corporate executives are more out-of-touch than ever

by Alison Green on March 31, 2025

At a time when many Americans are struggling with rising costs of living, too many corporate executives are making it clear that they have no idea what life is like for their employees.

We regularly hear accounts at AAM of out-of-touch executives who have alienated large portions of their workforce – often via clueless displays of wealth at the exact same time that they’re laying off employees, increasing health insurance costs, or otherwise squeezing their workers. At Slate today, I share some shocking examples of this, and talk about how it hurts both employers and employees. You can read it here.

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    1. JustCuz*

      The older I get, the more convinced I am that not only are these execs paying themselves waaaaaay too much over their worker’s wages, but that it should be criminalized lol because no one should be allowed to talk to anyone reporting (especially directly) to them about things like the trials of having to live in their *other* house while their *main* house is being renovated. All joking aside, it is objectively gross the pay gaps between managers and their reports.

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      1. Someone Else's Boss*

        Agreed! I unironically believe there should be a maximum percentage difference between levels of hierarchy that would mean any raise the CEO gets demands raises down the line.

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        1. animaniactoo*

          100%. I want there to be a maximum difference between the lowest paid employee of a company and the highest paid employee of a company, and for that to be a federal law.

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          2. CeeDoo*

            My building principal makes over $300,000 a year. It was reported in the Houston Chronicle several years ago. Assistants and aides make $13.50 an hour.

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          4. Disappointed with the Staff*

            Companies would game that via contracting out. Or fake splits – company A has all the factory workers, company B has all the executives.

            It’s a worthwhile thing to do, but I think it would be more complicated than a simple ratio limit within a single company. Pay equity lawsuits would be one point of comparison.

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            1. Your Local Password Resetter*

              They would certainly try, which is why you’d need robust definitions of what a company, employee or executive is. And a good enforcement agency.
              There will always be a gray area, but it’s already been done for things like exempt pay, discrimination, contractor/employee benefits, and a bunch of other things.

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            2. Jane*

              I agree with the above – yes there will always be people who try to get around regulations, but honestly many DON’T, even if just because it can sometimes be more effortful than just following the law is. Also, the more workers’ rights laws are passed, the easier it will be to pass more significant workers’ right laws in the future. So my personal impression is that laws of this ilk are still a net positive (and enough of a net positive that they are worth fighting for).

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              1. Reluctant Mezzo*

                I knew a nursing home who had different corporations for each building to get around the overtime laws.

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                1. TeaCoziesRUs*

                  Makes me wonder if any employee ever flagged it for their state / country Department of Labor…

                  Hell, just let Labor keep a percentage of the fees they earn by setting companies right – they might have enough staff to actually apply existing laws!

                2. TeaCoziesRUs*

                  I should say the fees that the company is charged IN ADDITION TO back pay, etc., that the workers should be receiving.

            3. Dust Bunny*

              Nobody said it would be straightforward, just that it was crappy and wrong.

              (Also, it should be based on total compensation, not just pay in dollars, or they’ll pay them an OK rate but then give them a company car and house or something.)

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          5. EllenD*

            In the UK, there’s a posh retail chain with Department store and upmarket supermarket that has this rule that links the pay of the Chair and Chief Executive to that of lowest paid full-time worker. For a long time – and may still be the case – their employees were the best paid retail workers and until recent years there was an annual bonus for all staff.
            The group is actually owned by its employees in the form of a trust set up in 1920s by the original owner. I always think it rather ironic that posh wealthy people boast about shopping at their stores, yet it’s based on a socialist approach.

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          6. EllenD*

            In the UK there’s a retail group – department stores and supermarket – that has this rule that the Chair and Chief Executive pay is a maximum multiple of pay of the lowest paid full time worker. The pay is usual very good for retail workers too, with an annual bonus (although not in recent years).
            I’m always amused that these posh shops, are owned by the employees through a trust set up in the 1920s by the original owner.

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        2. Curiouser and Curiouser*

          Percentage minimum wage. The distribution has to hit a certain percentage of the overall budget of the company. Because if Amazon is worth $160 billion, no, I’m not “impressed” that they pay their low level employees over minimum wage. It should be commensurate with what they’re bringing in on a yearly basis.

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      2. MigraineMonth*

        And to think, these are mostly executives who work and draw a paycheck, as opposed to the class of wealth owners.

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        1. Magc*

          This times infinity — the difference between the top wage earners and the wealth owners is obscene, and that’s on top of the difference between the bottom and top wage earners.

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        2. Lab Boss*

          That reminds me of the Chris Rock bit, “Shaq is rich, but the man that signs Shaq’s checks is WEALTHY.”

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        3. Plate of Wings*

          Preach!! It’s egregious and greedy (especially when you hear about these golden parachutes offered to someone who collosally screwed people over), but it’s firmly in the world of having a job. It makes wealth hoarding feel even more untouchable when you realize that.

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          1. MigraineMonth*

            The people who are paid these astronomical salaries still pay some income tax. (Not as high a percentage of their income as the lowest-paid workers at their company, but some.) They buy three houses, a vineyard, racehorses and a yacht, but they don’t buy senators or supreme court seats.

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            1. Paige*

              AMEN.

              The houses, vineyard, racehorses, and yacht all employ people, generate tax revenue, and (probably) don’t actively destroy society. We can certainly prioritize the order in which we eat the billionaires.

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      3. not nice, don't care*

        No company should be allowed to make a profit until/unless all their workers are paid living wages and have full benefits, including healthcare. They should also be required to pay rent for using public infrastructure and our common resources before making a profit.

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            1. Feckless Moppet*

              Not talking about billionaires here, but I used to be a tax accountant for high net-worth individuals (think: power couples working on Wall Street, Big Law attorneys) whose combined incomes were in the high seven digits. They did actually pay taxes, and it blew my mind just how much.

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              1. AF Vet*

                Right? Most of the high-income earners I know use the tax breaks they’re allowed, but also feel enough obligation to greater society at large to pay it forward by paying taxes, philanthropy, etc. They still make more money than they can spend in a lifetime.

                We’ve just now gotten to the point where I don’t ask if there’s a military discount unless it’s a large corporation. (And if it’s a restaurant, I’ll usually add most of that discount to the tip – so 20% plus whatever the discount was). I love the support that small businesses in military communities give us, and I know how close the profit margins can be. Let the younger troops enjoy it!

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          2. TM*

            Over 30% of large companies trading in Australia the last financial year paid no tax at all. Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc paid 1-3% of their earned profits.
            The companies relying most on stable societies, rule of law, relatively high wages to pay for their goods, reliable (enough) shipping and transportation and road networks, cargo terminals, quality regulations, etc etc etc, barely contribute to the pot. Very significantly less so if they’re multinational and can shuffle their profits offshore.
            A basic example of “tax mitigation” schemes is when $BigCompany operating from a low- or no-corporate tax jurisdiction “loans” $ForeignSubsidiary huge sums that they must then pay back at ridiculous interest rates. Servicing that “debt” therefore allows them to claim a tax offset in $ForeignCountry. There are many such loopholes.

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      4. goddessoftransitory*

        I feel quite sure the main attraction of having this much money IS being able to brag about it to those with far less. At least for this type of person.

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    2. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

      Honestly? They deal with it the same way that I deal with buying a more expensive smartphone when I *know* that there are children dying of preventable diseases and I could easily buy a flip phone and donate the remaining money to Doctors Without Borders or something. They compartmentalize.

      I don’t think those two are equivalent, because the executive has more of a presumed responsibility to employees than I do to a random sick child, and—frankly—because executives doing that looks really bad. I’m certainly not saying I think they’re equivalently awful. I just understand the *mechanism* of it because it’s not too different than the mechanism everyone living a non-ascetic life in a Western country uses. Just scaled way up.

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      1. Jane*

        I think there’s a meaningful difference between having enough money to live a “normal” life without suffering from lack of resources which includes the ability to have and do things merely for fun and pleasure, vs having enough money to do all that PLUS to have a super yacht, a private plane, a new car every year, a vacation home, personal staff etc. A person in the second circumstance has a much greater obligation to give away their wealth than people who are comfortable but not lavish. While I agree that both engage in some level of compartmentalization, I think that having excessive wealth is a completely different type of thing than having enough money to buy yourself treats occasionally is.

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        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          The question is what “excessive wealth” looks like. And what “normal life” looks like. In many parts of the world, even most impoverished Americans have a grotesquely higher quality of life than the average person there. We eat fruits flown from around the world out of season; we buy clothes that we, on some level, know were made by people working long hours for pennies; culturally, we spend millions of dollars on things like movies and video games.

          From the POV of someone for whom some protein with your rice is a “treat,” and a flu vaccine is an unimaginable luxury, how is that any different?

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          1. knitted feet*

            Right. Lavish is subjective, and a middle-class Westerner’s concept of a normal lifestyle with occasional treats is not universal.

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      2. Elizabeth West*

        There have been a few Buzzfeed posts with people who worked for the wealthy spilling secrets, and the thing that gets me the most is the waste. Throwing expensive things away that are perfectly good. Burning massive amounts of jet fuel for a strawberry.

        It’s obscene.

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        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          Most waste by developing nations is obscene by the standards of developing nations, too, to be frank. It’s very relative.

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    4. Six Feldspar*

      These people are living proof that too much money has significant detrimental affects on the human psyche, and I’d be happy to take on some of this burden to help them recover…

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    5. Calamity Janine*

      it’s grim, but part of me is amazed it happens without any sort of self-preservation instinct kicking in.

      it’s not that i want the same result to happen, but at some point, if the rich executives adopt the attitude of “let them eat cake!” and rub it in people’s faces… i do not know what they expect to result from this. say what you will about humanity, but this is a pattern that’s often repeated through history. at some point even the most basic knowledge of it has got to make two neurons gently connect into a thought of “wait, is it good for me if i do this? what usually happens to people who do this? do i want that to happen? i don’t think i do…”

      *okay Marie Antoinette didn’t actually say this and arguably gets a lot of unfair bad press heavily tinted by the misogyny of the time period but it’s useful cultural shorthand for a certain attitude

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      1. linger*

        The current NZ prime minister defaults to this sort of thing. For example:
        Defending renting out his own property to himself and claiming that back as an accommodation allowance, rather than staying in the official PM residence: “I’m entitled to my entitlements.” (He later backtracked on this in the face of media ridicule. Though he still changed the law around tax on property sales in a way that advantaged him selling off two of his other properties.)
        Defending his government’s outsourcing of a school lunch program to a low-bid low-quality provider that saw children actually injured by lunches exploding: “It’s not hard, just pack an apple and a Vegemite sandwich”.

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    6. Letherebelight*

      My best guess is that a) they have lost touch with the “little guy” and b) they think that their shows of wealth and whatnot will be “inspirational” and encourage the rabble to think that if only they work hard enough, they too can have several horses and a country home.
      A very small minority I think are genuine sadists or other personality disorders, they have been shown to be over-represented in the C-Suite but I think it’s just that we *all* as a human race like to show our “stuff” and the exec stuff happens to be bigger and less palatable to the working/middle/lower class people struggling to get by.

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  2. Richard Hershberger*

    Many of these stories are not merely about income inequality, but about the executive being an utter bore. Holding his employees hostage for vacation photos would show him to be a bore, even were it a more modest vacation.

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    1. Ally McBeal*

      I once had a CEO require me to stay 30-45 minutes late (on top of my usual 10-hour day) to look over his shoulder as he composed an email. Fortunately he wasn’t usually an utter bore, and definitely does care about his employees (didn’t draw a salary from company profits for the entire 4 years I worked for him), but the total disregard for employees’ time is pretty widespread among C-level folks. Probably because they have to give up such large chunks of their own personal time/life to reach that C level status.

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      1. OrangeCup*

        Agreed. I work for very wealthy people and am fortunately very well compensated for the work I do, but the amount of work I do late at night and on the weekends proves to me they have zero respect for their employees personal lives or even consider that we have them. And we do not have the staff they do handling all the personal details they don’t have to – chefs, housekeepers, butlers, drivers, etc.

