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possessives - 'The company I work for' cannot be shortened to 'My company'? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Main Post: possessives - 'The company I work for' cannot be shortened to 'My company'? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Can you say "my company" if you're not the owner?
Main Post:
I just noticed in another post I referred to the company in which I work as "my company".
I'm just an employee, not the owner.
Is it normal in English to say "my company" for the company in which you work?
Here's the context:
" I want to learn them because I love languages, that's the first thing, and second, because my company makes a lot of business trips in these countries and we have some clients there. "
Top Comment: Yes, it's normal to say "my company" when referring to the company which employs you.
My/Our company | WordReference Forums
Main Post: My/Our company | WordReference Forums
You don't owe your company anything
Main Post:
This is going to sound a little /antiwork, but I actually love my job. TL;DR at bottom.
OP Note - I struck out a good portion but left it readable just in case. HR at the current job got back to me and the retention fine was accidentally sent to me. It only applied to people who had received a bonus (which was not me)
I used to work for a big computer manufacturer, started as help desk, worked my way up through SME, then managing the infrastructure (deskside, server, a little network) for the help desk, then for a group of them. I loved my job, I was good at it, but it turns out that there were 3 other people doing roughly the same thing I was. They were doing it for less people (each supporting one help desk, smaller than my largest) and I would have to help them along and correct their mistakes. I also made SLIGHTLY more money than them. After 14 years, the company needed to lay someone off and no matter how much my direct manager and my customers liked me, I was a number on the page to corporate and they laid me off. (Long term eventually everyone got laid off as the service desks got moved to places like Costa Rica and Dalian China.
BOTTOM LINE - You do NOT owe your company anything. As much as you like the job, even your boss, you are a number on a spread sheet at the end of the day. Do what's best for you, the company will get on just fine without you.
TLDR - Laid off from first real job after 14 years because I was just a number. Leaving my second real job after 13 more years for a better position and my company wants to fine me 2 weeks pay. You are a number and don't owe your company anything.
Was out of work for 6 months when I got hired by my current company as a System Admin. I love working there. Every time I see posts here how much people are burnt out and hate their jobs I just really don't understand. I like the people, my management is good, they pay me under what I should be getting paid but I live super close to work and no commute is the most amazing thing in the world (which I think everyone who got to WFM now understands). Recently I found a job that came with a 33% raise, wasn't really any further away and applied. I let my boss know immediately when I knew the job was going to be mine (mistake but not one I paid for) and then pushed my start date at the new company a month because I didn't want to leave any projects unfinished or the other people I work with holding the bag. It just so happens that our performance reviews went out at that time, I got the standard paltry 3% pay raise that takes effect starting today, so for a whole 2 weeks, I'll be getting that raise.
I officially put in my resignation that day, but sign my performance review because why not. In my separation paperwork I just got yesterday (two weeks out from my last day worked) is a form saying that I have to approve the company taking ~$4500 (a little over 2 weeks pay) out of my paychecks for not following a retention policy that turns out was buried in my raise. Literally because I signed something for an extra $100 (about how much my raise comes out to for the time remaining) they are going to scam me for 2 weeks work. It's all new, it's not resolved yet. I'm talkign to HR today, but I am so angry with them right now. I could just not sign it but they owe me >200 hours of PTO or about $10000. After tax they are probably pretty close in value, but I shouldn't be paying them anything.
Top Comment:
This TLDR is basically what I've told those that work for me or around me.
You do what's best for you as the companies bottom line doesn't care about you.
About 5 years ago my company brought in an individual to see if my position was "no longer needed". I passed with flying colors...
Main Post:
Not to give too much info away, I was hired at an organization as a job title of basically "helper". Well for someone who is supposed to just be helping, I had a ridiculous amount of work.
Almost all of my coworkers were huge technologically illiterate boomers. So I actually sort of thrived this as a very useful person. For example, one guy would spend half his day copying items and passing them into another program we use. HE DIDN'T EVEN USE CTRL C CTRL V he would right click then copy then go into the files menu or something and "insert copied item from clipboard". He was so proud of himself when he showed me because "don't worry you won't have to retype everything!"
I wrote a program to do this automatically but did not tell him. So I would just run it occasionally as part of my responsibilities.
Anyway, I did a lot of stuff like this, I'd estimate i saved about 15 hours of work every day, on top of the 8.5 hours I did too! but then insert sergeant fuck face. (This wasn't the military but I just like to call him that.)
