My high school English teacher did this, although we didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t until I was doing an essay on banned books in college that I realized all of the ones we read in his class were banned. Really made me appreciate him more.
For me the joke just doesn’t work reversed. The younger generation grows up hearing the older generations slang, so even if the younger generation doesn’t use that slang they know it. Older generations don’t tend to keep up with younger generations slang so, at least to me, the joke really only works with the older not understanding the younger.
nah, danes still pollute a lot. more like indigenous people that are used to live of the land, aborigenes, amazonian tribes, african tribes. you know cultures that are more focused on earth.
congratulations! companies now have motivation to hire people as close as possible to the workplace, as well as fire those who live further than everywhere else!
those optimizing fucks would run that idea into the ground, i think
they’ll pick the most efficient option-- to them, it’s not “people HAVE to live this far away or less”. it’s “alright, who lives the farthest away and are potential new hires closer”. basically, they’d define “near” based on where employees live and where job applicants live.
it’d result in a world where the people who can afford to live closer than their coworkers are the people with more job security. it’d be more wealth inequality
In a later comment you imagine housing near the workplace to be an expensive way to boost your resume.
I imagine us one step closer to company towns. Housing thats owned and operated by an LLC connected to your workplace and housing issues and workplace issues become one and the same.
The company doesn’t control how far away you live. Why should you get paid to listen to podcasts for two hours a day because you chose to live an hour away, and I only get paid for actual work?
Why pay someone that drives an hour each way more than someone that cycles to work in twenty minutes?
In that example, based on a wage of £20ph, the driver would be earning £6,666 per year more than the cyclist, that’s nearly an additional £300,000 over a 45 year career… You’d be an absolute idiot to not sell your house and move as far away from your work as reasonably possible.
You seem to assume that I was implying that the two people in the scenario live an equal distance from the work place.
My scenario implies that the cyclist might live less than ten miles from work and that the driver lives a multiple of that away and ridicules the idea of financially rewarding someone for living further away from the workplace in terms of distance, time and carbon footprint.
I was comparing two different, but very reasonable scenarios where two employees pay would be hugely different for a very silly reason. It’s not apples and oranges.
That or go remote if there’s no productive reason why they need to be in the office and then just don’t have to pay for a non-existent commute
It’s actually kinda genius from the perspective of getting unneeded commuters off the road, because like hell are those middle managers willing to pay commute time just to be able to more effectively ride your shoulder at the office
Why not just pay the price of gas plus maintenance costs then? But I would be for the same wage for commutes because that’s time that the individuals don’t get back in their life.
Why not just live near your work place and save money and time yourself instead of making it your employers problem that you have a long commute.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of getting paid more for any reason. I just don’t think that it’s going to go down well in a workplace where some people would be getting paid substantially more for no other reason than they’ve chosen a job that’s far from where they live.
You would also account the gas and maintenance of the car that needs to drive that much. Also, now you are doing “overtime” every day. Thanks no thanks.
People always bring up this objection, but it’s extremely solvable: just pay employees for their travel respective to the median commute time for that area. Sure, people who live close get a little bonus and people who live far away get slightly less; but it removes all impetus to game the system and helps people who need it.
Germany kind of does that… When you file your taxes, you claim the “Pendlerpauschale”, which is, roughly translated, the commute lump sum. For the first 20 kilometres between home and work, people get 30 cents per km, any km after that gives you 38 cents.
It kind of works in the sense that the money you spend to get to work is more or less evened out. It is also paid regardless of your means of transport, so cheaper means (such as bicycles or trams) are incentivised by potentially making you some money in return. However, this is still far from an hourly wage… We’re talking about a few hundred euros, maybe a few thousand per year if you have a long commute.
If you used the median time and would force employers to pay a wage I really don’t get how you would either prevent people to move further away (if you have worker protection laws) or people being fired for living too far away (if you live in the USA). This would also make it far more profitable for higher incomes to commute, which seems kind of counter-intuitive as they are probably the ones who need it the least and who would be able to just move to a new home if they wanted to.
If you pay everyone the same “travel allowance” then that’s just part of everyone’s total compensation and compensation will be reduced somewhere else. There’s no magic money fountain at a business. An employee’s compensation is an employee’s compensation. Simply declaring that “this portion of your pay is a travel allowance” is absolutely meaningless.
A company is not going to pay everyone more money just to help those who live far away who “need it”.
Economists like to pretend that currency is entirely rational, real, finite, and concrete, but it’s really not. That fiction only holds together as long as the bulk of people are willing to believe it.
Besides, these laws would never be two lines long like are written here. They would have addenda and provisions and such, preventing businesses from discriminating against employees based upon commute length, giving an upper limit, preventing a decrease in compensation to accommodate the commute benefit, and so forth.
