The Supreme Court Says Unanimously Your Boss Can Make You Work For Free

originally posted by: Aazadan


At the jobs I've had you don't get sick days and you can forget about personal days or vacation days. I've known people that worked at a company for 10 years in low/no skill positions and never been given a single day of vacation.
im thinking that has more to do with the company than the skill level. sick days and vacation time are not handed out based on skill level. its full time vs time at the company



To be fair, you're not in a no skill position either.
very true. i know people though. my wife included. she has no real work experience. she has only worked part time. a pizza shop. a grocery store. while she did not get vacation time and sick days, the full timers did. not at the pizza shop. i think employers who hold under a certain number of employees get away with it.

No, they can't. Lets say you have a management:worker ratio of 3:1. At 121 employees that's 1 guy at the top, 3 below him (4), 9 below him (13), 27 below them (40), and 81 below them (121). Out of those 121 people 2/3 of them simply don't have higher level jobs waiting for them. Employment is pyramid structured, that means that not everyone can move up. The jobs simply don't exist for them.
they might not have a higher job today and they will top out eventually as per their skills but people retire, quit, get fired, die. sometimes you have to wait it out


I'm not for an overnight shift to $15/hour. Personally I would like to see us aim for a goal of about $40/hour phased in over 40 years (this takes future needed adjustments into account). It took 35 years for us to get to the point we're now at, I don't think it's unreasonable in expecting it to take 40 years to reverse course. That would be an annual increase to the minimum wage of about 4.04%.
i have no real useful comment on that. i doubt i will be alive in 40 years. so, to be very honest, i dont care what the minimum wage is then. my daughter then and i certainly hope not making minimum wage. but, i will be dead so whatev


But it's been my experience that most people who do well in my area are ripoff artists.
i would say it is in my experience that a great deal of people in any area that do well are a rip off artist to some degree. not all of course, but many
One of my former professors sells "premium websites" to people that he builds using the drag and drop editors in wordpress. Another builds unusable junk software. I don't think highly of those types and have no desire to follow in their footsteps but I have to admit that what they're doing is quite lucrative in my area. It's the same business model as Apple basically... style over substance.
well, while it is crappy, cant say i blame them.i mean if people are buying you know



I've been fired before for taking a single sick day after working at a company for a year (and yes I was actually sick), and I've known others who have had the same thing happen to them. That's the way things are.
sometimes yes. usually though there is more to the story. not saying that is the case with you but the dude that gets fired for missing one day usually the least productive, comes in late, is combative, etc etc

I look at things not as a whole but rather in terms of their parts breaking those down and getting into the how/why of them working the way they do and then looking at (theoretical) improvements to those things whether that's social structures, circuit board design, or an item tracking system in a game.

i hope you do well man. you seem like a smart dude.
still though, a lot of your theoretical improvements may not actually work in the real world
keep that in mind

a reply to: MountainLaurel

Should workers be required to submit to security searches once their shift has ended ?

They can resign if they don't like company policy. No one forces them to work there against their will.

originally posted by: Grovit
At the jobs I've had you don't get sick days and you can forget about personal days or vacation days. I've known people that worked at a company for 10 years in low/no skill positions and never been given a single day of vacation.
im thinking that has more to do with the company than the skill level. sick days and vacation time are not handed out based on skill level. its full time vs time at the company

This could be true. The better companies I worked at were in larger cities. Being in small town Ohio now, the working conditions are quite poor. I'm not sure why this would be the case. Cities have more labor but they also have more demand for that labor as well as more competition. Small businesses in less populated areas are free to charge a bit more.

But, I've still seen higher level positions provide access to things like more PTO and such.

they might not have a higher job today and they will top out eventually as per their skills but people retire, quit, get fired, die. sometimes you have to wait it out

There's still fewer jobs available than is needed. This is why we need more small business. Let me give an example: Runic Games they started with a 14 person staff in 2008 and by mid 2009 were up to 27 people. They were able to quickly build a polished and popular game that generated $12 million in sales (600,000 sales at $20 each). It cost them roughly $4 million to do so. They followed it up with a sequel that did even better and jumped the size of the company to 35 employees. This is something a large business cannot do, large corporations can't take the types of risks that were taken to make this company a success. Being a small studio, people were also paid better. It seems these days that the larger employers... Amazon, Walmart, EA, and so on are some of the worst when paying employees. The closer the worker is to the top of the company the more fair the distribution.