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      2. Fly on the Wall*

        And they don’t realize the impact keeping a person late is. They either have a spouse or hired help to pick up kids, make dinner, clean, etc. That is the biggest area I see a difference. No concept of why you had to be late ’cause the kids bus was late, or call out because they were sick or you needed to have a repairperson to your house.

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        1. CorruptedbyCoffee*

          This is what I was going to say. My husband once told his C level boss he had to leave an hour early for a house thing (I think it was meeting a roof repair guy or something), and his boss asked him “why doesn’t your wife handle that?”

          Turns out, bosses wife is a stay at home mom, and he works 80 hr weeks and sees his kids once a week in-between traveling. She took care of EVERYTHING for him that wasn’t work. He also made triple the salary. He just could not understand why I wouldn’t quit my job to become the helpmate I should.

          Bosses wife divorced him later because he was never around.

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          1. Strive to Excel*

            My uncle knows someone who has a job like this and is married. He works in one state, she works in another. They see each other a few times a month. They have several kids. They seem happy with this arrangement; he sends home a tremendous salary and she manages everything. He lives in an apartment most of the time.

            It sounds soul-crushing to me.

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            1. Your Local Password Resetter*

              It really makes you wonder why they even bothered getting married, or decided to have kids.

              At least I can see the potential benefits for the wife (lots of financial security but you still get to be a parent, assuming that’s what they want). But why start a family if you’re just going to ignore them?

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        2. Ally McBeal*

          Yep – the execs with no tangible sense of work-life balance are always the ones with stay-at-home spouses or a cadre of hired help (some of whom probably make more than I do).

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            1. Zephy*

              The Venn diagram of “people who have domestic staff in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty five” and “people who have actually had to cook and clean and care for their own damn homes and families” is two circles on two pieces of paper that might happen to overlap a little bit sometimes.

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              1. Zephy*

                Note: By “domestic staff” I mean people who work for them exclusively – people who hire a cleaning service a few times a month are not on the same level as people who have a dedicated maid.

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        3. The Rural Juror*

          I’m a mid-30s single cis woman who lives alone. I absolutely love my dog and one of the perks of having her is being able to firmly say, “I have to leave right at 5:00 to make it home and let the dog out.” So far I’ve only ever had one (older male married) boss be kind of pushy with me but I stood firm and left right on time.

          Our work/life balance at my company has been *mostly* good but I do think bosses there tend to forget their employees have responsibilities outside of work. We shouldn’t have to justify why we need to leave on time but sometimes they can be out of touch about that.

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          1. Elizabeth West*

            Business owners can be like that even if the business isn’t big — it’s their precious, and they think we should all be Gollum-ing over it when we’re really more like Samwise. We just want to do our jobs and go back to the Shire.

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      3. Turquoisecow*

        I’ve had bosses do this to me and they weren’t executives at all, but workaholics who had bought into the idea that the only way to get ahead in the company was to sacrifice things like personal time in favor of “emergencies” like composing an email on Friday night that the recipient wouldn’t read until Monday mint ing or answering emails from the beach.

        They weren’t entirely wrong in that company but it didn’t save them from layoffs or the company from bankruptcy due to mismanagement and it certainly didn’t make them happy. Now that I have a kid I definitely wouldn’t make that decision but they didn’t have kids.

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        1. Paint N Drip*

          yepppp people who do this do NOT need to be financially stratified from the average worker, their values (work over EVERYTHING) separate them just as much

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      4. not nice, don't care*

        In my decades of experience in a wide range of industries, the reason execs disregard employees’ time is because they regard employees as servants.

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      5. CommanderBanana*

        Also, everyone should remember that sociopathic traits are clustered in CEOs! I am convinced that the CEO at my last job plus one was a bone fide sociopath. He had dead shark eyes and seemed to view people as roughly equivalent to furniture that could talk.

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        1. CommanderBanana*

          Oh, and – he had two sons, both preteens. One seemed quiet and sad, the other one liked to walk into people’s offices and declare that “his dad could have fire them.”

          The sociopathic apple doesn’t fall far from the rotten, seeping tree.

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      6. Disappointed with the Staff*

        I’m fortunate in working for a wealthy person who understands this. They do exist!

        He’s awake about 5am every day, and when I work directly with him he occasionally rings me about 3-4 minutes after I log in for the day. He watches! (this is a nice thing, it’s him very carefully not ringing me at 5am! Unless I log in at 5am because I’m also an early riser) But the flip side is that he wants things done rather than bums in seats. He expects us to say “I’m leaving early/starting late tomorrow” when we need to. I work 48 weeks of 37.5 hours in a year and he’s happy with that. Other people work less, or more, according to their inclination.

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  3. Beans*

    My company is simultaneously planning an extravaganza of an event and cinching budgets down because of a possible recession. I’m tired.

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    1. JustCuz*

      I got laid off at my last company 2 weeks after the CEO hosted an industry event tour that he spent thousands on organizing and hosting. And don’t think it was for customers either. Oh no, this was for our COMPETITORS to come in, tour the facility, listen to presentations about our products and what we offer, guest (paid speakers) food and drinks. The whole shabang. FOR OUR COMPETITORS. He followed this up with a toned down, more somber employee appreciation evening with cheap food and a relatively expensive speaker who not only was found offensive but also told everyone during his speech exactly how much he had been paid to be there.

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    2. DramaQ*

      Same! We keep hearing about belt tightening because stocks are way down.

      meanwhile our department head somehow got approval for a week long extravaganza that involves flying all of us at our location to his because he doesn’t like our city.

      150 people roughly at $1500 a piece.

      I feel like if I don’t get a raise this year it isn’t because of stocks. If we are so tight on money they are making us account for every test tube and tissue we order how did this guy get approval for his extravaganza that could pay for several lifetimes of test tubes?

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      2. Wendy Darling*

        This is giving me flashbacks to my employer who couldn’t give anyone raises/promotions/replacements for broken equipment during COVID due to “economic uncertainty” but our industry got a giant boost from COVID and the company’s stock had its best year ever.

        Then the entire sales team went to an expensive resort in the tropics for sales kickoff. When I brought this up I was told that “our sales team are thoroughbreds” and my boss basically had to filibuster me before I did a lot of verbal hulk-smashing at some executives.

        I left for a job that was somehow both higher paying AND less stressful.

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        1. MigraineMonth*

          …So we put salespeople out to pasture after 4-5 years if we haven’t already “terminated” them for having a health condition?

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    3. Middle Manager*

      It’s the same in my organization. We’re planning a big, expensive event to celebrate a milestone anniversary. Meanwhile, the CEO is laser-focused on reducing expenses and spending his time too deep in the weeds. Make it make sense.

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  5. ImprobableSpork*

    We need to stop with this “they have no idea” narrative. They have plenty of idea. The cruelty is intentional.

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    1. A. Lab Rabbit*

      I don’t know that the cruelty is always intentional, but they sure do love to flaunt their (usually inherited) wealth and think that it means they are naturally smarter and work so much harder than all of their employees. It’s a huge amount of ego-massage for them.

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      1. goddessoftransitory*

        They see the flaunting as a perk, no question. The entire point of “working so hard” is to make sure everyone sees your fancy spoils.

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    2. Wendy Darling*

      I think they genuinely don’t know in some cases but it’s absolutely due to a lack of interest in knowing. It’s not difficult to find out.

      They also generally think they got to where they are via nothing but merit and the sweat of their brow so they think anyone could live like them if they just, you know, did better.

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      1. Lea*

        Yeah I’ll give a pass to the guy that was just moving around their house but the ‘yay for all our increased earnings/staff wage freeze’ types are absolutely nefarious

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    3. Ann O'Nemity*

      Not all out-of-touch leaders are deliberately cruel; some are just living in such a different orbit. My old CEO used to casually complain about her kid’s $40k prep school and the emotional toll of a delayed kitchen remodel, while some staff were literally on government assistance. But when her beloved assistant’s dad was deported while battling cancer, she was shocked—like, “Surely this is just a paperwork issue!” To her credit, she dug in, realized the system was far worse than she’d ever imagined, and in a completely unexpected twist, became a passionate advocate for immigration rights. She even testified at the state legislature on behalf of Dreamers. She stayed out of touch in many ways, but it didn’t seem intentionally cruel.

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      1. Richard Hershberger*

        This is not uncommon: inability to extend empathy beyond one’s own circle, but within that circle being genuinely caring. A variant is the ability to expand empathy to those whose condition is similar in some specific way to someone within that circle. Consider Dick Cheney. He was in general entirely ready to hate on whomever he was expected to hate. But he has a gay child, and so is not anti-gay in the normal way. See also, John McCain and torture victims. Is this commendable? I suppose so, but you have to set the bar pretty low.

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        1. Ally McBeal*

          And that’s how you get people who have gay kids but still vote for anti-gay politicians. The cognitive dissonance I experienced on my ten-year journey from far-right/devoutly-religious to far-left/lapsed-religious was almost physically painful at times and I don’t know how they don’t experience it in similarly painful ways. I know the dissonance is there – it just doesn’t seem to bother them.

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        2. Ann O'Nemity*

          Totally agree—your examples of Cheney and McCain are spot on. It’s like empathy by proximity: they can care deeply, but only once it touches their inner circle. I wouldn’t call it commendable either, but I do think there’s value in distinguishing between malice and privileged obliviousness. In my CEO’s case, it wasn’t cruelty—it was a bubble. And when that bubble popped, she didn’t become a saint, but she did put in real effort to learn and take action. Between the two, I’ll take obliviousness over malice any day—because at least then there’s the possibility for learning and growth. Malice rarely evolves, but obliviousness sometimes wakes up.

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        3. Wendy Darling*

          On the scale from “Abhorrent” to “Commendable it’s somewhere in the high bottom/low middle “well it’s better than nothing I suppose” range.

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      2. metadata minion*

        I wish I could remember where I read this, but someone pointed out that one reason rich/privileged people assume that surely there are reasonable exceptions to rules, and surely if you just explained things clearly it would all work out, is that *that’s how their life is*. And because they’re usually surrounded by other people who just have to speak to the manager and fill out the right paperwork to get things taken care of, they assume that’s how everyone’s life is.

        And I had kind of noticed that subconsicously, but having it explicitly written out made a lot of things clearer.

        If you point out that no, actually, it doesn’t work that way for a huge percentage of people, usually either someone will go the way of your old CEO and feel understandably upset and angry that other people don’t get the same reasonable consideration they do; OR they double down and insist that you must be doing something wrong, because it will break their world if they admit things aren’t fair.

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        1. Ann O'Nemity*

          Yes! That’s exactly how it played out. The CEO was initially like, “Well, surely if you just explain that he was too sick to work because of the cancer…” Then, “Okay, surely this is some sort of bureaucratic mix-up that’ll get sorted once you point it out.” She was genuinely shocked to learn that it wasn’t a bug in the system—it was the system working as designed to throw hard-working people out on their butt. Watching that realization dawn on her in real time was wild.

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        2. Paint N Drip*

          This is a part of privilege that is hard to educate people about, even as they are living it. You have been cushioned from so much, that life is easy and simple and reasonable – you have resources thus that your experience is just plain easier and if you run into trouble you can ask for help and you get it. The leaders or management or doctors or government officials tend to subconsciously align with other privileged people, so your complaint/ suggestion/ question is treated with validity, speed, politeness. For whatever reason you have privilege, there are people who will cater to you to uphold that privilege (we live in a society etc etc)

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        3. Not Tom, Just Petty*

          “insist that you must be doing something wrong”
          This is inherent in the system in so many ways. People born on third base not only think they hit a triple, but hit that triple because they did everything right. You can do everything right, even hit a triple aaaaand still not make it to third. You get tripped, get a cramp, rain clouds fall.
          But they will slide into home believing you did something wrong as much as they did something right. And neither may be true.

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          1. Wendy Darling*

            The last few years parts of my life have felt like I did everything right, hit a triple, and then a massive gaping mysterious hole in the earth opened under home plate and I end up standing there a few feet from third base gawking as my teammates and all my best-laid plans vanish into a pit.

