WSJ: Quit Quitting

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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There’s lots of hustle at many jobs these days. You see Walmart stockers (and I assume its the same at ALL grocery stores) that lug a ton of food, restock shelves, re arrange stuff to make it neat…and are busy, busy busy. But $15 to $17/hr here. Same for Whole FOods. You slack off, you get canned. It’s a 40 hour/week job

Funny you should mention Whole Foods. “ripped from yesterday’s headlines”.

Whole Foods CEO says ‘socialists are taking over’ in the US and young people in liberal cities ‘don’t seem like they want to work’

https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-ceo-us-socialist…

Is being an auto mechanic having ‘social benefit’? nope. For refrig repair, glass repair, a/c repair, Best Buy salesperson, etc? Nope.

The only recognized “social benefit” since Shinyland went supply side is making the “JC” richer.

Put in your hours. Go home and get on the internet or join your friends to discuss social issues and what you can do.

No can do. Want to see the pay stubs for the 60-80 hour weeks I worked, or the accounting for the weeks and weeks of vacation I was never allowed to use? There is no life other than work. Get up, work 12 hours to make the “JC” richer, go home, collapse into bed. Do the same all over the next day.

Steve

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No we weren’t.

Excuse me we have solved nothing in healthcare insurance. We have seen lower pay over all. We have seen our pensions stripped away.

We supported by and large taking our pay away for the poor rich people. Which is my goal to be a poor rich person. LOL

The poor rich people are on our side and want to pay more. Believe me I know in my family most of them who are more wealthy believe in higher pay and better benefits such as socializing medicine.

Our generation had been holding ourselves back pay wise. It was garbage. We can admit that. I get the local store owner thinks pay needs to be really low…as in $7.25 per hour. S/he is in part screwing the economy up. We have had 40 years of slow real GDP growth. Meanwhile pay has gone up and up in China creating fantastic growth for China…until recently.

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. you do your job, put their work on the ‘tomorrow’ file, and say you are busy when they ask you to do other people’s work. or it never seems to get done.

Can’t do that. At the pump seal company, the “boss” would allocate work between myself and the one other guy doing the same work. The other guy would bring the work allocated to him to me, say “do you understand this?” I’d look the file over, seemed perfectly straightforward to me. He suggested I should do it. I suggested I had enough work to do. He dragged me into the boss’ office, gave the boss a song and dance and the boss ordered me to do the work. So that is how it went for the rest of the time I was with that company. Tom would drop all work allocated to him on my desk, then wander off to another department to spend the afternoon shooting the breeze with a couple friends of his.

The boss was just as bad. He would get a project messed up, so drop it on my desk, and take a trip out in the field for a week, while I cleaned up his mess.

At RS, my one full timer wanted to work at half speed. He told the District Manager he would quit unless he got his way. The DM ordered me to accommodate him. I was working 60-80 hour weeks, while Kyle spent half his time talking with the girls at the Hallmark next door. When RS cut manager’s pay in late 89, just about every manager in the district quit, so Kyle got a store. Suddenly, it was Kyle who was accountable. He was bounced out of that store in a month. I never asked what he was doing to get tossed that fast, though, when his name came up, the DM’s secretary rolled her eyes.

Steve…happily retired, never looked back

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Steve,

I have very similar experiences. It is miserable having lazy managers like that looking for the point of least resistance.

Hurry up and wait is the only solution. It pisses everyone off then they are stuck doing their damned jobs. They figure that out eventually. The boss ends up with crappy work out of them still.

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Steve,

The song and dance…yep I have been there over and over again.

I finally got smart about leverage and said absolutely NO I wont do any of it.

The boss looked me over and said angrily back to work. I stopped doing it at all. People were pissed. But you know what I do my work. Others who really were not interested in doing the work quit instead eventually. Those guys wont be hired back.

That was a long time ago. Hurry up and wait.

The last time I went into that business I was offered a starting date. LOL I was not asking at all for work from them. Hurry up and wait are words to live by.

It is a bit like how this board works. I now have people I want to talk with but none of the broken records that wont discuss things. I am better off. The guys who do not know much wont be better off either way. Hurry up and wait. Not my problem. No one is here to make the first complainer feel better.

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Steve:“Want to see the pay stubs for the 60-80 hour weeks I worked, or the accounting for the weeks and weeks of vacation I was never allowed to use? There is no life other than work. Get up, work 12 hours to make the “JC” richer, go home, collapse into bed. Do the same all over the next day.”

It was long past time for you to find another job.

