What I Want My Employer To Know or The Customer Who Screamed At Me While Sitting In My Porsche

Having been in the Corporate world for 25 years now and have a message that all bosses should hear.

I want my Manager to really look into the entire value add of each individual.  Begin this task by asking for annual peer reviews, submitted by both peers and team members who have worked on a project together. Take the comments seriously.

I want my Employer to realize the only difference in an hourly employee and a salary one is that before I got paid for each hour of work and today I work for free and sometimes maybe 16+ hour days.  And, what exactly IS salary plus, whereby a worker works what I call 'over employed' hours and gets half their rate of pay?  Does that mean the employee should work at half their rate of expertise?  Sorry, but that is what I would feel like doing if I were in that situation.  But I am not.  Instead I work for free...not happy about that one either.

The people who are motivated to get the job done and take pride in their work, are the very same people you have employed here today, be they hourly or salary and salary plus should be revamped as it is, as it stands, very insulting. 

The same goof offs remain either at an hourly rate or a salaried one and if salaried it probably means me or someone else is doing their work because they aren't. (see Peer Review suggestion above)

I tend to work very quietly and absorb everything because I believe that if my job is done correctly, my manager is not spending time on escalations but on reports. Please acknowledge that quiet is good.

I want my Employer to know that on that account with the weekly escalations which ceased after the account was assigned to me; That wasn't luck, and it wasn't that I had a cush base with not much going on. It was because I had done a Vulcan mind meld with the customer, anticipated needs and next steps, provided prompt answers and got things done promptly, explained delays and issues preventing implementation with enough detail that the customer saw no benefit in an escalation because the customer realized if an escalation was necessary then I would do that better, knowing who, exactly, to escalate the concern to.


Please understand that the sane folks who work for you, really hate working 12 hour days because we want and do have a life apart from our career...at least we did before we started working all those long hours.  8 hours is already a very long stretch.  If a stellar employee is 'overemployed' this means you, dear Employer, are either understaffed or the work load is unequally balanced.  That's not my fault and I am not your band aide so please FIX that please!  And YES, we do want compensation for all the 'non paid over-employed' hours and no, we do not want to be in the position of having to ask you for it, it should be obvious to you and freely given.  This is time out of our life,  time we would prefer to spend with family, working out or walking the dog.  Instead, this time was donated to you, company, so please recognize that we only put in the long days because it was necessary to keep the base from exploding, work left undone, with resultant escalations or account (revenue) loss. We may love what we do, but just prefer not to be 'overemployed' at it. As a bonus, a balanced employee brings more to everything they do at work; a true value add and with lower healthcare costs.   Shine By Example! I want my Employer to notice and appreciate when I volunteer to cover folks while they are out, change or even cancel vacation time to help out on a project.   I want you to know how much all the kind words in my annual review mean to me, even if there is no raise and that I struggle all of the time to balance what I have with what I want, (that freakin raise) to remain humble and thankful.   I want my Employer to know that I take a lot of pride in my work and in managing the challenges, even when one time this customer, who is a friend now, screamed at me during a meeting that I on purpose took from my Porsche so that I would have something lovely to look at while I got my arse handed to me. It is specifically for the thrill of turning a bad customer situation good that I love what I do.  I want my Employer to understand that Customer Whisperer is a skill (and maybe worth a raise).   I want EVERYBODY to know that when I am working from home, (that includes you, Mother!) I am working at home. I am at my home office and it doesn't matter that I am a block away, no I cannot take you grocery shopping while my employer foots the bill for my time.  I do not have it easy, I am not working light days or sipping bloody marys and cold chilling with the TV on, bored out of my skull waiting for you to call me to chat.     98% of the time,  the employee who overachieves at the office, will go and do so at home.  It doesn't matter where they are, they are committed. If their base is busy, they are busy.  Likewise, the employee who sluffs off at work and carts around Avon products to sell up and down cube isles instead of doing their job (yep, we really had one of those) is not going to somehow mystically become a value add at home. Please, Dear God in heaven, do not point her out and exclaim how people who work from home, don't do as good a job.  Manager, you knew she was selling Avon at work and that work had no affiliation with Avon so it is your fault; own it and stop pointing the finger at all the great workers who work from home.  Mother, call HE, the Avon lady, to take you shopping!    Spoiler Alert! Working from home does not spoil me either, not when I am over employed, working my typical long hours.  On the fleeting occasions that I enjoy an 8 hour day, then, yes, thank you, I have now saved gas, time in driving in, have put in a load of laundry on my break and straightened up the coffee table so I am quite thankful.  And if my days were all like this, oh my, I would be very spoiled.  But it was a very bad call when while working 12 and 16 hour days on an 18 month project, my then manager said I was so spoiled to be able to work from home.  I want my Employer to understand 'timing'.   I want my Employer to understand the truth is that no, it is my Employer who is spoiled and  that I can only support all of this overemployment time because I can roll out of bed, not brush my hair, work in my jammies and let my house and personal life become a real wreck.  If my Employer expected me to actually drive in some place and look reasonable and do a 12 hour + day well, that would be a real deal breaker!     I want my Employer to know that I feel decently paid for an 8 hour day and exceedingly under paid during the times I am over employed.  Let's please work hard on load balancing so that my future is so bright I gotta wear shades. I don't really care how bad you say the economy is or isn't because I give my best I want the best given back.   I want some real appreciation for all of the folks who are great at being a team player.  It's not easy and some folks who work here really make it much harder than it needs to be.  Those of us who team play very well hope that the management is taking names and doing coaching and counselling at some point because psssst some of those problem children are still here.  It doesnt matter how good they sell, how great they schmooze.  What matters is the entire package, meaning that they don't burn up all that sales revenue in management and unnecessary chaos and micromanagement of the downstream groups.  Once, a sales rep blamed someone on her team for something she actually had done that caused a serious customer event.  The stress this caused on the wrongly blamed person, nearly caused her to lose her baby.  She was rushed to the hospital and placed on bedrest the remainder of the term. Years go by but I still wonder why that sales rep is still employed here.   I want my Manager to fearlessly tell it like it is to the EVPs, to my CEO and anybody else that will listen, to share and not bury the truth. Otherwise the candle of light remains in the dark, no help to anyone. Everything is a balance.  Each employee, over the course of their history, from the top down, should exhibit balance in management of the company. It is encumbent upon the top management of the company to edify that balance and expect this balance to be passed down to all employees, regardless of whether they are exempt or non exempt.  It is encumbent upon all of us to share the truth.