            Like, my spouse and I are doing fine and we’ve managed to make stuff work, but I did not have “unprecedented global pandemic banjaxes the housing market weeks after you decide you’re ready to buy a house” on my bingo card for 2020, and that level of chaos has continued.

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        4. MigraineMonth*

          This is true with all sorts of privilege. “Well, why didn’t you report it to the police? Why didn’t you tell the manager? What do you mean they blow off people like you, or treat you like the problem, and nothing ever changes, *I’ve* never experienced that.”

          There’s a great paragraph in the update from an LW who was struggling with paratransit issues making them late to work:

          One more thing: a number of commenters suggested reporting my issues with paratransit or making some kind of complaint. In some ways, I think it was useful for me to read so many people saying that because it helped me understand that this was a problem (but not a me problem). However, as I said at the time, I was not interested in doing that–it’s a whole lot of time/energy/stress/effort that I just don’t have to spare, especially when the prevalence of paratransit issues made it seem pretty unlikely to have any impact. I fully realize that that might make this an unsatisfying update for people who wanted me to make a fuss or make some real change in the system, but I also want to encourage folks to try to understand why people might not want to go through the trouble of making formal reports. I think that when you see someone in a situation that isn’t right it can be easy/tempting to think that calling on some higher authority will fix it, but too often I think that isn’t the case. And of course, this tends to just put more work and expectations onto already marginalized people. I’m not sure I’m articulating this very well (I’ve been struggling to describe it for a while) and I don’t think anyone meant anything but good with their comments, but I just wanted to mention it.

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    4. Beth*

      A lot of time it isn’t intentional cruelty so much as willful ignorance leading to unintentional cruelty.

      They don’t have to live on $40k, and they don’t know anyone who has to support a family on $40k, so they don’t have to know what that actually gets their workers. They know that their higher salary gets them luxuries (a giant house, a second vacation home, a new kitchen renovation, an international trip, designer clothes, a fancy car, private schools); they know their workers don’t have that, but assume they still have a decent life (a smaller but private house, a vacation airB&B for their trip to the next state over, a new fridge when theirs fails, department store clothes, a reliable car, good public schools). Leadership might think their luxuries are aspirational–it’ll inspire people to push forward in their careers, they can attain this too if they work hard!

      The cruelty happens when that assumption is wrong. More often than not, their lower-level workers have a pretty subsistence-level life (a tiny room in an apartment with multiple roommates, no travel budget, debt when something breaks and needs to be replaced, no new clothes, a busted-up car that they can’t really rely on, under-resourced public schools). The rich leader could’ve learned that this is their workers’ reality–there are plenty of resources to figure out how far a given salary goes in a given city. But it’s uncomfortable to confront how little poor people have, so they avoid it. They don’t mean to be cruel, but the impact is cruelty.

      Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        I very much agree that most out-of-touch but not-cruel people have a mental sliding scale where others who make less just live a ‘smaller’ version of their same lives – used cars, only one streaming service, owning a small home, etc. Their sliding scale is only based on their experience, so just as their scale doesn’t include ‘owning an island’ or ‘running an empire’ rich, it also doesn’t include ‘can’t afford both rent and enough food’ or ‘working full time and can’t afford new shoes’ poor

        I think many people who have only known financial security as adults have no idea how often a full-time salary can still include a life of poverty (or serious struggle outside the technical limits of poverty)

        Reply ↓
        1. LifebeforeCorona*

          Several years ago our bookkeeper completely blanked on issuing paychecks. When someone pointed it out the next day to the director, he immediately issued cheques for the missing money. Then he worked on figuring out why the pay deposits didn’t happen. Because he knew that even a one day late paycheck could cause havoc to lower paid staff. That’s what is missing. Executives have more flexibility to handle a missing payment. A $50 overdraft fee won’t break them. Their safety net is bigger and stronger.

          Reply ↓
        2. MigraineMonth*

          Also, a lot of people have really specific ideas about what “real poverty” looks like, and anything that doesn’t match can’t be serious. Stella may have been evicted a year ago and has been couch-surfing since then, but she isn’t living on the street. Bob splits pills because he can’t afford to take his daily medications every day, but hey, he has health insurance. Unless you’re a starving African child in one of those poverty porn ads, you aren’t really poor.

          I assume that’s how you get the weird Fox news segments that are like, “Poverty isn’t a big problem any more, did you know that most [housed] poor people have refrigerators *and* microwaves? That wasn’t the case 100 years ago! Some people on food stamps have been spotted with *smartphones*” (as if having a smartphone or a computer isn’t practically a requirement for getting/keeping a job these days).

          Reply ↓
          1. I Have RBF*

            I hate those segments. A crappy rental apartment with roomies, an old refrigerator, an old microwave and a stove with only one working burner isn’t luxury, except when compared to woodstoves and iceboxes. Those poor folks with smartphones? Don’t have a landline or often a TV and cable. The smartphone takes the place of both. (There are actually some pretty good deals on refurbs.)

            Reply ↓
            1. Freya*

              And in Australia, a basic smartphone with a relatively recent operating system is a necessity for logging in to any government website, such as the one where you access government assistance!

              Reply ↓
        3. Media Monkey*

          and also, it is likely that their assumed cost of everything is based on how much it cost them. for example, i had paid rent on a room in a flat in London of about £400 per month, before buying a flat with my now husband (a small 1 bed flat in outer london, sadly not a mansion!). about 5 years later, most people were paying £900 a month which was way more than i would have expected, because mentally for me, london rent is £400 and i didn’t understand that it had more than doubled in a short space of time (we complain about rent and house prices a lot in London, but don’t normally talk specifics!)

          Reply ↓
          1. Paint N Drip*

            Great point, especially if the executives haven’t lived a rental life for a long time. I find myself completely confused by the pricing on things, I’m only in my 30s but the ‘set points’ I have mentally established for things is SO DIFFERENT than the actual cost of them! Even things I buy all the time but don’t pay close attention to the price. I find myself more and more empathetic to the geriatric customers leaving pocket change as a tip

            Reply ↓
      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I think this really nails it: they basically see people under them in the company as having a smaller version of what they themselves have–like they have the Dream House, but everyone has a Barbie, right?

        Reply ↓
      3. Snark*

        I think it’s also worth noting that a lot of them genuinely don’t take note of a lot of the expenses we have to be concerned with. They don’t know what apartments rent for because they don’t rent. They don’t really know what clothes and cheap airfare and refrigerators and car repairs cost because they have shopping services and they fly Delta One and the house came with all Frigidaire and the service is included in the BMW lease, so they really don’t know what the cheap versions of all those things cost or think about how that adds up to a large percentage of your salary.

        Reply ↓
    5. Michelle*

      Agreed, though you’re getting a lot of comments rushing to defend the rich because the poor things just don’t know any better and it’s wrong to accuse them of MEANING it.

      If they don’t know, it’s because they don’t want to. To maintain that kind of ignorance, they’d have to ACTIVELY reject the truth. They’d rather work to remain ‘unknowingly’ cruel than allow any knowledge that might give them sadfeelz about themselves or, god forbid, suggest they change their behavior.

      The distinction is meaningless IMO.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jane*

        I agree that lack of awareness, and lack of interest in developing awareness, of what life is like for people who are very different from oneself, namely people who are much, much less privileged than oneself, is a moral failure. However, to my mind it’s not 100% meaningless – several comments above point out that if someone is oblivious (which is still contemnable) rather than callous or bigoted, there is an opportunity for this person to learn and change. So for those who want to raise awareness about poverty and suffering, it is probably worth distinguishing types of people for focusing your efforts. That’s pretty much the only use of it though.

        This is tangential, but personally I had a “conversion” from being a Democrat to being extremely far left (which imo is not too different from a conservative to leftist conversion). I feel that in my case I just had never been exposed to the information that led me to have the views I now hold. Of course I could and should have sought out that information earlier, and of course there are others who did so without having been raised with it. But there’s such an incredibly strong bias against “alternative” views in this country (USA) that this stuff isn’t necessarily the easiest to come across and seek out, especially given that it is actively suppressed and portrayed as irrelevant by the mainstream culture in which we are all completely immersed.

        Reply ↓
    6. MassMatt*

      I appreciate the frustration, but in general think the maxim “don’t ascribe to malice what could be explained by stupidity” applies.

      Reply ↓
      1. Good Enough For Government Work*

        You may be right, but I also hold to the phrase’s corollary:

        “Sufficiently advanced stupidity/ignorance is indistinguishable from malice.”

        Reply ↓
        1. Richard Hershberger*

          My person version is the realization that the answer to “Evil or stupid?” is “It doesn’t matter.”

          Reply ↓
  6. sofar*

    When TikTok first started taking off, all the writers/editors of the site I worked for were asked to start doing a lot of video. Since we do a lot of content around shopping/Black Fri, etc, the VP suggested we start doing some of those “$100 challenge” videos, where we go to a store and see what we can get for $100 and show our haul. As well as other video concepts that involved buying stuff and showing/unboxing it.

    I asked, “Will we just request reimbursement the regular way?” VP goes, “Oh hmmm… well I don’t think we can fund all this as a company. Just buy the stuff and return it.”

    I actually had to explain how, for a lot of folks, spending $100 and then waiting for weeks to get their refund via the retail return process posed hardship.

    Reply ↓
      1. goddessoftransitory*

        And screwing over the employees in the stores who may be working on commission. There’s really no end to the way this can mess up people’s budgets.

        Reply ↓
    2. I take tea*

      Such a waste of time and effort. And what about ecological impact, as some places will just throw away returns?

      I honesty don’t understand how American retailers survive, when some people seem to make a hobby out of buying and returning stuff, regardless if it can be resold or not. Or that’s the picture I get from reading to much Not Always Right…

      Reply ↓
      1. Antilles*

        Part of the answer is that there actually very few people who make a hobby of returning items like you’re saying. There are some, but it’s a very small percentage of consumers.
        The other part of the answer is that retailers are always tightening up on returns. You can’t return without the original packaging, to keep people from buying something for temporary use before returning. You can’t return anything that was wrapped (unless you happen to own your own shrink wrap machine). They ask for ID when you do a return and put it into their system to track the unreasonable returners. They don’t allow returns on expensive items like electronics. Etc.

        Reply ↓
      2. Ally McBeal*

        Well, some retailers are no longer offering free returns, to cut down on the cost of endless binge-shopping. Gen Z is increasingly preferring shopping in-person, which will help until the cycle starts swinging the other way again.

        Reply ↓
      3. MigraineMonth*

        The answer is that cost of “free” returns are calculated into the cost of the items. If I buy a sweater direct from Amazon, it’s several dollars more expensive than it would be if Amazon didn’t offer free returns to cover the average loss of people deciding to return. (So those people who buy & return stuff are driving up prices for the rest of us.)

        If I do decide to return it, the sweater generally doesn’t go back to an Amazon warehouse to get restocked. It goes to a location where resellers can buy it (if it’s a particularly hot item that week), and if it doesn’t work it gets packaged with other textiles for possible textile recycling, and if that isn’t profitable it ends up in a landfill.

        Reply ↓
      4. Dancing Otter*

        Or refund without an actual return.
        I bought a t-shirt on Amazon that turned out not to be as described. When I started the return process online, it defaulted to “returnless refund.” I thought that meant they would give me the refund right away, even before I took the package to Whole Foods (or wherever), but no, they didn’t want it back at all.
        Off to the thrift shop, I guess… I’m sure somebody will enjoy a neon turquoise shirt with a skull and a quote from The Tempest.

        Reply ↓
        1. Baby Yoda*

          I was relieved for a returnless refund a few weeks ago as well, as the package arrived empty so no product to return. That’s happened twice and there is no option to select for receiving empty packaging.

          Reply ↓
        2. Teapot Connoisseuse*

          That t-shirt sounds like something I’d definitely check out if I found it in a l8csl charity shop!

          Reply ↓
  7. A. Lab Rabbit*

    The horses one reminds me of the thing I saw somewhere where it was pointed out have people who have horses have better health, and so of course, it means that having horses are good for your health.

