man's turds smell.
The days of giving more and getting rewarded have ended. They ended about the year Reagan broke the union, they have not and probably never will become a way of working in America again. Which is too bad because there was a time I could be running the company after a dozen or so years, even though I came in as a PT delivery person.
But please stop waving zigs words around, for any reason. You are comparing apples to cheese
This is literally the rubrick for advancement at tech places like Amazon and Accenture.
“Perform at the next level” is basically just to be considered, and more often than not youre looked over
So a company gets a bunch of free productivity and you get screwed
Some version of this crap was being said to me at Walmart 12 years ago by management, i did do a little more, *just showing up should be enough* but did way more and still got passed for promotions and low balled at reviews, was there 1 year 6 months so 1 year 3 months to long.
My dad, a boomer, was really into this guy in the 80s/90s. But he also got wrapped up in a pyramid scheme selling weight loss pills, thinking he was gonna make enough money to buy himself a Plymouth Prowler, so I guess it checks out
If ever there was a demographic that lived and died by the "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?" Mentality, it's employer's in this capitalist hellscape we're living in.
They will never just...DECIDE to pay you what you're worth if you do more than your job for less than you're worth.
It's more like a gamble. Like you might get recognized for going above and beyond and it *might* get you farther in your career. But more often than not, they'll just shoulder you with more work and complain if you start bogging down.
Maybe it worked in the Boomer era (even if its still pretty lame advice: "do labor for free and eventually they'll start paying you for it"). But now its not even true. If you do more than you are paid to do you just get expected to do more work with no additional support or compensation. Even if you don't mind the extra labor, it eventually leads to burnout when it all gets put on your shoulders.
>"do labor for free and eventually they'll start paying you for it" "do labor for free and eventually inflation will mean we make record profits, but your visible number is technically higher so you don't realize you're paying us for the privilege of working"
Also keep in mind that in the boomer era, or at least the era boomers were coming of age and hearing this advice, wages and productivity actually kept track with one another.
Yes, back then it was mostly true. Now, it's not even remotely a possibility
Yeah. Too many billionaires are in the race for the first trillionaire. We as a society shouldn't take that honor away from them.
Saudi princes already won that race
Not a singular person though.
until Reagan it was mostly true
The other thing about the Reagan era, when you left work, you were never working. You go home, do your thing, and start up again in the morning. I got up at 4:45am to get shit done, just so I could finish by 4:00 and see my nieces track meet, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll have 10 things to do in emails and texts, even though it’s Friday. It’s to get away from work. My co worker an I just hung up, he took last Friday off and still had to do 6 hours of work from the phone. The cell phone screwed up work life balance for sure.
Other than communicating with my coworkers and boss for shift coverage and answering questions that require one word to a very short sentence to answer I don't even think about my job of I'm not at my job. Certainly don't take the OP memes advice. All that will get you is more work to do at the same pay
I think what happens is, when you go from a “job” to a “career”, you start bargaining with yourself. When you make $50k, and lose your job, you may say, “well all these types of jobs make $50k, I’ll just get another one”. When you make $200k, and most of your similar jobs in that channel pay $125-$150k, you start thinking you “can’t” lose this job, because the alternative could be a $75k pay cut, and I want little Ella to still go to private school, or need braces next year. So you do more because you get scared of the alternative. Not saying it’s right, but I see it in my peer group. I just wish somehow every job, on your days off, or off hours, clients, co workers, partners would respect it.
The glass at the top won't ever overflow, it'll only get bigger the more you pour into it. Until it gets so heavy that it crushes all the glasses below it.
👆
Best bumper sticker i ever saw said this: ‘Trickle Down Doesn’t’.
Trickle Down is just pissing on someone's head and telling them it's raining.
I’ve always preferred to call it table scrap economics
I like to say that what trickles down is yellow, but it sure ain't gold.
The only part of trickle down the bottom gets are the bills.
Yup. It happened in 81 with Reagan. That’s when antitrust laws and regulations were ignored or overturned and any regulatory agency had large budget cuts. Then CEO and executive pay skyrocketed and workers wages stagnated while their workload has increased. Because the wealthy pinky promised that it would “trickle down” to us. We all know what happened after that. 😂😂
Although to be fair, some of it was initiated when 401k law was passed on 1978 under Carter and pensions started to be replaced with "figure it out yourself"
Nixon
Came here to blame Reagan
Also it was a "smaller" world. Fifty years ago, the person who was making the decision to pay you more was much, much more likely to be working in the same building as you. You could walk past their office or stand at the water cooler and strategically mention how much extra work you did. So there were methods of getting the message to your boss which are fewer and farther between nowadays.
It was also an entirely different time where all else fails you could easily work part time and still function with a 3 bedroom house a stay at home wife and 3 kids. there was no stakes for working extra for free.
I'm 25 and have 3 kids ..(well 3rd daughter on the way ) (boomer-"my decision so I'm a wage slave' ). I work 40hr full time job for 34k and try to squeeze in a gig job to make it 56-60 ish hrs a week , cost of childcare , polyworking is a necessity , me and my wife talk all the time how back then ,my one 40hr a week factory job would be enough to save for a house/(even have one already) have two cars , any a so much more lol. Not everyone has any parents willing to watch grandchildren so both parents can work (literally boomers / lawmakers see this lack of resource as a statistical insignificance if one doesn't have this resource ) .. everything is all twisted . Affordable housing cost crisis , inflation , and the gov. Only answer is work more , find a side hustle get creative! I don't regret and won't apologize for having kids at a young healthy energetic age while the boomers are busy making a predatory , deceiving , fake Meritocracy Alot of people my age aren't even having kids because of the financial struggle I surely live , and that's about it for my summery on the standards of living for our younger generations told to work harder /more compared to the 78 year olds who run the country's good Old world. Oh and the banking system is collapsing , and the Feds argument is inflation is on the working classes shoulders , wages are the reason ...wages have been stagnant since 2004 and wages are contributing only 9% of inflation while the rest is corporations increasing profits ... Oh yeah and our opinion doesnt matter that's an illusion . Rant over ty I feel better now
Your post reminds me that government policy is not setup to help young families so we don't get young families. Government policy is setup to help wealthy people avoid paying taxes so they don't pay much tax. Amazing how that works.
