Don't Talk About Money, because You're Probably Getting Screwed

Anyone who has ever worked has likely run afoul of the "Don't talk about money" rule. Nearly every place that hires people has a rule like this. Ostensibly it's to not make people jealous that others make more than they do, and that is theoretically a sound idea. Unfortunately, when two people who do the same job, same title and everything, discuss pay, they may discover that one of them gets paid more for the same job.

It's possible that one may have got raises over time due to performance. The case I'm thinking of does not have that excuse. When the company someone works for outright does not give pay raises, and two people with the same position make different amounts, the question becomes: Why?

If nobody gets raises, there's no reason for multiple pay levels without differing titles. A pay scale usually has a ziggurat structure, with a store manager at the top. Below that you have the assistant manager, any subsequent managers such as department managers, then supervisors or key-holders, and regular employees at the bottom. But when supervisor one gets paid $10.75/hour and supervisor two gets $11.50/hour, one must wonder why that is. It makes even less sense when supervisor one became a supervisor before supervisor two.

This brings me back to the "don't talk about money" rule. The only way people can find out if they're being paid differently for the same job is to ask each other. If you ask each other and you find out you're being paid less than your co-worker, you aren't supposed to be able to bring this up because you shouldn't know how much other people get paid, and theoretically you can get in trouble. But why? Why do you get in trouble for asking, or being told, how much a co-worker gets paid? 

I would welcome any ideas, but the only option I can think of is it helps companies not have to pay people more. When I was hired at one of my previous workplaces (previous because it's not like everyone's current employer doesn't read all their online stuff, right?) I was hired at $8.50/hour, which I only got because I worked in the state of Illinois, where minimum wage is $8.25. A few months later I transferred to a store in Indiana because it was closer to home and I couldn't really afford all that fuel to get to and from the Illinois store, plus with only one car it would be in no way convenient for my wife and I to have to commute to two different places. When I got to the new store I was still paid my $8.50/hour while some of my co-workers were paid only $8/hour. If they had known about my wages being higher despite not outranking them and doing the same work, they would not have been happy. They might have asked for raises. And I would have supported them, because even my $8.50/hour didn't cover all my expenses.

I left that company for another employer, also not the one I am currently with. I took a pay cut to work there but it was even more close to home and less stressful, so I thought it balanced. My pay cut brought me to $8/hour, while many of my new co-workers were still only making $7.50/hour. Some of them had been with the company for two to three years, and were really beginning to feel the impossibility of coping with such low pay. One of them asked me my wages, and, feeling no need to keep secrets, I told them my wages and why it was higher than I thought others' might be (working in another state previously). What exactly happened after that, I do not know, but I do know the employee in question did receive a pay raise. Why was this such a hassle for the company? The company is a multi-million dollar corporation with locations around the country. Would an extra half dollar per hour for tens of thousands of employees put such a dent in their profits that they would have to close down stores, raise prices, or even fold altogether?

The obvious answer is of course no. No company currently operating in such ways cannot afford to pay its workers such a small amount more. This is part of why the President's push to raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour is so simple. It is such a small amount that no company that is already succeeding cannot afford it. It is also not enough to life off of, but that is a separate discussion. The nature of capitalism causes most companies to fight against paying their workers more in nearly every circumstance, for no other reason than that it would lower profits from astronomically high to merely ludicrously high.

You'll forgive me if I don't weep for the shareholders.

A love letter to early adopters

Dear early adopters: I love you dumb bastards.

You know who you are.

• If you paid $600 for an iPhone, and gladly, back in 2007;
• if you have a five-year-old Blu-Ray player
• (if you also have an HDDVD player come to that);
• if you jizzed in your pants over the iPad despite having multiple computers and a Kindle already (Yes, Adam, I'm sort of picking on you here)
• if you ever stood in line for the release of a console, game, or new piece of tech;
• if you bought Avatar on Blu-Ray or DVD yesterday (although probably Blu-Ray).

