4 ms·
When I am a guest at someone's house I always stay and help clean up, and wash dishes. Love to do my share. But it is foolish to be doing janitorial duties at
by bugsy 16y ago
When I am a guest at someone's house I always stay and help clean up, and wash dishes. Love to do my share.
But it is foolish to be doing janitorial duties at work. A situation a few years ago will serve as an example. As an expert, my time was being billed out to clients at $150/hr and I was getting paid $50 of that. The company did not want to hire more engineers so I was working 60-100 billable hours every week, working massive overtime for which I was not paid since developers are "salary". I had not had a Saturday or Sunday off in over a year.
On top of all this, the company decided to save money by firing the janitorial service, which was being paid $15 an hour, and whose workers earned minimum wage. It was announced that engineers would take turns vacuuming, taking out the trash, and cleaning dishes and and even cleaning out the fridge.
I quit over that. Obviously because I wasn't a team player, right?
- mcherm 16y agoWrong. Imagine the economy took a downturn and the company was having trouble finding placements for their consultants. Imagine that they decided to hang onto the employees even though they didn't have billable work for them (try hard: you may sprain your imagination). Imagine that the company's finances were in trouble over this, so they stopped the janitorial service. And then they asked you to take out the trash and clean the fridge. THAT is when it would be appropriate, and a team player would pitch in. Abusing employees is abuse whether it's excessive billable hours or excessive fridge-cleaning.