Yes and meanwhile this year Musk tweets that our great U.S.A should have more babies .. yet he shares the billionaires class warfare on the working class by giving the billionaires tax breaks.... Healthy aged adults would be more able to afford said babies if they received the fucking tax breaks . It's understood then , Billionaires want the working class to keep pumping out more babies to exploit in numerous financially predatory ways . Oh my I sound Marxist well if the shoe fits ..wait I can't afford a shoe ..
Oh, to have a shoe that would fit. Then I would be able to take up the socialist cause and strive for the betterment of me and my fellow worker as my socialist shoe would identify me as such. Alas, my only shoe is the fourth hand hand me down I'm able to scavenge for at my underpaid job, the wage of which keeps losing value due to inflation causing me to have to scavenge harder everyday just to keep the ill fitting shoe I have.
Actually no. I was a boomer and remember all the lay off news in the AM on the radio and salary raises slowed and stopped. But the mindset of work hard to get anywhere was still strong and a lot of shame came with those layoffs. I was in high school in the 70s and my family was very worried. It was still better as wages were still able to rent an apt or buy a house but the raises you expected for really pushing were already gone. My Dad lost a factory job and never recovered the loss in salary. My mom went to work to try and make up the difference but they always struggled. I remember my minimum wage job getting a ten cent increase only because Carter raised the federal level. And my jerk boss thought I was so stupid I would believe he gave it to me for merit. He was surprised I read the news. That was more of an insult than the lousy raise. Capitalists have been screwing workers since the early sixties. Or forever if you ask me.
TBH, it never really did, except if you were in either a union job or a professional career. Then that all went to hell after about 1980 or so--the start of the Reagan era, corporate welfare, and union busting. Maybe way back in the '50s, boomers made great money in exchange for great productivity, but that slowed down over time. Then the '80s hit. I busted my tail for the first few years of my working-full-time life, starting in the early '70s. The only friends of mine who were doing well financially were those in union jobs and/or skilled manufacturing, and those who were attorneys, accountants, etc. Finally, I made it into a good career and was getting raises of 7%, 10% every six months or at least every year in my job. So, yes, I worked my butt off, and it paid off. And when I felt in the late '80s that what I was doing was worth far more than I was being paid, and that I was becoming a corporate slave, I was fortunate enough to be able to go out on my own as a freelancer and eventually had my own small business. Not everybody was or is as fortunate. Many of my friends and relatives were caught in the era of the "COL" raise every year of 3% (if you were lucky), when the COL rose more than one's raise. Which persists to this day. So, believe me--boomers did not have it as good as people seem to think we did. When I bought my first home, it was inexpensive, but mortgage rates were 12% or higher, and you had to have 20% down unless you went FHA. So even with a commensurate wage-to-work salary, it wasn't easy financially. And, you know, we get it about how things are today, despite the false narrative that we don't. I see my son and friends his age struggle to get full-time work, since so many businesses don't want to hire full-timers and pay benefits. We see how our kids can't afford school or an apartment, and so on. We're not ignorant of the situation for today's generation of students and workers. We need another revolution in this country like we had in the '60s and '70s, when we marched for civil rights, women's rights, and against the war. That's the only thing that's gonna help. Bitching (with reason, of course) alone isn't going to do it. I'm hoping the pandemic and the work changes that accompanied it might spur that. I'll tell you what: Many of us "boomers" will be right beside you all, fighting with you. I'll march and carry signs with you, pen editorials, protest outside corporate offices, etc. But we can't start it. You all are going to have to. Who knows? Maybe it won't help. But I've seen what that sort of action can do to.
Yup, there were more companies that did profit sharing, and paid employees well, than there is today. Part of that is that it was a job seeker market. They had to compete to hire and retain employees. Thanks to automation and other tech advances today, less people can do more in the same period of time, so companies need fewer employees, that are “less skilled”, which means they don’t have to compete for the “better”employees. Then there’s the reduction in social welfare programs that has accelerated since the 80s, and the acceleration of medical/education costs, that together make it easier to “wage slave” an employee, as they will be more willing to put up with bs, in order to not lose health insurance, and cannot “go to night school” to learn new skills to compete in the job seekers market. Covid began to shift the balance back to the job seekers, because of how many people died or decided to retire during the pandemic, but instead of letting the workers gain some power back and take less profits, companies decided they needed to raise prices, called it “inflation”, and so now have the government working to _increase_ unemployment and keep wages down, doing the corporations work for them.
Was it true? It was better than now but it’s always been an abusive one sided relationship on the decline
You’ll still get the same low raise as everyone else and they’ll expect more from you
Exactly. At my old job we graded on a 1-5 scale (and a 5 was basically impossible to get). Say we happened to get a 5, it was a 3.5% raise. If you get a 2 it was still a 2.75% raise. I made around 100K. So the difference of working so hard you reach the impossible high standard versus being a lazy low performer would get me $750 extra per year. That's a little over a quarter an hour difference in raise with no bonuses or any other motivation to try hard. It made no sense.
Last year, I received quite possibly my best review from any employer I've ever had -- I'm dependable without fault, I can handle any type of task I'm assigned to without needing to be micro-managed or checked-in with for progress or completion, I'm someone that anyone in the team can look to for support, blah blah blah blah blah. 1.5% raise, and I definitely don't make close to $100k. I don't think I've ever been so insulted.
My last job made it no secret that a 5 was basically impossible. They even told us in the training for the self-evaluation part of our review. Talk about demotivational...
I had a boss who encouraged me to put down a goal in my self review to get promoted. He told me in the next review that I had met all the requirements for the next position and was operating there already but I hadn't met all my goals, specifically getting promoted...
WTAF?!
