I am willing to give up time out of my life (which is not renewable) for money from a company (which is renewable) and I am treated with contempt at job interviews like they are doing me a favor and treated as if I am trying to scam them. Why is society like this?
If I am helping your business make money shouldn’t there be some minimal gratitude? Instead companies treat you as if you are lucky to be helping them and they treat you as if you are constantly trying to scam them.
I am willing to give up time out of my life (which is not renewable) for money from a company (which is renewable) and I am treated with contempt at job interviews like they are doing me a favor and treated as if I am trying to scam them. Why is society like this?
Interviews work both ways. You are interviewing them just like they are interviewing you. They are doing you a huge favor in acting this way. Now you know you don’t want to work for them. This is much better than them pretending to be nice and you finding out later that it’s miserable.
It’s all about supply and demand.
If there is 150 more applicants coming in after you, they simply don’t need to treat you well. They can just wait till someone comes along that doesn’t have outrages demands like “respect” or “dignity”.
My advise would be to get skills in an high-demand area, then recruiters have to kiss your ass!
I think you meant “outrageous demands”. I only comment because it tripped me up reading it, sorry to be the grammar police.
Thanks, fixed it.
To the employers who treat their employees like this, employees are just numbers. Why put in the effort to build a relationship with a replaceable part? I agree with Ashy’s supply and demand point as well.
If you feel, in an interview, that you’re being negatively judged. Leave. You are interviewing them just as much as they, you. Sure there is a slightly different power dynamic at play but the point of contempt and feeling like they’re doing you a favor shouldn’t exist.
This isn’t super useful for people that are paycheck-to-paycheck and close to desperation mode.
Though to add to that, I’d suggest everyone live as far below their means as possible and save their asses off just for this reason.
You want all the money they can give you. They want your labour for free if they can get it. The deal you end up making is somewhere between those two extremes. The business needs someone to make money, but often doesn’t necessarily care who. They can pick the applicant that suits them best, providing the most value for money. They have something you want, and you may not have something they want, so they have all the power.
If you have experience or an education in a field with a worker shortage, you can get the opposite effect. See, for instance, the IT sector a few years ago, which had companies like Google and Facebook hiring people to do literally nothing all day, just so their competition doesn’t get their hands on the valuable workers. In those negotiations, there are plenty of companies that want to hire these people, so they have a lot of power in the negotiations. They’re doing the company a favour by “settling” for their offer.
Businesses don’t make a lot of profit from feelings. Even friendly people need to take economics into account, and that’s what most job offers are about. The same is true in reverse; you can work for the nicest, most caring boss you could ever imagine, but if you can’t make rent, something will need to change. Your negotiating power depends on what you have to offer, and what the other side has to offer in return. If you have nothing special to offer, you’re the one who’s going to have to settle. For jobs that don’t require any special education (or don’t ask for any experience), they are doing you a favour by hiring you, because you’re probably scratching the bottom of the barrel for jobs, and you can’t get anything better. If you had any better options, you wouldn’t be applying to such shitty companies.
The reason they’re treating you like you’re scamming them is a) most people they hire probably are putting in minimum effort, because there’s no way anyone is going to work themselves to death over minimum wage and b) they’re deadly afraid of you gaining the upper hand. If you become too good at your job, and the business starts relying on you sticking around, you may demand a raise or leave for a better job, leaving the business in the vulnerable position without much power. The longer they can keep you doing jobs that don’t require experience or leave you in a position where you’re replaceable, the less likely it becomes that you’ll be a threat to their bottom line, which is often tied to bonuses and other benefits for management. This is especially risky for business that run on quite thin margins, where the money all flows to the top, like grocery stores. This is where career advice like “become irreplaceable” comes from; a lot of career advice actually comes down to “get yourself more bargaining power”, packaged in non-offensive terms like “add valuable contributions”.
If you’re not applying to jobs with minimum requirements/wage and you’re still getting contempt, the interviewer is probably just a dick. You get those sometimes. In those cases, the interview is as much about you learning if you want to work for a company as it is about the company vetting you to work for them. If you have other options, it’s best to politely decline and find someone to work for who does respect you. There are bosses out there that do value the people working for them, but the good bosses don’t stick around dead-end jobs for too long.
Related: this bargaining power is exactly why unions are important. You, as one single employee, can probably hardly work yourself into a position where you can negotiate a better deal, but if all the employees in your sector decide to lay down their work all at once, businesses suddenly start to panic. They can make exceptions and special deals with the two or three workers that can negotiate themselves upwards, but when it comes to bargaining power, nothing beats dozens of workers coming together, leaving entire chains haemorrhaging bonus money as their business closes because nobody mans the machines/tills/registers.
Why is society like this?
✨Capitalism✨
A job should be a mutal relationship. Just like anything romantic, if there toxic you should look else ware. I have worked at one company for 6 months and the people are nice, but the job is awful and i put in my 2 weeks today. Because i checked out other business’s and the one i am currently am set up to go work for is sooooo much better. They wanted to make sure that the company and i were both happy. Compared to my current job that is “your hired”.
You just gotta find the right place to work, just like finding the right partner. It may take some time, but you will not regret it. Capitalism is self regulating if people are willing to fight for there workers rights and not take a job that pays less and cheats there workers. Those busniess will raise there wage and improve work enviroment. Or will no longer be in bussniess, because they went bankrupt.
My first job, i really liked. Good pay short hours, but one day the boss chewed me out infront of other workers. (Which i must add is not approrate) i told them i was thinking about quiting and THEY BEGGED ME not to. I still did and went belly up, i still dont regret it.
Fight for what you belive in! And hang in there, dont feel like your trapped to a business
Capitalism is self regulating
It most certainly is not. The bargaining power of a corporation and individual worker are not the same. It’s why labor unions exist. Additionally governments should regulate commerce for the benefit of everyone.
Lastly, please review and understand the differences between your and you’re, as well as their, there, and they’re. Absolutely frustrating trying to read what you wrote.
Unions are part of that system, though - and the OP mentions them as being a leverage tool specifically.
Self regulating, LMAO.
Ever heard of the term ‘capital strike’?
You won’t hear about it in the news, I wonder why?
The people today are at the end of a 4 decades long capital strike, and it doesnt look like its abetting, in fact, it’s looks like the slave owners are doubling down throwing inflation into the mix.
Inflation, is a tool not an outcome. It’s used to cudgel the poors back into complacency. Reduce their purchasing power, increase levels of despair.
Do you think I’m wrong about that? You might be thinking of the old version of the game. There’s been an update, it just didn’t get many headlines in the papers. Look up Modern Monetary Theory. I mean, why have the largest armed forces and a fiat currency if you aren’t willing to leverage them to get what you’re donors want?. Do you even capitalism bro?
Capitalism is self regulating if people are willing to fight for there workers rights and not take a job that pays less and cheats there workers. Those busniess will raise there wage and improve work enviroment. Or will no longer be in bussniess, because they went bankrupt.
Lmmfao, have you been living under a rock?? Never mind the privilege that oozes from your comment…
Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, OP! 🙄🙄🙄
What does it mean for a company to be renewable? Like you’re trying to say you want work in the field of renewable energy?
They’re talking about the money. It’s the income that’s renewable, not the company.
Because to companies, labor is just a business expense, you’re a cost to be kept low so they can please investors/shareholders. Our system isn’t for your average worker, it’s for the people who own the businesses.
They want desperate employees, someone they can bully and abuse.
