Antiwork

[Supermoon]

I get the feeling that most of these folks expect the same amount of juice, with less squeezing.

Yeah. Exactly. If Europe and Australia can do it…

Edit to add: so many studies have shown that four day work weeks, flex schedules, fewer hours, etc, don’t hurt productivity and lead to happier employees, but literally nobody in the Us has implemented these things and it’s just wild to me. We have all this hustle culture bullshit which makes people feel tough or whatever and is just counter productive

[californiagrown]

Yeah. Exactly. If Europe and Australia can do it…

Do those places have such rampant levels of consumerism as America?

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/ind...PC.KD/rankings This says that the average american outspends the average australian by more than 20%, despite goods being cheaper in america. We like to buy stuff, all the damn time. People need to be satisfied with less useless stuff to buy (juice), if they also want to have the work-life balance (squeeze) of Europe/straya.

[Supermoon]

I think work hours and consumerism aren’t necessarily tied directly together. People should be able to work less for the same compensation if their productivity didn’t change

[The AD]

Edit to add: so many studies have shown that four day work weeks, flex schedules, fewer hours, etc, don’t hurt productivity and lead to happier employees, but literally nobody in the Us has implemented these things and it’s just wild to me. We have all this hustle culture bullshit which makes people feel tough or whatever and is just counter productive

Agreed. I seriously doubt a high percentage of employees are truly productive 40 hours per week or more.

[californiagrown]

Edit to add: so many studies have shown that four day work weeks, flex schedules, fewer hours, etc, don’t hurt productivity and lead to happier employees, but literally nobody in the Us has implemented these things and it’s just wild to me. We have all this hustle culture bullshit which makes people feel tough or whatever and is just counter productive

A 4day workweek would likely work really well in many industries. I work in the construction industry (generally) and there is no way productivity wouldnt be 20% (or thereabouts) impacted if we went to a 4 day work week. Similarly, i dont see how manufacturing could get away with less work hours but keep productivity the same. Same with the service industry.

For every big bloated company with lots of redundancy and wasted oxygen, there are a bunch of mid and small companies that are pretty damn efficient. The big companies already at large scale could much more easily adapt to a 4day work week than the smaller company.


when this recession fully hits, maybe it will make sense for my industry to switch to a 4day workweek?

[Mustonen]

I think work hours and consumerism aren’t necessarily tied directly together. People should be able to work less for the same compensation if their productivity didn’t change

This strikes a similar chord to some of the pushback against WFH. It’s largely about control, and butts visibly in seats becomes a proxy for managing outcomes. The thing is, managing outcomes is hard. And many of the middle managers we promoted into their roles were never taught how to manage outcomes or really how to manage at all, which pulls on the thread about promoting into roles somebody isn’t qualified for.

[Mustonen]

A 4day workweek would likely work really well in many industries. I work in the construction industry (generally) and there is no way productivity wouldnt be 20% (or thereabouts) impacted if we went to a 4 day work week. Similarly, i dont see how manufacturing could get away with less work hours but keep productivity the same. Same with the service industry.

For every big bloated company with lots of redundancy and wasted oxygen, there are a bunch of mid and small companies that are pretty damn efficient. The big companies already at large scale could much more easily adapt to a 4day work week than the smaller company.


when this recession fully hits, maybe it will make sense for my industry to switch to a 4day workweek?

But why tho? Even with a three person crew, Frank gets Friday off, Joe gets Monday off, John gets Wednesday off. Everybody puts in a 20% longer day and you get a little smarter about scheduling tasks that require the whole crew. The bigger the crew, the easier that gets. I’m not saying that’s a perfect solution and I’m not even saying you’re wrong - I don’t work in construction. But manufacturing and service are no brainers for a 4 day workweek unless your service only has 9 to 5 availability and no prep/cleanup.

[m2711c]

just put ina 20% longer day? fer real? after an eight hour day of construction, most folks are fuckin' tired. how much extra labor you think that dudes gonna get done in those last 2 hours of that now 10 hour day?

[Ted Striker]

I get the feeling that most of these folks expect the same amount of juice, with less squeezing.

Not specific to what you guys are talking about at the moment, but to the movement in general: it's really about the division of juice. Loading dock guy gets a drop. Cubicle guy gets two drops. Cubicle's manager gets three. Juice Bezos has a trillion drops, and gets a million more each day.