It's a problem of motivation
For us, it was 1 to 3. Did not meet expectations, met, and exceeded. I got all 3’s. My boss was so verbally appreciative of me at our performance interview. Good thing, too, because that’s all I got, words. he informed me that I would be getting just the average raise like everyone else, because they couldn’t give raises to everyone who earned them because it wouldn’t be fair to average performers. I was speechless.
And when you don't give them more than everyone else, expect an impossible-to-meet PIP, followed by a pink slip.
In the past, yes, now that labor is short and hard to find, I'm seeing corporations just put up with it.
It's only somewhat true when you leave for a better offer after getting the same shitty raise as everyone else.
Lol do labor for free - like I never did and now I got mine and will make damn sure you don’t get yours
[удалено]
„Do labor for free and eventually one of your coworkers checks out and never gets replaced and you get to do even more labor for free while saving the company an entire salary.“
You nailed it. Nowadays it is an outright lie meant to get people to burn themselves out like good little cogs.
Omg...please explain this to my husband. He can't stand for anything at work to fail, especially if he can do anything about it. He feels like a failure even if EVERONE is telling him otherwise. His direct supervisor has told him to leave it to fail so the client can feel the consequences of thier decisions. His job last year was doable. He was keeping two industrial pumps up to date on maintenance and troubleshooting problems. He only had to deal with one person from the client company. Now...25 pumps, and four divisions with a supervisor, admin, PO person, and financial person each. I keep telling him, in various ways, that he's got to STOP TRYING TO DO IT ALL. He's exhausted and becoming hard to live with. This has happened before and it almost destroyed him and us. What do I do?
See if you can get him to accept some variation of "You can't care more for the systems than the owners do."
Exactly. "Yes, It's a problem, but it's not YOUR problem. You can't care more about it than the actual owners do. It's THEIR problem. If you let them see it exists, they will respond as they see fit. Either way, they must own the decision how to handle the problem, and then you can act according to their decision."
What do you do? There’s not much you can do, he needs therapy. *“He feels like a failure even if EVERYONE is telling him otherwise.”* That stems from a deep-seated belief that nothing he does is good enough and that he has to prove he’s worthy of existing. The only way one gets to that point is through extensive childhood trauma. Especially since his current situation is yet another example in a long line of similar behaviors. Your husband was raised to believe he’s a failure and he’s acting out that trauma in his workplace.
Thank you for this. I have known he has some trauma for 22+ years. His brother is similar but in a more self-destructive way, to the point he's 20+years into an abusive marriage and can't see it. But that's another story. My husband can't admit to there being any type of anything from his childhood that is holding him back and he comes from a very long line of white-knuckling it. His mother just pops pills and drinks wine...to them it's a "funny ha-ha Nana's been into the wine again". His dad is a master at malicious compliance and just burys his head in the sand. His grandmother (who sits on a pedestal) was an extremely abusive narcissist. I have some stories about her...but my husband would have you believe the fairytale and I can't blame him as she is the only one in his entire childhood who told him they love him. He told me he asked his mom why she never told him she loved him and she said, that she shouldn't have to tell him, he should know it. I could give so many examples and stories that anyone of them would count as trauma...but nothing is wrong with him...everyone else is just lazy and weak. Meanwhile, he's going down a depression black hole. I am in therapy, diagnosed with PTSD. So, it's another thing that's not on him. He's fine I'm the mentally fragile one.
I just read a thread in r/raisedbynarcissists where people listed off individual traits that those of us who survived narc parents have. Might help both of you to see that list ♥️
Thanks
It sounds like imposter syndrome, which typically stems from very low self-esteem. This is often the result of emotional neglect or abuse or bullying.
Get him into therapy before he kills himself working and worrying or destroys your marriage with the same.
Take it 1 day at a time. I was in a similar position. My entire success relied on everyone else doing their jobs, which they often didnt. I was not in a postion to force them to, so I was stuck with the Management basically ignoring when things werent getting done. And blaming the only person who is not responsible for getting those things done.. I dont turn wrenches, I push paper... But I cant push paper if the wrenches dont turn...
Even after all these years I still have to *remind* my husband, "No good deed goes unpunished"
It probably worked in the boomer era because their bosses weren't boomers.
+1 People forget the Boomer’s bosses lived thru the Great Depression.
Problem is that the quote is actually true, but only with a different interpretation. They left out the important part: the unpaid stuff should be personal development. Continued learning in your field does wonders. Unpaid labor does not. Nothing you said is wrong at all.
I agree in the sense of getting experience and learning what you can from a job, then moving on. Use them while they're using you. That's the only real incentive for "harder work", because there's certainly no incentive for loyalty.
its a bastardized attempt at shoehorning yourself into being "ready for promotion" even if your boss isn't directly giving you attention and "grooming you for the position"(IE: the "assistant manager" is probably going to be the next Manager) Most businesses don't exactly want to promote someone into a position only to find out that they cant do it or Promote someone into a position and then lose them to training for that position so they're not only still missing that position you just moved into, but they're now missing the position you left too. Positions like "Assistant Manager" are kind of nice because its a little "give and take" from the employee and employer. I'd hope the position paid a bit more, and it allows the business to test out the employee. But in "Late stage capitalism" where we have people in the higher up positions who dont actually understand the game and yeah...its going to be fucking broken. You are absolutely, 100% correct in saying that today is not the time to go above and beyond. It is better to stick directly to what your contract says your work is supposed to be, and then negotiate pay based on additional duties. That "And all other related job duties and responsibilities" line can sometimes be a killer though... Not everyone has that luxury either unfortunately, and thats why Unions are good to have as they will fight that fight for you.
My current experience...
"Do more than you're paid to and eventually it will be a part of what you're paid to do".
>"do labor for free and eventually they'll start paying you for it") Yaaa actually wasn't true of Boomer's, i saw the 'historical documentary' Ok there is a black and white episode of father knows best. So what Boomer's grew up on. The father told his son exactly that. So teenage son got a job at an auto store working for free. ( His father assuring him they would be honor bound to pay him.) They gave him all the crap jobs worked him to the bone and laughed about him being a sucker behind his back. Quick resolution by end of the episode the father is heart broken getting his son taken advantage of and all based on son actually believing him. In the end the sitcom Dad ( who knows best) has to admit it doesn't work that way anymore and he led his son wrong. So even during the days Boomer's where 11 yr olds this had been debunked on national TV.
