Working Daze by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for March 25, 2021

I know the feeling. My job is always trying to teach how to work more, but won’t pay us more. I make just a little above minimum wage.

I remember when I brought up Y2K at a general meeting. The President of the company said that he found it difficult to believe that it would be a problem. The next day, he called me into his office. He had done his homework and wanted to know what we needed to do.

In my experience, employee morale and commitment is not much a question of raw salary (which is still very important, don’t misunderstand me!), but of actual recognition. In my previous job, everyone was treated exactly the same, no matter what they did. Even the “employee of the month” award (which carried with it a cash bonus) was awarded with a random ballot. This meant that you would get the same salary&benefit whether you gave 110% of yourself, or if you just slacked your way through the day instead. The result was that, after a few weeks on the job, everyone just didn’t care anymore and worked as little as possible. After all, why should I do something more than the bare minimum, if I will get nothing for it, except maybe less energy for myself on the evening plus the loathing of my colleagues? If management actually took the time to care, and to make people understand that better work meant better rewards, then the situation would have been quite different.A different example is my current job, where we have no provisions for flexible work hours: if I happen to go beyond my scheduled working hours on a specific day, I am neither paid overtime, nor allowed to recuperate them on a following day. Deviations from regular schedule are simply not even accepted by the employee hours tracking software. The result is that everyone just drops whatever they are doing and punches the clock the millisecond their working hours are up. After all, why should I work for free? A simple “hours bank” system, which would allow me to “deposit” the extra hours I do and to “withdraw” then when needed, would solve this easily, but HR simply refuses to consider it.

New Year’s Eve, 1999. I kissed my lovely wife to welcome the new year while standing next to a running 750 kilowatt generator set. Just making sure that the TV and radio stations stayed on the air. (What would you have thought if the ball landed, and everything went black?)

Y2K was a non-event because of folks like Ed.

I can’t argue with Ed there.

And, in 21 years, not ONE gray hair on Ed’s head. See what having no stress does for someone? We can learn from him.

Ed has the right idea.

Ed’s early beard and hair made me think of the quarantine beards I saw on some of the men in our virtual meetings.

He’s not wrong…

He might also still be stung by the people who marginalized his Y2K work, since because he was successful there were no problems – and instead of thanking him they claimed that proved there was no problem in the first place…

I go with Ed. I remember many years ago my then boss told me that it woudn’t matter how many extra qualifications I got, it wouldn’t affect my grade – that’ s when I stopped trying.

Y2K was great for me. 25% raise.

“I pretend to work, and they pretend to pay me!” — corporate folk wisdom

I like how Sue’s color combinations are reversed from her later (and current) outfit – even her trademark earrings… and she’s wearing a skirt too.

Well, well… There was an actual time when she was actually proud of Ed.

but, not that Ed is a manager or Rita isn’t giving him raises all the time?

Not withstanding a Ford of Ford Motor Company story, most of us face the prospect of no desk at the office and no paycheck if we don’t produce work that the customer is willing to buy. (and most of us don’t work for government.)