The Glade 4.0

Two temp jobs when I was bouncing around trying to find something after graduating college, and one permanent position. One was three days after I got hired, one was nine months into a year contract. I have no idea what caused either, they both gave "you're not fitting in/you're not a good fit" as a reason and refused to say anything else. The permanent job was because I refused to work unpaid overtime, and they obviously gave me a BS reason for that one.

It's actually pretty ridiculous how prevalent forced unpaid overtime is amongst jobs for new college grads. They're really good at getting away with it. You're never directly asked to work extra hours, and they repeatedly make clear to you over and over that overtime is not authorized. However, your job duties are structured so they're impossible to complete in an 8-hour day, and they make you do your own timesheet (rather than clocking in and out of some kind of system) so there's no paper trail on their end. In fact, the expectation is that you commit fraud on your own timesheet in order to enable working unpaid overtime for them while they retain plausible deniability.

If I had been fired three times, I would reevaluate my outlook on my firings and question whether there was something about me that led to this happening repeatedly. I'm sure I could come up with a rationale as to why each individual incident was a bullshit firings, but three is a pattern and the common link is me.

I understand, evil greedy corporations only care about money are asking me to work like a slave for no pay, and they're going to fire me and replace me with some sucker who will work long hours for no additional compensation. I get it. However, if I could've completed all that work in eight hours, I'd still have a job. That's the opposite of being fired.

I am curious. Do you feel you're worth a certain salary because you have a college degree? A lot of people our age feel that way. It seems that we never had it adequately explained to us that the more a company pays you, the more they expect to get out of you.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The last time I got fired was in 2010. I've had a steady job for over three years now and am not, as far as I know, in danger of being fired again. I decided to take an unpaid internship for a year and scrape by in absolute poverty in order to get my HTL certification mostly because I was sick of the absolute **** treatment I was getting from employers in general with just my bio degree.

Also, when I say they often gave me tasks that were impossible to complete during my shift, I mean they were often literally impossible. As in, at 3:30 they'd call me over and said they just put a PCR run on the thermal cycler, and they wanted me to mass the DNA when it was finished. It was a three hour completely automated program. If I were to protest that I got off at 5:00, they'd initially seem to be fine with it, but within a few days I'd find myself written up for some kind of safety or ergonomics violation. One time they wrote me up for not holding the handrail as I was walking down the stairs. Another favorite strategy to force unpaid overtime was to schedule time on a piece of shared equipment, and have some of my job duties require that equipment, but only have the scheduled time overlap with my actual shift by a small amount. Like, I would get in at 8:30, and they'd have it reserved from 6:30 to 9:30. So I'd be expected to complete a 3 hour task in one hour, provided I showed up on time. When I complained about this, I was told I was expected to negotiate some kind of arrangement with the other people scheduled on that piece of equipment to get more time. My manager knew full well that in the absurdly hypercompetitive environment was fostered there, there was absolutely no way the other research groups would ever give up any of their scheduled time even if they weren't using it, as they would jump on an opportunity to cockblock their competition.

This was at Monsanto, by the way, you're probably familiar with them, as they are absolutely 100% the epitome of the sociopathic, greedy corporation that views all their employees as expendable numbers on a balance sheet. One time, after filling out my timesheet honestly after receiving direct orders to not go home until a specific task was finished, I was actually called into a private meeting with my manager where he said, "We only have the budget to pay for 40 hours. Just put that down every week. You don't want be known as the guy that obsessively watches the clock all day, do you? Because that's definitely the impression I get when you put exactly 6:17 down on here. There's no need to obsessively get it down to the exact minute as you're walking out. Just write in 5:00 and don't worry about it if it takes a little more or less time every day, it will all work itself out."

You're still fairly young. Maybe you should sign up for the Army and volunteer for Ranger training, since you seemed interested in the topic. You might learn something about demands on your time.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I got the very best scholarship for NROTC when I was in high school but then they put my application on "pending" because I was diagnosed with exercise induced asthma when I was 15. So I decided to go down a different track.

I'm confused here. Do you think I should have lied on my timesheets, worked unpaid overtime, and been happy about it? Or do you think that I was not actually being pressured into working unpaid, was fired for legitimate reasons, and convinced myself otherwise as some kind of defense mechanism?

I don't have your employer's side of the story, so I won't make any judgements. I understand very well that bosses sometimes give you impossible-to-meet requirements, but when that's the case you have to learn to (politely) dump the facts back in the bosses' lap and make him do his job as a boss. The thing about "well, negotiate for more time" is best met with "Sir, I don't feel I have any leverage to negotiate with. Perhaps you could explain the situation to them and they'd listen better than if I did?" or something to that effect?

Also, I don't know why you'd meet a suggestion like the one I made with a response like that, as if joining the Army is simply out of the question. You might have a very different perspective on demands on your time after that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Move on, find another job. You are good at what you do and can get something quickly if you try. Maybe not at your former pay-grade, but that will give you a chance to learn how to budget.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Funny you should mention Monsanto. They were one of my favorite places to work. I always found them to be quite reasonable, both at their Creve Couer campus and their Chesterfield campus.