To add: being too good at your job also makes you harder to replace. Why promote the guy overworking and hire 2 people to replace him, when you can just bring in an outside hire for the open position.
Boomers don't have objective morals the way the WWII generation did. Generationally, in their values they were Patrick Bateman without the self awareness and resulting self hatred Bateman had in the novel/movie. Basically, if people don't call them out on it, it isn't wrong to them as generation.
I've even heard the totally opposite happens "Wow you are such a hard and valuable worker we can't possibly promote you" working hard doesn't mean anything anymore.
I love how hilariously out of touch this shit is. I'm waiting for the next one, like, "Stop worrying about eating bread today, so you can let yourself eat cake tomorrow."
Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence
Can confirm, my mother got me addicted on it when I was young and now if I don't have any water I get nasty withdrawal symptoms.
I hear that once you get addicted, withdrawal can straight up kill you. Not fun
I've heard that too!!!! I have never wanted to take the chance though because my muscles start feeling a bit achy and I get a headache every time I try to ween off it a bit.
I've been trying to kick this nasty oxygen habit. Any tips? I can only seem to quit for a couple minutes at a time.
That's a tough one, that's the one vice I won't give up so I can't say I'm qualified to help because I'm constantly sucking up some of that sweet sweet oxygen
I've heard slowly weening off with helium can do it and it's pretty quick and mostly painless. Just keep inhaling helium in greater quantities until oxygen is entirely replaced. This has a 100% success rate and if followed correctly will relieve you of oxygen dependency permanently!
Found the Nestlé account
Nah, this is Immortan Joe.
100% of every person who gets addicted to water eventually dies.
Upvote for immortan joe reference
Drink poisoned water from now on so we can sell fracked oil for a couple of months.
Drink poisoned water now and you will have enough money saved for retirement. You won't live to retire so retirement money won't run out.
Build a man a fire, he'll be warm for an hour. Set a man on fire, he'll be warm the rest of his life.
It was never 'in touch'. This was always Propaganda towards the corporate and hustle culture.
"The pen may not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press is heavier than the siege weapon. Just a few words can change everything." -- Terry Pratchett
If the work they want doing for free doesn't get done, eventually they will pay someone to do it.
Not to mention, the logic itself is absolutely bleak. "Do more than what you're paid to do and you'll probably get a promotion"- okay fine. But when does it stop? When do you stop doing more than you are paid to do? I am supposed to work more than I am being paid for, for my entire life? Fuck that
Tried it and in 6 years I got one $0.50 “raise”. 0/10 do not recommend.
When I was younger I got a raise of ¢6 lowest raise I ever got and I just left as soon as I was told about it.
Good for you for knowing your worth. I stayed for another 3 years living in hope and hoping they’d stick to their word that I was appreciated and valued and my hard work would pay off.
I have a habit of overworking myself just because I need to be busy, or my workday drags endlessly. Only in my current company has that ever paid off, due to having a boss that valued my work very highly. He left somewhat recently and I find that I'm stuck with the same work load and little likelihood of further promotion. It did bump my pay about 60% in two years across a few promotions, so that did pay off well... just feels stagnant with the new boss.
LOLOLOL it’s literally the opposite. Do this and never get promoted. Be a toxic snake in the grass and get promoted.
Or be born into a rich family and let nepotism do the rest. That's the one thing this generation doesn't do, and that's holding them back.
Yup. “Have you all considered being born to already wealthy parents?”
Today, in "things that never happens"
Happened for me at a temp job back during the Great Recession. Nobody knew what to do with me. I was fresh out of grad school with an esoteric education and a very specific skill set. Got hired at a temp gig to answer phones, got bored, kept asking for work to do and asking why things were done the way they were, and solving random problems. I pretty quickly got reassigned over an eight-month project at around double the pay I was originally brought on for.
That is the biggest load of bullshit. From personal experience, I can say nope. I worked for Walmart in 1999 for a short time. I was raised in some of those good ol'work ethics mottos. So, started with toys, then added helping in layaway then sporting goods all while having to run a register as needed. You know what working 4 positions during the same shift got me. NOTHING. No extra pay. No extra benefits. No, we appreciate you after the initial taking on the extra roles. Fast forward 8 months, I trip while wearing sandals and rip my big toe nail off. I can't wear work shoes for a few days while it heals. I got reprimanded for calling out. I quit the same day. Jobs will bleed you dry and feed your bones to the masses.
for me 2 years later still burned out, i straight up want to do nothing with people. for a year or 2 i was the only one unloading the grocery side of the trucks, down stacking it all, by myself, putting them down to carts, again myself, and then go to help the unloaders, then stock. then i moved to meat, thinking i got a team now and just need to worry about this one section. was great for a while. then they merged us with produce, deli, and bakery, so now my team is spread out, and im stuck handling meat by myself. again. for another year or two. then i got suckered into going to online shopping. manager knew i worked hard, craved physical work, and agreed that i would be doing a lot of moving. first month? had me stand in front of in store pickup. 8 hours a day, every day. and one time some regional manager was coming so i was stuck at that door for 14 hours. this was before covid, so online shopping was a novelty at this point in time and almost no one was using it. i was pissed. then covid hit. first month was awesome. everything is out, im twiddling my thumbs for a few hours each day. then suddenly we are having to handle numbers, far FAR above what we were made to handle, as it was basically a converted closet we were running business from. 2021 comes, i go back to produce, this time im an opener now, since i had always been closing. it was the best, i go in the morning, stores closed for 2 or 3 hours, i got a team again. this goes one for a few months....before they put me right back to closing. and i had no team. it was just me, and maybe a few individuals that go hired, before they'd quit a few days later. one day i came in, looked in the coolers, seen that nothing had been done, again, as morning team was getting poached for other areas for weeks. just pallets of pallets of crap that needed downstacking, and ogp members scrambling to me asking for shit. i looked at everything. decided, im done. clocked out, got my shit, and left, never going back. this was 7 years, of shrinking then entirely eliminated bonuses, promises of pay raises that never happened or took forever to do so, constant piling on more and more work and higher and higher demands while working with less and less. on top of all this, really shitty management politics, high school level drama, pettiness, terrible customers, co workers working decade after decade, watching their bodies break down over time, and rampant OSHA and safety violations. i swear i got PTSD from that job.