If you did any of those things, you absolutely fit the definition of "early-adopter." You're the kind of person who can't be without New Stuff. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a very good position in society. But god dammit do you guys haemorrhage money.

I don't know where I'd be without all the early adopters in the world. Early adopters are the ones who tell their friends (or in the case of tech journalists, their readers) whether this hunk of plastic and silicon is worth the, um, plastic and silicon used to make it. They are the ones who tell us all the cool stuff that New Stuff can do. You lot are the ones who drive the tech sector of the economy of the First World, not just by buying these things but also by making others want these things more.

But my favourite purpose of the early adopters is this: you buy up the first several batches. You drive the makers to make better ones. And absolutely most importantly, you drive the fucking price down.

I remember when I got my first iPod (it was called an iPod Video if that helps). Two weeks later, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. My reaction was along the lines of "God DAMMIT." Then I learnt it was to be $600 with a 2-year contract with AT&T. My reaction was along the lines of "Holy FUCK that's a bad deal." But, as always, the early adopters bought the iPhones up. About a year later, halfway through that contract, Apple dropped the price to about $200 - still not a great price, but infinitely better than it was - and refunded the early adopters $100. More than one tech writer likened it to an angry john throwing a $100 note at a whore after he finished.

Now, the iPhone is down to $100 for the cheapest 3G model, or $50 for a refurbished one. The top-of-the-line model (3GS) is still $200. Meanwhile, the iPad came out and the cheapest version ... is $600. And the early adopters have jumped all over that shit.

Keep buying, early adopters! Your money spent makes that product more affordable for me.

Cars, buses, and books

I'm officially sick of cars.

In honesty, I think I was sick of cars some time ago. Driving to Indianapolis roughly once a week, followed by driving across Evansville each day, will do that to a person. This is it, though. I'm avoiding driving whenever I can.

As I type this, [pause to make myself not a liar] I changed my wake-up time on my phone alarm clock from 8:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. This should give me time to do my usual morning routine, read the news, shit, shower, shave, eat, and get out to Green River and catch a bus around 7:30. I really would prefer if the bus routes were more direct to USI, but this town is a worse hell-hole than Scranton.

If nothing else, this new and brilliant form of transportation should give me time to read. I've recently started the Dune series, on the advice of a friend, and likewise on said friend's advice, started with The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. It's an extremely pre- prequel to the original Dune, but it was fairly good, and I enjoyed it. Yes, Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade absolutely lambasted it as crap, but since I only read Dune and Dune Messiah this summer, I think I'm coming at it from a different angle than he is. Plus I like the author and think he's a great guy.

The main reason a bus ride would help me read the Dune series is because the Dune books are incredibly long. The Butlerian Jihad was over 600 pages in hardcover. I'm used to 600 pages in paperback, but outside of Harry Potter I read few 400+ page books. There was a time I would've been saddened to read someone else say such a thing, but frankly I don't have the time to sit down and read that much anymore. Being gainfully unemployed has a few, very few, benefits. One of them is time to catch up on the thousands of sci-fi novels I've wanted to read over the years but didn't get round to. This isn't to say I don't want a job: in the unlikely event someone is reading this and is hiring for a position in Evansville, my contact information is listed. I'm interested and have a largely open schedule.

I can't think of a better year to have time to read though: my favourite authors are putting out quite a lot of work this year and a few of them I haven't got a chance to read yet. I still haven't picked up a copy of Karen Traviss's Order 66, and I haven't even read the final of her Wess'har series, Judge. Meanwhile, my first favourite author, Matthew Woodring Stover, has two books coming out: Caine Black Knife, the third of four Caine books, is out Tuesday. Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor comes out on Dec. 30. Yes, I'm not sure about the title either, but it's Stover, and even his least favourite of my novels, Shatterpoint, was fantastic. Besides, there's nothing I look forward to more than Luke Skywalker and some Moody Introspective Self-Loathing.

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