And in the end would it turn out to be less than worthwhile? Maybe. But current remuneration in Western culture emphatically isn’t working. We need either one big change or lots of little changes, and this would fall in the latter category.
Well there sometimes is a magic money fountain. Like when the minimum wage goes up the money fountain just pays people more money that apparently wasn’t there before. Or when people ask for a raise and their boss tells them no so they leave and have to pay a new hire 140% of the original employee. The trick is to make the money fountain think you’re not going to work anymore because it’s only on a trickle. As soon as you stop working it remembers where all the money is. Magic
I love you, unlike OP, who clearly hates you, so here’s the alt-text.
On January 26th, 2274 Mars days into the mission, NASA declared Spirit a ‘stationary research station’, expected to stay operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.
He gave you IMMORTALITY, didn’t say nothin’ about remaining conscious!
And while suffocation due to CO2 accumulation doesn’t feel nice, HYPOXIA ON THE OTHER HAND FEELS AMAZING!
So:
step 1: shut off your oxygen feed and your suit heat
step 2: let the CO2 scrubbers do their job
step 3: breathe easy because you still have the ambient nitrogen mix component
pretty soon you’re gonna feel floaty, dizzy, and giddy - you’re gonna feel exhilarated, a real I CAN DO IT vibe - and then as a tingly and warm sensation engulfs your entire body, you will begin to feel HELLA sleepy.
then your immortal body will go into a state of persistent dormancy, preserved by the cold, purified by the radiation.
if you are EVER found (assuming you ever are… and if you aren’t, you won’t be in any condition to care!) and your rescuers expose you to an atmosphere your body can actually use, you will AWAKEN and be able to pick up however many days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, or millennia later, and resume living a life, even if it isn’t necessarily the one you once knew.
And should you be abducted by the gravity of any celestial body you will feel pain unimaginable for however long your nerves last, stranded on something that nobody else will ever discover to live out the heat death of the universe in a constant cycle of pain (if you can regenerate lost nerves) or as a mangled sentient* meat pile (if you can’t regenerate) all because you were given Immortality and not Invulnerability.
Assuming you haven’t entirely lost your mind by now.
No. You won't feel pain if you're not conscious. What are you on about?
Also, you can see the Earth and Moon in the corner of the frame, he's not that far away. Probably in Earth orbit, or in near-Earth solar orbit. So the celestial body he's most likely to hit is Earth, which means he just wakes up after impact and everything's fine.
True. It’s the best outcome if they’re unable to make it home. Gross, though.
But it IS a problem for the astronaut, as “I don’t want to die!” implied they didn’t want to lose sapience. Only a problem until it happens, of course, but then, so is death.
By definition, an immortal should not be able to die, but it depends on the writer. You’re correct that nothing says they can’t experience pain, though.
I’ve always seen the two as different but like you said it depends on the writer.
In my experience though “immortal” is mainly used in the sense that there’s no physically possible way for a mere human to kill said immortal.
It could also be the difference between something that’s biologically immortal (like lobsters who could theoretically grow forever due to their ability to reconstruct telomeres) and something physically immortal like certain atoms. Or event potentially something “essentially immortal” where by all accounts to human life they will outlive us by eons and there’s nothing we can do to even affect them let alone cause damage.
“Mortal” means “subject to death,” so without qualifiers “immortal” should mean something cannot die at all. But of course everything in the real world dies eventually, so when used on real things it’s being hyperbolic. Since there’s a supernatural being in the comic, all bets are off.
Okay so here's what I don't get. I run a small team of 10. I am SUPER cool about people calling in. I don't give people grief for it. I don't have ridiculous performance expectations. I get that timelines have to slip when people call in. Even my upper management is pretty sane.
YET PEOPLE STILL COME IN SICK. WHY?!?
Motherfucker you're in a union shop with 8 hours sick leave a month and 10+ hours of vacation time per month AND at least 3 floating days you can use whenever AND other leave benefits. Most of you assholes are sitting on like 200-500+ hours of leave in your banks. I tell people to take care of themselves and their families first on the regular. The hell else am I supposed to do? Give people a gold star and a BJ for calling in sick? Keep your goddamned plague at home.
My current job is great about leave requests, but it’s taken me three years to finally get comfortable using it. Every other job I had would either make a fuss or guilt workers for using leave.
On top of that, I had the idea that you have to go to school or work sick unless you can’t get up passed down to me from my parents. They meant well. They were teaching me how to deal with the types of work environments they knew.
Toxic work culture can be so widespread that it sticks with you.
Yeah, I don’t understand the mentality of people who brag about never taking a sick day. So you came into work and spread whatever communicable disease you had at the time to your coworkers and then, they to their families how many times? Great job!
