this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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I learned this in my previous job. We were a city-owned theater, which came with all of the trappings of government bureaucracy. But we were also open after hours, and did a lot of technical work for our shows. The city’s IT would log off on Friday at 5pm, and not log back in again until 8am on Monday. We were one of the few departments that was open over the weekend and after hours, (often until 1 or 2am when loading shows out.)
So naturally, we butted heads with IT a lot. Because we didn’t have access to change things we often needed to change. Whenever we needed to urgently troubleshoot something before a show started, our hands were almost always tied by IT. And IT’s given solution was always the same. Submit a ticket, and we’ll get to it when we get to it. But when you have 2000 people waiting on a show to start at 7pm on a Saturday, you can’t wait for IT to get back into the office on Monday.
Historically, the solution was to use our own gear. Every technician had their own personal laptop, so they could use that instead of the city laptop. But this caused issues of its own, because we couldn’t connect to any of the city-controlled gear as the city network was MAC filtered, (and IT obviously wasn’t going to allow our personal devices to connect to their network.) We worked with what we had, worked around problems we couldn’t fix, and it was a lot of extra stress for no extra benefit; The higher-ups didn’t see a problem because the shows were never visibly impacted. And IT didn’t see a problem, because the higher-ups weren’t complaining.
Eventually, we just started letting it burn. Shows suddenly started 15 to 30 minutes late, (which was unheard of in a building where even 2 minutes late was considered unacceptable.) Clients didn’t get equipment they had paid for, because it was broken on Friday evening and we couldn’t troubleshoot it over the weekend. Projectors didn’t have video feeds, because techs stopped using their personal laptops for shows. Et cetera, et cetera. Instead, the techs simply started noting every time they wanted to fix something but couldn’t because their hands were tied.
And wouldn’t you know it, the system got fixed. IT was suddenly required to keep someone on call for weekend tickets. Because when people stop propping up the broken system, all of the flaws get discovered and heads roll until shit gets fixed.