    In reality, no, that’s not what it means. (Correlation does not imply causation.) It’s because if you are rich enough to own a horse, you are also rich enough to have decent health insurance and can afford to take time off to see a doctor, and can also afford to do what they recommend.

    Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          I’m going to go out on a limb and bet you are both taller than and better at math than my five-year-old niece. *winks*

          Reply ↓
      2. HannahS*

        I think Hazelfizz is implying that people who have reached their adult height are better at math than young children. I can certainly confirm that I am twice the height of my 3 y/0 and MUCH better at math, mostly because I can accurately count to 30 and she can’t. :)

        Reply ↓
    2. Strive to Excel*

      Owning horses does require people to go outside and exercise, which is also generally associated with good health. Not sure that it makes owning horses any better for you than any other outdoor activity – and of course it requires someone to have the free time and physical location to be able to get outside and exercise regularly.

      I wonder if there’s similar research showing that people who hire staff to help keep their houses clean are also healthier.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        And also the inverse: most people who aren’t healthy don’t choose to own a horse they can’t ride.
        (This is separate from hippotherapy (horse therapy), and does not imply in any way that a person has to be able-bodied to ride a horse.)

        Reply ↓
          1. Nightengale*

            fun fact, “hippopotamus” means “river horse”

            I had to explain this recently at work when a confused member of my nursing staff took a message from a patient parent asking if I would prescribe hippotherapy. No the child was not going to be riding a hippopotamus here in western Pennsylvania.

            Reply ↓
            1. Higher-ed Jessica*

              Just as well, I can’t cite research on this but I’m pretty confident that children who do not ride hippopotamuses have longer lifespans.

              Reply ↓
              1. Nightengale*

                I strongly suspect you are right. . .but is that true causation or correlation because child mortality is overall higher in hippopotamus endemic areas?

                Reply ↓
      2. Global Cat Herder*

        >> I wonder if there’s similar research showing that people who hire staff to help keep their houses clean are also healthier.

        Married men live longer than unmarried men.

        Reply ↓
        1. A. Lab Rabbit*

          See, this is where the statistics can get interesting. Do married men live longer than unmarried men because their wives prevent them from doing stupid things or encourage them to do healthy things (like go to the doctor)? Or do married women also live longer than unmarried women, in which case it’s probably something to do with the emotional health and wellbeing and how it affects your physical health and wellbeing. But none of that can be teased out of the raw data just by looking at it; you have to analyze the data and compare it with other studies to figure out which is which.

          I highly encourage people to learn more about statistics. You can learn a lot about the world that way.

          Reply ↓
          1. Rogue Slime Mold*

            Cambridge University asked the question. Married has the greatest life expectancy (compared to widowed, divorced, and never married). Cohabitating but not now married in each category lies between the two, with “widowed and now cohabitating” being almost overlain on “married.” The gaps between the curves are bigger for men than for women. Theory is that marriage is a proxy for social connections.

            https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-demographic-economics/article/effect-of-marital-status-on-life-expectancy-is-cohabitation-as-protective-as-marriage/5B6B9B86C737AE3F095CF3781023F458

            Reply ↓
            1. MigraineMonth*

              Which doesn’t actually mean that getting married will probably increase your lifespan (even if you eventually live in an community of elderly like those in the study). It is also possible that the people who choose to marry are more likely to live longer. The researchers note in the highlights:

              Selection bias was a large contributor to longer life expectancy among married persons.

              Until we start randomly assigning people to marry or not to marry, and to divorce or not divorce, I think it’s going to be difficult to prove causation.

              Reply ↓
          3. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

            iirc the stats for the UK at least, although married men live longer than lifelong single ones, lifelong single women live longer than married ones, which is maybe surprising because it is generally thought life is easier – logistically and financially – to be in a couple. Maybe doing most of the logistical planning, caring, homemaking etc takes a higher toll.

            Reply ↓
            1. Arrietty*

              I’d imagine that childbearing has a significant effect too. Not that single women can’t do that, but they do less of it overall.

              Reply ↓
            2. amoeba*

              I mean, studies also show that unmarried women without children tend to be happier (and it’s the other way round for men). Basically, men profit more off heterosexual relationships than women. Which… doesn’t actually surprise me. (Signed as a woman in a happy heterosexual relationship! But I do see the problems with unequal distribution of care work and mental load etc. all around me…)

              Reply ↓
    3. Charlotte Lucas*

      I have lived somewhere that people just .. has horses. I would be interested to see research that accounted for the difference between people who have horses as part of their regular livestock and those who keep horses as a luxury.

      Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        Agreed! I live in a place where people of all stripes own boats – most of them own these EXPENSIVE beasts to work on them all summer long, but on the other hand I suspect boat ownership is aligned with financial abundance and the health benefits that being wealthy brings.
        It would be interesting to see this broken down for other things too, personally I’d like it re: wine consumption – same results for rich pensioners by the sea as the laborers on a vineyard? You know the 2000s “Mediterranean diet” Dr. Oz-flavored BS where wine would lengthen your lifespan – as if someone who can afford a daily wine wouldn’t have OTHER little elements in their life to add to their health

        Reply ↓
      2. Selina Luna*

        Same. I live in a rural area where many people are in poverty, and many of those same people have horses because they need them as work animals. The farmers around here use horses to get to animals on further-out areas of the ranch. They don’t usually own the ranch, by the way. They probably own the horse, and work at the ranch that is owned by someone else. In some cases, their family collectively owns the ranch, but that’s a big plot of land with a small compound of 10 houses in the corner, owned by between 50 and 70 adults, many of whom have other jobs to help keep the family ranch afloat.

        Reply ↓
    4. MigraineMonth*

      I know that correlation doesn’t mean causation, but I’m a bit disgusted by any study on health outcomes that doesn’t bother to control for something as obvious as income. That’s a pretty obvious one.

      Admittedly, not as bad as the widely-reported “gold standard” study that found inviting patients to get colonoscopies didn’t reduce colon cancer deaths. That one failed to control for–I really wish I were joking–*whether or not the patient got a colonoscopy*.

      https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/09/in-gold-standard-trial-colonoscopy-fails-to-reduce-rate-of-cancer-deaths/#:~:text=After%2010%20years%2C%20the%20researchers,only%2042%25%20actually%20did%20one.

      Reply ↓
      1. CeeDoo*

        Welcome to standardized testing in US schools. The data shows that the number one predictor of doing well on a standardized test is the student’s economic level. Then they punish low performing schools, and those just happen to be the schools in poorer areas. The rich get richer, etc.

        Reply ↓
        1. Grenelda Thurber*

          And the punishment is…less funding than their better performing counterparts? That has never made any sense to me. Sure, let’s give the kids with the most disadvantages less money. That’ll make them change their ways. /s

          Reply ↓
          1. Selina Luna*

            I’ll tell you a secret: if you improve an amount that they deem “too much,” they’ll also punish you for that. I have bitter personal experience with that one.

            Reply ↓
            1. MigraineMonth*

              I went to the highest-performing (and best-funded) public school in my state, and it was designated a failing school because we tested into the 99th percentile the first year and therefore “did not show continuous improvement” over the next years.

              I wanted a plan for improving mathematical reasoning among congresspeople.

              Reply ↓
              1. linger*

                Wait, what, they wanted all schools to show continuous improvement in percentile ranks of pupils?
                That’s … not how percentiles work. That’s not how populations work.

                Reply ↓
          2. LifebeforeCorona*

            Exactly, my friend’s kid went to an expensive private school. When they had fundraisers, celebrities performed because the parents had the connections to engage them. My grandkids’ school had fundraisers and parents donated items for silent auctions and the school band provided the entertainment.

            Reply ↓
      2. MeepMeep123*

        Reminds me of the “gold standard” study that found that masking did not prevent COVID. The intervention they used was putting up signs telling people to wear masks – and did not control whether anyone actually wore them.

        Reply ↓
        1. Indolent Libertine*

          Right, and what the Cochrane meta-analysis actually concluded was that they could not establish with certainty whether mask MANDATES worked, because they could not find a single location where any mandate had been sufficiently followed to produce accurate statistics about reductions in transmission caused by mandating masks. Which then got picked up in most of the media as “study says masking doesn’t work” when it said nothing of the sort.

          Reply ↓
      3. amoeba*

        I mean, I agree that this study is very unsuitable as an argument against *having* a colonoscopy, but I’m pretty sure it got them the data they wanted – whether their programme had an effect or not. Although sure, you’d think they’d want to know *why* it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to be working…

        Reply ↓
  8. Greta*

    An elephant in the room that wasn’t mentioned is that these out of touch examples reinforce the perception that executives don’t really do anything. Sure they have to available, but they are expecting everyone else to be as well.

    Playing with horses with other CEOs shouldn’t be valued more than the work output done by employees every day. All it shows is the lack of checks. The us versus them mentality is part of this, though something has to give because employees are having to subsidize the cost of these executives.

    Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        a little parallel play for the C-suite, aren’t they doing a good job keeping hands to themselves?? adorable

        Reply ↓
    2. Don't You Call Me Lady*

      I don’t want to see anyone’s vacation photos or hear about their second home, but if they bring an actual elephant into the room, I am there for that

      Reply ↓
      1. bleh*

        Yes please to elephants. But only if they are rescue elephants that cannot be rewilded and love human company.

        Reply ↓
        1. Greta*

          Don’t get me started on society propping up industries like exotic animal breeding or breeding for executive networking involving trophy hunts. They get so up in arms when there is a crack down due to disease, animal safety, or any regulation. Yet a lot of regulations exist because someone messed up and it had a great impact. But we don’t put similar resources for things that more deeply benefit a larger amount of people.

          Reply ↓
  9. Former Retail Lifer*

    About ten years ago, my husband told me a story about the company’s CEO complaining about his daughter’s pay to a group of employees. She was a teacher making $40,000. “How is anyone supposed to live off that?”

    The average wage of the employees he was talking to was $35,000 a year.

    Reply ↓
    1. PhyllisB*

      When I worked at the phone company as a long distance operator I remember one of our supervisors making the comment to someone that she didn’t see how we could live on the salary we made. If she had said this to one of her fellow supervisors I could shoot of understand, but she was talking to one of the employees.

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I’ve had the “how do you live on your income?” conversation with some friends who have less privilege than me (respectfully, and *not* at work!), and it’s a really eye-opening one. I’ve never had to think of food or prescription medication as optional “nice to haves” if there’s money left over.

        I do think we all set the standard of what’s “normal” to our own upbringing and experience. “Wow, that executive is so out-of-touch, she doesn’t know how to shop in a grocery store! She’s really out-of-touch! Uh, no, I don’t check my bank balance before grocery shopping to be sure I don’t go over… wait, is that part of *your* normal?”

        Reply ↓
      2. Joanne’s Daughter*

        In my younger younger younger days, I too was a telephone operator. What an interesting job!

        Reply ↓
  10. Wendy Darling*

    My company records little video interviews with various people in leadership and sends them out. One time they had all the execs together and one of the questions was “what was your first car?”

    Lots of sports cars and cool vintage cars. Zero beaters. NOT RELATABLE.

    Reply ↓
    2. TM*

      Hah, the most egregious example of jerk-execs I encountered was where the company car for each of the three execs was a Corvette. A red one. Yes, they were all middle-aged men.
      It was the 80s, but this also was NZ, where extreme exec pay/benefits was still a novelty. Anyway, no idea how long the company car remained a Corvette – I was a made redundant from the place due to “costs”.

      Reply ↓
  12. Just a Pile of Oranges*

    One of the managers here said that the reason we don’t pay well is because we hire people with no experience.

    But I can tell you as someone who has access to some of the pay data, getting that experience means nothing either. The people who have worked here for five years and would be considered experienced are making maybe 50 cents an hour more than new hires.