Yes, 80% of all jobs are ‘working for someone’. The other 20% are small business owners who probably work 80 hours a week to earn a paycheck…

t.

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27

t:
There are tens of millions of jobs out there that aren’t ‘socially rewarding’ in any sense. Your plumber, electrician, window installer, carpenter, computer fixer, cable installer, home construction people, lawn service, vet, doctor, all put in lots of hours. It’s a job. Some find good satisfaction in doing a good job, but your septic repair person isn’t slacking off. Lots of hard work for most trades. Working on assembly line? Good pay but boring as heck, but some don’t mind and enjoy the paycheck.

Two points:

I spent nearly four decades owning/managing an IBEW electrical contracting business in NYC (among other parallel endeavors). My employees were mainly Boomers with a smattering of “The Greatest Generation” and a handful of foreigners (immigrants from Sicily, Malta, etc.). I’m not going to get involved in a union vs. non-union conversation, but I would point out that the was a conscious effort to actively encourage inefficient methods, materials and habits in order to require more personnel (and more expensive classes of personnel) to accomplish the work in order to maximize the number of “brothers” employed. The group most resistant to this ongoing pressure were those who grew up outside the US. They put in their 35 hour weeks (well, actually they managed to only be working about 30 of them when you include unsanctioned coffee breaks, time to wash up, etc.), two of which were mandatory time and a half overtime. The cost to the contractor for “A” mechanics a decade ago was almost exactly $100 per hour (half in benefits and assorted mandatory contributions, half in wages). Not bad for guys/(a few gals) with generally a high school education.

There is no generality which fits all people. While I’m a Boomer, my schedule was a bit extreme. I got married half-way through my undergrad degree, started working full-time during the day as an electrical contractor and getting my electrical engineering degree by going to night school four nights a week until 10:30 at a school a couple of hours away from where I lived. I continued that schedule through getting an MBA (though that school was an hour closer to home).

After that, I felt like any spare time was wasted time, so I got a Professional Engineer license (becoming one of only four people in NYC to ever have both a Master Electrician license and a PE) and then stared to serially start (or "re-invent) symbiotic businesses. So, you might say that I simultaneously held four full-time (if you define that as 14 hours per day) jobs for decades.

So there was a post on Metar over the past few days (I think referencing the WSJ) finding it unusual that some who were home-bound during COVID found that, rather than doing one full time job “super-well” could make more money if they did two full-time jobs mediocrely. Frankly, there is no reason they couldn’t do both jobs super-well (compared to others) and maybe take on (appropriately chosen by level of supervision) three or four jobs if they were satisfied with only a mediocre job.

Similar to “age only being a number”, “hours worked” is not necessarily the same as the quantity of quality output. It’s a guide, which if adhered to, limits one to mediocrity.

Jeff

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28

Steve,

I do not recall that happening to me.

Not in the Coast Guard
Not in the oil fields
Not in the CIA
Not at AT&T

I worked harder at the first three, and felt more fulfilled, it was a positive social whatever. I make more money and work less at AT&T. How much less, well I tell people I used to work for a living, but for 20 plus years I have gotten paychecks from Ma Bell. So what do you do for them? Well, I basically have been trained as an Electronics Engineer, a telecommunications engineer, and a network engineer, but I mostly stand around and scowl at people, it pays more and nobody bothers me.

I do miss riding in helicopters and boats and zipping back and forth to Africa. I suppose I should have stayed in the Coast Guard, most fun, good money.

Oh well, young and dumb.

Cheers
Qazulight

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Man, I learned that about 6 months into my engineering career. If working twice as hard isn’t going to double my income, I’m going to adjust the level of effort accordingly.

Well, I learned a different lesson from my Dad…and from life:

“No matter what you are doing, Son, do the very best you can…whether it is digging a ditch or anything else. Better work will be rewarded in the long term.”

I practiced Dad’s approach for decades, and while the rewards were sometimes delayed, they always came in one form or another.

Your mileage may vary…and from the attitude expressed above, tend to make for a self-fulfilling prophecy. :wink:

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Yes, 80% of all jobs are ‘working for someone’. The other 20% are small business owners who probably work 80 hours a week to earn a paycheck…

80 hours?

The line I heard from multiple sources is “owning your own business, your schedule is flexible - you can work whichever 100 hours of the week you prefer.”

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Thank you for recommending this post to our Best of feature.

I do not recall that happening to me.

Not in the Coast Guard
Not in the oil fields
Not in the CIA
Not at AT&T

…

I do miss riding in helicopters and boats and zipping back and forth to Africa. I suppose I should have stayed in the Coast Guard, most fun, good money.

