Page 2 of 7 FirstFirst 1234567 LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 62

Thread: What is your work ethic like?

  1. #11
    AARGH dr.walrus's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Ho Chi Minh City
    Posts
    993

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    23, full time student, part time developer. Worked full time over the summer, still found time to cater for a friend's wedding over the summer, everything cooked from scratch. Start work at 9am, finish between 10pm and 2am, 5 days a week.

    My dad was a builder, packed it in after an injury, went into computing. Much like yourself, his aim was that I didn't have to do that sort of work myself.

    I have slow patches, but I get ill easily, and I've been ill for 8 weeks after putting in the 70-80hr weeks I have been. I have barely played a computer game for 6 months.

    Spent about a year out of full time work since i was 18 (my 2nd year), worked for my dad since I was a kid. Was still developing and labouring on the side during my 2nd year.

    I don't get on with my family - if everything falls apart I simply don't have anywhere to go. I have to work hard because noone else is going to do it for me.

  2. #12
    ATX Mental Case Killa_Ape's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Whitecourt
    Posts
    142

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    I live in Canada so wages are slightly different depending where you are. I mostly work the oilfield as an Electrician, I've been with the company for 6 years and have been there the longest next to the boss son so as a journeyman I get to deal with a lot of apprentices. Lots of the younger ones care mostly about their cell phone and when they are going home as opposed to doing work. That's how come they call me the slave driver because I want them doing work all the time not standing around talking (some days I feel like an overpaid babysitter). Now I wouldn't say all the young ones are like that but most of the younger ones are and we've had an apprentice get a good work ethic since he's started.

    The farm boys have a damn good work ethic due to growing up on the farm and busting their ass all day for their family and it's quite refreshing to see them. We've had some older guys that had no work ethic either (2 of them were previously working for the union and they had gravy jobs before).

    I personally have a strong work ethic and make sure things get done the right way and on time (if we have a deadline) and make sure everything is organized for the next day. I stay late if it needs to be done or fixed and won't leave until it's as far as it can go (maybe missing some parts to finish). Lots of the younger ones want to go home and go out or drink or whatever it is they do (some want to go see their family which I understand and don't have a problem with somethings are more important then work). When it comes to getting paid first year apprentices get 50% of the journeyman wage and then 60% for second year and so forth. So wage wise it's pretty set in stone but if you accel the boss gives you a little more because you are worth more then the same level of apprentice who's slacking off, when times get slow the ones who are slacking are the ones who get days off first.

    For a basic laborer around here I believe starting wage is 14$ so that's why I mentioned wage difference. Companies work on wage increase as they can do more jobs (ie: more useful then just digging holes/trenches). I'm not sure what their increases are but I know for us we start someone on probation and give them $1 raise after 3months (putting them at 50% journeyman rate). So I'd say you are probably fair on your $0.50 after 6 months. The boss is also upfront about this as well so if someone asks for a raise before then he just tells them how it is and this was discussed before they started, if they have a problem with it then that's too bad for them (had 1 quit over this but was happy to see them go!)

  3. #13
    herpin' the derp farlo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    fort smith arkansas
    Posts
    709

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    I'm 27. I've worked a full time job since i got out of high school. did a lot of temp work. then worked at wal-mart for 4 years 3rd shift in freezer and dairy, unloaded trucks, got tired of working at night and went to electronics during the day. after my second kid was born, i decided it was time to get a better paying job. I quit wal-mart when i started working at a call center for experian. I HATED that job and due to my abhorrence of that place, i ended up quitting when i got my income tax refund that year. from that point i worked doing contract jobs like setting up retail kiosks and running network cabling. i got a call from a local insurance place after seeing my resume on careerbuilder, and they convinced me to go through classes to get my health insurance producers license. i worked at that place for a couple of months doing outside sales, strictly for commissions, got fed up with that place and applied for my current job. been there for 2 years now, i sell health insurance for blue cross blue shield in 4 states over the phone to people that call in, I'm also the IT guy since the guy that was here when on to a programming job, i do the network stuff, and repair pagers XD

    ive always gotten good evaluations, so i assume ive got a good work ethic.

  4. #14
    If you can't hack it, you don't own it! Oneslowz28's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Aiken, Sc
    Posts
    5,084

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    @ Killa Ape Yea I hear that its standard for Union workers to get paid like that. Down here in the Southern US the word Union is considered a curse word. Having a business degree I fully understand the advantages of having a union and the cons that come along with it. I pay the $10/hour starting wage because the help is so flaky. My oldest laborer makes just over $17/hour because I can count on him to do his job and show up every single day on time. In the last 16 years he has missed a total of 5 days with us. He is so reliable and trust worthy that we have let him borrow expensive equipment to do small side jobs on the weekend.

