So, assuming you read the first article, now we’ll get down to the WHY. In America, (I might add it is most definitely not like this in other industrialized countries) virtually all of the power in an employee/employer lies with the employer.
Case in point: Forty-hour work week. Gone. Joe average works 50+ hours per week. My personal experience- I’ve had multiple employers demand and require more than 40. The fact that they are legally not allowed to require over 40 doesn’t matter. They do what the fuck they feel like and if you don’t like it, there’s the door. Almost always, companies that require buttloads of hours are poorly run.
Case in point: At-will employment, active in most states. They can legally fire you for any reason at any time and you have no recourse. None. Again, in other countries, they have to show cause before a mediator. Is that such a bad idea?
Corporations run this country, no news there. They told the politicians what they wanted and got it. None of us workers blinked.
When I was at Wealthbridge, on multiple occasions I went beyond 8 hours in a day, not getting paid for the extra, and I was an hourly employee. On the day they fired me they paid me for two hours! They didn’t even pay me for the day. Ouch.
Expect nothing from this kind of company, none of the little extra things you do will ever be repaid. Take everything you can. They sure as hell will from you. Now, I know there are some companies that are not like this. We’ll get to that.
In the majority of companies like Wealthbridge, upper management( Ken Frye and especially Nick Shepherd ) truly believe they are imperial. How else can their attitude toward fucking with people’s lives be explained?
At Wealthbridge Mortgage, a company of 120, during my time with them, they fired between five and ten percent of their workforce every month. Despite their posturing as something more, in its essence Wealthbridge is nothing more than a cold-call telemarketing company. There’s always turnover in these places. But 10 percent a month?? That shows two things- first, they have no clue who to hire for what job. Second, they refuse to invest in their employees. Anyone who doesn’t treat management as some kind of generous feudal lord and do exactly as told will be let go.
I’ve listened to Wealthbridge’s management stand in front of their troops and say, and these are direct quotes, “you should be grateful to Wealthbridge for giving you the opportunity to feed your family” and “if you’re not working as absolutely hard as you can every day, coming in early and staying late, then I can use the company resources of your cubicle and your computer more efficiently with someone else”.
Most of you won’t blink at this. That, to me, is more terrifying than anything else. Read the above lines again. You are a cog in a wheel, do exactly as we want, you have no rights other than to work.
We would all like to work for the exceptions. I’ve worked for two that had want I would call competent management, and both had serious flaws. I didn’t mind the flaws, because I understand that no one does everything well .
One of the ways you can tell a good company from bad is when someone complains about a work condition or a benefit being cut. A good company will seek your input and actively try to change said issue. A bad company will tell you “tough,” get back to work. I hope we all can work for companies that will be there for us when things go bad. I hope we can help that company survive in this landscape of wildly oscillating ethics.
Companies like Wealthbridge Mortgage simply don’t care. They don’t build anything. They move piles of money around.
Let’s step back and take a look at a larger picture.
Corporations are out of control in America. Do I really have to quote all the bailout, bonuses, lies, gambles, inequities? Goldman-Saks recently got flu shots from the CDC before pregnant women and small children. Thousands of pregnant women and small children had to wait weeks for their turn because the supply was gone, in part because I guess the CDC figured a middle-aged broker with a house in the Hamptons had a more pressing need.
Hold that thought.
You know if you were unfairly terminated at your job or not.
It altered your life path. Unjustly. Caused you and your family distress.
Why do we allow companies to behave like this? Why do we allow them to do anything to anyone and meekly justify our inaction as “that’s just the way it is”.
Two reasons:
1) Fatigue
2) Fear.
With the demands of children, families, work, this and that organization, we’re exhausted, working more, sleeping less, eating worse, having less joy.
Err… this was planned. If you’re too tired, it all just washes over you. You’re overwhelmed. It’s easier just to go with the flow.
Exactly.
Fear. I’ll lose my job. And in this economy…. You have to eat a lot of shit.
I watched a That 70’s Show rerun the other day where Red said, “Being a man is mostly doing a lot of stuff you don’t want to do.”
When did it come down to this?
In the last twenty years, companies have eaten other companies to grow in an artificial way. Those that remained got bigger and bigger to the point that they could do whatever they wanted with no consequence. To the point that some of them became too big to fail.