    Reply ↓
    1. Glutton for punishment*

      Our company is in a niche industrial service business in which it is hard to hire experienced workers. You can’t really go to trade school for this, unlike welders, electricians, etc. We lost two good employees (tech assistants) partly because they were making $15.50 and $16.50/hour. Even when one got his CDL license, which is a prerequisite to moving up since the service trucks require one, the boss moved the bar again and said, yes, you got your CDL but you haven’t done xyz yet. The boss feels that since part of the time is spent riding to/from the jobsites, they aren’t earning then. (Yet we charge customers travel and mileage…but I digress.) He has no concept of time because, yes, that would have been a decent blue collar wage… in 2005. A grown person in their late 20s/early 30s can’t support themselves, much less a family, off that in this economy. Myself and the two master techs are paid well, but in the 20+ years I’ve been here, there’s never been an assistant or trainee make it up to the technician level.

      Reply ↓
    5. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Clicking would have answered your question (no, it isn’t) and been faster than asking. If you’re trying to complain, just actually complain and then everyone will set you straight that Alison deserves to earn an income from these articles. When they are paywalled, it’s so she can get paid.

      Reply ↓
    6. A large cage of birds*

      Slate limits the number of free articles you can view (per month?) so it depends on how much you read Slate.

      Reply ↓
      1. CeeDoo*

        I only read when Alison writes, so I’ve never had to pay. I think I’ve been denied the article once or twice over the last year.

        Reply ↓
  14. Nuke*

    I really have to say… as a horse owner who is nowhere near rich, these insane rich people really make it hard for us normie horse people! I tell people I have a horse, and everyone assumes I have multiple $20,000+ Thoroughbreds with fancy lineages, and I keep them in the yard behind my mansion (next to the vineyard, of course).

    Sorry to disappoint, but my scruffy mustang is a rescue who cost me $250 because she was heading to an auction! I promise, not all horse people are self-absorbed, entirely un-self-aware CEOs! Some of us have horses from the garbage and board at a private personal barn with no riding arena, LOL!

    Reply ↓
    1. Not Australian*

      I love this response, not least because I’ve been watching ‘horse rescue’ videos on YouTube recently and the number of wonderful animals just ‘thrown away’ by uncaring owners is absolutely sickening. “Adopt, don’t shop” seems to be the way to go with horses, just as much as other species – i.e. loving them for themselves rather than as status symbols.

      Reply ↓
      1. Nuke*

        I think a lot of people have misconceptions about horses and the people who own them due to the upper echelon of owners – people who do things like fancy shows and whatnot. And even then, my barn owner is one of those people, and he’s not RICH (he’s a teacher!). Yes, he sold his last horse for $75,000 or something, but he had invested at least $50k into her training and boarding to become a high level show horse, and now he’s training a new horse for the circuit. At my barn, his retired show horse lives with my mare. He would NEVER send any of his animals to an auction, and they retire to his backyard.

        But of course, so many horses are not like that. I actually had another horse until a couple years ago who I rehomed after I rescued my mustang, because she needed more riding than I could give her. I had that horse for 7 years, and now she’s a rockstar lesson horse. But… I found out her old owner (who sold her because she was going to college) had been low-key stalking me online this whole time, and FLIPPED out when she found out I rehomed her, accusing me of “getting rid of her because she’s old now”.

        So like. I can’t really blame people for judging horse people as a little nuts, LOL. Out of touch is one of the least offensive things I’ve seen a Horse Person be, tbh…

        My personal view is that there’s no reason to breed a horse on purpose anymore due to how many completely fine horses are thrown away. The “barn manager” of my last barn kept back-to-back breeding her barely sound mare who was stallbound 24/7, only to never give all her babies proper socialization or actual turnout. All because she wanted more horses of her color, or something. Everyone is convinced their animal is just So Great and should be bred… ridiculous.

        Reply ↓
        1. Nuke*

          So many PEOPLE are not like that*, rather. Lol. Horses are definitely not selling each other to my knowledge.

          Reply ↓
        2. Grenelda Thurber*

          The old owner was probably just checking in now and then to see how her buddy was doing. Kids get really attached to their horses, I bet it killed the old owner to sell her. Sounds like the horse is doing well as a lesson horse, and props to you for taking a mustang.

          Reply ↓
          1. Nuke*

            I wish I could give her that benefit of the doubt, but she didn’t actually reach out to me in any way in the 7 years I had the horse, instead just watching me from afar, then blowing up at me at FOUR IN THE MORNING when she saw my post about rehoming her. She didn’t even greet me or ask how anything was going, just right out the gate with “Can you tell me the name of the place you sold Rain to, I want to make sure it’s actually somewhere nice and you aren’t just dumping her because she’s getting older.” I wound up having to tell her I was uncomfortable with having contact with her anymore because she VERY suddenly started trying to friend/follow me everywhere. She went on and on about how Rain was her “heart horse”, but none of that seemed true when she sold her to me! She was just “too busy!”

            Which, by the way, is fine! I don’t judge people for selling horses at all! But for 7 years she just never inquired about her apparently beloved amazing soul-bonded heart horse, and then suddenly accused me of dumping her after I had her for many years. OKAY BYE.

            Reply ↓
    2. Just a Pile of Oranges*

      Please give your scruffy mustang a pat from me. I miss being young enough to take off and spend a summer helping to take care of other people’s horses.

      Reply ↓
      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Heh, like that meme,
        “Where did you get your dog?” “Oh, we had six months of interviews and paperwork with the rescue people!”

        “And your cat?” “Found her in the trash.”

        Reply ↓
        1. Lizzie (with the deaf cat)*

          My cat came in through the ceiling, presumably Ceiling Cat was doing distribution on that day.

          Reply ↓
    4. Lily_Itriwi*

      My grandparents had rescue ponies, but they could only do that because thdy had wealth for a house with significamt land they could keep them on. In some parts of the world, that doesn’t take much money, but here in the UK, that is a lot of wealth. While there are exception like yours, it’s often not so much the cost of the horse but costs of upkeep that mean people assume horse people have significant disposable income. Speaking as a person who as a middle class horse obsessed kid, did a lot of maths on how my parents maybe could buy me a horse, actually?

      Reply ↓
      1. Nuke*

        The cost of board varies INSANELY throughout the US, too. I know in some southern states, it’s unheard of to pay more than a couple hundred dollars a month for board. That is definitely not the case where I live in Upstate NY, but it’s still certainly not more expensive than… I don’t know, a human child! I know that’s a whole other discussion, but I don’t have kids because my animals are my kids. I also have a friend who pays about what I pay monthly in board for his car payment. It’s a reasonable price for board, but insane for a car, lol.

        Reply ↓
    5. Rogue Slime Mold*

      One of my daughter’s friends (now about 30) bought a horse because she concluded that buying a house was going to remain out of reach, while horses were not gaining in price nearly as fast as starter homes.

      Reply ↓
      1. Nuke*

        What’s kind of nuts is that the price of horses skyrocketed when covid hit. Full disclosure, I bought my current horse for $250. Now, she was sold to me with the understanding that she didn’t have any training, but that’s still an insanely cheap price for a horse. She is currently rideable, but not very well trained, so I’d call her “green”. I could definitely get at LEAST $5,000 for her if I sold her tomorrow.

        Fortunately, that would only happen over my dead body, and even then I think my barn owner would happily keep her!!

        Reply ↓
    6. TM*

      Yes, but that was patentely not the case with that guy and his multiple horses, winery, rural property and either the ability to conveniently commute a relatively long distance to work or a pied à terre nearer the office.
      And I’m sure you don’t bore staff with whom you don’t have a personal relationship *at length* about your hobby at a *work meeting* while haw-hawing it up with the other execs who also engage in your not-so-common hobby (in urban environments).
      The only comfort is that exec’s “winery” isn’t going so fabulously if he still has to work an office job.

      Reply ↓
  15. Sauron*

    I worked for a VERY large tech company in NYC when the pandemic hit, and at the time I was part of a local employee engagement committee. After we all started working from home, the exec who was in charge of that committee called into our meeting and advised us all to go work from our lake homes. “I’ve been working from my lake house, and just being able to enjoy the fresh air and get away from the city has done wonders for me. I say just go to your lake house and let this all blow over, and don’t stress about it.”

    We were all NYC professionals in our 20s and 30s and we had our cameras on! He could see our apartments, and that none of us even had desk chairs – we were all sitting at kitchen counters, on sofas or in my case, on the floor in my tiny bedroom. Unbelievable.

    Reply ↓
  16. TX lizard*

    At a small (mandatory) lunch to thank employees who volunteered for an employee social event, our execs struggled to get conversation going. We were sat in a conference room, with them shoulder to shoulder at the head of the table. They resorted to talking about their cruises and vacations and asking us what our favorite tropical travel destination is. Buddy, I have like 2 weeks of combined PTO and make just enough to pay my rent and put some in retirement. The most tropical place I’m going is the sunscreen aisle in the grocery store (if I have a coupon).

    Reply ↓
    1. Richard Hershberger*

      “a small (mandatory) lunch to thank employees who volunteered for an employee social event” There is a moral there.

      Reply ↓
      1. TX lizard*

        Tbh we all thought it would be a trap to pressure us into organizing another event or something, so at least it wasn’t that.

        Reply ↓
    1. Dancing Otter*

      Ooh, where did you get it?
      Mine says, “Mind your own uterus.” I can’t trade the car in because I can’t find a replacement sticker.

      Reply ↓
      1. Juicebox Hero*

        Etsy. There’s a bunch of sellers selling those and other anti- Current Situation merch. My other magnet has a guillotine on it and says “French Revolution Re-enactment Society” :)

        Reply ↓
  18. Red Light Specialist*

    I’m glad to see that Slate is still running your columns, even though they now have a workplace advice column of their own!

    Reply ↓
  19. Lemons*

    For a real doozy, Google “uline ceo ad” and click the link (first for me) called “About Uline – From the President”.

    The tldr is “kids these days have it so EASY with their stimulus checks and their being-on-parents-insurance, it’s terrible that they have the freedom to change jobs! We thought we could trap them with health insurance! How dare they make decisions that are best for them!”

    Reply ↓
      1. Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable*

        I have a sibling who works for Uline. Granted in some ways they treat their employees well (pay above market), but the “Letters from Liz” are hilariously out-of-touch (I did hate-read the latest one). Even one of my colleagues is now on the lookout for new letters when he needs a laugh.

        I would last about 2 days at Uline since women have to wear panty hose (yuck) or a full three-piece suit. They’re stingy with PTO and very anti-WFH, even for jobs that can be easily done remotely. The culture takes micromanaging to the next level. Somehow my sibling tolerates it and has been working there for awhile. They strongly disagree with the politics of the owners, but keep quiet and collect their paycheck.

        Reply ↓
    3. Emperor Kuzco*

      Read her “about page” you linked, then googled the CEO. Her networth (according to Forbes) is 5.7 billion.

      Ugh.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lemons*

        I read some of her other letters…it does read like a bad livejournal. Not a strong writer, our Liz, but of course the president gets to do what she wants!

        Reply ↓
      2. A. Lab Rabbit*

        I don’t think she even realizes that this is basically a Glassdoor review of how incredibly shitty it is to work for their company. (So again, massive amounts of cluelessness.) She’s attributing massive rates of turnover to people being selfish and immature, when in reality, they are taking care of themselves by getting out of a ridiculously shitty working situation as ASAP as possible.

        The utter gall is that she wants us to feel sorry for her for having to deal with a problem of her own creation. She could just pay people better and treat them better and her problem would go away.

        What an ass.

        Reply ↓
        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Like the old vaudeville routine: what’s the definition of chutzpah? The guy who murders his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

          Reply ↓
      3. Ally McBeal*

        Because no reputable journalistic publication would post it, probably. Hosting it on the Uline website helps with SEO, and they’re almost certainly linking individual posts on her LinkedIn page for additional engagement.

        Reply ↓
    5. MigraineMonth*

      “The unintended consequences [of the Affordable Care Act] are that [young people] can quit a job without losing [health insurance] coverage.”

      I’m pretty sure she expects me to clutching my pearls over this line, but this is the best unintended consequence I’ve heard about in ages (and who can afford pearls?).

      Reply ↓
    7. Rogue Slime Mold*

      Ecclesiastes 7:10: Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.

      I imagine it’s a popular theme in ancient Sanskrit inscriptions, too.