We are having a team meeting when he shows up. White hair combed okayish, a scrunched face, glasses. He just sort of just showed up one day and took notes during our morning meeting.
At one point someone brought up a name of one of our customers. I said, oh is that the 300 lb guy with a big beard? Sort of as a joke because I mostly do back end stuff. There was a guy like this I recently did some entrance stuff for. But I was wrong and my boss said no it's blah blah some other person.. okay. Then we talked about that person a bit.
Fast forward about a week and this Sgt ff is a complete fucking douchebag to me. I don't know why, he will ignore me during group conversations and literally sometimes scoff at me. Who actually scoffs at people??
I was having a really rough week looking for some extremely important files. People were yelling all day. I was exasperated. Too much to do, I was having anxiety attacks at home in the middle of the night. But it was Friday so I was pulling through.
As i looked for this file I ended up deep on our file structure and the search returned a personal folder structure within one of the drives. I clicked out of curiosity and there it was "Sgt ff's notes".
I opened it and there was a whole section about me. This guy basically goes from location to location getting people fired to save the CEOs money.
And he was working on me now. I scrolled through his notes and at the very top I saw
"Frosty thought a 4'10 24 year old female patient was a 300 lb bearded man. Clearly atrocious attention to detail"
That's just ONE example of how completely fucked up his comments were.
So, in combination with my job (which I generally liked and enjoyed helping people) knowing I wasn't getting paid enough for my effort. This horrible week I had. And Sgt fuck faces comments, I said fuck this.
I set up 3 email configurations.
- To my boss letting him know I will be taking 2 weeks of vacation time. To be sent at 10pm tonight.
- To the company letting them know I will not be present for 2 weeks so whatever work they currently need me to do they will need to do themselves. To be sent Monday morning at 4 AM.
- For any emails that came in, I set an auto response that said "I will be out for an unknown amount of time, for any routine, emergency, or even occasional items, it is imperative you reach out to Sgt Fuck Face at xxxxx for assistance"
Then? I turned off every automated task I had ever set up.
Then I swung by ff's temporary office and said "I think I found a way to make your job easier!" He didn't even really turn his head to look at me but just raised one eyebrow. Then I left.
I actually got multiple calls on Monday morning I didn't answer. It didn't last long apparently. But I stayed strong and didn't respond to anything.
On Wednesday I had a little anxiety about it but I stayed as strong as i could. I thought about the tasks that needed a 2 day turnaround... there's no way some of the guys were keeping up with their normal duties. Guaranteed at least 2 people were no longer doing their normal jobs just to keep up with my automated tasks.
I got a long email to my personal account (I guess from my resume or when I interviewed) from my boss on Thursday night of the first week!
It went something like this:
"Frosty, I know you're a smart person and probably figured out what the company had us doing. I would say it's very important you call me but that probably isn't going to work I see.
I've talked with sgt ff's boss, and he will be leaving our location. I explained our progress meetings seemed to be going in the wrong direction and that you are one of our most valuable employees here.
I am sure you are probably looking at other jobs at this point, or maybe you have even started one. I hope not. If you could please reach back to me I would like to offer you a raise. It has become very apparent how useful you are around here. I hear about it every day, believe me."
So I came back on Monday with a 10,000 dollar raise and Sgt fuck face out of my face. My boss apologized again in person and said he didn't get a say in it. I think it's a little weird he could have a say after I left, but not before... but I sort of get it.
Edit: Hopefully this is a better edit than most r/awardspeechedits but I just want to unrelatedly say that while the world seems to be going to shit, every single one of us can start making a difference in it. Please just try to bicycle or walk to work once a week, or skip one meat-based meal every so often. Try out composting. Or swap your dairy milk with almond/oat/coconut/etc/etc/etc milk. It's easy to blame everyone else or industry and carry on like you can't make a difference. But you really can. All of us can. And if everyone starts to live more sustainably, the markets MUST switch and follow US, the people, the workers. That's the way it works and that's how we get more bicycle lanes and a more sustainable earth where our friends and family can prosper.
Top Comment: I fully believe your boss. Only after shit really hits the fan will the C-suite listen.
Reddit - The heart of the internet
Main Post: Reddit - The heart of the internet
From a Manager - this sub has changed my company
Main Post:
Throw away because I don’t want this linked to my main account which includes work related posts.