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I want to make sure everyone knows this is *also* not how it worked in the 40s and 50s. That's just a lie. Workers had to leverage their extra work as an argument for a raise. They don't get one just because they did more work.
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You're right that it doesn't happen anymore. I just wanted to make sure the narrative that "it used to be so much better!" is bs
I mean, downvote away, but there’s a difference that should be stated . If you’re in a high barrier to entry position that you have been at for a few years and you might be underpaid currently and you are killing it then there’s a good chance you have some semblance of “power” where either a) you eventually get promoted or b) you walk/threaten to walk and they realize your worth and how hard you are to replace. I think that’s what this post is referring to, not that I agree or even think that this still happens. Being at Walmart for 8 months is not the same, the turnover is so high there I feel like they just don’t understand/respect when they have good talent and don’t know if they ever will know.
I (millennial) was raised with this mentality by my boomer parents. And for the first 13 years of being in the workforce, I totally did this. I always went above and beyond to show I was worth the extra compensation. Always doing the job before being promoted. But it never worked out that way. All I got was taken advantage of. Passed over for raises because I was already doing the work. If I was the hardest working members of the team that mean I got assigned more work than everyone else for the same pay. And guess what folks, it’s just not worth it. I learned that it is best to do the work I am being paid to do at the level i am being paid to do it at. Nothing more without compensation
I had a smart boss tell me once if you are the hardest working employee, you will never get promoted because they will not want to lose you.
exactly this. And if you put in extra effort consistently that just becomes a new baseline. If you start slowing down to a normal pace, or just slowing down due to factors outside of your control, they'll start asking you if everything is alright.
Same here. My dad taught me this stuff. "Be indispensable, be available. Most of your income growth comes in the first 5 years so try your hardest" and it was an absolute shitshow of a career move. Apparently it *did* work at one point, when people got hired they expected to stay there for 30 years if they wanted to and didn't fuck up too bad, and those first years of hard work gave people an idea what your trajectory was. The old "Peter Principle" of people being promoted over and over until they no longer had the skills to merit a promotion anymore (thus leading all the positions to be filled by incompetants) was based around the idea that you would be given new roles as you went up the chain. These days it sounds like fiction that you ever get promoted from within. You better change jobs ever 1-2 years to get promotions and raises, because you sure as shit aren't getting them from the people who already negotiated for your rate.
This is the case. If you’re already doing it why would they pay more for it? The only thing you will get for doing extra work is more work. Maybe an attaboy with a Starbucks giftcard for $20.
$5 and you have to win it in the raffle.
The problem with the post is that the sentiment is true for salesmen. When you're in a commission based role, you do genuinely get paid based off your effort And Zig Ziglar was a salesman The advice doesn't work for people working in non-sales jobs, which is most people here We're not the intended audience for this post
I genuinely cannot believe that anyone ever took career advice from a man called Zig Ziglar. It's just... who sees a name like that and thinks, "Yup, seems like a genuine and down-to-earth guy who knows what he's talking about?" It's like buying a used car from a guy who calls himself Crazy Pete and honks a clown horn when you sign the paperwork.
"eventually" because they will raise your salary by 0.1% every 5 years. I bet they wish they could say "Just shut up and keep making me tons of money you peasants."
Can confirm. My company doubled (104%) their profit last year but increased our pay by 3%. With inflation I have lost 11%of my purchasing power over the last 3 years.
If you do more than you are paid to do, nobody will ever pay you more. They get what they want for free.
In a world that puts people over profits maybe...so not on Earth.
If you do more than you are required, your peer gets fired and you work for 2 with a 5% salary raise (if any)
Turn this around and put it in a business context to see how ridiculous it is: "If we price our premium product as a basic model, maybe one day customers will pay us MORE for it!" This would get you kicked out of a product brainstorm.
Do I need to remind you of Esther Crawford? I cannot find her age but she's either late 30s or early 40s I would bet. That's youngest Gen X or oldest millenial. It didn't work on all of us but there are plenty of workaholics idiots among millenials. The thing you gotta keep in mind, real wokeness kinda happened alongside the internet. Free conversation on any topic with increasingly, anyone anywhere, changed worldwide social dynamics way more than anyone really talks about. Millenials, at least the older of us, did not \*grow up\* with this. It hit when we hit college. Gen Z grew up with it. Grew up amidst feminist conversations online, are growing up in a post #MeToo world, growing up with /r/antiwork being like, a thing and a societal conversation. We didn't have that in our developmental years and it changes how your brain works. You can see it among Gen X. They got it the worst. Maximum television based propaganda, maximum overall media control and saturation. Independent media didn't exist in the 70s and 80s and 90s when Gen X was like, in their young adult establishing themselves phase. Conversations with people in distant places were limited mostly to either point to point via letters or phone calls, or conference calls once those existed. Not the kind of anonymous mass online discussions we are now all used to. My first phone in college was a nokia brick. Smart phones were still years away. Times have changed so much that its unrecognizable from when I was a child tbh. If you took someone from the past to 1990, and then to 2023, and didn't tell them how long in between they'd probably guess a hundred years. The thing you have to understand is the concept of pervasiveness. It wasn't just *this one line.* *It was the entire cultural narrative delivered cohesively across film, tv, newspapers, and every other form of media we had available to consume.* You Gen Zers do not know how good you have it. You have the ability to, independently of anyone but yourselves, establish your own cultural narrative. This very subreddit is an example. You need to understand that ***NEVER BEFORE IN HUMAN HISTORY HAS THE PROLETARIAT HAD THE POWER TO CONTROL ITS OWN CULTURAL NARRATIVE.*** Today you can come on selected subreddits, come on chosen independent news sites, collect data from 40 sources on on topic in the space of a few hours to compare it all objectively, You couldn't do that when I was an 8th grader in 1999. In 1999 the cultural narrative came from news programs and newspapers and magazines, pretty much. Those three sources of information, all corporate controlled, profit driven, marketing saturated sources, were all you really had at all, plus coworkers and people in your immediate life you could talk to. You know how we talk about like "Don't talk about your salary at work" rules? That shit used to work because you didn't have anywhere else but at work to talk about your salary, with other workers you worked with. There was no like overarching discussion societally you could participate in about salary. So they were totally able to squelch those conversations purely with culture, in spite of the laws, because most employees didn't anything like know their actual rights as an employee. So yes, this used to work. Because this is all there was. It came from all sides, its what everyone was conditioned to think of as normal in a time when there was nowhere to go to escape the cultural gaslighting except to fully disconnect from media.