First of all, I agree with you and applaud you advocating for sick time off and letting production goals slip to prioritize wellness.
There are reasons people would come to work anyway, and I’m not justifying or excusing or even agreeing with it, just explaining different factors:
they might not want to admit that they’re sick, so if they’re able to come in and get through the workday, then they’re not sick sick.
they might be too comfortable in their routines to want to disrupt them for “just a cold” or whatever
you may not pressure them, but their peers may pressure them
they might have a strong will to "not let the team down"
depending on pay structure, maybe using sick time negates what would’ve been OT, so they make less money even though it’s paid sick time
depending on bonus/raise/promotion metrics, calling out may impact advancement opportunities
some people define themselves via their occupation, so being sick at home gives them a sort of existential crisis and makes them feel like useless lumps of shit?
they want to impress a higher up (maybe even you) that they’ll sacrifice their own well-being to achieve
they’re fucking morons who learned absolutely nothing from the pandemic that was way too recent to have already been forgotten
the coffee at work is that damn good
they hate their family and want to get away
their family hates them and told them to fuck off and they had nowhere else to go
if they’re able to cash out PTO and/or sick time, maybe that’s what they’re aiming to do
they think you’re cute and don’t want to spend even a single day at home away from your cute face
But in all seriousness (and I know I’m preaching to the choir because you already agree), studies show that productivity is higher when people call out one at a time compared to infecting the whole staff. Don’t back down on this issue. You might not be able to send people home when they’re sick, but I’m sure you can be direct and say something like:
“Flu season is upon us. I know for a fact that many of us will be getting sick over the next 3 months or so. When (not if) I get sick, I will be using sick time to be at home, resting and getting better and ensuring that I don’t spread it to anybody in here. I encourage each and every one of you to do the same. I care more about our health and safety than I do about productivity and goals. I would rather lose you for a day or two than lose half our staff at once for a week. Be self aware and proactive. If I had my way, nobody would even be allowed in the building if they had so much as a case of the sniffles. Take care of us all by taking care of yourself.”
Well I've told them and behaved that way to suit. It's been a bloody year. Also we're public sector, so it's not like we're going to be downsized out of nowhere.
Years of Corpo Approved socially public funded education experience gets you really used to all the forced trauma of the bells and whistles and 'knowing your place' was a common schoolground chant to STFU and obey.
They expect you to. The only way you can communicate that you don’t is by giving people grief for coming sick. That will force them to look at their environment and decide what to do, if you don’t, they’ll just pick the safe option that works everywhere.
The toxic culture is coming from the outside. They have no reason to trust you, because dozens of corporations institute wellness programs and talk about caring while still punishing people who take time off. Plus, some of them have just internalized the idea that they should just work through it.
One thing I have heard can help is if the boss takes time off, so since you have some authority, maybe make a point of taking your own time off and telling them when you do?
I really do try to model the behavior and stay home when I'm ill. I had Shingles and Hand, Foot and Mouth this year, so they've seen me call out (I was happier before I knew that viral orchitis was a thing and also, boy does it suck to get a shingles out break near your bloody eye).
Send them home when they do this. It’s taking care of your other employees, while teaching them that it’s ok to call in sick, since they will be sent home anyway.
Just as importantly, it’s also teaching them that it’s not okay to NOT call in sick when that’s necessary!
Some people need all the help they can get when it comes to unlearn the unhealthy Protestant Work Ethic dogma that corporations and others have been piggybacking on to more easily exploit and/or control people by shaming them.
If I hear the word rightsizing come out of my boss’ mouth, that mouth is immediately losing a few teeth. I would legitimately prefer the boss in this comic, because at least they’re honest.
It’s not manly, it’s a toxic combination of rage issues and holding everyone to the standards of being honest, with themselves and others. Get it right.
What part of “rage issues” do you not comprehend, troll?
I am well fucking aware it’s not a good thing. Just like you are well fucking aware that your bullshit comment isn’t gonna change shit.
I, on the other hand, am actively working to fix it. Just because I am aware of and honest about my own limitations does not make me less than you. Hell, it makes me better than you.
In short, piss off with your self-righteous and performative ass. Nobody wants to see it.
Not much I think, think you’re also demonstrating it in comments.
I think my comment contributes to question this kind of behavior which is still too much normalized as shown by your votes. Too many people still think it’s cool.
I’m glad you’re working on it and I hopes it improves things for you. I think answering to critics online without resorting to insults could be a good exercise. I didn’t say I was better than you, while you just did, I just wanted to point out that this behavior shouldn’t be celebrated.
Yeah, at this point, the boss in the comic would be massive improvement over most tech CEOs. Corporate doublespeak is more infuriating than just being a fuckup
I genuinely respect when people own up to their mistakes.
