I get this, but I will tell you what 20+ years in the working world has taught me: **** you, pay me. Pretty much any employer will take as much as they can, for as little as they can pay. Clearly you're more than pulling your weight, so it needs to be reflected on payday.
I look back at the jobs I had where I was super devoted and worked my life away, and the ones where I've skated, and one common denominator applies- they are all still there, still making money for other people, almost as if I wasn't as special as I thought I was.
I think it was @Corey Y who was talking about this a few weeks back. The way society has moved from
"I am growing these carrots because I will eat them and use them to feed my family" to
"I am reading these meters to make money for my supervisors who will then pay me so that I can then go to the store and buy carrots that I will eat and feed my family with."
I am paraphrasing, but I think that was the gist of it. And it's so focking true.
Ender, I've been in the "official" (on payroll) workforce for 32 years and worked for 3-4 years before that mowing lawns, bagging groceries for cash, throwing newspapers. I very often held two jobs and worked 70-80 hours per week with no days off for months at a time. I totally agree with the "F.U., pay me" sentiment. Unfortunately, I work in one of those "right-to-work" states (what a BS ironic name for that) where workers have ZERO rights.
In Oklahoma, you can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all. Your employer isn't obliged to give you any reason or advance notice whatsoever, and you have no legal recourse.
The ONLY exceptions to this are if you are fired without verifiable cause (like a paper trail showing you'd been reprimanded a number of times, poor evaluations/performance reviews, etc.) after you've filed a Worker's Comp claim OR if you were fired because your employer believed you were going to be a whistleblower and expose some evil chit they were doing. Then it is possible (slight possibility) of having some legal avenue to pursue against wrongful termination.
Other than that, it's cup your balls and say bye-bye.
Though I've never had to do it, I understand it is also like pulling teeth in this state to receive unemployment benefits. So essentially you could work for a company or organization for X number of years, then for any reason or no reason--ostensibly including a scenario in which a new manager comes in who just happens not to like the looks of you--be called in to an office and told to pack up your desk and get out. And the money just stops.
There are also next to NO unions in Oklahoma because, of course, for a lowlife grunt worker of any kind to have any rights or protections would be nothing but wicked Communism.
And yet the vast majority of Okies are poor, working class people. But of course they vote against their own interests because most are too dimwitted to realize they are being duped and treated like cattle. The batsh!t crazy legislators in this state make the masses believe if they vote for anyone other than the most staunch neocon fundamentalist wackadoos then they are anti-American haters of baby Jesus.
I'm usually pretty apolitical. But sometimes I do get worked up about stuff that seems SO unjust and clearly in need of rethinking and overhauling.
The more I think about it, the more I look forward to moving back out of Oklahoma. There are many great, forward-thinking, interesting, intelligent and fun people here, but their voices are overwhelmed by people with very Dark Ages, fire-and-brimstone, puritanical outlooks on things.
I think the thing that galls me the most is that the neocons float the idea that they are the party of "small government" yet they clearly want to dictate how everyone else lives according to their own moral code or religious beliefs. It couldn't possibly be MORE invasive and intrusive than to try to dictate which consenting adults can marry each other or what a woman does regarding her personal reproductive choices. Not to mention this will likely be the LAST state to legalize weed and it already has so many blue laws/sin taxes in place it's ridiculous.
Tattoo parlors were illegal in Oklahoma until 2006. Car dealerships are all closed on Sundays. It's just a bass-ackwards place in so many ways.
[/rant]
