r/antiwork • u/one-thicc-b • Feb 13 '25

Know your Worth 🏆 Respectfully told an employer to fuck off today

Had an interview for a position that looked cool on paper. Met with the interviewer, answered their questions. Everything was smooth sailing.

Until I asked about work-life balance. It was clear the person was not valued by their bosses and the benefits were probably not worth it. The position itself was severely under compensated compared to my local market too, which yikes…

Oh, and the expectation was to drop everything to help with “emergencies” at the exec level. Please lmfaooo.

Lucky to be in a position to decline a garbage job. Not that I expect anything will come out of it but I was professional about my thoughts.

Fuck these companies man. So hard to find a decent working environment these days…

2.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

1.7k

u/Incomitatum Mutualist Feb 13 '25

Nearly all Urgency is manufactured and/or shows that the C-suit doesn't know how to Manage.

I simply don't believe in "hard" work. If things are difficult then something is out of alignment.

476

u/GreyWulfen Feb 13 '25

Yes, real emergencies are rare unless you work in an emergency type job. Most things can be handled by good prep or planning for things that could happen.

Real emergencies like mass weather disruptions or "oh shit the building is on fire/flooded etc should be really rare

169

u/F1shB0wl816 Feb 13 '25

All this “lean” is the pitfall of getting past the down times. It seems like everyone managing expects things to go perfectly every time while also spending as little as possible to make it happen. The good days justify it and the bad days are sold as unforeseen events.

96

u/not_chrash Feb 13 '25

A good example is call centers. When was the last time you called into one that wasn't "experiencing unusual call volume"? They've been crying wolf for decades.

40

u/nycpunkfukka Feb 13 '25

I honestly believe it’s by design. They understaff call centers hoping you’ll give up and just leave them alone rather than wait on hold for an hour.

I work in medical billing and insurance companies are the WORST with this. They always try to route you to their online provider portal to check eligibility and file claims, but they give you the barest of information on the portal, so you end up having to call them anyway to clarify the conflicting info you saw on the portal. And things like pre-authorization for some procedures or denial appeals HAVE to be done by phone. So you spend an hour on hold to answer one question and file one claim appeal.

3

u/sjbuggs Feb 14 '25

I used to work at a tech support call center and the only metric management cared about toward the end was related to calls answered in under 5m. Thing was, the software they used to generate the schedule figured out that even if fully staffed we wouldn't be able to meet that metric during the busiest times of day.

So it scheduled nearly everyone to take lunch during the worst times. Because 6m of hold time is just as bad as 60+ minutes. Naturally they had the same 'unusual' call volume nonsense on the system.

1

u/chrash Feb 14 '25

It's become a crutch. Time for an intervention?

42

u/Rvaguitars Feb 13 '25

There were no downtimes. Most industries made serious bank during Covid. The people who finances it affected were people that got paid too much to do nothing.

22

u/F1shB0wl816 Feb 13 '25

I’m meaning downside on the smaller employee level that really affects the job and any associated cost. Even my employer during and after covid was experiencing record growth but they were all about lean manufacturing. I think they only wanted a small excess of parts on hand, enough to be cozy for a few days if a hiccup happens.

But they never accounted for enough growth, or the actual down times on the machine that’d be unnecessary if they put a little money and time in maintaining them. Despite still growing they were leaving a lot of money on the table and also creating a shit ton of unnecessary work. Great for job security I suppose but nobody was really winning.

Taco Bell was often like that with staff when I was there way back when. There was never enough people unless the manager making the schedule was there since it’d make there day worst to deal with the eventual build up. My current job feels the same in that it really can create an issue when the plan goes anything less than perfect.

The downtimes would also be Covid for example. The economy has made record profits for almost two decades and businesses had their hands out before a month of hard times came through. They needed assistance like they’re living check to check despite this growth. Just to follow through with more greedflation, undue profits, worker rights abuses, tax breaks, fight unions despite unionizing amongst their class, etc.

Employers should be able to handle some hard times or downtimes like the start of Covid or even the recession. They definitely shouldn’t have these bullshit day to day emergencies due to a general disregard for responsible planning.