    If I could find a young local laborer with some experience who would work 75% as fast and efficient as Jack and he made it to the 1 year mark, I would bump them to $12-13 an hour. If they lasted 2 years another raise would be in order. I firmly believe in in paying your employees what they are worth. A temp who jabber jaws on the phone all day or is sitting on his ass every time I turn around will never make more than $10/hour. But one who shows the desire to work and learn the trade will be hired on full time and will have the opportunity to get a raise and bonus.

  5. #15
    Case Wizard blaze15301's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    usa
    Posts
    905

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    Quote Originally Posted by Oneslowz28 View Post
    @ Killa Ape Yea I hear that its standard for Union workers to get paid like that. Down here in the Southern US the word Union is considered a curse word. Having a business degree I fully understand the advantages of having a union and the cons that come along with it. I pay the $10/hour starting wage because the help is so flaky. My oldest laborer makes just over $17/hour because I can count on him to do his job and show up every single day on time. In the last 16 years he has missed a total of 5 days with us. He is so reliable and trust worthy that we have let him borrow expensive equipment to do small side jobs on the weekend.

    If I could find a young local laborer with some experience who would work 75% as fast and efficient as Jack and he made it to the 1 year mark, I would bump them to $12-13 an hour. If they lasted 2 years another raise would be in order. I firmly believe in in paying your employees what they are worth. A temp who jabber jaws on the phone all day or is sitting on his ass every time I turn around will never make more than $10/hour. But one who shows the desire to work and learn the trade will be hired on full time and will have the opportunity to get a raise and bonus.
    what state do you live in. id love to work for your company.
    Quote Originally Posted by AmEv View Post
    Or are you talking about vending machine choice C-4?

    mmmmm... skittles....
    bench mark software.

    video bios flashing guide

  6. #16
    Stupidity feeds my children blueonblack's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    2,616

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    Ok, I'll bite. The first five years of my work life were just like that. In and out of jobs one after the other, but not because I didn't think I made enough or they treated me badly: I just didn't care. I had everything I needed handed to me (this started at age 16) and no one had bothered to explain the Real World to me. I had a wake-up call at 21 that lasted two and a half years. I did a lot of growing up during that time, and had a full-time job three days after it ended, and haven't gone more than two days without one since.

    I've got no formal education beyond high school. I've been at with my current employer for over fifteen years. I've been lucky in that I've been able to switch positions a few times. Once I master something to the point that I feel like a robot doing it, it just sucks. I've been the parts guy, a mechanic, the guy who pays the bills for repairs, and the guy arranges the repairs. I seem to be at the end of my career path there and I would honestly rather dig ditches in the rain than do what I do. You mentioned taking pride in your work, and there is not a shred of that to be had in my position. Unfortunately, I have a family to feed and ditch digging doesn't pay well. So I keep going back. They recently decided to switch my shift around and cut my pay by about eight dollars an hour but I still go back, because even with that pay cut I still make more than anyone else is going to pay me. If I were single, or even just childless, I'd be out in a heartbeat, just for my own sanity, but that's not an option. At least for another thirteen years or so.

    So in answer to what I think is your question, yes I have a strong work ethic. I like nothing more than to stand back and see a job well done, and I take my obligations seriously. I can't speak for anywhere else, but around here if you're not working it's because you don't want to. As for these kids that come and go because they feel entitled, I say let them. That feeling of entitlement will get sanded off of them soon enough. Yes, they piss me off, but I can smile a little inside looking at what they have in front of them that they haven't seen coming yet.
    “Do not trust people like me. I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth. I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible, and when I leave you will finally understand why storms are named after people.”

  7. #17
    Will YOU be ready when the zombies rise? x88x's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Location
    MD, USA
    Posts
    6,334

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    I've never really understood the whole "I'm worth more than you're paying me" stance. I forget where I heard it first, but my philosophy on it is this: Your time/work/knowledge/etc is only worth as much as someone will pay you for it. Maybe you are worth more to somebody else, but obviously you're not worth more to me, otherwise I would be paying you respectively.

    I'm 22, and have been working part or full time steadily for the last 5.25 years except for a two month period in 2008...but that's a different story. Before that (ie, high school), I never really had a job, but I did a fair amount of volunteer work and, tbh, I never really had much use for money. Not because my parents picked up the tab for everything (though they did pay for my car insurance as long as my grades stayed up), just because I didn't have much to spend money on.

