How's That Working for Ya?

It’s great to be vindicated.

Given my less-than-stellar experiences in the work force, I’ve come to a number of negative conclusions regarding jobs in America. Last week, I found an article on Forbes.com that echoed my personal sentiments. The writer postulated a theory I’ve held for a while now: hard work doesn’t automatically lead to success. It won’t get you raises, riches or respect. In fact, depending on the circumstances, hard work won’t do you a damn bit of good. Put that in your cig and vape it.

The article even dared to speak a truth I’ve known for some time: if you’re on a fixed salary or, worse yet, paid hourly like most of America, and you’re counting on hard work at the job to lift you into the One Percent, man, are you deluded. If you’re hourly, the only thing hard work will get you is more work. Expecting praise and raises from the boss? Forget it. You’re more likely to hear, “Do even more. And if you don’t, you’re fired.”

I’ve worked secretarial jobs, and I’ve seen this happen. Any office managers out there reading this? Wondering why you just hired a new girl and still can’t get any extra work out of the clerical pool? It’s because after their first job review they looked at their paycheck and saw the minimal cost-of-living raise and realized the truth: all their hard work isn’t going to get them squat. At the end of the year all they’re going to see is a 2% raise, if that, whether they bust their butts or sit on them. So why bust your butt? There’s no incentive. Production falls off, volunteering for extra credit stops. When a new girl comes in, the old-timers slow down accordingly, leaving her to pick up the slack. Depending on how long it takes her to catch on, she soon slows down too. And that’s how you can add a new person to the clerical department and still not get the work out any faster. Why should they knock themselves out? What’s the point?

When I worked at a newspaper, back in the day, the daily paper’s typist asked for a raise. She’d been working there for a couple of years, I believe, was fast and accurate and a—here it comes—hard worker. The company told her sorry, no raise, we don’t have enough in the budget. She might have swallowed that excuse if one of the sales people hadn’t threatened to quit at roughly the same time. The company scrounged up a hefty pay hike to get the ad rep to stay. The typist ended up quitting. I don’t imagine the company even looked for more money to tempt her into sticking around. They just hired another typist, presumably at a lower pay rate.

Because it’s not how hard you work, it’s what you work hard at. Most of us probably work or worked at hourly positions. The “work hard and you’ll get ahead” party line is a scam. If you’re hourly, you’re overhead. Having you there costs the company money. They’re going to pay you as little as they can get away with, keep the raises to a minimum, and squeeze as much production out of you as they can. If your job can be done by somebody cheaper, or by a machine, or in a foreign country, sooner or later it will be.

The road to success is not in hourly jobs. It’s in management or sales, the departments that put money into the company’s pockets. Work hard at making the company money, or making your boss’s life easier, and pretty soon there will be more money in your pockets too.

It worked for my brother. He worked for Campbell’s Soup as a negotiator with labor unions. He decided which branch plants could be closed or culled of hard-working hourly employees. His hard work put money back into the company’s pockets, and he was paid handsomely for it. The ad rep brought revenue to the newspaper, and got a pay hike to keep her there so she could go on doing so. The typist had a vital job, one the paper couldn’t exist without, but it was more a necessary evil. No profit to the company, so no raise for the typist. So much for her hard work.

So what’s the answer? If you’re stuck at an hourly job, what are you supposed to work hard at? The Forbes article wasn’t much help. The writer’s point was, you have to take control of your career. Work for yourself, not a company. That doesn’t mean start your own business, although you can. It means you need to be the captain of your career. You decide what you want to get out of your job, money or knowledge or satisfaction or whatever. That’s what you work hard toward.

The article lost me when the writer cited as its main example a fellow who had it all. He worked where he wanted, when he wanted, for as long as he wanted, at a handsome salary. When he decided he’d gained as much as he was going to from a particular employer, he moved on. And what, pray tell, did this man do to land any job he wanted and to earn those big bucks? I have no idea. The article writer never got that specific. I gathered he had some kind of specialized knowledge that saved corporations money, much like my brother. I’m betting he worked hard to acquire that knowledge, too. It clearly put him in demand with companies willing to throw gobs of money at him for what was, to him, a temp job. Those of us with common hourly-job skills are pretty much shit out of luck.

It doesn’t have to stay that way, though. The hardest work will come with you deciding what you want to do and how much you want to be paid for it. Then you have to figure out how to achieve that. Work hard toward that goal. Maybe it’ll pay off, maybe it won’t.

