• Ulvain@sh.itjust.works
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    18 days ago

    Let me clarify: the business didn’t need the employee to be there, it needed the employee to be pliable.

  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    In the first world, we have employee protections that mean that a) pulling stuff like this in the first place is illegal and that b) bragging about it on social media means that when you get dragged in front of an employment relations tribunal, your lawyer caves their forehead in with their palm and tells you that you owe back pay and penalties

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            17 days ago

            The state owning and operating key services also doesn’t make it socialism. Except when you’ve had a decades long campaign to redefine socialism

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          18 days ago

          If the US was actually socialist it wouldn’t need employment tribunals because people like this wouldn’t have the power to pull this crap in the first place.

          All employment tribunals do is allow capitalism to exist as it currently does, but with a few breaks applied and with a steering wheel.

          • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            17 days ago

            While capitalism is the majority it’s going to feel that way. We become socialist once a majority of people feel that way. Unfortunately most americans are greedy to the bone, and often selfish too.

    • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      In the first world, we might have protections against firing but companies can deny vacation day requests for project reasons and if you don’t go to work you will have consequences, legally.

      • twei@discuss.tchncs.de
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        17 days ago

        That’s the point where you call in sick and stay home anyways. Can get fired for not coming to work, can’t get fired for being sick

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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          17 days ago

          You shouldn’t get fired anyways, but here in Spain if you miss work because you are sick you need to have a note from your doctor justifying that staying at come was the correct choice, so you wouldn’t be able to call in sick.

          You wouldn’t be able to be fired either, the company needs several heavy failures from a worker to be able to legally fire them. Companies usually decide to lay off people instead. Since you didn’t go to work, the company would be entitled to subtract whatever they pay you in the hours you weren’t there (which is way more than what you end up getting post taxes, so be prepared to earn way less than the days you missed), so there would be SOME consequence.

  • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    I literally told my employees back in the day that if for any reason a request was denied, just don’t show up anyway. I also never asked for a reason for the request. The building won’t burn down if you aren’t here. Just keep in mind that someone has to pick up the slack and pay it forward.

    My direct boss always wondered why employees would come in on off days to cover shifts when I was there, but not him. Don’t be an ass, treat employees with respect, and surprise, surprise, people actually want to work.

    • CTDummy@lemm.ee
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      18 days ago

      Reminds me of my former employer. Would always give us time off when we requested it. Was always understanding if we needed time away or had issues going on that impacted us work. When I gave my 2 weeks notice I told him to call me if he needed cover as I knew him and his wife were going on holiday soon (the guy almost never takes proper time off). Nearly a month later he calls and mentioned one of his newer employees was out sick. Very enthusiastically agreed to come back for a week to cover them as I had started my own business. Lovely people and would always cover a skip like that in a heart beat. They’re few and far between.

    • AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      My God, not a single negative review at the time of writing this. Perhaps we should rethink office politics combatative hierarchical structures.

      • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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        18 days ago

        I had a prior employer who got some of those well deserved negative reviews, from employees. Google swears they can’t pay to take them down, but the ToS is so slanted towards their customer (the business paying AdSense fees) it’s exactly that just with more steps.

        Once they nuked the bad reviews, a manager came around for a ‘friendly chat’ with individuals about how great it’d be for them to use their personal login and write leave a review - wink wink.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    18 days ago

    I dunno who needs to hear this but, they need us more than we need them.

    They keep trying to flex and act like they’re in charge of everything because they sign the paychecks, the fact of the matter is that the money they give you is a paltry amount compared to what they’re making from your labor. If you don’t do the work, they won’t make any money at all. Sure as shit the business owner isn’t going to step up to do your job.

    They need you. They want to convince you that you need them. They want to take your power away from you.

    Employment is a two-way street. Anyone who will treat you like trash isn’t worthy of your sweat.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      This is true, but you can only grab hold of that power collectively. There is no way to pull on this lever solo.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        17 days ago

        Sometimes you can, but it’s rare.

        Collective action and unions are the way for 99.9%

        The 0.1% know who they are, and they’re happy to throw their weight around. When the company pushes back and gets rid of them, they often end up bringing that person back as a consultant because they really cannot survive without their help

    • ThirdConsul
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      17 days ago

      Your uninformed (or hopeful) if you think big businesses make money from labor. A lot of it is from capital, investments or rent.