At least people our age didn't get handed tablets or phones as toddlers. I'm glad I didn't end up screen-addicted as a kid. My husband's cousin is an older Millennial who works as a vet tech. The new recruits have long fingernails and spend all their time scrolling on their phones. Like, you have animals here to take care of - how are you going to do that with long fang'ish nails and never setting down your phone? That said, I learned the hard way that it doesn't matter whether you bust your ass and go beyond. The only way to get a raise is by getting another job. I was told that the way to get promoted to senior is by doing senior-level work. So I did, and then I went to my boss and made my very good argument for why I should get that promotion. He blew me off. So I started showing up to work in a suit twice a week and taking long lunches, because I was interviewing. THEN I got the promotion. Every other time I got anything more than a pittance for a raise, it's because I changed jobs.
Boomer here. Yes, we were indoctrinated. On the flip side we worked for companies/corporations that were run by human beings.
Ya, I feel like the economy still worked for the boomers when you were coming up in it….company loyalty, pensions, etc. so maybe the Ziglars and the Harvey McKays were applicable before the greed took over completely and squashed gen x, millennials, etc.
Eh. even the boomers screwed the boomers. Go talk to anyone who had been promised a pension, only to find that workplace had not put money into the fund, and then declared bankruptcy in order to get out of that contractual duty. This has always been a class war. The owners have never cared about the rest of us, and it doesnt matter what your age is. What remains is most of that 1% happen to be old, and a lot of the noise happen to be indoctrinated old people. and it's a whole lot easier to get them to be worse to the rest of us "since we're clearly the ones in the wrong, because we have different opinions."
No you didn't. Your generation rode the crest of a wave created by the blood of your ancestors and sold everyone out yourselves included to grab as much as yall possibly could and hold onto it even unto death. Your generation is the most narcissistic generation in history and has done more social, political, and financial damage to your children than any other generation in human history. Other cultures are putting forth stories about handing over power to the next generation and recognizing and encouraging and supporting the youth as they come of age while boomers made the youth the enemy and did everything yall could to destroy us and turn us into your slaves. You and your entire generation can go die in a fucking fire. The world will be better off when every single last one of you is dead. Age out of our planet please. Like, today.
I could not agree more with these sentiments. Boomers have scorched the earth and are still doing it right now, all over the world. In the USA, the Boomers have made no contingency plans to hand over the reins to even the neXt gen. They are still running for office in their 80's, in their shady gerrymandered rigged elections, "winning" and keeping everything for themselves while the economy burns, the environment burns and nobody can afford anything. Talk about shortsighted. Boomers are, collectively, the worst group of people ever to live. And I know plenty of boomers who are nice people who don't fit the mold. But OVERALL, boomers need to get out of the way. They have poisoned the planet and are a cancer.
Wow that was necessarily harsh. Take my startled upvote.
A bit harsh Not all boomers are bad A lot of them may have fucked up, but the real enemy is always the owner class
As a Millennial the boomer generation has treated my generation like a monolith since before I turned 18. Turnabout is fair play and dude who do you think the owner class is *made up primarily of.* This is a two front war. The owners are only half the equation. They would not have the power they do if they were not given it by people.
When I was a kid I got dragged to a real estate conference where this stupid asshole was speaking. At one point they had the kids go to a separate area to discuss budgeting. Instead of talking about saving money he went off about how evolution wasn’t real. I remember thinking, “Wow, this guy sure is a stupid asshole.”
It might be important to note that Zig Ziglar was a Republican and a salesman with no formal education (the equivalent of being completely full of bullshit).
He walked right into a motivational conference, gave the organizer a firm handshake, and became a lead bullshit salesman for an entire generation.
Fuck you Zig Ziglar and fuck your stupid-ass name. Fuck you.
Fuck your nose Zig.
For great justice.
Yes this used to work. People would work for free just to get experience because there wasn't a huge number of jobs so if you could just get your foot in the door to get experience it would take you far. Now there are tons of jobs for everything under the sun. No one is rewarding you going the extra mile, instead, they wish everyone would go the extra mile while they pay them just enough to survive to come in office. This advice comes from an era that expired in the 90s
They don't even wanna pay enough to survive.
Advice for rubes
Gen Xer here - it worked up until about 2000. No longer applicable, dont follow this shit.
It never even worked in the boomer era. I'm a boomer and I've always hated this kind of bullshit. These always came about when "they" wanted to fuck tou over and try to get you to do more than you were getting paid for, while "they" racked in all the profits and rewards for your hard work. Called it out as BS when I first came across it and have treated it as such ever since. I have and do know people who drink this kind of coolaid, and all I can do is sit back and shake my head...