I recommend you stay out of secretarial work. That’s hell on earth. I still haven’t decided if becoming a writer was a step down or not. I’d better work harder at figuring that out, before I waste any more time.

Life is Not Fair

Maybe I’m still feeling echoes from that blog I reposted about my bad luck in the workplace, but the other day I got thinking about Survivor. the reality TV show. I was an avid fan for the first couple of seasons, then lost interest as I realized it was total a-holes screwing over each other, with the biggest a-hole getting rewarded with a million bucks. Watching Survivor is like reliving a bad experience with office politics in the worst job you’ve ever had. I’ve had enough of that in real life, thank you very much.

In one of the last times I tuned in, it was because some local woman had been picked as a contestant. Nobody I knew. She didn’t even live in the area any more. But she had at one time, so she got a lot of pre-show press coverage here in Dutch Country. I turned on the show to see this local celebrity. She was one of those annoying people who’s always chirpy and upbeat, with a penchant for bursting into song at inappropriate moments. She was probably a morning person too. She and nineteen other people got dumped on a tropical island. Let the games begin.

Oh, wait, not just yet. Once they’d settled on the beach, Jeff Probst announced this season’s twist: they had too many contestants. Before the game even got started, two players would have to go. Method of determination: schoolyard choose-up.

Yeah. No contests, no challenge, no demonstration of skills. The first two people to reach the island were named the heads of their “tribes.” They each picked a person. Those people then picked two people, and so on down the line. The two left over at the end were eliminated from the game.

I wasn’t at all surprised when Annoying Local Woman didn’t make the cut. There’s a time and place for show tunes, and it isn’t on a tropical island with a bunch of hungry, sweaty strangers. Or any place other than a Broadway stage, for that matter.

So they shipped her back to Dutch Country, singing all the way, along with the other guy who wasn’t picked to play. I didn’t learn much about him in the half hour leading up to the team selections. He didn’t get much air time. Not at all surprising, considering how it turned out.

Without the benefit of film clips, we the viewers were left to wonder why he wasn’t picked. He was a young, good-looking, healthy-seeming guy. He didn’t display any bad habits during his five seconds of air time. So why was he left standing on the beach? I have no idea.

I’ll bet he didn’t either. It must have really pissed him off. No telling how many times he auditioned before he finally got the nod. He probably prepped like mad, getting himself into physical shape, learning survival skills, studying past seasons of the show, planning his strategy. He probably already had the million dollars spent in his mind. This was it, his one big shot, his fifteen minutes—or sixteen hour-long episodes—of fame.

Then he gets to the island, and only then finds out they’ve changed the rules. Five minutes later it’s over. He’s out of the game before the game even started, because none of the other kids on the playground wanted him on their team. So much for weeks of prep.

To add insult to injury, this was the first time Survivor had ever played the game this way, dumping two people right at the outset. To my knowledge, it was also the last. Never before, and as far as I know never since, have they done it this way. Just that one time. Somebody with a brain probably realized it was expensive, not to mention pointless, to ship twenty people out to Pango Pango if you really only wanted eighteen. Or maybe Annoying Local Woman sued them for breach of contract. She signed on to play the game and then the show reneged. If I was a lawyer I would have represented her, as long as she didn’t sing in court.

They did this on Amazing Race as well. Maybe it was even the same year. One time, one season only, they brought in twelve teams and then cut one right at the starting line. At least this happened by challenge. Twelve teams competed in a mini-contest. Last to finish got sent home then and there. Again, what was the point, other than to crush somebody’s hopes and dreams right off the bat on national television?

None of this helps that guy, or that race team. This was their shot at the big time. How were they to know the game would change the one time they got to play? Or that the rules would change back for every subsequent season, after their one chance was over? Timing is everything, and sometimes it sucks. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

Take it from me. I’ve had too many jobs yanked out from under me because the rules changed after I got there. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with that happens. Stay flexible, I guess. And get out of the traditional work force. Start your own job and make your own rules, and adapt them as needed to a changing marketplace. My current job could go belly-up at any second, with no warning, and through no fault of mine. I should be concocting a Plan B, C, and D right now, just to keep my butt well and fully covered.

And not waste time watching Survivor, though I’ll stick with Amazing Race. I like Phil. He comes across as a nice guy. And nobody sings show tunes on there because they’re all out of breath. That right there’s enough to recommend it.