      Reply ↓
      1. starsaphire*

        Was it Cicero or Cato the Elder that wrote a big screed about “young kids these days” and their not knowing how good they have it, how they fail to respect their elders, etc. etc. – I can never remember.

        Get off my lawn, btw. ;)

        Reply ↓
        2. Nightengale*

          Not sure about either of those but this was attributed to Socrates by Plato

          “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

          Reply ↓
    9. Lab Boss*

      You can’t possibly know how hard you’ve made me and half my work team laugh today. First at the content, then at each other’s reactions to the content, then again as we do impressions of the facial expressions of the web team that has to post the content.

      Reply ↓
  20. Working On My Night Cheese*

    During COVID, our CEO wanted us back in the office asap but the majority of the staff had kids whose schools were closed. His proposed solution? They should all send their kids to the private school that his kids go to, which stayed open.

    Reply ↓
    1. MikeM_inMD*

      And I bet he didn’t offer to pay the tuition or even help with it. (And he probably didn’t even know if the school had any opening.)

      Reply ↓
  21. Chirpy*

    My company has repeatedly had employee satisfaction surveys where people typically say the company is decent to work for except for low pay.
    Every time, corporate responds with “you just need to take more pride in your work, money isn’t everything.”

    After 10 years at this job, I make $17 an hour. A living wage in my state (for a single person, no children) is at least $20 an hour, even in rural areas. I live in a bigger city where the living wage is more like $25 an hour or more.

    Reply ↓
    1. Roy G. Biv*

      Dear Corporate:

      Pride is an intangible. Money is tangible. From here on out I need ONLY more tangibles, so that one day I can afford to retire. And no, it will not be to go live out my days at my lake house, my ski chalet, my island house nor my country estate. Because none of them, you know, exist.

      Signed,

      Pretty Much Everyone

      Reply ↓
      1. Chirpy*

        And by tangibles, we don’t mean pizza parties, either!

        “Pride in my work” and pizza aren’t valid for rent payments.

        I’m pretty sure the guy who says this makes at least 3x what I do.

        Reply ↓
    2. DramaQ*

      Oh that’s one of my favorites! Our survey says we’re unhappy with pay, our workload and how promotions work. Every time.

      At every meeting the big wigs lecture us about how there is more to your job than pay and promotions and we should really be more focused on what an honor it is to work here and strive for the respect of our managers. Not be out “for just money and reward”.

      I’m hoping I find a different job and we have one of these meetings during my final two weeks because I REALLY want to suggest the idea the idea the highe ups give up their salaries, bonuses, stocks and army of minions to come do our jobs for at minimum a year.

      Somehow I don’t think they will consider “professional honor” to be a satisfying motivation.

      Reply ↓
      1. Muscadine*

        When the managers and CEO’s start to strive for the respect of their underlings. Because “money isn’t everything”.

        Reply ↓
      2. Chirpy*

        Same. I’d love to see any of these people do my job, with my pay, and have to use only that pay to find an apartment and live on it for a year. Also, then they can deal directly with the customers with no capability to go higher up for assistance, too.

        Reply ↓
  22. Not my usual name*

    Last week our director held a group consultation meeting, where she confirmed several roles would be made redundant, on her mobile phone in her brand new, very expensive car (At a guess it cost 1.5 x average salary of people on the call). I think that was the point I noped out and decided I would take voluntary redundancy. She definitely lost my respect that day.

    Reply ↓
  23. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    Can I share a positive about our unicorn of a CEO?

    This man got asked in an all hands meeting about return to office. Because of my role, I basically already knew the answer to that was we’re not going back, but his answer was “Well, we can either come back or spend the money elsewhere, like raises and bonuses. I think you guys prefer the second one.” He also explained we have office space for business/employee needs, but we overall have proven we don’t need to be in the office.

    He also takes time to personally meet with new hires quarterly/every six months as his schedule allows and based on how many new hires there are. I can’t think of many executives, let alone CEOs, who would take the time.

    It’s also worth noting that our company is doing extremely well and we have very low turnover. Meanwhile, I was laid off of my previous job, and that CEO, when asked if there would be layoffs, said “Well, keep working hard and that won’t happen.” *rolls eyes*

    Reply ↓
    1. Tau*

      At former company, I honestly gained quite a bit of respect for C-Level when they went “OK, so inflation is starting to pick up and we cannot give you all raises to compensate because we don’t have the money and parent company wouldn’t let us. So what we’re going to do is do a wage freeze for everyone earning above a certain amount so that we can sink our entire raise budget into the lowest paid employees who will be feeling the sting the hardest.”

      (That place actually *did* lay me off in the end, but I went into it with eyes wide open because they were extremely transparent about their financial difficulties and what that meant for us the whole way through + they went to bat for us so we got as good of a layoff package as they could manage and also tried to crowdsource all sorts of job hunting help. I still have fond feelings towards the people there.)

      Reply ↓
      1. bee*

        I would 100% be okay not getting a raise one year if I knew it meant the employees making less than I do had their wages keeping up with inflation.

        The problem is that I know at my company that when I don’t get a raise or promotion, the savings are going to out Private Equity overlords.

        Reply ↓
    2. Richard Hershberger*

      On the RTO part, we don’t read about companies happily adapting to remote work and reduced office expenses. That isn’t news. But that doesn’t mean these companies aren’t out there. The interesting question is the ratio of remote to hybrid to in-office jobs. I don’t know the answer, in large part because the business press is largely useless. I strongly suspect that in the long run, any company requiring in-office work for a job that does not actually require it will find itself at a competitive disadvantage.

      Reply ↓
  24. animaniactoo*

    Many many years ago, I was working at a company that was going downhill fast. My last 2 paychecks had bounced and I was ABSOLUTELY living paycheck to paycheck.

    Therefore, I had absolutely ZERO sympathy for one of the owner’s wives when she came to visit and started complaining to him about having to sell her horses because he was a fuckup.

    It was a loud complaint in a room barely separate from the large open office where many of us were cashing our checks the same day to prevent them bouncing and even that had started to not be possible. Horses? You are concerned about your horses? LADY I AM CONCERNED ABOUT MY RENT AND MY ABILITY TO EAT NEXT WEEK.

    Granted it was his wife and not him, but still…

    There is another story that I could tell from my current company, but as I am currently at work, I will wait until another time.

    Reply ↓
  25. bee*

    Years ago now I worked at a company that had a male CEO while the rest of the staff (besides the IT team) was predominately women, many of whom were mothers.

    The CEO scheduled an 8am all-hands meeting, for which I’m sure there was a genuine purpose but it’s been lost to time. The meeting was mostly fine (albeit annoying to me to have an 8am sharp meeting), but then at the end he congratulated himself for getting to the early meeting on time. His wife was out of town caring for her sister after a rough pregnancy and delivery, so for the first time ever he was in charge of getting himself and his three kids ready and dropped off at daycare. He said this as a brag to a room full of working moms who do that every day. I have never heard a silence so loud.

    Reply ↓
  26. Purple Stapler*

    Corporate higher ups are also out of the loop on environmental stuff. A friend told me the higher ups at her office have been urging employees to buy EVs, vacations with fewer flights, etc. This is going on while the executives all drive gas cars, and multiple (like 5-10) long haul flights a year EACH. Friend reports that a lot of the folks in her office rent and so having to depend on public EV chargers is a massive hassle.

    Reply ↓
  27. S Smith*

    On the other hand, a new employee wondered at our company owner’s competency based solely on his car. He drove a five+ year old Ford minivan. She thought–how stable is the company if this is what the owner drove? He was not a flashy person, had two small kids and a large dog. The car was perfect financially and functionally. However, the new employee was not impressed and worried for the company’s future–and wondered if she should she accept the position. That was in 2006. Company is thriving and the employee–a young professional then–is now a seasoned pro at the same company. The business owner remained true to his sensible ways. He grew up fairly poor–some days little food, frozen water glass next to his bed in winter as the heat didn’t work, etc. Perhaps some people feel the need to flex expensive things to show the trappings of success or credibility with certain people.

    Reply ↓
      1. A. Lab Rabbit*

        I don’t think it’s fiction. There are people like this. Some CEOs (especially of smaller companies) do have common sense (although they are rare).

        I especially agree with the last line: “Perhaps some people feel the need to flex expensive things to show the trappings of success or credibility with certain people.” We’ve certainly seen a lot of that in the last ten years. Even if I won the lottery, I would never sit on a gold-plated toilet seat.

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          I worked at a company where the owner/CEO was kind of in denial about her level of wealth, which came out in really odd ways.

          She owned a five-year-old normal vehicle, then got mad at the employee who didn’t recognize the car and tried to direct her into to guest parking. At one point she decided the brick she’d bought for a new office building was “too pink” and donated it all to the city (which has a new pinkish school and town hall). At another point she went on a tirade at an all-hands staff meeting about employees were stealing or losing the company-branded pens, and that even she only ever took home the ones that were broken or leaked. We oscillated between pulling-out-all-the-stops extravagance and a weird level of frugality.

          It was a very strange place to work!

          Reply ↓
          1. Crankysaurus*

            Ha! We worked together. The town library was also built with the rejected bricks, and the plantings in medians all over town were rejected plants from another time she changed her mind.
            Another interesting donation to the town was a fire truck donated after the town determined that none of their equipment would fit in the parking garage. It was cheaper to donate new fire trucks than to redesign the parking structure.
            On the other hand, I left that job 10 years ago and still occasionally come across one of the branded pens I took home rather than taking back to my office after EOD meetings. So maybe we were going through pens faster than expected…

            Reply ↓
      2. econobiker*

        Some CEO don’t have their company pay for overpriced “company” prestige vehicles for them to drive.

        Reply ↓
      1. econobiker*

        Old Warren’s small house was equivalent to todays $342,267.89 when he purchased it in 1958. So not specifically small but not ostentatious like most CEO or investment folks such as the Wall Street types renting condos @$40k per month in NYC…

        Reply ↓
        1. OmahaAnon*

          Buffet’s house is beautiful and large, on a huge lot in a very desirable old-money part of the city. Plus he has other homes and properties.

          He’s a responsible benefactor of healthcare facilities and other nonprofits, sometimes takes Paul McCartney out for ice cream at one of the little local places, and generally has a good reputation, but the modesty of his house is a little exaggerated.

          Reply ↓
          1. MigraineMonth*

            I like what Warren Buffet says, but he isn’t exactly a “good” billionaire. According to ProPublica, Warren Buffet paid only $23.7M in taxes between 2014 and 2018 on an estimated $24,300M wealth increase, for a “true” tax rate of 0.1%. (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/08/bezos-musk-buffett-bloomberg-icahn-and-soros-pay-little-in-taxes.html)

            That’s a tenth or less of what other *billionaires* like Bezos, Bloomberg and Musk paid (they paid 1-3.3% of their wealth gain). “No one among the 25 wealthiest [Americans] avoided as much tax as Buffett, the grandfatherly centibillionaire.”

            For comparison, the median US household earned $70,000, paid 14% on their income, and probably didn’t have much wealth gain in those years.

            Reply ↓
    3. Rogue Slime Mold*

      Talked to someone who worked at an old tech company, where the top brass of R&D prided themselves on keeping their ancient clunkers running. When the guy with the most ancient sedan retired, and was replaced by someone who rode to work in a limo, it was the mark of a sea change in the company.

      Reply ↓
  28. ExtraAnonThisTime*

    The same week that layoffs were announced at my organization, a c-suite executive accidentally copied everyone in my business line on her reservation email for executive transportation. She wasn’t using a company towncar to get from her midtown Manhattan apartment to a hair salon, and the driver was instructed to wait for her at the salon and return her home afterward.
    Someone replied all, “I don’t think this was supposed to have such wide distribution,” and the email was quickly recalled by IT.

    Reply ↓
  29. I NEED A Tea*

    In the province where I live grocery store chains have reported record profits while food bank usage has increased 25% over last year, and yet grocery stores are asking their customers if they want to donate to food banks. So let me get this straight: part of the reason people are using food banks is because they can’t afford groceries due to high prices and yet you’re asking me to donate to the food bank. The CEOs are obtuse.