4

u/Effective_Will_1801 Feb 13 '25

That's because they don't save some profit for a rainy day

9

u/RatmiGaming Feb 13 '25

“Unforeseen events”. Also known as issues your employees brought to management and were laughed out of the room and then became an enormous problem.

4

u/Effective_Will_1801 Feb 13 '25

Yeah they stop the preventive maintenance to save money and then it's urgent emergency when the system breaks down

41

u/Euphoric-Reputation4 Feb 13 '25

Every job I've ever had, none of which have been in emergency services, my motto has been:

"There is no such thing as a [fill in the blank] emergency."

This is particularly true for most customer service/retail jobs.

There is no such thing as a paint emergency. There is no such thing as a design emergency. There is no such thing as a FedEx emergency.

Otherwise stated as, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine."

20

u/Effective_Will_1801 Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 13 '25

We had an emergency when a customer was suspected of having a heart attack. That's an emergency I needed someone to go get the defib while I stayed with her on the phone to paramedics and they were like oh I didn't know it was urgent. I said emergency calling fake things emergency makes it worse when you genuinely have an emergency.

4

u/Effective_Will_1801 Feb 13 '25

Some roles can have more urgent things like a carer or tech but you can never tell when.

1

u/d-jake Feb 14 '25

Worked as a nurse in level I trauma center, definition of emergency. We were prepared, and everyone knew their role. Emergencies were handled, one by one. People left their shift on time. Later traveled and worked smaller places. EVERYTHING was an emergency in some of them, and I was always begged to "stay over".

55

u/gerbilshower Feb 13 '25

i will go one further. most urgency is manufactured AND, when it is manufactured it actively creates chaos and mistakes in most environments.

getting a barrage of emails from 3 bosses about some shit that has to be done before EOD and its the first time your hearing about it, or the email they attached was from 11am that morning, or there is no explanation at all. all that shit serves to do is create artificial urgency that then cascades into mistakes.

7

u/Effective_Will_1801 Feb 13 '25

My fave is when three or four phones are all manned by the same person because EOF cut backs so they just ring in sequence while the staff member is dealing with in person stuff then higher ups complain nobody is answering the phones.

6

u/lcs264 Feb 13 '25

Big part in this imo is also that a looooot of managers/c-suite people LOVE to act and come across as important. Being demanding and bossy to subordinates fuels their ego. Simultaneously, creating an urgency culture also very much make it seem like their job is more important than it actually is. When shit goes down it’s never their fault tho

23

u/one-thicc-b Feb 13 '25

Fair. The job I declined was specific to healthcare, local health group. I also declined it based on principle — why tf would I tell a clinician the best way to do their job? It had to do a lot with claims and shit for medicaid.

After the interview I felt slimy.

18

u/noofa01 Feb 13 '25

"If you're doing it hard you're doing it wrong "

17

u/Shazam1269 Feb 13 '25

If shits always on fire, then you SUCK!

11

u/Personal_Pace_548 Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 13 '25

Tech startups seem to rely on this mentality and wear it as a badge of honor. At some point you need to start acting like a real company that has their shit together or (more likely) you’re just incompetent.

2

u/zdiddy987 Feb 13 '25

Need this tattooed on my forehead

6

u/EitherFondant7074 Feb 13 '25

My wife has a badass saying

"A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine"

So many of these bullshit companies don't frickin get it.

5

u/AEM7694 Feb 13 '25

A response I use almost weekly to people:

Your lack of planning is not my emergency.

5

u/housesettlingcreaks Feb 13 '25

The emergency at C-suite is that they have a checklist in their brain for things they want done regardless of the deadline. When they don't have it checked off (for something that's often 1-3 weeks away), they have to have it by tomorrow for a 'tight deadline,' so they can focus on something else.

This isn't always the case, but the urgency is almost always manufactured in some way or another.

4

u/AntRevolutionary925 Feb 13 '25

That’s pretty dependent on industry. As an engineer, things are often hard, and real emergencies do occur often.

5

u/RatmiGaming Feb 13 '25

Agree. Almost every emergency can be pointed to a managerial flaw, a lack of planning, or a change of a procedure that wasn’t communicated.