You paint a woeful story of vicious capitalist oppression. I notice you have some very specific grievances, as though you know for certain you were terminated because you didn't stay late that one time. Your spiel about being written up for safety violations certainly paints a picture of an employer looking to get rid of someone. I have to question why. What was it about you that made them want to get rid of you?

I seem to recall you making a post about getting frostbite by sticking your hand into a -80 C degree freezer without gloves. This seems to have been after you were terminated from Monsanto for what was ostensibly a bullshit excuse to fire you. Apparently being fired from Monsanto for failing to follow safety procedures didn't teach you to follow your safety guidelines. Maybe Monsanto's firing wasn't a bullshit excuse? Maybe you're a safety risk inside of a laboratory? Perhaps you pose a danger, not only to yourself, but also to those around you?

I've known quite a few lab rats who felt that doing a three hour PCR run was their justification for a three hour break. Is it possible that all those other times you did runs on a piece of equipment - you know, when it wasn't 3:30 and you were getting ready to leave at 5:00 - that you were **** off while you waited for your data, instead of doing some other useful lab work?

See, this isn't the first time you've brought up mandatory unpaid work on this board. First it was mandatory unpaid internships, now it's mandatory unpaid overtime. I happen to have worked in those environments you mentioned, and I'll be honest, I didn't see a lot of people working overtime. The typical overtime scenario I saw was when someone had to stay until I left to ensure that I wasn't alone in the lab. It wasn't one of the researchers who stayed late, either. It was their boss.

This "mandatory unpaid" thing is sounding more and more like being asked to work offended your liberal sensibilities. I'm beginning to suspect your previous firings had less to do with evil sociopathic capitalist monstrosities, and were instead a combination of your own competence level, work ethic, and observation of good lab procedures. In other words, while you may not be utterly incompetent, you aren't anywhere near talented enough to get away with not putting in a full day of work and not using proper PPE.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

First of all, I never claimed I was not fired for performance issues at the other two jobs. I just said they gave me BS reasons and I wasn't sure what the actual reason was. I never had the quality or quantity of my work criticized by anyone before being fired and had no idea the firings were coming at those two jobs. I honestly think it's pretty likely those two temp firings were due to performance issues, but even if the actual reason I was fired was, "You're lazy, worthless, incompetent, and your parents don't love you" then "you're not a good fit" is still a bullshit reason. They didn't tell me the actual truth. Before someone nitpicks on this, ok, technically "you're not a good fit" is still true in that instance, but it's true for literally any termination reason.

Monsanto is the only "evil capitalist oppression" experience I've ever really had while working. I certainly don't think that about my other jobs, the only real complaint I have about them is letting me go without telling me anything so I would know what not to do the next time.

Also, as far as mandatory unpaid internships go, if I recall correctly you yourself admitted that they exist in a number of fields.

If you got fired after sticking your bare hand into something -80 degrees and froze the **** out of yourself, you really shouldn't quibble if they don't actually call you a **** idiot to your face for freezing your hand .

And after hearing that, maybe the Army isn't for you after all. There's all kinds of ways for people with no common sense to hurt themselves.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, I was not fired for that. That happened like a year ago. Seriously, you guys paint a really bleak picture when it comes to maintaining employment and how hard it seems to be for you. Ever since I got my current job I've found that simply showing up every day, showing up on time, leaving on time, and actually working the entire shift rather than screwing around or talking on your phone generally puts you in the top third, and my performance numbers have consistently been either #2 or #3 out of all the employees.

How hard it seems to be for us? Dude, I work two jobs, one of which has me replying to you presently from a tent in Wisconsin and involves me taking a field shower and sleeping on a cot tonight even though I'm about to turn 40 in less than 2 months.

It also involves me being over about 550 **** about 200 of whom would pretty likely do something just as dumb as sticking their hand in a -80 degree freezer without a glove on and some of whom almost certainly will before the end of the exercise. Unlike you though, this won't get that individual fired; it will involve me doing paperwork and my commander explaining to some general what his plan is to stop dumbasses from being dumbasses.

I don't remember the freezer story at all, but that is just un **** believable. What in the **** ever possessed you to do that ****? I don't know the first thing about working in a lab and I know better than to do that. I mean, just what the actual ****?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It was because 99.9% of the time when I needed to get something from there it was a plastic item that doesn't freeze your skin to it. I did not consider the difference or even really register that this item was metal until I'd touched it.

Also, Coro, if you actually worked at Monsanto, surely you noticed some of the other predatory capitalist attitudes. Do they still do the semi regular presentations in the lunch area where some executive gives a speech on what competitors they've managed to crush that quarter, how the competition is incompetent and how their products don't work, or how they managed to, say, drive an entire DuPont division out of business? But it's OK, because we snatched up all the employees that were any good! You see, most companies when they do this kind of pep talk focus it on something like "improving quality" or "serving the customer better." Not talking about which "enemies" they've managed to recently quash.