One day they ask loading dock guy to load two extra trucks per shift. He asks, "will I get a second drop?" "No. I thought you were a team player?! WTFs wrong with these kids today..."

[Supermoon]

Not specific to what you guys are talking about at the moment, but to the movement in general: it's really about the division of juice. Loading dock guy gets a drop. Cubicle guy gets two drops. Cubicle's manager gets three. Juice Bezos has a trillion drops, and gets a million more each day.

One day they ask loading dock guy to load two extra trucks per shift. He asks, "will I get a second drop?" "No. I thought you were a team player?! WTFs wrong with these kids today..."

This

[Mustonen]

just put ina 20% longer day? fer real? after an eight hour day of construction, most folks are fuckin' tired. how much extra labor you think that dudes gonna get done in those last 2 hours of that now 10 hour day?

Sure, sure. And that isn’t the point anyways, I guess. The point is that we’ll be more productive if we aren’t just spinning time at work for 40+/week. Fair point that nobody in construction is fucking off for X hours/day.

[Supermoon]

Sure, sure. And that isn’t the point anyways, I guess. The point is that we’ll be more productive if we aren’t just spinning time at work for 40+/week. Fair point that nobody in construction is fucking off for X hours/day.

I would say that, at least in the trades, you are working overtime and getting $$ when they push you beyond 40. For the salaried employee you get jack shit.

[jono]

That’s my take. He’s just kind of an idiot about this. But to some degree he’s being fed this “quiet quitting” sort of line and it isn’t doing him the service he thinks it might be.

Is there more backstory to this? You said he's already provided you with some "greenhorn" stuff you couldn't use. Did his experience doing that sour him on the whole idea? Maybe he wasn't all that committed to doing this in the first place, maybe it looks harder now, maybe he got discouraged and decided he doesn't want to spend his time fighting for ideas against what looked to him like "not invented here" mentalities.

Just seems like he's probably got more to say. Anytime someone says "I'm not paid for x" that's an opening for negotiation. A bad opening, but still an opening.

Sounds like californiagrown either got a dud or he may not be paying enough to compensate ambitious, capable people. If you hire someone for a role that makes you money you either cover the opportunity cost of someone who is both ambitious and understands their value or you accept them making you less money.

You can always pick someone from the bottom of any pay range. But a person who doesn't understand what makes them valuable won't know how to maximize that. If that costs you 10x their salary then it does indeed suck to be you. No need to shoot the messenger.

[dunfree]

just put ina 20% longer day? fer real? after an eight hour day of construction, most folks are fuckin' tired. how much extra labor you think that dudes gonna get done in those last 2 hours of that now 10 hour day?

Some warehouses work 4 10s or 3 12s

[J. Barron DeJong]

https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/...7sgBSr97iytgbA

[nickwm21]

We’ve tried to run 4-10s on a few projects but surprisingly there’s always a lot of pushback. Most of the projects we build are in major metropolitan areas and most of the skilled labor is commuting in from beyond the suburbs. With their early start and 8hr shift, they kinda avoid the white collar commute hours… a 10 hour shift will push them into that desk jockey traffic and significantly increase their drive time home. Additionally, with some labor agreements you need to add another 15m break for that added 2 hours, so you don’t really get a full 40.

The exception is Elevator Mechanics - they have a 4-10 schedule written into their union agreement…


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[TahoeJ]

Not specific to what you guys are talking about at the moment, but to the movement in general: it's really about the division of juice. Loading dock guy gets a drop. Cubicle guy gets two drops. Cubicle's manager gets three. Juice Bezos has a trillion drops, and gets a million more each day.

One day they ask loading dock guy to load two extra trucks per shift. He asks, "will I get a second drop?" "No. I thought you were a team player?! WTFs wrong with these kids today..."

/ end thread.