I’d greatly prefer a boss who says “look, this isn’t your fault, I wish I could do better by you, but it was my job to protect your job and this is where we are. Absolutely use me as a reference, reach out to me if I can do anything to help you land on your feet”
People really hate when something unfair happens and you try to pin it on them… But when you put down the titles, explain why it’s come to this, and offer to help them find a new job? That’s how you don’t burn the bridge from the other side… It doesn’t even require you to actually take responsibility, you just have to acknowledge it’s not their fault and make them feel you’re not taking it lightly
I have seen a pattern of the boss or even second-tier management not even knowing it’s about to happen. Like the now-famous Cloudflare botched “layoff-not-a-layoff” decisions are being made by folks who probably don’t even know the people they are firing, they are just names on a spreadsheet.
The good managers I’ve worked for think this way, they are there to make their team better and actually care about them as humans. For anyone thinking about going into management, every business I’ve ever seen needs more managers that care, it’s a worthwhile job and even fewer people can do it correctly than many technical jobs. Managing poorly is trivial, so we all think it’s “easy”.
I think a lot of the way executives handle things like this is very similar to how kids handle problems. They continue to try to cover it up and downplay it in hopes that everything will be over soon and no one will talk about it. They say “this is an adjustment” or “it’s a transitory period” while continuing to do additional lay offs and saying “we just need to put this all behind us”, instead of ripping the bandaid off.
Just treat people like another adult on equal footing with you. It’s not that hard.
HR will say it’s your fault so that the company saves on severance and unemployment insurance reimbursements. They pass off those costs to state taxes and the fired employees.
Admitting fault and admitting they are firing perfectly capable workers is more expensive and hurts the bottom line, which is all they are really there to protect.
Yeah, that’s my point. By not acknowledging how bad it is, it makes it worse. People get mentally exhausted, and productivity drops. They think they can fool people into believing this are sliiiiiiiiightly better, which means the company should do better. But that’s based on the belief that your employees don’t see through your bullshit. Any benefit they get from trying to game employee’s responses (read: get them to believe your corporate bullshit) they end up losing more through the negative impact it has on those left standing after the firings.
I agree on the outcome, I’m saying they don’t care what the fired employee really thinks, they just need to cover their asses in the event an employee sues them. And they are also doing it to discourage the fired employee from suing by showing them they’ve already built a case against them.
I mean I was just a teenager when Oppy was launched. I followed it more or less religiously through out my life. It was easily like seeing a pet go. Loyalest little robot that could… and did.
Oh yeah? Could be that he DOES have broken arms, but he can’t afford to go to a doctor so he toughs it out on cheap black market painkillers, leading to bones that never heal right and life-long crippling opioid addiction! Checkmate, capitalist!
Sheesh, I took that to a SUPER dark place for what started as a silly porn joke! 😂
Those foot pull hooks are useful, but I have yet to figure out how to get out the door without an awkward shuffle step or downright stumble as I pull the door open.
I hate those stupid air dryers. Most of them barely do any better than just shaking your hands in the air, because they’re simply spraying your clean hands with all of the shit and piss particles that are floating in the air.
Would rather have some cheap paper towels so I can dry my hands, and use the towel to open the door before throwing it in the trash.
Additionally, my understanding is that a lot of the cleaning done by washing your hands is mechanical, and using a paper towel with a slightly rough and absorbent surface scrapes off all the stuff that has been loosened by washing with soap and water.
Outside of antibacterial or germicidal soaps, the cleaning action of washing with soap is 100% mechanical. Soap molecules are asymmetrical and have one side that’s hydrophilic and one side that’s hydrophobic which, when used with water, creates a nifty mechanism that picks up crap on one side and catches a ride on the water molecules with the other side.
Regular soap does also kill bacteria with those hydrophobic sides of its molecules by breaking a bacteria or virus’ lipid membrane. I would argue this still a mechanical process though. Antibacterial soaps use a specific chemical, Triclosan, that binds with enzymes within the bacteria that prevent it from reproducing.
The new generation doesn’t use this bad design anymore. The Dyson Airblade V is just a box with two sharp edges that blows the water right onto your pants and the Airblade Wash+Dry works in a similiar way with a little bit sleeker design. Both of them have hepa filters too, so from a hygienic standpoint they are much better than their old airblades and the clones that filled the market.
Most of them barely do any better than just shaking your hands in the air,
I saw one of these once where someone scratched “4. wipe hands on pants” on the instruction panel.
The trick is to shake dry in the sink, then rub the moisture up past your wrists onto your forearms, creating a thin layer. Then use the dryer, repeating the rubbing motion spreading the moisture out until it’s gone.
because they’re simply spraying your clean hands with all of the shit and piss particles that are floating in the air.
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