I keep on hearing this sentence everywhere, on and offline and I am growing quite angry with it. Not only because it’s a blatant generalization, but also because it doesn’t match my experience from the other side. So today, I thought I will share a few of my personal examples from the past year or so, on (minimum wage) jobs and projects. And I mean only “tried and tested” life experiences, so I won’t even mention all the jobs and projects I applied to and never heard back from. Hold on to your socks, here it comes.

I worked full time for hospitality place 1 last Spring. Amid the season, they decided we should switch to 60 hours a week, 2 services a day, no day off, overtime paid cash for X€-illegaly, obviously. First pay day showed us the cash hourly rate had melted in the sun and was now below minimum wage. Hospitality place 2 was way more nice and fair, good people, they were giving us cash bonuses on the side…only to find out those “bonuses” were supposed to cover overtime- which they didn’t. When I joined hospitality place 3, they had lost 3 out of 4 apprentices in 2 months and I quickly got why: working schedules changed the day before to accommodate business, exhausting shifts, toxic middle management. 

Service company 1 asked me to come on site for an hour long interview. The HR lady was 30 minutes late, made me pass some tests, and we discussed my CV. Only to tell me at the end that they didn’t have anything at this point in time- she just wanted to add me to the pool of candidates they can contact. But they called me back a few weeks later saying they will have a job for “a client”, 3 hours per weekend, I said yes. Then nothing. The “someone will contact you” never happened, no contract. I tried calling the HR lady on Friday evening, no luck. One person did contact me about the uniform, and, with her, I gathered the following: I had to meet a (male) colleague, at the dump of a village, at 5 am, on a Saturday morning, so that he could give me my uniform. Look, I am not a fearful person usually, but all I could picture then was my name on the newspaper’s front page announcing my murder (turns out the dump was the client and they just never sign contracts before the person completes their first day of work…).

I was requested to interview in person for service company 2, only to be received by a very confused sales man. He opened the interview saying he couldn’t believe I was his appointment when he saw me because I was clearly not…on brand…and that he didn’t spend more than a minute on my CV anyway. He then proceeded to fill a whole hour of his own voice, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was too old and too fat for the job, so I shouldn’t get my hopes too high in expecting an answer from them (I swear, my age and my divorce kilos didn’t interfere with my ability to speak English- which was the only initial requirement for the job).

Then franchise company 1 was interested in my profile: an hour on the phone, then 2.5 hours on site with the CEO. Guy was 30 minutes late, filled up the next 2 hours with the sound of his own voice, occasionally playing puppy tricks on me to see if I was listening: “I don’t know why I was saying that, why was I saying that again?”. He thought he was spoiling his employees because there was a break room (a triangular hallway also used as a storage room with sink, a fridge and a sofa), which could explain why he was taken advantage of so much (his words, not mine). I noticed the girls at the counter all had hair done, make-up done, nails done, fancy uniforms (skirt/pants, shirt, tie, apron- that they had to maintain themselves). They all looked impeccable, but once we were out of earshot, he bent to me with a smile saying they couldn’t be trusted and that he was counting on me to “keep an eye on the youngsters” as I was a “more mature profile”. I puked in my mouth.

Project 1 seemed super interesting and well paid, though the scope was blurry and company specific training was not provided. I asked for clarification twice, first one got ignored, second one got a “your job is to keep the customer happy” and “you will learn by taking the plunge”. Week 2, the CEO asked me to join all sorts of (unrelated to my scope) meetings, going above the total hours I could bill for a week. I warned him  twice to allow more hours for the week, first one got ignored, second one got an “oki”- but it never happened. I had to end the contract slightly out of pocket.

Project 2 was seeing big things for me after our first half hour Zoom conversation, and asked to talk again for another hour. We agreed on an hourly rate, on an initial training in a few days, then they asked for the contract to start early June. I asked “just so we are clear, does that mean I won’t be paid during the handover?”. Panic on the other side of the screen “Hum, no, we didn’t really think you would, people who have worked for us before didn’t”. They changed their mind after I didn’t answer their training invitation, only to propose a fixed fee for X hours “or so”…

As you will guess from my experience, in “people don’t want to work anymore’, I see more companies with poor ethics, who keep on showing they don’t value their potential employees time- or money. Seriously, you can’t say “let’s build a long term and mutually beneficial work relationship” while asking employees to invest in their own training or physical appearance- that’s gaslighting at its best. You don’t want to waste time and money on them? Don’t take their time and money. Give them the same level of honesty and clarity you expect from them. 

Companies have pushed double standards on work ethics so far that they don’t even realize the disconnection they have created anymore: why do people use AI soup in their application (because you started to use LMM to screen applications and AI talks to AI)? Why does nobody want to work in difficult jobs anymore (because you prefer high turnovers to actively looking for solutions to improve them)? Why do the people we hire end up not showing up (because it took you 2 weeks to grant them minimal wage, they found a quicker match)? The saddest part: everyone wishes they were valued and respected in the work environment. Time for a new deal!