2

u/zdiddy987 Feb 13 '25

Yes or somebody missed something or didn't prepare and that buck gets passed on like an emergency

1

u/masterbond9 Feb 13 '25

The only hard work that should exist is manual labor, and some people just aren't cut out for it

2

u/Incomitatum Mutualist Feb 13 '25

Nah, that's pretty easy too with the proper planning. Do you use tools and simple-machines?

Do you have a wheelbarrow? Just gotta think it through; and act your wage.

2

u/masterbond9 Feb 13 '25

Tools make things easier, yes, but it's still physically demanding and quicker, but even with proper planning, some tasks are just hard to do, with or without proper planning. In the last 2 weeks I've personally installed the framing for a video wall and I've probably helped pull at least a half mile, but probably closer to a full mile's worth, of CAT6 cable and then moved about 8 pallets of reels of cable, probably about 500 pounds each +/-

And don't worry, I do plan as much as I can, and I do act my wage, and I get paid quite a bit, too

2

u/Incomitatum Mutualist Feb 14 '25

I got a degree in Network Communications and had a summer-job running cable for a time.

Once, we were running a line from a house, through a shop, into a shed: just under the limit of what we cold do without a repeater on the line. After a few mandatory over-45 degree turns and it would not GO, and we didn't wanna break the chord by tugging on it too hard.

This was the day I learned about the existence Industrial Lube. O_O Sometimes it's what the job demands.

Be well comrade; none of us get out of here alive.

1

u/masterbond9 Feb 14 '25

Oh believe me. I know. I'm already questioning if I want to continue with my career as an electrician, but I'm almost done with my apprenticeship, so I'll at least work to build up a good savings and start looking for something else

1

u/KasamUK Feb 14 '25

Part of my wife’s role is to coordinate her employers emergency response (to things that are an actual emergency) 1st thing she dose each time is get rid of about 2/3 of the people trying to be involved because they just don’t need to be there

3

u/Proud-Ad6709 Feb 14 '25

That is the hardest part sometimes. I used to work in emergency management for IT and I had to kick a few CFOs and CEOs out of rooms they did not look impressed. But if you don't add value you are making the issue worse.

I used to love looking at someone directly in the eyes and asking them what they could do to fix the current issue and if they said something like I am a stakeholder I would hand them a pre made business card with the list of stake holder dial in lines and tell them to return to a desk and call in as that would give them better info than standing around here.

1

u/youareceo Feb 14 '25

Nearly all urgency is tyranny

166

u/LoreBreaker85 Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 13 '25

The amount of resources organizations expend to support the c-suite is astounding. If a regular user had the kind of “emergencies” the c-suite had they would be fired for stupidity.

I used to work in field services, get called to the exec sweet to plug up a computer that was kicked unplugged, or to reboot a computer for the user because god forbid we tell them to reboot it.

One situation comes to mind, a new hire who reported directly to the c-suite said excel was slow. When he started his boss insisted this guy got a developer laptop with 64gb of ram in 2015 to use excel. I get called up there because this guy was blowing a gasket because excel was slow. After a few minutes I noticed he was using excel through Citrix, whatever extensions this guy used required excel be virtualized on a server. That VM his excel was running off of had 2 cores and 4gb of ram. Of course this idiot needed a $4000 laptop, to run excel off a VM.

Edit: corrected spelling.

-39

u/nolajax Feb 13 '25

Can’t make the C suite if you can’t spell it right. 

14

u/StolenWishes Feb 13 '25

Have any evidence that the C-suite can spell it?

1

u/AuntieMRocks Feb 14 '25

I laughed at that because it worked both ways - c-suite (as I'm sure OP meant) and an image of a walking and talking empty suit as a generic c-suite occupant. Nice accidental double meaning, lorebreaker85!

45

u/tandyman8360 lazy and proud Feb 13 '25

My last job was constantly trying to get sales just under the wire every quarter. They kept getting cheaper foreign parts, then having to wait for them to come in. During COVID, we made sales because we had a bunch of obsolete product we could sell because it was the only thing available. We had it sitting in inventory.

My current job is awesome. Timelines stretch out years. Sometimes, we have a monthly target, but our participation isn't demanded, it's asked for. Some of us had to come in a couple hours during the holidays and we got a bonus.

