Stop and think about the title I used. Every job is created equal. Somewhere along the way we started to separate the workplace equality. We split it into many categories. We most commonly discuss workplace equality in terms of men v. woman or old v. young. What we nearly always fail to mention is the job title v. job title equality.
Feel free to stop reading right here because I am very comfortable being a socialist. Yep. I’m one of ‘them.’ You’ve heard the word, it has the stink of a carcass, and chances are you truly don’t even understand what it even means. I don’t believe any job is more important or should be paid better per hour than another. I just don’t. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how any rational and intelligent adult mind could spend time thinking on the matter without coming to the same conclusion.
It is my opinion that your job is important. If it were not important, you probably wouldn’t have it as it wouldn’t exist. There is a reason you have it and you do it. Without you, either immediately or in the near future someone or a lot of someone’s is going to be very aware of exactly how critical your job is. I don’t even care what that job is. I am sure you could spend time and think of a truly useless job, but at that point I’d counter with that’s a job that shouldn’t exist to start with and it should be downsized.
I am a socialist, and I think all jobs are important. I am talking about job to job equality. So what? Valid point, my friend. So what does it mean? How does this column effect you at all? Should it? Are you wasting your time reading my ramblings? Perhaps, but we need to dig deeper to know for sure.
It’s my opinion that a janitor isn’t a second or third class citizen in the workplace. We have been trained to think lowly of the janitor. We disrespect this person. In public, we say things like “even the janitor needs health insurance.” Even the janitor? How is that for a slap in the face? To quote my favorite philosopher Michelle Tanner “How Rude.” People take jobs for granted. You think the CEO really works 796 times harder than the janitor? You really think his work is 796 times more important than a janitors? That’s what payscale would suggest we believe and accept. Pick a business. Walmart for example. Have their staff of janitors (maintenance associates) take a week off of work. How long do you think it would take before someone notices their absence? How long before someone is demanding their return? How long before they cannot even do business because they are absent? I can answer that very question with near precise timeline as I watched a very close situation play out a few years ago. The store will be fine for 24 hours. By hour 36, the bathrooms will be disgusting and trash will be overflowing, the carts will be a mess, and by 48 hours, the floors will be so cluttered with debris it will be very difficult to push a cart around. The bathrooms will be unusable. The other employees will have to start doing janitorial work just to do their actual job. By hour 60, the store would be near shut down without zero janitorial work being accomplished. The health inspector would be alerted and en route. There would be feces and urine everywhere in the bathrooms. The floors would be nearly destroyed. Trash overflowing in the parking lots.
If the CEO took a 4 day vacation and was completely off the job for any reason, do you think business would come to a screeching halt? The answer is a simple no. Is the CEO important? Sure. Do they play a very important role in the operation of the enterprise? Without a doubt. Pick any two job titles anywhere in any organization and I can play the same game. What’s my point? If you are able to remove a single piece of the operation and the largest employer and one of the most profitable businesses in the history of the world can come crumbling down, maybe they aren’t 796 times less valuable.
This is true across all verticals. This is true across all platforms and job titles. There is a reason we are paid to come to work. We are vital to the operation. The argument you are likely to make is that some are more important because they have critical decisions to make. They should be compensated more because they make difficult decisions. I won’t even argue that point. Compensated more? Sure. That’s fine. How many times over more? I think 796 times more is a bit extreme. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft is a monumental failure across all platforms and has single handedly turned a near monopoly in the personal computer into a true collapse of biblical proportions. With that said about the worst CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the last 100 years, he does have one thing nearly on point. His pay is roughly 5 times his medium employee. That seems fair. Tie bonuses into stock and allow his performance grow his pay.
If Michael Duke of Walmart had the same payscale as Steve Ballmer, he’d make $110,500 a year. If you scaled everyone’s pay down from there as no one would out earn the CEO Walmart could do one of two things. Either give everyone a sizeable raise which is what people around the world have been bitching about for twenty years OR they can put even more money into the warchest. I am under the opinion that no CEO is worth 200 times or more than what their medium employee earns.
