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Management Introduces Disciplinary Rules To Make Most Of Employees, Freaks Out When They Turn The Rules Against Them
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Management Introduces Disciplinary Rules To Make Most Of Employees, Freaks Out When They Turn The Rules Against Them

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A workplace disciplinary policy should provide the employees with clear guidelines and what consequences they can expect if the rules are broken.

On paper, it sounds like a good thing; it protects the company from wrongful allegations and ensures equal treatment of all employees. Win-win, right? Maybe somewhere. Just not where Redditor Alternative_Hunter34 works.

A few days ago, they made a post on the popular subreddit r/AntiWork, talking about how their organization deals with late and sick employees, and it’s clear that the situation is a lose-lose there.

A company’s ridiculous punishment policies are going viral

Image credits: CuriousMarc (not the actual photo)

After one of the employees publicly explained how everyone is exploiting them

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Image credits: Alternative_Hunter34

We managed to get in touch with Alternative_Hunter34 and the Redditor was kind enough to tell us more about their work.

“At the time of leaving my previous job, nearly ten years ago, [this] company was doing well and growing steadily,” Alternative_Hunter34 explained to Bored Panda the reason they came here.

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“They had ample job opportunities, and I walked in with ease. Essentially, I was drawn in by inertia. The path of least resistance.”

All in all, the employee is quite happy with their position. “The job would be fine if not for the management situation. As I did post in a reply to one poster, the job is well paid. Above minimum wage by a significant degree, and we have been steadily well paid since I joined.”

At this point, Alternative_Hunter34 doesn’t plan to go anywhere else. “As my company well knows, they offer the best paid, entry-level, no skills jobs in a wide radius,” they said. “We all moan, we all rant and rave, but most of us will be in the next day, week, and month regardless, and without breaking step, we will fight to keep the jobs we complain about should we come under redundancy or disciplinary.”

It’s a predicament the Redditor calls the money trap.

“Having collected and acclimated to our wages for some time now, it would require significant changes and personal sacrifices that the majority of us, myself included, are simply unwilling to make in order to break away and accept a lower wage,” they explained. “Our employers are as aware of this as we are, and therefore, we all know that until the conditions are absolutely intolerable, the majority of the workforce will remain firmly in place.”

Sue Bingham, the author of Creating the High Performance Work Place: It’s Not Complicated to Develop a Culture of Commitment, agrees that too often companies’ HR policies are overly restrictive.

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“Such policies are often convoluted and overly paternal, and attempt to control the behavior of regular people through rules designed to rein in the ‘bad apples,'” Bingham, who has consulted with hundreds of company leaders on how to create high-performance workplaces over the past three decades, wrote in the Harvard Business Review.

“Although a small percentage of employees may try to take advantage of more flexible or generous policies, designing your HR policies with such people in mind isn’t the answer. It won’t help boost the performance of the majority of employees – employees who have the organization’s best interests at heart. It will only make them feel distrusted,” she said, which sounds exactly like what happened in our story — people who are intelligent adults were treated like children you can’t take your eyes off for one second. No wonder they retaliated after receiving such a message from their employer.

“Communicate one standard of conduct that states, ‘Everyone is expected to act in the best interest of the organization and his/her fellow employees’ as a replacement for a long list of conduct rules,” Bingham said.

A global poll conducted by Gallup has uncovered that out of the world’s one billion full-time workers, only 15% of people are engaged at work. That means that a whopping 85% of people are unhappy in their jobs.

But employees everywhere don’t necessarily hate the company they work for as much as they do their boss. Yes, they join a company, but they often quit their manager. Sometimes it’s due to that exact person, others because they have not been prepared to lead the workforce.

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People think these practices are at the very least appalling but could also be illegal

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pauldavis avatar
Paul Davis
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've worked for so many managers who really genuinely seem to would prefer the entire business go under than have to give any employees the slightest bit of fair treatment. Well except for the employees who were their personal friends -- the worst, most callous managers always seemed to exhibit the most blatant favoritism.

drolltimes avatar
Klaatu Verrata (Cough)
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is it. That's the whole thing. One problem, though, is that too many employees really take advantage of employer kindness. We are super generous with time off, bonuses, perks, and benefits, and yet we still have to deal with dead weight more than I like. Getting rid of toxic oxygen-stealers quickly is the key. Yeah, you foster a strong team ethic and make everyone feel very valued (I have an open door policy for all employees--so at times i know more about what's going on in my employees' lives than some of their family members do), but the key to keeping a good work culture also MUST include getting rid of toxic people/lazy time-wasters. I used to find this difficult...especially bc they often have a million sad stories for why they suck. Now I have hardened a bit bc I have evolved to think about the impact that employee's work ethic has had on the other employees. Makes it much easier to show them the door post haste. Also, favoritism is the WORST.

Load More Replies...
meghanhibicke avatar
Evil Little Thing
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Management forgot that people don't work for fun; you have to pay them to be there.

curtispartridge avatar
Curtis Partridge
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Try being a freelance graphic designer, clients actually think what you do for a living is fun and think you work for free. “Who the hell do you think you are charging me $$$$ for this XYZ project!”

Load More Replies...
bp_10 avatar
WilvanderHeijden
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's amazing how employers manage to instate insane policies to control their employees . Everyone with a bit of a functional brain could have predicted how this would go down. It just shows the distance in thinking between employers and employees. "I will withhold one hour of your wage if you're 5 minutes late!!!" "Ok, that just means that I won't start working for at least 75 minutes."

Load More Comments
pauldavis avatar
Paul Davis
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've worked for so many managers who really genuinely seem to would prefer the entire business go under than have to give any employees the slightest bit of fair treatment. Well except for the employees who were their personal friends -- the worst, most callous managers always seemed to exhibit the most blatant favoritism.

drolltimes avatar
Klaatu Verrata (Cough)
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is it. That's the whole thing. One problem, though, is that too many employees really take advantage of employer kindness. We are super generous with time off, bonuses, perks, and benefits, and yet we still have to deal with dead weight more than I like. Getting rid of toxic oxygen-stealers quickly is the key. Yeah, you foster a strong team ethic and make everyone feel very valued (I have an open door policy for all employees--so at times i know more about what's going on in my employees' lives than some of their family members do), but the key to keeping a good work culture also MUST include getting rid of toxic people/lazy time-wasters. I used to find this difficult...especially bc they often have a million sad stories for why they suck. Now I have hardened a bit bc I have evolved to think about the impact that employee's work ethic has had on the other employees. Makes it much easier to show them the door post haste. Also, favoritism is the WORST.

Load More Replies...
meghanhibicke avatar
Evil Little Thing
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Management forgot that people don't work for fun; you have to pay them to be there.

curtispartridge avatar
Curtis Partridge
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Try being a freelance graphic designer, clients actually think what you do for a living is fun and think you work for free. “Who the hell do you think you are charging me $$$$ for this XYZ project!”

Load More Replies...
bp_10 avatar
WilvanderHeijden
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's amazing how employers manage to instate insane policies to control their employees . Everyone with a bit of a functional brain could have predicted how this would go down. It just shows the distance in thinking between employers and employees. "I will withhold one hour of your wage if you're 5 minutes late!!!" "Ok, that just means that I won't start working for at least 75 minutes."

Load More Comments
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