30

u/Barkleyslakjssrtqwe Feb 13 '25

So how did you end the interview or process?

12

u/one-thicc-b Feb 13 '25

Completed the interview and sent an email a few hours later.

1

u/iLizfell Feb 14 '25

Right now im cooking one.

I still havent decided if i should keep it short or give a bit of feedback why its not cool to ask for a weeks worth of job as a "test" and they only gave 48h to complete it.

Mind you they called me 11am est so they expect me to drop my current job to do their test i guess?

21

u/KeeperOfTheChips Feb 13 '25

It’s very nice of you that you stayed respectful and professional. I probably will go with “An emergency is an emergency because there isn’t an established process in place to handle it. With due disrespect, it’s because your company sucks”

11

u/Calm-Paramedic-1920 Feb 13 '25

I got lucky recently and found the right company to move into after my previous role was cut by company restructuring/reorganization. Honestly, I was looking for something new anyway, because the environment was getting more toxic by the day. They did me a favor, and now I'm happily working with great people who make me feel human, rather than a number on a spreadsheet.

15

u/stupidugly1889 Feb 13 '25

I had an interview where the boss said he doesn’t like to micro-manage but then when on a 5 minute tirade about being on your phone on the clock (it’s an IT job, I work on my phone) and ended the interview by letting me know he considers me late if I’m on time

6

u/ShiZor9 Feb 13 '25

Had something similar for an Inventory Manager/Category manager position. Turns out it was just a WH job picking orders and prepping them for shipping. Zero office work/ppl managing/ and pay rate factored in 10 hrs of OT per week. I didn’t even get an answer on what PTO was offered. (It was 0).

5

u/CokeExtraIce Feb 14 '25

I worked for Staples awhile back as the Night Shift Supervisor, so basically everyone's dumping grounds for tasks they didn't want to do themselves or whatnot. I remember coming in one night a few minutes early and I went to punch in and my general manager said I couldn't punch in early because he wouldn't be paying any overtime, and then he proceeded to talk to me about work things and I just put my headphones on and started listening to music and he said hey I'm talking to you, I said sorry I don't work for free and if I can't punch in early I'm certainly not sitting here listening to you harp on me about work while I'm not getting paid. He was not happy and the next night when I came in right on time he told me I should be here ahead of time to make sure my employees were here on time, and this is where I had a serious conversation with him and just said, I work this job to live not the other way around so don't get this twisted, I'm here to do exactly how much time I'm paid for and leave that is it and you trying to invade my work-life balance is only going to make me leave this job and you'll be in the same position you were in before I started.

7

u/SeaRoad4079 Feb 13 '25

There is two ways to get what you want from your workforce...

Respect and competency

Or

Fear and exercise of power

3

u/mrjane7 Feb 13 '25

That sucks, but I'm glad to hear you were able to stick to your guns. I agree it's hard. Best of luck to you, dude!

2

u/MasterDeBaitor Feb 13 '25

You just described my job at my company

2

u/JosKarith Feb 13 '25

So, what's the Emergency uplift? 200%, 300%? Because if it's that important then you need to pay people so they offline their lives for you.

2

u/Clean-Water9283 Feb 13 '25

They would have lost me at "severely undercompensated."

6

u/TacticalSpeed13 Feb 13 '25

A lot of missing information

14

u/StolenWishes Feb 13 '25

So ask - don't just take vague potshots.

2

u/No_Snow_8746 Feb 13 '25

We need to know detail else it just reads like a vague story.

1

u/NinjaHiccup Feb 13 '25

You're lucky to have gotten an honest answer.

1

u/EitherFondant7074 Feb 13 '25

Good for you!!! F these places.

1

u/ZLUCremisi Feb 14 '25

My area: were fast food pays better than warehouse/yard work.

1

u/Paranormalfollower69 Feb 22 '25

Experts say there are thousands of jobs out there, I applied to 20 stores. Couldn’t even get an interview with any of them, and the dreaded “we decided to pursue other candidates” line, just to see the same job posted again.

-9

u/ButterflyNo8336 Feb 13 '25

You found a job that didn’t fit and made a good choice, why are you acting like you stood up for yourself?