Dingus of the Week: Bosses
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Dingus of the Week: Bosses
But not if you are a boss who subscribes to this newsletter. Then, you get a papal dispensation.
The bosses are mad right now.1 Very mad. You see, something changed during 2020. With the looming threat of disease, forced into our homes to pet our dogs and face down our own mortality, Americans decided that maybe dying for work wasn’t what we wanted to do.
Given a small glimpse at work and life balance, workers have been demanding to be able to keep working from home, better wages, and boundaries on their work time. In sum, a lot of people have decided they don’t want to die at their desks and that maybe there are more important things in life than being a manager. And that maybe we can just have happy lives walking our dogs, finger painting with our kids, and seeing friends, and if that means we don’t earn six figures that’s okay because we could die at any moment. And our workplaces will actually hasten that death.
This is what is making the bosses so angry. Because no one wants to work anymore.
One boss was so mad he put it in the paper of record that he was mad. Steven Rattner, the CEO of Willett Advisors, wrote in the New York Times:
The question lurking in the minds of many with whom I’ve spoken (as well as my own): Has America gone soft?
A recent Wall Street Journal report noted that in a Qualtrics survey of more than 3,000 workers and managers, 38 percent said the importance of work to them had diminished during Covid and 25 percent said it had increased. (The rest said that it had not changed.)
That’s right, Steven. Perhaps we don’t want to absolutely kill ourselves for companies who will fire our asses at the slightest inconvenience. In 2020, I was working two jobs for my company (without additional compensation), I was working 10-12 hour days, while parenting two children as a single mother, launching a book, and then navigating repairs after a natural disaster. That summer, I lost a significant about of weight due to stress and developed chronic back pain that I am still dealing with. All to be fired at the end of the year.
I have a very good friend who has a very important job, so I won’t out her here. But she’s spent the past three years working 2.5 jobs for her large employer at the executive level without much extra compensation. It’s hurt her health, her personal life, and her mental well-being, and it’s basically brought her to the point of a near breakdown before they finally gave her the promotion they’d been dangling in front of her for 18 months.
I have heard this story from so many friends at so many levels of the capitalist system. Maybe we just want to work, get some healthcare, and be happy.
So, you bet your shiny heinie no one wants to work anymore, Steven.
Steven goes on to yearn for a simpler time when people would wake up, go to the office, come home, go to bed. Day in and day out.
This is also a way of him revealing that he clearly didn’t have to deal with childcare for his four children. Steven, tell me you aren’t the primary caretaker without telling me you are the primary caretaker.
He then goes on to cast skepticism over the notion of a shorter work week. Saying that less input equals less output. I don’t think he’s right. Study after study has proven that shorter work weeks are better for workers and more productive. However, I don’t care if he’s right or wrong. Why should people care?
If 2020 taught us anything it’s that companies will murder people to justify making a chicken nugget. And I am not very shocked that the net effect of this realization would be people saying, “You know what, I don’t want to spend my one wild and precious life whiling away in the cubicle mines.”
And Now for Something Good:
Iowa women’s basketball team play tonight against Colorado.
Happy second anniversary to the Evergiven, a former dingus award winner, who gave us so much joy when she got stuck in that canal.
Kari Lake’s appeal in her election lawsuit was turned down.
Speaking of dingusy lawsuits, a right-wing activist in Iowa who advised the governor on her mask mandate (or lack thereof) policies had a lawsuit get dismissed this week, because, and I quote, “The Court has reviewed the filings in this matter. None of the Plaintiff’s filings remotely comply with the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure for commencement of actions.” The lawsuit demanded over $87,000,0002 from a local school district for their invitation-only drag show.
I just really enjoyed looking at pictures of this crumbling English manor. Someone, please buy it for me. I promise I’ll move there, and you won’t hear from me again.
A 90-year-old turtle named Mr. Pickles became a father.
Machaela Cavanaugh is continuing to filibuster Nebraska as Republicans in the state want to past anti-trans laws. Cavanaugh has vowed to burn the session to the ground. WE HOPE SHE DOES!
Also, Tina Smith ate some Jell-O.
This isn’t good, but Afroman’s home was wrongfully raided. But the good thing is he made a song about it.
What I Am Drinking:
This week, I contracted a cold that would not quit. It’s been five days and I’m still running almost entirely on DayQuil and caffeine. So, I mostly drank tea, more tea, and a lot more tea. When I was at Blackberry Farm, I drank some very delightful tea, maybe some of the best tea I’ve ever had. And that was Smith’s Golden Light Tea. It’s this lovely floral tea, full of flavor and sweetness.
In the spirit of tea. I looked up spirits you can mix with tea and two stood out to me. This Contraband cocktail that involves soaking tea leaves in .5oz rum, .5oz vermouth, and 1.5oz bourbon for two hours, then straining and serving over ice. It sounds like a tea-infused Manhattan.
And then, this Jalisco High Tea 1 1/2 ounces reposado tequila, 1/4 ounce cherry Liqueur, 1 1/2 ounces chilled lemon tea, 1/2 ounce simple syrup, 1 splash lime juice, shaking them all together in a cocktail glass and serving over ice.
But this weekend, I am throwing a party for a newly minted 12-year-old, so I will be drinking a margarita. The margarita has become my child birthday drink. My kids live another year? That means tequila. This year, the margarita will pairs with her Carlos O’Kelly’s nacho bar that I will be ordering. Some of you may remember this, but in 2020, right when the shutdowns were happening, my daughter had a birthday party. Mid-March of 2020 was a weird time. Some things were canceled like sports. Other things continued, like large horse auctions. Some people were canceling spring break trips, while others were going anyway. It wasn’t immediately clear whether we should have a party or not. I canceled it and I still remember an email I got from one of the moms who told me, “I think this is an overreaction.”
When I tweeted about her disappointment, our confusion, the pushback from other parents, and how all the shipping delays meant we had no party supplies, Carlos O’Kellys offered to give my daughter a free fiesta in a box. If you don’t know, Carlos O’Kelly’s is a Midwestern Mexican food chain that began in Marion, Iowa. I accepted it and we had a grand time. This year, my daughter asked for the fiesta in a box once, again. That was a weird awful time, but somehow we got free nachos. And they were delicious.
*Me at my daughter’s birthday party, taking over the playlist, grumbling, “They don’t make songs like this anymore!”*
Are you a boss? I don’t mean you. You are not a regular boss. You are a cool boss. You get a papal dispensation. I’m the pope of dinguses, so I can make that decision. Don’t think too hard about the theological implications of that metaphor.
I had to correct this number because this woman was suing for $87,000,000, not $87,000 as I initially wrote. I knew that, and yet, somehow my mind couldn’t process what a dingus she is.
Dingus of the Week: Bosses
It really says a lot about Capitalists that despite ample data that shorter work weeks are actually more productive (in the Capitalist sense of they make more money), Capitalists still want people in workplaces 40+ hours a week to prove something.
Almost like Capitalism is a shitty exploitative system or something!
I’d give this a thousand likes if I could. I’m currently job hunting (at 55 which is whole other kind of hell) and was “no. 2” in their matrix rankings because I wasn’t excited by the prospect of an imminent shift from 3 days in the office to 5.