So, what are you going to do about it? What am I going to do about it?
What does this have to do with Wealthbridge Mortgage?
Attitude.
If the big guys can get away with this, so can we. It always cracks me up how companies will market themselves to potential clients will tag lines like: “Our people are the difference”, “Our employees make us the best”.
And then they turn around and, at best, offer those superior employees “competitive”( mediocre) compensation. If a big company gets away with cutting benefits, companies like Wealthbridge Mortgage will jump on the opportunity and justify the cuts as “competitive”.
So how do we, in a severely slanted environment, hit back? Make them wake up?
You speak up.
Being an IT guru, I can, if fact, cripple Wealthbridge. They’re all too unfocused and busy to even put up a fair fight. Their networks is poorly protected, their web site wide open, all of their databases are foolishly consolidated in a single place. Their backup and restore from disaster plans are, to say the least, feeble.
If you got a mortgage or even applied for one with these yahoos, your life is an open book to most of the employees. These are the same people that come and go with the hirings and firings. Social Security numbers, income, addresses, credit scores are spread onto multiple machines with inadequate security and used by dozens of employees who receive little or no training about what security is or how to achieve it. I’m talking live data. Your life.
Wealthbridge Mortgage is incredibly caviler with its client’s data. And they don’t have anywhere near the technical expertise to begin to deal with any of a number of attacks.
I’ll stop there.
There are times we have to take shit. But there are times we shouldn’t.
This is my way of striking back. It is somewhat unsatisfying. I was, and still am, furious. If I was younger and didn’t have a family I would have already taken a flamethrower to the place.
But their transgression against me probably doesn’t warrant violence. Goldman Saks and the flu shots I talked about earlier does. People probably died so that their brokers could get flu shots. Makes you want to clear the building, make sure no one’s in there and burn it to the ground, doesn’t it?
How far does nonsense like this have to go on before we take action beyond just bitching about it?
Me, I write. I will fight my battle. If one of my future stories has an evil corporation involved, you can guess their name. I already have a short film script that has a corporation lurking in the background called, yeah, that's right, “Wealthbridge Mortgage”.
To you readers, I say, don’t back down all the time, you’ll just encourage them. Be smart. Don’t fight a battle that will place you or your family in jeopardy unless you have to. Pick your spot and stand up.
And hit them straight between the eyes. Hard.
Myself, I’ve purposely waiting this long since Thanksgiving. I had to cool off- this little article is way tamer than it used to be. I had to wait to make sure a couple of things I needed to happen worked out. I had to put myself in a position where I was a little protected. That’s just being smart.
I do regret one thing. On the morning I was fired, Nick Shepherd tried to lecture me how I was disrespectful. I said I wasn’t, (unless you consider not curtseying every time a manager walks by disrespectful) except in the one infamous email and, frankly, that was more than justified.
Nick said, and this is a direct fucking quote, “That’s like saying you don’t beat your wife most of the time”.
I will regret for all my days not punching him in his smug little face. Maybe that wouldn’t have been smart, but it would have been satisfying. I guess for V.P. Nick, disrespecting employees the way he does is pertectly okay, because he's the VP. He's wrong.
Burning a bridge every now and then is a healthy thing. Otherwise you might make the same mistake twice. Bloodying the nose of a bully, however short-lived that might be, can be a good thing.
Standing your ground when they think they can slap you like an insect is a good thing.
That’s part of what a strong man or a strong woman does.
That’s what Americans used to do.
(Editor's update: Wealthbridge management, after receiving the 1st article, blocked my emails. I've heard they also scrambled to change passwords to sensitive systems. Both attempts are lame with a capital L. For god's sake I have lots of email aliases, and I know passwords and ways in and out of their network they don't even know exist- their systems are a tangled mess. If I wanted to inflict damage to their system, I already would have. I still can. And trust me, I would hit them in a way they'd never even know who'd hit them where. So, have some have asked, why not do it? Two words: Collateral Damage. Too many employees and customers would get hurt. This is personal because I'm choosing to make it personal.
With over 1000 reads already, and this article sent to contacts, employees, management, customers, while being little more than a pain in the ass for them, will hopefully cause managers who are as irresponsible as they are, to think twice before terminating someone with no cause whatsoever.)