i have no real useful comment on that. i doubt i will be alive in 40 years. so, to be very honest, i dont care what the minimum wage is then. my daughter then and i certainly hope not making minimum wage. but, i will be dead so whatev

We have different opinions then. I take the view that we're borrowing the world from our children. I would like to see it returned to them in reasonable condition. It's on us to solve these issues so that they don't have to. It's like John Adams said

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

well, while it is crappy, cant say i blame them.i mean if people are buying you know

I suppose. I try not to be too judgmental about it, it's completely opposite my views on the proper way to earn a living, but it's not my place to preach at them either. I like to produce things, but they need to be made properly. In decades past I would have been one of those manufacturers that went broke providing a quality product rather than downgrade to the Chinese junk.

i hope you do well man. you seem like a smart dude.
still though, a lot of your theoretical improvements may not actually work in the real world
keep that in mind

This is weird to say, but I look forward to the day that my entire world view is shattered. I would love to see the world as a happier place than it is. It can't come soon enough, but I've seen things work for awhile now... I'm not so sure they do work different.

a reply to: Aazadan

You speak in absolutes in broad view with an extremely negative view point making out every employer and position to be hellacious. I'm sorry you have had bad experiences but just because your job didn't have PTO doesn't mean the rest don't either. Just because you couldn't move up in responsibility and pay doesn't mean no one else can either. I feel like you are being really unrealistic and dramatic in order to enforce your opinion as absolute fact. Quite simply you are wrong in many instances, it's not really your fault because we all have a unique world view and experiences but it is ridiculous to act like yours is the only one that is correct and that matters.

originally posted by: sputniksteve
a reply to: Aazadan

You speak in absolutes in broad view with an extremely negative view point making out every employer and position to be hellacious. I'm sorry you have had bad experiences but just because your job didn't have PTO doesn't mean the rest don't either. Just because you couldn't move up in responsibility and pay doesn't mean no one else can either. I feel like you are being really unrealistic and dramatic in order to enforce your opinion as absolute fact. Quite simply you are wrong in many instances, it's not really your fault because we all have a unique world view and experiences but it is ridiculous to act like yours is the only one that is correct and that matters.

It's my intention to be pessimistic because I see little good in our current system. It's not my intention to speak in absolutes. Employment is all a numbers game. X% get employed Y% of that move up, Z% move up from there. Most people in the current system cannot move up unless we create those jobs in the first place which means more and more small business and less Walmart.

Some of the group that will move up see they move up and are happy with that. My view on life doesn't coincide with that. If I get a position that 10 people put in for, that means I created 9 losers. If I later get a job that 15 put in for I have created 13 losers (1 lucky person gets my old job). The current system is predicated on the majority of people losing and a few massive successes to show up. This is the result of high wealth inequality. It's going to work for some people but those some people are the minority. Under my view if 5 people compete for a job and 1 gets it, that's great for the 1 but the other 4 are left as they were before. It doesn't matter who got that job. It could be me, or my neighbor, or my coworker. In the numbers it is all the same.

Some people certainly land their dream job (I'm one of them, I just haven't monetized it yet) and for those people the system works great. That can't be the case for everyone though.

All that said, it's quite difficult for me to be optimistic for the future. I have gotten to experience the terror of the night as you're homeless and seek to evade cops, I've done plenty of minimum wage work where the expectation is that you do half of it off the clock to keep the books small, I've seen the most brilliant minds in my industry locally abandon their principals in favor of selling junkware. And I've been to the funerals of way too many friends as consequence of them going to Iraq.

The world is not a nice place.

a reply to: Aazadan

you didnt create 9 losers(them), you created 1 winner(you)
they are not your responsibility.

what general area of ohio are you in if you dont want to get too specific?
im in ohio too. outside cleveland

i know you mentioned cnc and other coding jobs.
there are lots of industry jobs around here that are paying killer money

i know of a few manufacturing plants scattered around and not just near me i could turn you onto.
not for shoveling sand either

a reply to: Aazadan

Like Grovit said, you getting a job doesn't make the ones who didn't losers. They really aren't your responsibility. With an attitude like you have it's no wonder you are miserable and are surrounded by misery. I don't say that to hurt your feelings but you have to change your attitude and be positive to see positivity and surround yourself with positivity. It sounds corny but other people can sense that negative energy even if it is subconsciously and react as such. The world is what we make of it man, you will never ever be happy if you let the world beat you up like this. Some people are dealt a crappy hand when they don't deserve it and others are given silver spoons when they don't deserve it but successful and happy people make things happen and don't care what the cards read, they change the game. The poorest people I have ever seen in life were usually the happiest because they know that money doesn't matter.