    Reply ↓
    1. A. Lab Rabbit*

      Yeah, I love it when some big corporation asks me to donate to this or that charity just so they can get a hit of publicity dopamine. I’m always thinking “No, you’re the big wealthy corporation who could just make this problem go away if you wanted to, but you choose greed instead.” Lol/not lol, no, just no.

      Reply ↓
    2. bamcheeks*

      I am so angry every time I see those collection boxes at supermarkets. So instead of giving money to food banks so they can bulk-buy what people actually need at the lowest prices, you want me to buy full price food and then you’ll gush about how generous your customers are, whilst your executives donate money to the political parties who made food banks mainstream over the last 15 years? Fck right off.

      Reply ↓
    3. Rogue Slime Mold*

      The food bank I volunteer at gets donations of various food–not selling, about to expire, fresh food–from a lot of local grocery stores. As a nexus for moving that food to people who need it, rather than throwing it in a dumpster.

      If the focus is bang-for-your-buck, then you should give money to the food bank to buy bulk cereal, soup, etc. (Or, change all of society so food banks are no longer needed. But in the meantime…) A lot of people connect to picking out the specific cans of soup or baby food to donate. (Just like, with a disaster, people want to donate physical stuff rather than just money, even if that is irrational.) The donation boxes are a stream that brings in some food and connects people to the local food bank.

      Reply ↓
    4. Samwise*

      Eh, if you’re sure they’re not also donating to the food bank, then the outrage is appropriate. Are you sure?

      Most big grocery stores where I live donate to the regional food bank, within the rather stringent laws around businesses donating food. So no outrage here. And tbh, I like donating to the food bank, the women’s shelter, etc., it’s easy for me to shop for a bag of groceries and drop it off on my way out the store, it’s farther away and more time consuming to take a bag of groceries direct to the food bank. Same with round-up donations at the cash register.

      Reply ↓
      1. TM*

        The point is they could either reduce prices so that fewer people have to rely on food banks, or that they could donate a sliver of their obscene profits *in cash* to those charities. Who would then be able to buy in bulk the kind of supplies that store well and that they know their patrons actually need.
        Some supermarkets here “kindly” donate certain foods they were going to toss at the end of the day (baked goods, slightly damaged packaged items, etc), but that was all to be written off anyway and is just as much about preventing dumpster diving and saving a little on waste disposal.

        Reply ↓
    5. iglwif*

      Yeah, and they want us to buy food from them and put it in a food bank donation bin, when we could just donate money so the food bank can buy what it needs … OR THEY COULD DONATE SOME OF THEIR RECORD PROFITS.

      Reply ↓
    6. Wolf*

      Ourlocal bank has a coin-collecting thingie for donations. They literally sit in the most expensive part of town, make two millions in profit every year, and ask for your spare coins.

      Reply ↓
  30. Bitte Meddler*

    At my last job, we got a new CEO. One of the first things he did in early 2023 after his self-imposed, self-described, 9-month “getting to know you” period was crack down on flex hours and WFH, both of which had existed in the company looooooong before COVID.

    When employee displeasure showed up in employee surveys and in near-instantaneous high turnover, he would use at least 10 minutes of every quarterly town hall berating anyone who was unhappy with his draconian rules: “You should be grateful working for a company like XYZ! Look at the new factory we’re building in Mexico! Look at the awards we’re winning! Our share price and dividends have never been higher! I would think you’d be proud to be contributing to that success.”

    Those of us who quit were like, “Hoss, my pay isn’t tied to stock price performance and I don’t own enough of our stock for dividends to even factor into my budget. However, my pay-available-for-living-expenses IS affected by how many days I have to drive 1 hour each way, chewing up gas, oil, and tire life; and by how much makeup and hair product I have to use when going into the office. Never mind work-life balance.”

    He brought up complaints like mine by saying that he didn’t think the commute was bad at all, and he lived 30 miles (up to 50 minutes) away from the office.

    He conveniently left out that he had a CHAUFFEUR and that he was chilling in the back seat, catching up on the day’s news, drinking coffee, and noshing on breakfast during his ride to the office. [No idea what his chauffered ride home was like. The executive who knew about the morning routine only knew because she’d ridden with him one day after an early-morning meeting at his mansion.]

    Reply ↓
    1. econobiker*

      So he wasn’t truly commuting himself but had delegated the activity and responsibility of driving to someone else. And probably the chauffeur and vehicle maintainance,, licensing, and insurance was paid for by the company or within his personal perks from the company.

      Ergo another out of touch individual.

      Reply ↓
    2. coffee*

      Also they come into work and sit in their private offices, not in the chaos of the open plan office.

      Reply ↓
  31. MassMatt*

    Years ago when Mitt Romney was running for Senate, he and his wife were interviewed by a local news station and the subject of his being a billionaire came up. His wife said it really wasn’t true that they were out of touch, they knew about hard times, why, when he started his new company for two years they had to live off his investments. Truly hard times.

    Reply ↓
    2. CommanderBanana*

      Ahh, yes, Mittens, the guy who famously didn’t know how many houses he owned.

      The Gangnam Style “Romney Style” parody video remains one of my favorite things ever. What a dillweed.

      Reply ↓
  32. Chairman of the Bored*

    There is a reason that people were rooting for the ocean when that sub went missing, and that Luigi is now everybody’s favorite video game character.

    Reply ↓
    1. MigraineMonth*

      I spent fifteen minutes trying to pick up my migraine medication and learning that the prior authorization for insurance I’d spent a month and a half getting in the first place had expired. So I either needed to pay $835 so I could take the month’s injection on time, or call to ask my neurologist to email my insurance and then email me so I could ask the pharmacist to try to fill the (often delayed due to out-of-stock-issues) medication again, this time (hopefully) with insurance coverage.

      When I went to buy a bar of chocolate, and in the checkout like there was one of those “horrific killer among us” magazine covers (with that one picture of Mangione from his perp-walk) that asked, “How did he become radicalized?”

      Look, I’m not planning to murder anyone, but I feel like the answer is pretty self-evidently “interacted with the US healthcare industry”.

      Reply ↓
      1. frustrated and in pain*

        I take a medication to manage a condition that will ultimately require surgery to fix. I had to get prior auth from the insurance company to get and I can only fill 28 days at a time, it has to be special ordered, and I can only request a refill a few days ahead of time. When my insurance changed I had to get a new pre-auth which of course meant tons of back and forth and I was off my meds for a few weeks which meant my condition flared up and I was in agony.

        Now I’m dealing with medication shortages and the pharmacies haven’t been able to get it. Last time I filled it no one was able to order it and I ended up having to drive an hour after someone found it randomly in stock.

        I’m waiting to see if my insurance will approve the surgery, but since my condition is technically managed by medication, I think we all know the answer…

        Reply ↓
      2. goddessoftransitory*

        EEEEzackly. I loved all those faux-naive outrage articles when that went down: “How could ANYONE conceive of this or enjoy the outcome?” When it was glaringly clear how both things could and did happen. You can’t do everything but flat out say “we’d prefer you just die because it’s cheaper” forever before somebody snaps.

        Reply ↓
      3. MSD*

        I’m sure you’ve researched this but just in case. I don’t use insurance for my migraine medication. It’s cheaper to use a discount coupon (not sure if we can name names but it starts with Good…). The difference for me is $25 vs about $600. It’s crazy. Same with another prescription.

        Reply ↓
  33. Schneider_at_home*

    I’m going to add an off the wall observation: Supervisors who spend their weekends helping their kids move or painting a bedroom, or even taking care of an aging parent when they can afford to hire someone to do it/caregiver respite. Come down off the cross, build a bridge , and get over it.

    Lemme tell ya, if you choose to beat yourself up bc you are too damn cheap to hire someone to move your kids couch or paint your spare room, that’s a you problem. I would rather stimulate the economy then spend my free time on unpaid labor. But i don’t have the funds. So my weekends and holidays are spent on upkeep.

    You got there. Act like it an quit moaning that you are tired and your back hurts. We are not the same. Bc I am grateful that I have a house, i don’t see it as some sort of cross to bear that makes me a martyr.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Um, what? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but it sure sounds like you hate your supervisor.

      Reply ↓
    3. Dido*

      I’m sorry that you hate your family. For healthy families, helping your children move or paint is quality and bonding time.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wolf*

        I love my family, but I’d rather spend money on movers and have quality time, rather than spend days with my family carrying heavy things.

        Reply ↓
  34. Jamoche*

    First software company I worked for was started when the owner of a small office products wholesale company realized that you make 1¢ on a pencil but $10K on a $10 floppy disk full of POS/inventory software – no understanding of how much work and other expenses go into the software, but that’s a different red flag.

    There were maybe 20 employees total, and most of us were young. Coming up to the end of the year, boss tells us we’ll be getting a bonus that was about equal to a month’s salary, and we should all put up pictures of what we were going to do with it. And then the end of year comes, oops, we don’t have the money for bonuses, but the boss is going on a two-week skiing vacation.

    That job was *so* educational.

    Reply ↓
    2. MigraineMonth*

      I worked at a start-up technology company that contracted software developers to work for them for $15/hr or less (“for the experience”), but had a real law firm on retainer. I discovered why when the contract ran out of hours the CEO/owner threatened to sue me for not continuing to work for him for free until the ill-defined, constantly changing, massive project was “complete”.

      It was, as you said, very educational.

      Reply ↓
  35. Bunny Girl*

    I used to work for a veterinary clinic that had once been local but had been bought out by a corporate office just before I started working there. The owner, and his family, were very wealthy and had made a lot of money off the sale. This SOB had the nerve to tell me during the interview that “no one goes into Vet Med to make money” as he listed out the pay as $11.50 an hour. Then my first week of starting, he had this huge case of very expensive wine delivered to the clinic for himself. Most of us had second jobs, were living in poor conditions, and several people starting doing OF.

    Reply ↓
    1. Bitte Meddler*

      Ooh, yeah, outside of the tone-deaf leaders at pretty much every company I’ve worked at, the owner of the vet practice where I take my cats whined to me one day about how her daughter’s private school *and* her equestrian training facility were both raising their rates… while I was trying to talk to her about ways to not euthanize my cat because I couldn’t afford her exploratory surgery.

      She was whining as a way of trying to show that “we’re all in this together” and “prices are rising everywhere” which is why she couldn’t give me a break on the cost of surgery or work out a payment plan.

      Gosh, vet, I’m *so sorry* I can’t afford to fund your child’s horse-riding lessons and stable fees for her horse.

      Reply ↓
    2. goddessoftransitory*

      Man, if Tale of Two Cities ever happens in real life, the list of people in my knitted register is going to be a mile long.

      Reply ↓
  36. Wilbur*

    Oddly enough, I think I’d respect the CEO more if their trip to Antarctica wasn’t a “Once in a lifetime experience”. If they were talking about their 5th time I’d think they had a real passion for science instead of “Well, I’ve already visited every other continent”…

    Reply ↓
  37. Meep*

    I am laughing at it now (it isn’t funny though), but the Chair of the Board/Owner for my company (it is a startup) decided he wanted to share his knowledge with us for a Thursday Lunch in Learn. It concluded at 2pm. At 4pm, we were told that we would not be paid for the past three weeks and were being furloughed. *insert Womblands’ ‘He knew! He effing knew!” meme*

    I was the one who ordered the pizza and set up the event. Safe to say, I was mostly just grateful it went on the company card where in the early days I was expected to be reimbursed.

    Reply ↓
  38. I'm not on a boat*

    A few weeks ago, I was in a Zoom meeting to discuss a serious ethics issue (which I had discovered and reported) with about a dozen colleagues, a mix of individual contributors and management (me being one of the former).

    For the most part, the company culture regarding being on camera is “not required, only if you want to”.

    One person, a VP/Senior Director, attended the meeting from her sailboat, with her camera on.

    I was not impressed.

    Reply ↓
    2. Alice*

      I mean, if a serious ethics issue arises when the VP was planning to be on vacation, it’s good if they call in from the boat, right? Better than postponing the meeting.