Feel free to stop reading right here because I am very comfortable being a socialist. Yep. I’m one of ‘them.’ You’ve heard the word, it has the stink of a carcass, and chances are you truly don’t even understand what it even means. I don’t believe any job is more important or should be paid better per hour than another. I just don’t. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how any rational and intelligent adult mind could spend time thinking on the matter without coming to the same conclusion.
It is my opinion that your job is important. If it were not important, you probably wouldn’t have it as it wouldn’t exist. There is a reason you have it and you do it. Without you, either immediately or in the near future someone or a lot of someone’s is going to be very aware of exactly how critical your job is. I don’t even care what that job is. I am sure you could spend time and think of a truly useless job, but at that point I’d counter with that’s a job that shouldn’t exist to start with and it should be downsized.
I am a socialist, and I think all jobs are important. I am talking about job to job equality. So what? Valid point, my friend. So what does it mean? How does this column effect you at all? Should it? Are you wasting your time reading my ramblings? Perhaps, but we need to dig deeper to know for sure.
It’s my opinion that a janitor isn’t a second or third class citizen in the workplace. We have been trained to think lowly of the janitor. We disrespect this person. In public, we say things like “even the janitor needs health insurance.” Even the janitor? How is that for a slap in the face? To quote my favorite philosopher Michelle Tanner “How Rude.” People take jobs for granted. You think the CEO really works 796 times harder than the janitor? You really think his work is 796 times more important than a janitors? That’s what payscale would suggest we believe and accept. Pick a business. Walmart for example. Have their staff of janitors (maintenance associates) take a week off of work. How long do you think it would take before someone notices their absence? How long before someone is demanding their return? How long before they cannot even do business because they are absent? I can answer that very question with near precise timeline as I watched a very close situation play out a few years ago. The store will be fine for 24 hours. By hour 36, the bathrooms will be disgusting and trash will be overflowing, the carts will be a mess, and by 48 hours, the floors will be so cluttered with debris it will be very difficult to push a cart around. The bathrooms will be unusable. The other employees will have to start doing janitorial work just to do their actual job. By hour 60, the store would be near shut down without zero janitorial work being accomplished. The health inspector would be alerted and en route. There would be feces and urine everywhere in the bathrooms. The floors would be nearly destroyed. Trash overflowing in the parking lots.
If the CEO took a 4 day vacation and was completely off the job for any reason, do you think business would come to a screeching halt? The answer is a simple no. Is the CEO important? Sure. Do they play a very important role in the operation of the enterprise? Without a doubt. Pick any two job titles anywhere in any organization and I can play the same game. What’s my point? If you are able to remove a single piece of the operation and the largest employer and one of the most profitable businesses in the history of the world can come crumbling down, maybe they aren’t 796 times less valuable.
This is true across all verticals. This is true across all platforms and job titles. There is a reason we are paid to come to work. We are vital to the operation. The argument you are likely to make is that some are more important because they have critical decisions to make. They should be compensated more because they make difficult decisions. I won’t even argue that point. Compensated more? Sure. That’s fine. How many times over more? I think 796 times more is a bit extreme. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft is a monumental failure across all platforms and has single handedly turned a near monopoly in the personal computer into a true collapse of biblical proportions. With that said about the worst CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the last 100 years, he does have one thing nearly on point. His pay is roughly 5 times his medium employee. That seems fair. Tie bonuses into stock and allow his performance grow his pay.
If Michael Duke of Walmart had the same payscale as Steve Ballmer, he’d make $110,500 a year. If you scaled everyone’s pay down from there as no one would out earn the CEO Walmart could do one of two things. Either give everyone a sizeable raise which is what people around the world have been bitching about for twenty years OR they can put even more money into the warchest. I am under the opinion that no CEO is worth 200 times or more than what their medium employee earns.