Must confess, I had a ball and with everything on the warships free while at sea for months (except the cheap beer) and very good TD cash when flopping around to foreign NATO bases in the Argus we often made out like bandits.

The move to Germany and becoming an military AOCP programmer on the NATO AWACs was lots of hard work but when offered a NATO Civilian programming job with my two daughters explaining all the benefits (for them) to me … well … of course I jumped at it.

I make no secret I loved the military … particularly the sub hunting during the height of the Cold War. I often wonder why Steve didn’t quit the crappy job but I suppose that is his business?

Tim

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Crazy!!

It is a WW II military statement “hurry up and wait”. Ha!

Memory is a wonderful thing.

Close friend of mine who was at the Bay of Tonkin when the “incident” occurred, none of the men there on those ships knew till they were told months later when their ships arrived back in the states…

His experience as a radio operator in the US Navy, he innocently told a group of guys how to fix an electronic component. Everything that went wrong from then on out the teams of guys needed his help. He realized suddenly he knew nothing for his own sake. Hurry up and wait.

I take a certain satisfaction in lazy people letting themselves be fully known to the bosses. The bosses always turned around and complained to me about it. Fully knowing I was not going to help get anyone else’s job done. If you cant hack it I do not care.

33

Anyone working more than 50 hours per week on average as the owner of a business is doing something wrong or in the wrong business. The quality of the work goes down after 50 hours per week.

I do understand showing up for more than 50 hours. That is another matter. That might be 60 hours, even 70 hours some weeks.

When someone works over 50 hours the odds are they feel completely trapped. Every deadline must be met, there are no options. At that point it is not worth the stress. The stress will kill.

I do understand people will work more than 50 hours. Their work by and large ends up sucking. Hate to be the client.

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…Anyone working more than 50 hours per week on average as the owner of a business is doing something wrong or in the wrong business…

…When someone works over 50 hours the odds are they feel completely trapped. Every deadline must be met, there are no options. At that point it is not worth the stress. The stress will kill…

Well, Leap1, the first thing I would say is to reference the famous quote about avoiding all generalizations, including this one. :wink: Another variation on the quote says all generalizations are dangerous (Dumas).

Here is what I know from my own experience:

After a surprise divorce in a no-fault state, half my/our assets left with her and the country rock drummer she “ran away” with. After much reflection, I decided to take a chance and dropped out of my corporate career…and moved to an area I had lived in once before…and start a restaurant in a location where two prior ones had failed, using about 95+% of my remaining assets.

The risks were well-defined:

If the restaurant failed, I would be over 50 and essentially broke…with no clear career path (corporate types don’t like “rebels” who leave the corporate world).

The person I hired to run the restaurant day-to-day received a more than competitive salary, plus 10% of the operating profit above breakeven. If the restaurant failed, he could leave and get another job.

For the first two years, I took no salary and lived out of what was left of my savings, working some 100 hours/week. Everyone else never missed a paycheck.

Due to the combined efforts of all of us (me, the manager, the employees), the restaurant became a huge success…and after seven years, I sold it to my manager, and I retired at age 57. (Yes, I carried the note that allowed him to buy it). He ran it for another 16 years and then he sold right before COVID hit and retired.

So, when you think about business owners and how hard many work, please keep in mind that most small businesses are not started by “silver spooners”; rather folks who take a risk…sometimes a huge one…with limited assets.

If the business fails, there is no “bailout” a la General Motors…there is only the mirror (and an empty bank account) looking back at you.

And guess what?! I look back on those 7+ years as some of the best in my life:

Best in terms of the experience and best in terms of the returns, despite "averaging more than 50 hours/week. “Labours of love”, wherein one creates something from nothing, are like that.

Murph
BL Home Fool

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35

There are tens of millions of jobs out there that aren’t ‘socially rewarding’ in any sense. Your plumber, electrician, window installer, carpenter, computer fixer, cable installer, home construction people, lawn service, vet, doctor, all put in lots of hours.

That social reward is often in your point of view. All of those jobs you list - and many more - are socially rewarding if you choose to see them that way. The plumber, electrician, window installer, and carpenter help fix people’s homes, or help build a good home for someone. Or they build or repair places where people can work at good jobs or learn in good schools or enjoy the arts. Vets and doctors help people and their pets pretty directly.

Not all socially rewarding jobs involve working directly in social work or environmental work or big causes. Your job can be socially rewarding by just helping people with everyday parts of life - by doing a good job in the mundane things that people take for granted until they don’t work right. Cleaning houses can be socially rewarding when you do a good job for people who appreciate it. Fixing cars can be socially rewarding when you help people keep their car in good shape.

too many Gen Z and others skated through high school.

