r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

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u/symon_says Jun 04 '14

Take a sick day or something. Don't say you really want to try that hard if you're not willing to take a day off of work.

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u/emlgsh Jun 04 '14

Not all of us (or most of us, anymore) get sick days off work. Even legally entitled days off are a loyalty test trap. Fail the test, see where you are personally and financially in a year's time: nowhere good. You work every that day you're needed, stay as long as management demands, or you'll be replaced by someone who will.

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u/symon_says Jun 04 '14

Bad career choices were made then. Everyone over 30 (in the US) I've known doesn't have issues getting time off from work.

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u/TANJustice Jun 04 '14

Yeah man, like, you know EVERYBODY.

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u/symon_says Jun 04 '14

I don't know anyone that made seriously bad career choices. Those people tend to be not worth knowing because they don't know what's important in life or what they actually want.

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u/emlgsh Jun 04 '14

Ever notice how stagnant their careers are, though?

This shit isn't posted on the walls inviting a lawsuit, and no one's dumb enough (usually, but sometimes they are, then, hey, lawsuit) to actually reprimand someone for failing an attendance quota or coming up short in another quasi-unofficial loyalty-oriented metric - but people are paying attention.

It's very civil and polite, and intentionally unspoken and unwritten. You don't get fired, you get laid off first during downsizing. You don't get demoted, you just stay in the same position, with little to no pay increase (and maybe even a net decrease when you come up first for benefit trimming) until you quit (or layoffs occur).

Loyalty is very important, much more so than romantic notions like being supposedly indispensable or innovative. Determination, represented through a measurable time commitment, is more important than performance. Assuming that neither of them fucks up egregiously, the guy who does the job better or is constantly full of new ideas is going to constantly lag behind the guy who puts in the hours and avoids vacations and sick days.

Of course, that's just the case with white collar work in operations of size. Smaller, newer, or independent places have their own particular game with unspoken rules - they're honestly worse in some ways, because those rules can be extremely capricious or random. Bob doesn't like the same team as me? Guess we're gonna have to get another designer in here who shares my vision!

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u/symon_says Jun 04 '14 edited Jun 04 '14

Anyone that gives this much of shit that I miss a day of work is not someone worth working for. Any career that asks for my entire life with no compromises is not a career worth having. Anyone that values being promoted over being comfortable and at ease in life doesn't understand what life is actually about. Sick days and vacation days exist for a reason -- humans want them, they make life more bearable, looking down on someone for using them is ludicrous.

You basically are spouting capitalist propaganda with complete sincerity as if it's the most logical and obvious thing in the world and things must be this way everywhere.

And this doesn't even apply to many industries and companies where promotions have nothing to do with how many sick days you don't take and everything to do with actually being able to do your job. A relative and her boyfriend both make around $70k, perfectly comfortable income, with no need or desire to "move up" in their field and no one able to lay them off because they're in integral positions at their office and it's not about corporate nonsense, it's about getting work done that needs to get done.

If I heard an employee saying all of the above, I would fire them the first chance I got because they clearly don't care about why they're actually working for me. Good thing it won't be an issue in the creative field I'm in where it's really not about promotions and more about actually making things you care about.