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My dad worked for the same company almost my whole life until he retired. Yes, he was actually able to retire – even though he was always an hourly blue-collar employee – because he’s a Baby Boomer.
It wasn’t a bad deal. He worked his tush off, the company paid him for every hour he was there, and he was eventually able to retire. True, there was a highly contentious 1976 strike that I will never forget, but for the most part, both sides got what they needed from each other.
Yes, the good ol’ days where you could look the boss straight in the eye and get a job with a strong handshake. A world that boomers still live in today.
Now it’s upload your CV and, if by some miracle, especially if you’re white, male and over 40 and it survives the HR shredder, you might get an email asking to come in for a preliminary interview. And then after 100 rounds of interviews you get told you’re not a ‘good fit’ for the company. Of course that’s assuming you ever get told the reason.
Boomers would do anything for their work, and our Gen-X generation blindly followed their examples. We thought we’d also be appreciated, but we were not. Many people in my generation know what it’s like to perform thousands of hours of unpaid work and then be kicked to the curb anyway. We feel betrayed when this happens.
[…] I could tell so many stories. When I visited my now-husband in the Netherlands, I still wrote and emailed in a weekly column. I got a kick out of writing one of them the day “after” it ran, thanks to the magic of the time difference, and wrote about that.
If big news happened on a day I was off, I dropped everything and got right to the newsroom. I took work calls at all hours of the day and night. There was a huge crime story on a weekend once, and my staff had already put in 40 hours, and I didn’t have an overtime budget to pay them more, so off I went to cover it myself.
In other words, free work for the boss.
[…] At one point, the company decided to change our computer system, switch the programs we used, and fire the editor all at the same time. For a couple of weeks, I corralled all the chaos as city editor before being named as editor. It was a lot.
Once I worked from 6 a.m. one day until 4 a.m. the next day, straight through. I was barely able to find time to pee in that stretch. It was hard. Everything got done, and I’m proud that it did, but it only happened because I made it happen.”
Presumably all unpaid.
We worked through a blizzard so bad that after we finished, the last paginator and I – I’d sent everyone else home – had to struggle on foot through drifts so deep we could barely get through them.
No vehicle short of a snowplow could have gotten through the streets. The drifts were past my waist. Panting and sweating but also freezing, we managed to make our way to my house, where I cooked midnight spaghetti for us. She had to sleep at my place.
Almost nobody saw that paper, but we had to officially publish it, or we’d have to refund all the advertising, which would have meant losing thousands of dollars. The company expressed zero appreciation.
The newspaper industry was imploding thanks to the internet destroying its business model, so my experience was no doubt more extreme than that of workers in most other fields. Still, all of us working there gave it our all, trying to keep the inevitable from happening. And we did impeccable work under impossible circumstances.
Under my leadership, the paper was recognized for excellence by our state press association every year. One would think all this would count for something. But it didn’t – of course, it didn’t.
And many Gen-X workers can tell similar tales.
Here’s what it boils down to: “My parents missed a lot of time with me when I was growing up because work was always encroaching on family time. And then they lost their jobs anyway. I’m not falling for that.”
Good for them. It’s not really ‘shirking’ when you’re providing the appropriate amount of work for your pay.”
First in, last to leave, in the hopes that the boss would notice, and get made redundant anyway as your job goes. Actually, more like get replaced with the same position, but with a different name, and filled with somebody willing to work for half the pay.
Nobody was happier than me when, post-pandemic, corporations had to start courting employees and paying them more. (They didn’t court older workers, of course. I eventually gave up on getting hired and went all-in on freelance.) I laugh when I drive by the sign announcing my local Taco Bell is paying $15 per hour.
That’s awesome: those people at Taco Bell are making more than my reporters, paginators, or photographers did. Because I worked so much unpaid overtime, they are making more than I made as editor of a daily paper, and when they leave work, they don’t have to worry about it again until the next time they clock in.
I worked in fast food as a student, so I know it can be harder and more stressful than people seem to give it credit for, but one thing I can say about it is that when you're off work, it’s out of your head.
Unless you’re in management, you’re not taking emergency work calls at home. “The napkin dispenser is empty, and nobody here knows where the napkins are kept! You gotta come in!”
Nope.
For a couple of years, I worked another job, mostly with millennials. I quickly learned it was not safe to get between them and the door at 5 p.m. because they’d trample you. I had no problem working past five if I were in the middle of something, but I was the only one there who felt that way.
Initially, I thought badly of them for it. But they were right, and I was wrong. It made no sense for them to donate extra time like that.
I’m irked that I didn’t take all my vacation time because they didn’t provide enough workers to cover me. I’m irked that I had to hit up my husband to help me sometimes.
I’m irked that once, when my son was young, I called him and told him there were various leftovers for his dinner, but I’d have to work late again. My daughter was at college, and my husband was working a late shift at that point, so my son was on his own. And then I called him later and asked him what he’d eaten, and he answered, “A can of frosting.”
At that point, I left work and cooked the kid a real dinner, which I served around 9 p.m. Ridiculous.
Employers can’t have it both ways. Either employees are valued and will reap the rewards of all their work and sacrifice, or they’ll face employees who feel zero loyalty and won’t do anything more than the duties they are explicitly paid to perform.
My generation of chumps was screwed, and I’m still plenty irked and bitter. Generation Alpha, I hope you’re paying attention.”
Looking back I’m glad I’m one of those that valued my own and family time over work time.
I remember years back the new boss dragging me into his office and saying I should be staying behind on Friday night and having drinks with everyone. Yeah, sure, like I want to spend more time with these rhymes-with-runts than I actually have to.
This is the same rhymes-with-runt who decided to move the annual end-of-year outing from Fridays to Saturdays to save money. It’d be no surprise that he was an accountant. Needless to say I never went to any of the Saturday outings.
But yeah, us Gen Xers were chumps, which makes it even more satisfying to see Millennials and Gen Z refuse to fall for the same scam.
Source: https://www.yourtango.com/self/gen-x-learned-hard-way-company-loyalty-rarely-pays-off
