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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: techguerrilla who wrote (42942)	8/14/2004 11:09:49 AM
From: cirrus	Respond to of 81568

Your experience is typical. I have a friend, a conservative, who ran his own businesses before semi-retiring and coming to work for the medium-sized firm that employed me. When he arrived he was a typical conservative, against just about any social program or government regulation. Well, when his secretary's mom took ill (Years before the family leave act) he authorized her to take occasional time off to get her mom to treatment and do the things that could not be done evenings. Uh oh... that wasn't company policy and he was overruled... this $7 an hour person wasn't paid. He came to me screaming! "This is insane! This is inhuman! Fourteen years with this company and we won't give her a few hours to take her mother to radiation treatment! I never ran a business this way! There ought to be a law, goddamit!" That was the beginning. There were many, many other incidents... a young father disappointed at missing his son's first little league game because his boss said he "might" be needed at the office. Numbers manipulated to avoid paying deserved bonuses. Oral promises broken. Many other things. He began to see how the real world worked. Essentially, he was stunned by how people were treated, the company essentially nickled and dimed employees while they did very well for themselves. "Dammit! Any idiot knows you need to take care of your employees first and the big shots second! When my company had some tough times I paid my employees before I paid myself! To make a long story short, I've seen so many good people oppose government social initiatives because they truly believe the needs are already met by the private sector. The small businessmen I know treat their employees well, like family, and they simply don't understand how anyone would do differently. Yet, once we move up beyond small to medium, where organization charts, policies and procedures start dictating how things are run. The owners cease to know their employees as people, instead viewing them as a just another element of production. We see a distintegration of conservative values, yet the conservative mindset remains - a sharp disconnect between the two. Anyway, my friend has a completely different attitude now. In essence, after seeing how the much of the real world works, he supports government social initiatives and regulations just to make sure that the "jerks do what they're supposed to do."