Well if they require them to wait and can't leave the premesis until they are told they can sounds like they should be paid. Waiting to go to work I'd have to say no since they can choose not to go in.so if they clock out bit the company doesn't let them leave than they need to be paid for that time.

originally posted by: Grovit
a reply to: Aazadan
what general area of ohio are you in if you dont want to get too specific?
im in ohio too. outside cleveland

I'm currently in southern Ohio, it used to be south eastern in Marietta but I moved out of there recently, so we're in different areas.

originally posted by: sputniksteve
Like Grovit said, you getting a job doesn't make the ones who didn't losers. They really aren't your responsibility. With an attitude like you have it's no wonder you are miserable and are surrounded by misery.

Perhaps, but then again perhaps not. Like I said, employment is all a numbers game. About 55% of the population gets employed, some percent of that gets to move up past the bottom of the totem pole, and some percent of that gets to run a company. On a macro level it doesn't really matter who does what. The world doesn't suddenly change if I'm a CEO instead of a cashier, it only changes on the micro level where I get the nicer life instead of someone else.

I don't say that to hurt your feelings but you have to change your attitude and be positive to see positivity and surround yourself with positivity.

I'm being overly negative here but there are other subjects on which I am very positive. For example I believe in the goodness of people for the most part, some people screw things up when money gets involved though where they let their obsession for collecting money take over the reason they wanted a little bit more money in the first place. Another example would be that I'm quite optimistic about the future, aside from our current economic model which doesn't really support high levels of automation.

a reply to: dragonridr

What if they get stuck in the parking lot? Should they be paid for that too? For example, when I leave our Datacenter I have to wait in line of usually 3-4 cars behind a gate that has to fully open and close between each car. This process takes about 5-6 minutes. Should I be paid for that? After all, I can't leave...

a reply to: raymundoko

Just a follow up on that post:

I did some research. The roofing company had to rent a truck that specializes in the disposal of asphalt roof shingles. Apparently this can be as much as 400 dollars per load (there were two loads).

The new shingles cost about 1500 dollars and the installation supplies (paper, nails etc) cost around 500 dollars. So right away you are looking at 3-3.5k just for disposal and materials.

Labor is estimated at about 40 hours for a standard roof, installation only, so add another 20 for removal and disposal. Split between two people this lines up with the 3-4 days it took to do my house. I have found that a roofer in my area makes roughly 18 dollars an hour (which is farm more than I thought they would make) So each roofer (there were two) made about 700 bucks apiece. (I would assume roughly 500 bring home) So now we are at 4.5K cost. Then you have fuel, vehicle (they had a company truck), vehicle insurance, workman's comp, company insurance (for the job done), and I estimated about 500 dollars for a weeks job. So right away we are at a minimum of 5k (and I did all these as low end estimates for my roof) just for the basics to run the job. The owner of the company spent 2-3 hours each day at the site and handled all the paperwork and misc items. I didn't even include that they had to replace 4 sheets of plywood underneath the shingles....

Do you see where this is going? Sure, the owner is probably getting quite a bit more than the employees. He more than likely used his own assets to get the first jobs that were the foundation for his future business. No doubt he went through financial hardships while starting his company as all entrepreneurs do. He deserves to be paid more and his company deserves to have money to float employees, and their owner, through jobs while they wait to get paid for jobs done or line up jobs to do.

If a roofer wants to make more money, he can save up his money and open his own roofing company. Then hopefully he has the business know how to keep his business afloat.

originally posted by: Grovit
well sir, i dont have the same view of people as you.
i dont trust people. my life experiences lead me to feel that way.
trust has to be earned. it is not given automatically. not by me.

We might continue to write about this for a long time without much result: you will not change your point of view, I won't change mine. I've said my part, you said yours. Sometimes that's how it is.