      E.g. McDonald’s profits are mostly from rent.

      • Ross_audio@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        And Hollywood profits aren’t from movies, honestly you’ve fallen for basic accounting tricks…

        A franchise that doesn’t make money devalues the retail space. McDonald’s model links rents to sales so they take maximum value at all times.

        Royalty fee: 4% of gross revenues

        Brand marketing and promotion fee: 4% of gross revenues

        Location rent: Unlike most other franchises, McDonald’s owns the land and buildings at its locations and franchisees pay rent that can be based on a percentage of sales or as a fixed amount. Percentage rents are 31.75% of sales. Fixed rents are typically £100,000 to £225,000 per month.

        So Corporately it looks like they make their money from rent. But that rent is directly linked to sales and labour in most cases.

        Without sales they don’t get rent unless they’ve agreed a fixed rent and that’s increasingly rare. Usually only the highest value sites.

        The real estate value of the property is linked to business revenue as well. If a franchise fails and doesn’t get another investor then the empty building is worth a lot less.

        By picking McDonald’s you’re actually about as wrong as possible. Everything of value is linked back to labour, even the value of the land.

        It might work differently in other countries but I doubt it. Economics work the same everywhere and McDonalds didn’t like to standardise when they find a winning model for themselves.

      • MellowYellow13@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Capitalism’s value and money is based on your labor, that’s it, that’s the foundation for all of it including rent.

      • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        McDonald’s franchises can’t pay rent without that business making money. It’s labor at the end of the day. Always is. Always has been. Always will be.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        17 days ago

        I get what you’re saying here. McDonald’s, the franchiser, makes money on rent. But they’re renting to McDonald’s franchisee’s (at least in part, likely a majority of it). Even if they’re renting out to third parties, those third parties are making money largely from service, which is rendered via labor.

        So the service is performed by labor, and the service makes the revenue to pay the rent and pay the labor, QED, rent is paid by labor.

        McDonald’s franchisee’s are paying their rent with labor. It’s not like the franchise is getting fully assembled big Macs delivered. The labor needs to assemble the parts to make the whole.

        Without labor, they would have no product to sell, since it’s not feasible to cut out the on site assembly of the food while keeping it as fresh as it is.

        Yes, a nontrivial part of revenue is in materials, and there’s a mark up on the sale of those materials when sold, but the majority of cost is for the labor of putting everything together.

        On top of this, there’s plenty of non-McDonald’s examples of the same. I work in IT support, almost all of my work is service, where I go in, either in person or remotely, and perform corrections to get things working normally. There’s plenty of industries that have similar models, where there’s little to no production of things that you’re paying for, and the vast majority of the payment is for labor.

        Finance, tax prep, handymen, carpenters, welders, programmers, factory workers, delivery drivers… The lion share of revenue is directly from labor.

        With food service costs are generally split between labor and materials, since the raw materials can be rather costly, but for many other workforces, labor is the main revenue.

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        McDonald’s profits are mostly from rent.

        rent on what?

        Come on, follow through. Don’t leave the equation partially finished. Rent on what?

        RENT ON FUCKING MC’DICKOLDS FRANCHISES. Not rent on Toy R Us, not rent on Starbucks, it’s rent on MICKY-DEEZNUTS FRANCHISES MATE.

        Cute thou.

  • Old_Yharnam@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Any manager who talks about work like that in public isn’t a manager of any high caliber.

    Probably just a gas station manager or some shit

  • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I had something similar happen once when I was a teenager, working McDonald’s. Keep in mind, is not PTO it’s just ‘don’t schedule me these days’. Handed my request to a manager like a month in advance. Before I went in the family vacation, double checked everything was fine. When I got back from vacation, went to work to get the next schedule only to get stopped and informed I was fired for ‘no call no show’.

    The one manager that didn’t like me for some reason (honestly don’t know why) had changed the schedule to explicitly get me fired. The manager I handed my request to was there and even said she remembered my request and putting it in the books but claimed there was nothing they could do.