    My dad does home improvement/cabinetry/etc on the side, and while I was living with my parents I helped him with that work as long back as I can remember. Granted, I imagine I wasn't much use for a long time, but how many 10 year olds know what a radial arm saw is and know how to use one properly, eh? Once me helping on those jobs was more of a help than a hindrance, he would even cut me in on the payment once the job was done, and I think it was through that kind of work that I developed the work ethic I have now. One thing I should note about the work my dad does, he does it entirely on commission, not at an hourly rate, so he makes an estimate on how much it will cost, and we would get paid the same if it took 10 hours as if it took 50 hours. As such, he always pushed both me and himself to not waste any time doing the job, but one of the principles that he instilled in me is that if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing properly, regardless of what you are being paid. Another result of working with him on those jobs is that, oddly (apparently), I really enjoy a good, hard day's work. Sure, I can get paid more sitting at my desk coding, but I get a lot more satisfaction out of building something, whether it's a computer, a house, or even just a ditch. I love being able to look at a finished product and being able to say with pride that yes, I made that, and I made it to the best of my abilities....and if that wasn't enough, I improved my abilities and went back and made it better.

    When I was a full-time student, I always had a part-time job on campus. I never really understood people who didn't...to me, my job was a rest from the academic environment where I could settle in to a more directly productive task, where I could concentrate on actually doing something purposeful with an immediate affect. Plus, I got paid, so I always had a bit of spending money.

    I have switched roles now, working full-time and going to school part-time, and tbh I'm much happier this way. My biggest problem with the academic environment was people who were there either because they had nothing better to do or because it was easier for them to accumulate student loans than to actually do work. I've been at my current job for almost 2.5 years now, and been in and out of lulls and busy periods, but I've never had anything but praise from any of my supervisors, so I must be doing good. We had an intern this summer though, who seems a lot like the kids you had working for you...he accomplished literally nothing the entire time he worked there, but because his supervisor worked off-site, it took quite a while before anyone noticed..yeah, he didn't get a job once his internship was over...actually almost got fired. The strangest thing is that even near the end of the summer, he still was convinced that he would be getting a job.

    I haven't always enjoyed the job I've been doing at the moment, but the thing that I have noticed that affects that the most is whether I am actually being productive. I have had jobs where all I did was sit around all day and wait for someone to call in with a problem. I worked in tech support for a while, and while I did get paid fairly well at both positions, they were on the whole, the most boring, unsatisfying jobs I have ever had. For me, there is nothing worse than being on the job and having literally nothing to do, and there is nothing I can do about it. One of those jobs was as the on-site tech at a middle school. For some reason, somebody decided it would be a great idea to keep the tech's on their normal jobs...during the summer... I would go in, sit down at my desk, watch TV, study whatever I was teaching myself at the moment, eat lunch, go back to reading or watching TV, and leave. ..that was my normal day once the school year ended, and if I'd had to do it for more than the ~1 month that I did, I seriously think I would have gone mad.

    So, to answer the question, yes, I have (I think) quite a good work ethic. Yes, unfortunately, that seems to be rather rare in my generation (20-24). Also unfortunately, it seems to be the expected norm in our society today for people that age. People expect them to be that way, and they are. I'm not saying it's an excuse, and idk which one came first, but either way you look at it, I think it's a problem. I remember a discussion last semester in a sociology course I was taking; we were talking about the roles of children in society, and it was interesting to me to see people's responses to certain situations. For example, in the early 1900's, it was normal for a 10-12 year old child to be left in charge of the younger children on a farm while the parents were out working. Several people were horrified by this, and expressed that they would never trust their children to someone that young...they're too irresponsible. And that's the thing, at that time, people were raised with an expectation of responsibility and integrity, and I feel like the further on we go, the less and less this becomes the case. I always think it's so odd when I talk to people about my life atm. They're always, "Oh, ok, you're a Software Engineer and Network Security Specialist for a large company, ok, you're making $xx,xxx/year (the internet doesn't need to know ), ok, you're a part-time student, you make lots of cool stuff in your spare time, ok, you recently bought a house, ok...wait, what? You're 22??" You can almost see the gears spinning in their heads.. "But...you're not supposed to be like that...you're supposed to be a drug-addled hoodlum who can't hold a job to save his life...wtf?"