Surely you know Monsanto has the reputation as the most evil company in the US. That's not something I made up. There's a reason for that.

Unbelievable



Yes, the reason is that people are whiners. So what if they give the wrong sort of talks? Yawn.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So, Lex, did you get fired, or laid off? When you say, they "got passice aggressive and let me go," that suggests that they just didn't want you around anymore and laid you off. As opposed to being fired for a cause.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

It has a lot more to do with their business practices in poorer countries, and their tendency to cruelly make examples of people. The "talks" are just more evidence of their outlook.

Monsanto sells GM crops. When you buy GM seed from them, they expect to be paid royalties every year you grow their GM crops on your land, not just a flat price for the seeds. Originally in poorer countries Monsanto would sell GM food crops. This proved to not work well, because it didn't take long for farmers to realize they could just plant next year's crop from the seeds of this one, and pay Monsanto nothing. Since were talking about poorer countries with ineffective governments and no patent protection, Monsanto could do nothing to collect.

So instead, they convinced farmers to grow cash crops, and then sold them GM cash crops. This time, when the farmers tried to grow a GM crop without paying them royalties, they'd wait for the shipment to arrive in a first world nation, and then have it seized for patent/copyright violation. Absolutely no **** are given over the fact that this shipment represents their entire livelihoods, and seizing it is likely to cause the whole family to starve to death or get sold into slavery to pay their debts.

That's a good question, I'm not really sure. I felt like I was fired. Still it was on fairly good terms. The CEO referred me to a job interview at another startup.

So what exactly is the problem with having them pay royalties?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Only time I ever got fired was whilst standing in front of the manager flipping him the bird with both hands and telling him to shove the job up his ***.

He never gave me a reason.

Right, so I'm pretty conservative, and have significant libertarian leanings. I'm not a big fan of the "evil corporation" mantra. Corporations do what they do. That said, Monsanto comes about as close to "evil corporation" as you can get. I've worked closely with a great many farmers, and some of the **** Monsanto does to farmers is messed up.

Sorry - that's a complete derail.

There's been some serious problems with this actually. While I won't comment on the touchy feely "it's their entire livelihood" stuff, there's been a lot of situations that are out of line. Example: where a farmer does not want to grow the crop anymore, but since you cannot fully stop a crop from coming back up, they end up getting sued because their yield is mixed with Monsanto's crop.

There was another instance where a farmer never purchased Monsanto seeds, but a neighboring farm did. Farmer 1 harvests his seeds and ended up with Monsanto seeds in the mix. Got sued.

**** like that. They are pretty ruthless.

They were two separate incidents. I perhaps didn't make that clear.

In this thread, Xeq mentioned BS safety policy writeups preceding his firing around 2010. In 2014, there is a thread about his poor judgment with freezers in the week surrounding the post date. So four years after being fired for BS safety policy writeups, he still han't figured out how to follow proper lab safety guidelines.

That's more damning, hence my assessment that he was fired for being a putz.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

If I'm going to be completely honest, I have to admit that this could be the case. Maybe I wasn't taking safety seriously enough for them, and they set me on a series of snipe hunts and impossible tasks in order to try and get me to quit on my own? Yeah, it's possible. They were honestly pretty paranoid about certain lab risks, they treated the area of the lab where the ethidium bromide was used like it was **** Mordor and would literally run through it if they had no choice but to go through there. I resisted the implication that the firing was due to the quantity or quality of my work, because over all my jobs I've never gotten anything but praise over the quantity and quality of my work. That's definitely not the case when it comes to my safety record, as by my own admission I've been written up several times for it and have had some incidents. It would also explain the three-day firing, as there's no way they could have evaluated my overall work quality in three days, but I could easily have made some major safety mistake without realizing it that made them want to get me out ASAP.

If I'm honest, even now with that -80 freezer if I had to go in there to get like a specimen in a plastic bag I probably wouldn't have a problem just opening it up and grabbing it without searching for the thermal gloves first. When I have to do something like neutralize and dump the waste formalin, I'll wear gloves, goggles, and a coat, but I generally don't use the giant plexiglass face shield or the additional plastic apron. Mainly because it's often 90 degrees in there and I'm not keen on putting on a fifth layer of clothing before moving heavy boxes around.

Holy **** dude, really? After 2 incidents and by your own admission your safety record isn't great, you straight-up admit you just don't take precautions because it's uncomfortable?

If you reach into the freezer ungloved for plastic items, you are going to do it again with a metal item or something else because you're training yourself to do it that way. You need to use the gloves every time so that using the gloves is a habit.

If you keep on with this attitude you are eventually going to seriously injure or kill yourself. I'm not kidding. Stop **** doing that **** if you value your health.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."