    Technically, I’ve been fired twice from McDonald’s (second time was years later at a different McDonald’s and basically the owner thought my hair was too long and I had ‘girls hair’). So I cut McDonald’s out of my life a long time ago. And it brings me great joy every time I read about McDonald’s having financial problems or people not going there as much as they used to. I hope I live long enough to see McDonald’s file for bankruptcy. And all the managers that wronged me, I’ve never forgotten. I wish them nothing but unhappiness and misfortune for all their days.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      And all the managers that wronged me, I’ve never forgotten. I wish them nothing but unhappiness and misfortune for all their days.

      seems like you already won tho. You left. They stayed.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      We may have worked at the same shitty McDonald’s as teens lmao. I once requested off one single day several weeks in advance, because I had some school trip that day and wouldn’t be in the state. A week from the trip I looked at the schedule and saw I was scheduled for that day, even though I had it approved weeks earlier. I asked my manager about it and made it very clear that I would not be able to come to work that day. They told me I needed to find a replacement or I’d get a “point” or whatever they did to keep track of people’s “fuck-ups”. I told the manager that I didn’t have a way to contact any of the other people that worked at that McDonald’s because I had just started working there and didn’t have any of their numbers. The manager went and printed out a spreadsheet of every employee that worked at that location and their phone numbers (probably without their consent), and I called every single person on that list. There were probably close to a hundred names (I think it was a list of literally every person who had ever worked at that location, past or present), but no one was available to cover my shift. Trip day comes, I got a point, and then was “quiet fired” a couple months later when they just stopped putting me on the schedule (except for after I submitted a two weeks notice, where they scheduled me for an 8 hour shift on my last day 🙃). I too have avoided McDonald’s ever since then.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      16 days ago

      Oh McDonald’s can go dying a ditch but just so you know they’re a franchise. Kind of surprised you worked two different ones and didn’t realize that

    • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      This. The only “need” for the business being satisfied is that one manager’s “need” to hear his own voice and to lord power over someone. And such managers are the ones whom, if I were in charge of the business, I’d make redundant in a heartbeat.

    • PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      You guys all feel this way, but when 6/10 ppl request off the day before thx giving or something what are managers supposed to do? Just close up shop?

      • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Well definitely firing somebody should help your staffing problems.

        A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

          • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            Probably talk about it with employees like adults and try to work something out, rather than throwing their weight around?

            I’ve worked on both types of teams, and the ones that have reasonable discussions about staffing problems are always healthier in other ways too. The ones where management just hands down edicts from on high and expects people to roll over and take it always end up being dysfunctional across the board.

          • 486@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            If the PTO request would have been made a day in advance, very few would argue that denying it would be poor planning of the manager. A MONTH in advance though, that very much screams poor planning. Any competent manager should be able to manage and plan for that.

      • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        I mean, yeah. Unless this is a critical business, like emergency services, then… Oh no, we can’t make someone’s bullshit for another day or two? The fucking HUMANITY. Won’t anyone think of the bottom line???

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    18 days ago

    I got fired as a teenager for visiting my late grandfather on his deathbed. I was fired within a few days of his death.

    • cum@lemmy.cafe
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      18 days ago

      I think there’s probably a lot of context you’re leaving out

        • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          Could also be one of those times where the context would only make it seem even worse.

      • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        You know a better approach to your theory might have been to ask op if they were an otherwise model employee, or if there were any other circumstances that may have added to this one incident to account for being sacked. Or perhaps query what aort of job it was. If it was a supermarket job, or a paper round or something basic like that then perhaps the staff turnover is great anyway and something like visiting a dying relative is a drop in the ocean of the reasons someone may lose that job.

        I just think that being presumptuous and condescending might be the reason so many dislike your comment.

        Just my opinion though.

        • cum@lemmy.cafe
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          17 days ago

          Given they said they were a teenager, I’m going to assume not. Also no, it’s just getting downvoted because that’s how hiveminds work. It also works in reverse when they happen to agree with you. It’s not that deep.

          • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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            17 days ago

            “I keep getting downvoted because of a hive mind of people who just don’t like me for no reason, nothing to do with what I said” sounds terribly republican

            • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              I opened lemmy again a few hours later to see their reply saying “its not me, its everyone else” and all i could think was… there is absolutely no point in trying to get through to someone so un self aware. They have shwon they likely cant reflect on their own action or look inwards to find fault. We all act like this from time to time but this person had plenty of time to think before they responded.