    Oh, and asking for a raise on your second day at a job?? That's just absurd. I completely support saving up to go to Burning Man , but come one, use some common sense. BTW, imo $10/hr starting wage is quite good for what essentially (at that stage, from what I gathered) amounts to mostly unskilled manual labor. Heck, that's almost what I was making in tech support at that middle school.
    That we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
    --Benjamin Franklin
    TBCS 5TB Club :: coilgun :: bench PSU :: mightyMite :: Zeus :: E15 Magna EV

  8. #18
    Undead Pirate d_stilgar's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Philadelphia, PA
    Posts
    2,987

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    I'm 24. Two summers ago I got a job working a build site in Vegas. I would work as hard as I possibly could but never felt like I was doing enough. This was mostly due to my supervisor telling me how bad and slow I was at everything. Later, his supervisor tells me that he is hard on all his workers but that he thinks I'm doing a great job.

    About a month later they hire a couple temp guys. We are assigned to move all the supplies from one room to another. I was about to make 10 trips up and down stairs and from one end of the building to the other more than the two temp guys. I calculated it out and figured that I was doing the work of three of those guys. They kept telling me to slow down and that it didn't matter. I told them they should work harder or not come back.

    A while later my supervisor went home to visit his family for a few days. I was put in charge despite the fact that I only had a month's experience and was relatively new to the job site.

    People need to work as hard as they can in no matter what job they are given. People aren't paid to give partial effort. An honest day's pay requires and honest day's work.

    Now I'm at a landscape job where my boss tells me that we have to work at a certain pace in order to be on schedule in repeating the same thing every week (mowing, pulling weeds, weed whacking, edging, etc.). Mowing isn't the sort of job that you benefit from doing as fast you can. If you finish early you don't have any reason to go back and do it again. The grass won't be long yet. Suffice to say, I still find things to do when I finish early but it's been one of the nicest jobs I've ever had.

  9. #19
    If you can't hack it, you don't own it! Oneslowz28's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Aiken, Sc
    Posts
    5,084

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    I forgot to say that for the jobs I have been ranting about here, I will hire just about anyone as long as they check out and and seem to want to work. That's the thing about the construction industry, unless you are working in the front office, you need minimal education. Everything you need to know about the trade can be learned on the job from a skilled trades man. My carpenter will teach you anything you want to know if you show him you are willing to learn. Same thing with the masons and journeymen. They may be a little hard on the new guys but they know not to call names, or constantly belittle them, because that is not productive. They also know I absolutely hate it and will send them home for the day if I see it happening.

    I have a new guy who will be there today. I really hope he works out because he is a friend of one of my carpenters. He is on the verge of loosing his home and came from a commercial construction background. So maybe he will workout and stay around for a while.

    This epidemic where people are not willing to work is only getting worse. We get about 20-30 people calling every week wanting us to sign off on their unemployment saying we do not need help so they can continue to get $250 a week for sitting on their ass. We always decline unless they are legitimately looking for a position we do not need any help in. I will offer the ones I answer a job and they always refuse saying $10/hr is not enough and they can do nothing and make more in food stamps and unemployment.

  10. #20
    mentally overclocked Cale_Hagan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Cameron Park, Ca
    Posts
    671

    Default Re: What is your work ethic like?

    well, ive been @ target 2 and a half years now... its true what they say about the people you work with, they make it or break it. i bust my rear doing whatever they need, and they are always calling me in, because im their go to guy. ill do whatever, and been trained almost everywhere. im a team trainer because i show exemplary skills on the floor, and always do it right. im not above doing cart attending, which includes cleaning restrooms and the like, which most wouldn't do. also, multiple times ive been complemented for my thoroughness. ive only complained about 1 person to an exec ever in my two years. he was my team leader, but had the attitude of " you are the worker, and i am the upper management, and basically i can do whatever i want" type of attitude, and" you are expendable" i called him on it like 3-4 times, and talked with him, and everytime he blew me off. finally the4th time or so he did that, when he wasnt even doing his job properly, i went to see the store manager. he was gone within 1-2 days. i know he has had other people complain, but due to the facts i gave the store manager, with the validity, that tl was gone. it bugs me the people at my work who take the attitude of " im only getting 8.50, so why should i work hard?" i just want to say, because you accepted that job at that paygrade, so you should either do it right, or quit." but i cant say that. cause i like my job. so in short, i have an amazing work ethic. just look at my sig ive had for a while, that should help expain some.
    "The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.” -George Carlin

    “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.” -George Carlin

    Quote Originally Posted by DynamoNED
    Any contest that lacks integrity is no contest at all

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •