I worked at an energy company that had, among other things:
-delayed our January 2019 COL increases to August 2020
– (while we were still waiting on the above) tried to retroactively slash our wages by 20% for three months during COVID (illegal to do it retroactively, and a 20% paycut would have taken a lot of us below the legal minimum wage
-settled for “only” slashing it by 10% for 6 months
-as payback for the above, also got rid of the 4% profit sharing for that period – so basically a bigger paycut because SLT was petulant at not being able to steal enough from our paycheques
-wasted money on a vanity project called “Rant and Rave” where we spammed our customers with surveys…. while we were dealing with a paycut
-tried to play fast and loose with sick leave pay for people who caught COVID as a result of working second jobs to counteract the above wage theft
-tried to radically alter our job descriptions and have us sign off on it by using an automated PeopleHR notification that simply alerted us to download something and indicate we’d read it, subverting the whole process for changing job roles laid out in our contract and their own handbook
-massively bungled a systems upgrade that led us unable to bill accurately for 18+ months
-sent out an all-staff email stating that the billing department, who’d been crippled by SLT’s bungling of the above, needed help with their backlog and that the role was “really just typing on a computer” so anyone could help
-when said team objected, claimed it was “a misunderstanding” – and then posted said email, unchanged, on the front of the intranet
-reorganised the office layout to cram more staff into smaller rooms on the basis that she wanted the executives on one floor, essentially putting all of the rest of us at increased risk of COVID for an aesthetic – I knew the company didn’t value or respect it’s employees, but even I didn’t see “you’re not worth protection from a deadly virus” coming
So that’s the landscape when the CEO decides to call an all-hands town hall where she can honk it up dipshit style about the exciting new offerings she wants us to foist on our customers – said “new” offerings being adjustable thermostats and smart NEST appliances. Groundbreaking!
She then chooses to hype up these wonderous and previously unheard of devices by telling a story about… how it let her turn off the heating to bedrooms (plural!) that she wasn;t using, and how she used the cameras to spy on her cleaner who was rounding up her billable hours.
Cool. Awesome. Love struggling to make ends meet in my one-bedroom flat while you flap your noisome gums about our multiple unused rooms and abusing the low-paid worker who does your housework.
Absolute wretch of a human being. Completely without empathy and unable to see those “below” her as actual people.
