In a nutshell - Miss Swan

We keep getting emails about doing better, slowing down, and proofreading more carefully.  For free.  Yeah.  If our nimble fingers lie still and only our simple minds and eyes are engaged, then we are volunteers in fattening the wallets of the bonus receivers and shareholders.   So the better you do your job the less money you make.  Come on executives.  You know the answer as well as we do.  If you are really seeking quality, you have to pay for quality.  You need to pay us for the time we spend proofreading.  I would hate to have errors in my medical report, and honestly when I get feedback I cringe and wonder how I made the error that I did.  But at the same time, the voice in my head is asking how I’m going to pay my bills.  Ten years ago I was making 2-1/2 times as much money doing the same job.  More experience and knowledge.  Usually that makes an employee more valuable and consequently one makes more money as their value goes up.  Not here.  It is so disheartening.

I can think of 3 ways right off the top of my head to improve the quality of the work we do.  The problem is improvement and maintenance costs money.  MM is clearly not going to spend any money on us.  If you buy a house and shout at it “Don’t fall down!” it just won’t work.  You have to maintain it, spend some money on it, and if you do, it will provide for you.  Same for employees.

And the fact that no one is responding to the employee survey is a response in itself.  Last year the number one issue MTs had was compensation.  Yet, when we had the meeting to go over the survey, it was totally glossed over, like it never even came up as an issue.  So don’t waste our time with this ersatz concern of what we think.  Unfortunately these are the 2 lives so many companies live; the boastful, we-are-so-wonderful one on glossy paper and public websites, and the dirty little reality of how employees are treated.