              • cum@lemmy.cafe
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                17 days ago

                Lol these comments get increasingly emotional and deranged. This is why these are hiveminds responses.

                There’s a word for what the original commenter was talking about, and that’s bereavement. It’s also protected under US law.

                So you’re being incredibly gullible if you believe this person was fired for the sole reason of them being a teenager and their family member dying. That’s just like cartoonishly evil and blatantly illegal, and it just reinforces a very black and white world view that this community is predisposed to. That’s the whole point of why I suggested there’s context missing here.

                Also are you new here that you think votes determine truth?

                • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
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                  17 days ago

                  Are you new here (to this planet, I mean) that you think law determines truth? People get fired for illegal reasons all the time, why are you so convinced that something so “cartoonishly evil” could not happen? A rule just existing in a book somewhere isn’t some mystical rune that curses every business owner to act within its limits.

                  He’s a teenager at the time. What’s he gonna do, sue them? Call the police, drop a complaint form to the NLRB? Lol.

                  Even assuming he (and the business owner) knew his rights at the time, he has no way to personally enforce them without some strong organization (union) sticking its neck out to back him. In most cases, especially those under at-will employment, the employer doesn’t even have to give a reason to fire someone, which is already a mountain of plausible deniability in the employer’s favor.

                  Of course without that, there’s all sorts of bullshit reasons the business owner can make up; just as you’ve done here; to “prove” their side, that will confirm the same biases you’ve so clearly put on display for us without even knowing the guy.

                • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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                  16 days ago

                  Most crime in this country is perpetrated by companies against their labor force. The weaker the victim the easier it is to get away with.

          • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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            17 days ago

            You’re getting downvoted because you were an insensitive dick

          • Seleni@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            Waves hand hi, I’m one of the downvoters! I downvoted you for being an ass, no hive mind necessary.

            Even if there were other circumstances pertaining to their firing (and I’ve seen this sort of ‘cartoonish villainy’ before, albeit it was a model employee who wanted time off to go to her own graduation, so I’d say it’s entirely possible their story is true) to quote The Dude, ‘You’re not wrong, Walter. You’re just an asshole’.

          • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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            16 days ago

            Ooooor you sound like you think you know the other person’s life better than they do. Like a manager who thinks it’s appropriate to fire someone while their relative is actively dying. No hive mind here, just a gaping asshole.

  • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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    17 days ago

    At work right now they’re denying all the new vacation requests because we’ve got to make a bunch of products for customer. But they at least told us when the order was placed, so everybody took a vacation before the rush or planned one afterwards.

      • acchariya@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        It sounds like poor planning on behalf of management to me. Unless you work in some kind of micro enterprise with <5 employees, good planning should leave sufficient capacity to enable at least some vacation time to continue.

        • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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          16 days ago

          A little bit. But mistakes happen, it’s a huge order, and they were transparent about it. I can accept that so long as it stays infrequent.

        • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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          16 days ago

          My last help desk job we used to try to run at 70% capacity. Basically meaning you would be on a call 70% of time you were scheduled on the phone. That way when shit happened and we got busy there was capacity to handle it. People were happy and did their jobs well. Then new management came and decided we should aim for 100% and stopped letting us replace people as they left (they never explicitly said this but looking at the numbers when they did let us hire told the story). Everything went to shit after that. People were miserable, no one was able to help each other so there was no knowledge transfer and after the experienced people left they had to reduce their responsibilities down to just the most basic tasks and have the other app support teams take back over what the desk was previously doing for them. By the time I left the whole IT side of that company was a dumpster fire while the execs continued to try to grow the company without investing in it.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          Depends on the timing.

          Random time? Sure.

          However, there’s a tendency for certain times to have a lot of people to take off the same time. December, holidays, time that schools are out.

  • Roopappy@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I’ve managed people for 20 years, and I’ve never denied a PTO request. The business has never collapsed because of that.

    • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      17 days ago

      We have Dec 24th and 25th off this year. My entire team requested Monday, Dec 23rd off. I denied all of them (after securing it as a paid holiday).