Gen Z didn’t invent that. Skating through school is as old as schools. I’m a boomer and in hindsight I skated through high school. And Jr. Hi. And grade school. University, too. I annoyed a great many teachers by failing to do homework and still learning and grasping the things they were teaching. I’m quite sure I’m not alone. Others skated through school in different ways, barely passing, or dropping out altogether.

So don’t be harping on Gen Z for being lazy in school. We were lazy, too. Plus we boomers have screwed up the world in a great many ways that they are going to have to fix. I choose to believe they WILL fix or find ways to get through the things their parents and grandparents screwed up in this world.

–Peter

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“No matter what you are doing, Son, do the very best you can…whether it is digging a ditch or anything else. Better work will be rewarded in the long term.”

Sorry, dad. You were wrong. Sometimes better work will be rewarded in the long term. Sometimes it won’t. The main reward for doing better work had better come from your own satisfaction in doing a job right. If others reward it, so much the better.

And sometimes, if your better work is not being adequately rewarded, you need to find different people to work for. There are a great many people out there who don’t care if you do really good work. They just view you as a tool to use for their own benefit. You are a way to make money for them.

Am I a bit cynical? Darn tootin’ I am. Before you get too down on me for saying that, it took me a long time to learn that hard work is not always rewarded. I have worked for multiple people who took advantage of me. Who used me to make money for themselves while sharing just enough with me to keep me from leaving.

I’m not going to say that the advice to work hard and it will be rewarded is wrong. It’s not wrong. But if you work hard and are not being rewarded, don’t keep doing what you’re doing. Do something different. Change something. You don’t have to change professions, often you just need to change jobs. I spent way too long working at one place then another waiting for my work to be rewarded.

Just remember that the line “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” - correct as it might be - can be used to take advantage of you. Sometimes its the push you need to move forward and get to the good work you are capable of doing. And sometimes it’s used to keep you working hard without proper reward.

–Peter

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There are tens of millions of jobs out there that aren’t ‘socially rewarding’ in any sense.

What “sense” is it that declares that creating and maintaining a fit place to live for a homeless person is “socially rewarding,” but creating and maintaining a fit place to live for a middle-class family is not?

That helping to run a food bank or soup kitchen for people who can’t afford to buy food is “socially rewarding”, but helping to run a grocery or restaurant for people who can afford to buy food is not?

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Sorry, dad. You were wrong. Sometimes better work will be rewarded in the long term. Sometimes it won’t. The main reward for doing better work had better come from your own satisfaction in doing a job right. If others reward it, so much the better…

Hi Peter,

Of course, hard/better work is not always rewarded…and my Dad knew that. He came from absolutely nothing, and had to quit school in the 7th grade when his Dad died, so he could work to help his Mom keep from losing their small house. He still practiced his “work hard” advice despite setbacks and became a successful entrepreneur and self-made man.

Do you think it would have been better if his advice was:

“Do as little as you can, Son, just to get by, because hard work is not always rewarded.”

Or, “Work hard Son, only if you see relatively quick rewards”.

Which advice/mindset is better for the person and the society?

If one has to err on one side or the other, I’ll take my Dad’s advice every time, even though it is not “perfect”. :wink:

Cheers!
Murph
BL Home Fool
(who notes that every time he became unhappy in the 25 years he spent in the “corporate wars”, someone at another company noticed his hard/better work ethic and tried to hire him away. Sometimes, he said “Yes” ) :wink:

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Just remember that the line “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” - correct as it might be - can be used to take advantage of you.

Preach it brother. Work better and faster than your coworkers, and you are rewarded with more work, because it makes the boss look good. Ever watch “Mr Roberts”? Roberts was a crackerjack XO. The captain wanted to be promoted to full Commander, and figured the best way to do that was to have the best run ship, and the best way to have the best run ship, was to keep Roberts right there as XO. So, every time Roberts requested transfer, the Captain marked the request “disapproved”.

Mister Roberts (1955) - (Movie Clip) Disharmony Aboard This Ship

https://www.tcm.com/video/1521229/mister-roberts-1955-movie-…

Can’t understand why people “don’t want to work” when the “JCs” treat them like that.
/sarcasm

Steve

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Just remember that the line “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” - correct as it might be - can be used to take advantage of you.

Good old victimhood complex.

Don’t work hard, work smart! Working just for the money is a loser. Work for the fun of it. Find jobs that move you toward your goals.

What the other guy gets out of it is his worry, not yours!

The Captain

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