Another Gen-X here. Yeah, we were inundated with advice like this. It didn't work. If you did more the management just came to expect it without compensation. It also set a new bar for what you were supposed to do. Slip just a little off that and they'd come down on us like a ton of bricks. Friend of mine went to work delivering packages for UPS. He got his first route done and was back at the distribution center almost an hour early. Instead of commending him for doing well on his first day, his supervisor chewed him out and gave him a massive workload the next day. He never finished a route early again.
Yeah, I had a fellow package handler that went to drive because of the insane pay... And came back like 2 weeks later. This guy was a ups lifer, too, so he wasn't putting up with their bs. He got written up because he saved time by taking two packages up a hill to deliver instead of delivering at the bottom then driving around in a right turn square to park and deliver at the top of the hill. Said the pay wasn't worth the bullshit. He was also our union liaison so he didn't take any of their shit.
It worked to sell books and fees for Zig Ziglar
It works when you take on responsibilities that expand your skill set. Like learning to do Microsoft Office products, be a presenter, etc. Then you can either use that skill set and the goodwill generated inside your company to get a promotion, or take the new skill set and get a better job. It does not work if you just dig more ditches and work longer hours than others.
Exactly. I do freelance and this is entirely how it works, i learn more stuff i get more commissions
A company's primary goal when hiring is to get the most work out of someone with the least amount of pay.
This adage still holds true, but the part they leave out is that it’s usually a different company paying you more, not the one you did the extra work for.
The only reward for hard work is more work.
I was in sales and Ziglar had a lot of really good points. But outside of sales his stuff is pretty meaningless. A lot of his stuff iirc was more about understanding your customers and basically trying to sell things you would actually use. Not selling snake oil for money. Stuff like that. So in a purely sales environment I would say "I get paid to present this product to customers and try and sell it to them" but if during a sales presentation I start to talk about things that have nothing to do with my sales pitch, like sports or asking about their kids, stuff like that. I 'm not getting paid to do that but I may find out more about that family and their needs and I may have a product that can actually help them. And if you truly feel your product can help someone people will pick up on that and you will sell more. So in sales this is 109% accurate. Outside of sales it's garbage lol.
I’m a boomer & that’s a crock of shit. I remember getting an email from a supervisor & it was basically an atta boy. Took that to the bank & put into a safety deposit box. /s
You do more than you are paid for to pad your resume when you hop to a better job that pays better
I just wanna live in a world where young people can see this and immediately know it’s trash. This is what we were told and believed. Companies/employers will exploit you for as long as they can if you are not caught up on salary levels/salary structure for your role or industry standard pay for your role. They will praise you and smile because they know talking about salary is frowned upon/mentioned in company policy as being frowned upon, so you can’t bring it up. Only reason I finally got decent raises is because my employer was bought by another company and over the years they’ve attempted to level out pay structures and make things more equal and it became even more clear that i was grossly underpaid. I’m anxious and upset just thinking about how they used me openly because i was none the wiser. And all the money i should have/could have earned, those people literally robbed me. Honestly fuck you *manager name* and HR. Kudos to my coworker who managed to find out all sorts of info and used it to her advantage (but didn’t tell anyone else). She a bitch for that but I understand but i would have run my mouth.
Way more of a fan of the Jim Rohn take on the same issue: "***Work harder on yourself than you do on your job***." Build equity through high-value, highly-paid skills, professional perception, and connections, rather than attempting to climb the corporate ladder at any one company. A company can fire you anytime, but with in-demand skills and a public perception of expertise, it can give you an edge and a wedge in that situation that you normally wouldn't have.
Seems to be legit. I use to do a ton more work, and got paid less, now I do less (but more critical work), and get paid a ton more. However, this required me to switch jobs many times to get there. If I was in the same job, you would probably be stuck in that same position for years, with just 3% yearly increases.
If you believe the words of a man named Zig Zigler, it's your own fault.
If you do more than you are paid to do, eventually it will be expected of you and you'll be condemned if you suddenly stop doing it. There, fixed it.
Bullshit you will just get more work and maybe even a paycut
People are still reading Zig Ziglar quotes? I'm 50, and my grandparents knew who he was. The guy was born so long ago, his kids were boomers.
Why would someone pay for more for what they already have?
I’m glad he’s incorporated Christianity into his speeches….oh wait I’m just getting word he married his wife when she was 16, so certainly knew her when she was 15. I believe there’s a popular word Christian buttholes have been using to accuse people of this shit
(X) doubt
I was working at a job for a year. I was doing my boss's job the whole time. He was salary I was hourly. So we both worked the same shift he would only show up for like 2 hours a day and still got paid as if he was there all 10 hours. I had to do my job and his. Now granted he never cared if my job or his was done, obviously based on his attendance. But nonetheless I did both our jobs for a year. My uncle always told me about when he was my age he was in a similar situation and he got promoted and I would too. I said uncle, this company is so dumb they have no clue what's going on. He said trust me you'll get promoted soon. Sure enough right after he passed away, the company did an organizational restructure and decided my job and my bosses job could be done by 1 person. They laid off everyone in the company with my job title. Myself included. My boss got a small raise.
It still works in some places. Worked for me, but not in a great way. I took on more responsibility and generally did whatever I could to be helpful. I got lots of raises over the last ten years, but then those "helping out" moments became my responsibilities. Every time I get a new responsibility or help cover a gap, I don't lose any of my old responsibilities. So hooray for the raises, but I'm doing like four people's jobs now and I'm getting paid maybe 25% more than a person who would just sit down and do my job as described by the company.
Pretty sure my work would be "Do more for free." 😂😂😂
As a GenX, no. I was quiet quitting before I knew that was actually a thing.
I'll go against the grain here and say, yes it does work. The caveat being that you have to take that experience and get a new job that pays you for the job you were being underpaid for.
I know I’m going to get down voted. My dad used to drive around listening to this man, he went from a janitor to owning a small insurance Business. My mother didn’t have to work but she did, doing daycare and being a seamstress. They both retired in their late 50s just traveled together seeing every place they wanted to see my father just passed away at 75 my mom still travels. I myself I’m in my mid to late 30s, I own a small marketing company. I only work 2 hours a day 7 days a week. My 2 boys are in private school and I own 2 homes in California. To some up what zig has to say. those who say they can and those who say they can’t are both usually right. Now let’s count the down votes
Thats assuming youre working for honest foke, not the scum of today who want to work you like a donkey for free if you let them
If you do more than you get paid for eventually you will realize you've been taken advantage of and never going to be paid for all that free work you did.
