Friday, February 11, 2011

Give Back

Come the revolution, the wall is going to have to be a very long one indeed considering all the people who are going to be first against it. Today my venom is directed at whomever invented the corporate buzz phrase of this year...."Give Back"
I'm not sure if it extends to other corporations or is peculiar to my company, but the idea is that as a happy and thankful employee I "Give Back" some of my time to special projects without being paid for it. It's even talked about by managers in terms of your annual review, "That's a good choice for your Give Back this year".
What the phrase does is cleverly imply that there is some onus on you to return a favour, when in fact you haven't been given anything to start with to give back. My time is MINE, not the companies to give me. I sell my time to the company and they pay me for it - end of that transaction! Any more of MY time they want more normally falls into the category of overtime and they should be paying even more for.
The term Give Back should be scrapped in favour of the more correct term of "Give away for free because I'm a mug"
You only get one allotted span of time on this planet, and it's YOURS, no-one else's.

2 comments:

Mick said...

Richly deserved vitriol...Of course, as a member of that lesser species, the ***UNCLEAN////CONTRACTOR\\\\UNCLEAN*** I am not worthy of giving free time to the company under the auspices of a buzz phrase. It happens under the "look, do you want a job or not" clause

Unknown said...

I'm going to try that one on my employees... he he...