      Reply ↓
      2. I'm not on a boat*

        Of course! I’m glad she was in the meeting…she needed to be a part of the conversation. But she did not need to be on camera on her boat, and she ABSOLUTELY MOST DEFINITELY did not need to make a point of telling everyone she was on a boat (I may not have explained how ridiculous it was in my original comment).

        Reply ↓
  39. Inauguration Indignation*

    I work in higher ed. My institution just had TWO DAYS of festivities to “inaugurate” our new university president, something that definitely didn’t happen for our last two university presidents. Meanwhile we keep getting emails about budget constraints, that we won’t be getting raises this year, and so on and so forth. But apparently we had the money for two days of festivities…

    Reply ↓
    1. Annoyed Anon*

      My current company just went through the third round of layoffs since I was hired in 2023, starts every leadership meeting and town hall with how much we need to cut costs and find efficiencies, and even put out an order two weeks ago for all entitities under the corporate umbrella to cut non-labor expenses by 14%.

      And then last week they flew several dozen senior finance employees in from around the globe to HQ for a week-long meeting (and party). At the end of April, they’re flying everyone in the U.S. and Canada to a resort in Southern California for a 3-day “offsite” that will consist of a few speeches from the C-suite and a lot of fun activities and open bars. The hotel room rate starts at $600/night per person. And, yes, we aren’t sharing rooms.

      While we enjoy the parties, I’m also pretty sure that we’d rather have our valuable co-workers back on the payroll instead of an all-expenses-paid 3-day trip to a resort.

      Reply ↓
    2. Meep*

      Ugh. In 2017, I went to the welcome ceremony for our last University president where he shat all over his previous school. I was not impressed. I was even less impressed when he decided to use the lobby and 8th floor of my college building to host big wigs for football games since it was right next to the stadium and sent out a college-wide email about how if we could miss class to free up space for his entourage, that would be great.

      He finally got fired this year for… you guessed it! Misappropriating funds!

      Reply ↓
  40. AnonForThis*

    I worked for a company where travel was required of many employees. Senior leadership flew business class and stayed in 5-star hotels while the rest of us were made to drive long distances, pinch pennies on flights even if it meant red-eyes or onerous connections, and stay in 2-star budget hotels. Needless to say, that….did not sit well.

    Reply ↓
  42. Cube Farm for One*

    I’ve experienced “executive to executive” clemency which is a true morale suck. At the new arm of an august corporation, the CEO let our grand boss do whatever he wanted in terms of personnel policy. The whole company has no dress code but we have to wear full business suits? The company has compassionate WFH policies for emergencies but we don’t? Our branch is policed for butts in the seats hours to the tune of 60 a week? No one up top cared about us.

    When the head of our branch retired with a big send off, the main company CEO came to us saying, with a flourish “you can now wear jeans to work.” While that was nice, where was this guy when these ridiculous policies were enacted? Oh right, covering for his corner office pal.

    Reply ↓
  43. 2 Cents*

    My favorite was during the Great Resignation — our 150 (or so) person department had seen about a dozen resignations as people left for greener pastures. During one of the (mandated) FRIDAY all-hands meetings, the CMO briefly forgot who he was speaking to and went on a mini rant about “all of these job seekers taking advantage of employers who are looking to fill roles and are asking for these incredible salaries, trying to take us for a ride” — mind you, he was calling in from his Berkshire vacation home. Then he blanched, and tried to cover, like “but I’m sure they’re worth it.”

    Reply ↓
  44. Volunteer Enforcer*

    I worked for a national charity in the UK, the CEO made £180k. Little tidbit, this was more than the then prime minister’s £150k. Meanwhile, all of us at middle management and lower were under £30k. Plenty of stories about struggling to meet the cost of living available.

    Reply ↓
  45. Anon for this*

    So I work for a global healthcare company. Last week they announced restructures including a few layoffs across the globe.
    Today our CEO salary for 2024 was announced. The full package including bonus and equity is over $20M and over 95 times the median employee salary.
    Oh a personal note, this is a company that always gives decent annual COL and merit rises and for internal promotions makes sure to match market rate. But the C-suite salaries are really sticking in my craw right now.

    Reply ↓
  46. Ari Flynn*

    In re: idioms. May I suggest “pet two cats with one hand”? Not only is it a neat trick if you can manage it, but the cats are happier when your other hand is free to fill their food bowl.

    Reply ↓
  47. Jam on Toast*

    Years ago, Mr. Jam and I were invited to a holiday party for the construction company he worked for at the time. The reins of the company had recently been handed over to the founder’s grandchildren. There were 5 or 6 grandchildren, who had all enjoyed very privileged upbringings and then as adults, been gently escorted into lucrative roles in the c-suite of this multi-million dollar construction company.

    Needless to say, their backgrounds meant they tended to have trouble relating to the blue-collar construction workers who worked for them building all the office towers and highrises.

    On the night in question, Mr. Jam and I had chewed our way through the rubber chicken and congealed pasta before the lights dimmed in the reception hall, and the most painful year-in-review speech I have ever witnessed began.

    It started with a slide show featuring pictures of the grandchildren’s various luxury cars, homes, and travel to Italy, sparsely interspersed with pictures of them graciously visiting different job sites throughout the year. No pictures of the crews themselves, of course, except for a few hapless employees shoehorned in around the visiting grandees for a little local color.

    Then it devolved into a half-hour tirade, with the speakers ripping apart all of the companies who hadn’t selected their bids for upcoming projects. They detailed how much money they were going to lose before promising that they were going to f*ck those cheap *ssh*les over for betraying them (and yes, that is a direct quote!).

    Then to add the finishing flourish to the out-of-touch treat that they were serving that night, they proceeded to chastise the 400 or so “lucky” employees who had received invites to the party for a litany of mistakes and expensive shortcomings that had cut into the grandchildren’s bonuses! Not only did they complain about how much the party was costing them, but they even called people out BY NAME for especially costly mishaps. That was an extra lovely touch since that meant the guests those poor souls had invited to the party got to hear their loved ones being raked over the coals publically and at length.

    We left as soon as we could. To this day, I am genuinely surprised a brawl didn’t break out – the anger among the audience who were a captive audience to this speech was palpable and inescapable.

    Reply ↓
  48. AnonymousForThis*

    This was indirect, but at a firm I worked for in 2016, the owner of the company drove a BMW while the rest of us all drove second-handed used cars, nothing close to a brand of a luxury car.

    This was on top of the fact that I was severely lowballed, and not-so-wisely took the job because I thought any job was better than none, being underemployed before that.

    Let’s just say that I looked at his BMW with very severe and intense hatred. And I was out of that job within 6 months. And when I got out, it was a very ugly ending. But that is a story for another day.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lou's Girl*

      Oh same. At the International Non-Profit I worked for years ago, a nonprofit that helped poor and homeless people, our brand-new CIO pulled up in his brand-new Porsche. Ok, maybe you made some good investments and good money choices in life, but it was just completely tone deaf- not just to those we served, but we were all making pennies on the dollar as well. To make matters worse, he would publicly berate anyone who even dared park next to his precious.

      Reply ↓
  50. CharmCityStrong*

    My first job out of college was working for a company in the comic book industry. Sounds like fun, but I worked with numbers, and it didn’t pay well. Real “Disney Tax” sort of place.

    Business had been flat, so there weren’t pay raises my first year there. The second year, departments held all-hands meetings in the offices, and the Veeps read a script about how the company was making money, but expenses were up, so there wasn’t money in the budget for raises now but the company would revisit the issue in six months. Most people were blindsided by this. I wasn’t; given what I did, I knew revenue was flat.

    Still, there were a lot of hopeful people — I found out there hasn’t been raises in three years — until January when the company president announced we were buying a toy company. Morale tanked. I left a few months later for significantly more money. Honestly, what they paid was criminal.

    I still have friends who work there, and management managed to lose and alienate all of their major clients since the start of COVID. Revenue tanked, and they filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of the year.

    Apparently, it came out in the bankruptcy filings that the same execs who stiffed the employees, lost the clients, and drove the business into the ditch budgeted for bonuses for themselves if the company assets sold at certain levels. You wreck the company and drive it out of business and you get a bonus? Nice work if you can get it.

    Reply ↓
  51. Strive to Excel*

    Can I call out Disney’s CEO for, in his memoirs, regretting that he can’t just pay his employees in Disney scrip rather than real money? Because he deserves to be called out more.

    Reply ↓
  52. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

    Years ago, I worked for a defense contractor (which shall remain nameless). On the same day that layoffs were announced, executives were seen in the parking lot choosing their new company cars.

    Reply ↓
  53. Deardusky*

    I was a single mother making less than 30,ooo a year in 2009, when the owner of the company laid me off because he was sure Obama would tank the economy. A year later he spent millions of his own money on a failed run for congress.

    Reply ↓
  54. Doyouenjoywhatyoudo*

    My boss prohibited the employees from wearing shorts to the office, even when it was 100 degrees out. Even when people came by on their day off to pick up their paychecks. But he made an exception for himself and regularly wore shorts when he came in on his day off to micromanage his employees. He didn’t appreciate it when I called him out on his hypocrisy.

    Reply ↓
  55. Chairman of the Bored*

    10 years ago I worked at a big company where the CEO made about $100k per day.

    Given the volume of a chicken’s egg and the market price of gold at the time, a solid gold egg would have been worth about $50k.

    In other words, if the CEO literally laid golden eggs he would still be overpaid by about 2x.

    Reply ↓
  56. penguin tummy*

    The first time we got Covid in our family, it was just before the mass rollout of vaccines and self testing became available. I had one vaccine, my husband hadn’t had a chance to get any. While on a video call with my workplace team and the Director of Infection Control I was told that my husband should stay at the other end of our house and use the second bathroom. We live in a three bedroom, one bathroom house. Completely out of touch with how people might actually live!

    Reply ↓
    1. Wolf*

      I’ve seen so many friends who worked from garden sheds, unfinished basements and kitchens, while their companies sent out reminders on the importance of ergonomic desks and chairs at home.

      Reply ↓
  57. stratospherica*

    The other week we had a regular all-staff meeting (which takes place at 8am, an hour earlier than most people start) moved around. The occasion? Because it’s the CEO’s birthday on that day. The whole hour was taken up by content aggrandising the CEO and wishing him a happy birthday. When it came time for him to give a speech, he was not in the office (he forced us all to go into office 4 days a week) and did not turn his camera on. He was very audibly hungover.

    Reply ↓
  58. TM*

    While all of Alison’s examples were appalling to various degrees, the truly egregious one was the exec bragging about record profits during Covid to staff who had endured a wage freeze and elevated workplace health risks during that period.
    I honestly wonder if a class action suit for a backdated increase would have succeeded based on breach of comtract, when the grounds for the pay freeze was in and the boss made statements that directly contradicted that (and which were undoubtedly documented in the balance sheets).
    Probably not, but I would have wanted to try in those circumstances!

    Reply ↓
  59. Asking For a Friend*

    I’m an EA, so there’s an expectation I take my PTO around the time my manager does. Oh the countless times when they were cancelling their vacations for whatever reasons — then requiring that I do the same — and then changing their minds back again! Well guess what, I can’t book a last-minute holiday and take off on such short notice — I have a very different budget, and my partner actually works for a living. This has led to some tense conversations over the years.

    Reply ↓
  61. Innie*

    (I’m in Canada if it’s relevant) My boss complained about having to wait for knee surgery because he wanted to go back to playing golf. He asked why he shouldn’t be able to pay to jump the queue and get it before others. My brother at that time was confined to his bed waiting for back surgery, barely able to get up to use the washroom, for several months. I had to bite my tongue hard to tell him what I thought about his golf game.

    Reply ↓
  62. Springtime*

    This happened about 12 years ago. The company I worked at was selling itself to another. The CEO, at one of the All Hands meetings, said (a mistaken attempt at humor? Sympathy?) that once the sale was done he was going to be out of a job. What?! He was metaphorically going to have a fleet of tractor trailers driving up to his house to shovel money at him due to this sale. In comparison, there were likely many people with low-paying jobs and little severance who were going to lose their livelihood.

    Reply ↓

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