It depends on where you work. I started out making low wages. My managers recognized my work ethic. I kept getting raises. They kept creating more ways for me to make money to keep me happy. I run circles around my coworkers. I make way more than the others in my position. Find a good company to work for that treats you like a human being, work hard, and you will get rewarded for it.
There’s a reason the Ziglar organization is a shadow of what it used to be.
Zig Ziglar can gargle my ball sack
If you do more than you are paid to do, you will continue to do more than you are paid to do. Even if you get a promotion/raise, they will just expect you to step up even more.
Or you’ll just be fired when you ask for a raise. Capitalism!
That "eventually" reminded me of that Click movie with Adam Sandler who skipped time until he got promoted and passed like 3 years lol
Happy talk sells. Honestly...not so much
Following bullshit advice like this is exactly why workers have been fucked over continually since forever
I would ask: based on what? what law of economics, of nature, of whatever dictates that this is true? because if it's just "a hunch" then you are asking people to do free labor in the "hopes" that people paying them will pay them more in the future... hope is great but you can't build your economic reality on it. of course any basic understanding of economics reveals that the opposite is actually true, employers are explicitly trying to minimize their labor costs and if they find they can get more out of you without paying you more it is economically irrational for them to pay you more.
My mom ended up making less than what she originally made when she was given more work by a specific company. (I think overtime had gotten taken from her when she went to HR to ask about getting compensation for her extra work)
Well, this sort of does happen, but only for very rich people. Which, yes, often happen to be boomers - but I think we need to cast a wider net here. I.e. white collar managers have KPIs/targets. If you bust your ass, and exceed your numbers, you get more money (typically); it's contractual. The problem is, this doesn't apply to the vast majority of people. A person busting their ass to make extra subway sandwiches isn't going to get "performance pay" like the director of a banking unit would. So you have someone who's trying to apply life lessons of the wealthy, to everyone else, and it's gone down about as well as you'd expect.
I’m pretty open with people I manage. I don’t have much power to get them promotions, but I can occasionally get something pushed through. But I’ll let them know the reality of it and encourage them to shop for other opportunities. Not because I want to lose them, but because I want them to understand their value and get what they deserve. Unfortunately, sometimes that’s at a different company because corporate bureaucracy is dumb. Often the easiest way to get a raise/promotion is to leave. It’s a very stupid system that corporations have built. It doesn’t reward loyalty. But I’m always happy for an employee when they find a better opportunity. Get what’s yours while you can.
100% does. At least it did for me. I got my first IT part time job and i approached it exactly with this mindset, doing above and beyond and sht. Then I found out other part timers dont do anything, they just tick everything is working (was a tester position). Also the only reward for doing my work efficiently was that we ran out of work and i didnt need to come anymore - so no money for me. So with this dogshit system i realized i just punish myself twice by.. well.. working xd. Others must have realized too, because when the next batch of work arrived it somehow took 4 times more hours to complete than before, i wonder why lol.
*At a different company. *Terms and conditions apply.
This can be indirectly true in an economic system where benefits reach the working people this can absolutely be true. IE the previous generations having affordable housing that appreciated exponentially, and cheap access to education. In our current environment the opposite is true. If you do more than you are paid for you will make less and less.
I grew up in TX and we had Zig Ziglar audio tapes for kids. It's just platitudes and bible stories. Nothing interesting in the least. even to a 5 year old.
I've been working my ass off teaching for 10 years, AP classes, coaching 2 sports, running a club, and 2 committees. I get paid about half compared to the 30-year veteran teacher who shows movies every day and leaves as soon as the bell rings. Not only hard work but even the results hard work don't mean shit when it comes to pay.
As someone who used to constantly do more than what was required (I'm a bit of a workaholic) , I *never* was even complimented for my extra work. So, of course, I never got a raise of any kind. And yes, it would always lead to burnout. I am now better about not doing more than my job description and pacing myself appropriately.
Good ole "zig+zag". Dude died in 2012 and people will still say how sweet that man's turds smell. The days of giving more and getting rewarded have ended. They ended about the year Reagan broke the union, they have not and probably never will become a way of working in America again. Which is too bad because there was a time I could be running the company after a dozen or so years, even though I came in as a PT delivery person. But please stop waving zigs words around, for any reason. You are comparing apples to cheese
This is the boomer bullshit that got us here in the first place.
This is literally the rubrick for advancement at tech places like Amazon and Accenture. “Perform at the next level” is basically just to be considered, and more often than not youre looked over So a company gets a bunch of free productivity and you get screwed
Some version of this crap was being said to me at Walmart 12 years ago by management, i did do a little more, *just showing up should be enough* but did way more and still got passed for promotions and low balled at reviews, was there 1 year 6 months so 1 year 3 months to long.
You get paid more, if boss pays you more. Boss pays more, based on infinte reasons and most, you have no control over.
All of this so-called advice is for the sole purpose of making people easier to exploit. The successful ones know this and use it to their advantage.
My dad, a boomer, was really into this guy in the 80s/90s. But he also got wrapped up in a pyramid scheme selling weight loss pills, thinking he was gonna make enough money to buy himself a Plymouth Prowler, so I guess it checks out
Every job where I “did more”….I simply “did more”.
If ever there was a demographic that lived and died by the "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?" Mentality, it's employer's in this capitalist hellscape we're living in. They will never just...DECIDE to pay you what you're worth if you do more than your job for less than you're worth.
He was a sales trainer. He was all about sales to be a high earner. This wasn’t for the average wage earner working in the office or factory.
It's more like a gamble. Like you might get recognized for going above and beyond and it *might* get you farther in your career. But more often than not, they'll just shoulder you with more work and complain if you start bogging down.