Obvious Secrets Young People (My Friends) Don't Seem to Know

Basically, it really boils down to read everything you sign. Except maybe on websites' terms of service because you'll realize that there are clauses such as the one in one of Game Stop's Terms of Service where they actually say the soul of the undersigned belongs to the company.

It's probably a combination of the fact that I worked over-full time years before my peers and the fact that I was horribly taken advantage of during that first job that it makes me super pissed off when my friends/family have decent(ish) jobs who take advantage of them. We are fortunate (so very very fortunate) to live in a country where fair working conditions are legally mandated. I think this rant is mostly aimed at my peers, those people in my graduating class (Oh EIGHT!) who are going out into the workforce for possibly the first time in their lives.

This is the way it works, that I've seen: a business (usually a large business with either over 100 employees or fewer, but more apathetic ones) will hire a fresh new face who is jolly and out of college and in a metric butt-ton of debt. They will hand the new hire stacks, literally, of paperwork and give a strict time limit for finishing them because they are paying for training and paperwork should only take fifteen minutes. The new hire is then pressured into signing everything without reading or digesting what contract they have just entered into. But everything seemed reasonable so it's all good. Besides, if you don't sign today, there are fifteen other people who will take the job so today has been a waste if you don't. (I have only had one job where they actually quizzed me on my contract, I liked that job a good deal.)

Work starts. All seems pretty great. The pay is good enough, maybe the work is tedious, maybe the work is frustrating.

Then the bosses ask once in a while for the new hire to stay a little overtime. The money for overtime is fantastic and the new hire is barely able to eat meat every week so of course they take it. Then overtime becomes regular. Then more time is added and there are threats that if the new hire doesn't take the hours, they will be fired. Subtle threats, to be sure, but extant.


This situation I recently found out has been happening to a friend of mine. She has been working 12 hour days of manual labor regularly with just one lunch break and four 15 minute breaks. She is so destitute that she has been thanking her luck for some extra cash.She is so exhausted that she was even perturbed at my outrage at how illegal that is.

Ok, first off, that's not legal. Unless you are in Hollywood, regularly working 12 hours in a 24 hour period is actually not kosher. Businesses use a power disparity and assume that their workers don't know their rights to allow for this to happen. Even if overtime is allowable in the contract (which is usually is, at one and half times regular pay), there it is absolutely, completely unacceptable to threaten someone's job if they do not agree to work optional hours. Especially not an additional 4 hours.

Another thing with the timing. By law, once you work over five and half (or six? I think it's six but it winds up being five and a half) you are supposed to have a 30 minute lunch. If you work up to 12, you certainly have to have a second meal, I forgot to look at the lower bound of that threshold. There is a Federal Law which states that you must have a ten minute break every 2 hours. If you work a 12 hour day, you should have a total of an hour of meals and three 10-15 minute breaks.

*This is just a separate issue but your bathrooms should also be useable. It's unsafe if they're not and CVS will soon be hearing my wrath because I had to change a toddler in their bathroom which was not fit for anyone to use, even meth addicts.*

Ok, but jobs can suck. (I'm really glad mine doesn't, if you're reading this!!) The next step is actually sometimes harder than enduring subtle threats and heavy lifting. The companies which exploit their workers in this manner know that they are so exhausted that they can't do anything about it. But if one can overcome this fatigue, it's really difficult who to turn to. Even harder is speaking the right language. Before going to anyone, have as much hard evidence as you can. Then you may get somewhere with your HR, Corporate or a department of government who deals with unemployment and employee fairness. But as I learned with my health saga, if you have hard evidence and someone backing you up, you will get a lot farther.




Some advice I learned today: If a girl is with a guy for four months and has never met his friends, she is not his girlfriend.

And here is an artist with a sense of humor about his music. I loved the original song since I first heard it but this I find this a signature of someone who takes imitation to truly be a form of flattery.

I can't decide which is my favorite part, the full chorus or the awesome rock guitar solo.