[fastfred]

just put ina 20% longer day? fer real? after an eight hour day of construction, most folks are fuckin' tired. how much extra labor you think that dudes gonna get done in those last 2 hours of that now 10 hour day?

people are pussies and I am now a pussy used to work circles around people manual labor up until my mid thrities people are fucking soft man real soft watching the average "man" struggle to lift or do the simplist labor like task in life is humourous to me

I'm just here to post that I'm smokeing a bowl for lunch trying to figure out what happened and what I should do this afternoon
options
1) clean my shop
2) install a new maxxair fan on the van
3) paper work (not happeneing when I'm too hight)
4) go for a bike ride
5) go for a walk/hike with the dog

still 8 more hours in the day so I've got time

would that all be quiet quitting cause I don't plan on being too productive and I only worked three hours this weekend had to dress up this morning and review hundreds of thousands of dollars of bullshit with some big credit card company big wig

life is rought guys

[fastfred]

Checking my email

[Mustonen]

Is there more backstory to this? You said he's already provided you with some "greenhorn" stuff you couldn't use. Did his experience doing that sour him on the whole idea? Maybe he wasn't all that committed to doing this in the first place, maybe it looks harder now, maybe he got discouraged and decided he doesn't want to spend his time fighting for ideas against what looked to him like "not invented here" mentalities.

Just seems like he's probably got more to say. Anytime someone says "I'm not paid for x" that's an opening for negotiation. A bad opening, but still an opening.

Sure, maybe. It was meant just as an example, even though it’s a real one. I’ve heard similar messages from plenty of places. Another example is my (much) younger brother who wasn’t interested in learning how to be a manager at his shitty service job. I counseled him and he listened and it worked out well for him for that period of his life (no real credit to me, he just needed a minute to see past this low effort mentality).

The greenhorn guy fires off the occasional report that looks like a class assignment, and he makes suggestions for things that we can do, and he expressed interest in pursuing these things further. I worked with his direct supervisor and the department manager to carve out a unique job description for him that included exploring some of his ideas, mostly in a self-directed way. Basically, “you have ideas, here is a significant amount of time/week to just noodle on them and see what might have legs. If they do, we will build a role around them and you can design it. If they don’t, keep on noodling.” This was done in the context of a general promotion that also allowed him to work from home.

He’s a good kid and I’m interested in some of his ideas, but not interested enough to create a role that is specific to his interests, and if we did create that role he wouldn’t be qualified for it anyways.

[skaredshtles]

Checking my email

I can't be the only one that immediately thought of this:

[The AD]

https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/...7sgBSr97iytgbA

Gotta say I'm not getting this guy's point at all. The idea behind quiet quitting isn't "getting something you feel you're entitled to for no reason," it's getting what you're entitled to based on doing the work you're required to do, right?

[californiagrown]

Not specific to what you guys are talking about at the moment, but to the movement in general: it's really about the division of juice. Loading dock guy gets a drop. Cubicle guy gets two drops. Cubicle's manager gets three. Juice Bezos has a trillion drops, and gets a million more each day.

One day they ask loading dock guy to load two extra trucks per shift. He asks, "will I get a second drop?" "No. I thought you were a team player?! WTFs wrong with these kids today..."

Seems like the dock worker should be comparing his juice quantity to his boss in the trailer, not the Bezos' of the world.

Bezos will be fine when amazon workers quiet quit. He remains pretty much unaffected. the middle managment though will suffer as their staff lets them down and/or starts taking a larger percentage of their pay. And the middle mgmt doesnt want to quite quit because most of them have designs on moving up into upper mgmt. So the ones who get fucked over the most are the middle mgmt types who squeeze harder and harder to make up for less squeezing from their staff, in order to produce the same amount of juice to show to upper mgmt.


Also, it sounds like an hourly pay structure would alleviate nearly all of the quite-quitters issues. So, just do away with salary positions until upper mgmt level where bonuses become the primary compensation anyways.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Gotta say I'm not getting this guy's point at all. The idea behind quiet quitting isn't "getting something you feel you're entitled to for no reason," it's getting what you're entitled to based on doing the work you're required to do, right?

I think the point is that management is expecting to get something they aren’t entitled to at no cost (worker going above and beyond their job description, without additional compensation).

But if you flip the scenario - worker wants additional compensation without providing any excess value to management, there’s no way management is going to consider that fair. So why should they expect the first case to be fair.

Long form of his argument here:

https://ez.substack.com/p/quiet-quit...eath-of-office

[Mazderati]

'Hero' is thrown around a lot when it's not deserved. This kid, on the other hand...