I’m a senior manager at small firm (under 30 staff). During covid, our revenue skyrocketed as we were all able to work from home in a high demand industry. My boss, the business owner asked for my input in how we reward the team - he was thinking a team activity or Xmas bonus.
This sub has really made me question why we spend so much of our life working just to get by, so I put together a proposal - let’s work less and give everyone more space in their personal life.
My proposal was:
- to provide a permanent pay increase of 10% to all staff.
- give an extra 5 days off per year (I come from a country where 4 weeks is standard, so this increased to 5 weeks total).
- make Monday an optional work day. Finish all your work from last week? Great, don’t come in. The week officially begins on Tuesday and that’s when we meet together. Feeling a little behind? Your Monday is for you to catch up from home, and you don’t have to meet or work with anyone else.
The proposal was accepted 4 months ago, and all I can say is wowwww - what a difference it’s made to the team happiness, with no decline in revenue.
It’s a fairly different story to what is posted here usually, but I wanted to share it, as without this sub I would never have thought to suggest such a thing.
Top Comment:
Meanwhile my manager said to me that 'we're not here to make staff happy' then wonders why most people don't even last a year.
37 Tactics I used to grow my company to $50k/month in sales without spending a penny on marketing.
Main Post:
A few years ago, I grew my E-commerce site from $0 to $50k in monthly revenue just 3 months after launching. We didn’t have a physical presence and I didn’t spend one penny on marketing, every single sale came from free online channels. This past year, I used these exact same tactics to start a startup. We've since raised over $2.5M in VC funding and scored some marquee customers. Here are 37 of my favorite tactics. I'm happy to expand on any of these and provide more detailed commentary in the comments.
- Trade mentions and tweets with other companies and thought leaders. Companies with a similar number of followers will be more willing to cross promote.
- Share your startup on Betalist
- Create a Crunchbase page
- Respond to unanswered questions in your niche on Quora. Look for questions with a lot of people waiting for an answer.
- Share your website on Startupli.st or Erlibird.com
- Submit a free press release using a service like PRlog
- Sign up for a service like Mention.com, respond to anyone that mentions your brand, one of your competitors, or asks a question about your space.
- Launch a topic at Scoop.it and post your website into your topic page
- Message meetup coordinators and ask for speaking gigs at local events.
- Film your speaking gigs and share videos of your talks on your blog
- Use tools like MajesticSEO to see who links to your competitors, outreach to those websites and ask for links.
- Encourage social shares by using a service like Twilighter
- Send personalized E-mails to your existing users, ask for referrals or their help promoting your company.
- Create an infographic, share on free distribution sites like Visual.ly and Pinterest.
- Write a post called “Our competitor vs Our Company” - This will attract search engine traffic looking for reviews of your competitor
- Submit a presentation to Slideshare
- Giveaway a free e-book, ask users to sign up to your newsletter to download it.
- Create a “how-to” guide for something that is difficult in your industry.
- Promote your company in your E-mail signature
- Launch an E-mail newsletter using a free service like MailChimp.
- Get your startup featured on existing newsletters such as Startupdigest
- Submit your site to ProductHunt
- Find what blogs appear in Google for your target keywords, leave relevant comments on those blogs.
- Ask for feedback on Hackernews using their ShowHN forum
- Teach a class on skillshare.com or generalassemb.ly about your industry or niche
- Outreach to bloggers and influencers, invite them to share your content. If you mention them in your content, they’re more likely to share it.
- Write guest posts on other blogs
- If you’re a B2B startup, you can reach out directly to target customers on LinkedIn.
- Contact school alumni on LinkedIn, leverage their advice and assistance
- Pinpoint a young or new journalist at a big publication, offer them an exclusive on your content. Provide them with data that only you have access to. New journalists are hungry for connections and will be more willing to work with you.
- Giveaway your product for free to Youtubers and review bloggers in exchange for promotion.
- Start a drip E-mail marketing campaign
- Create a deal on AppSumo
- Invite your existing customers to provide feedback on the next version of your product. You can send them a survey or a WuFoo form to do this easily.
- Determine what questions people in your niche are asking, create blog posts answering those questions
- Run a free promotion or giveaway if users follow you on social media
- Manually reach out to Twitter followers of similar companies in your space. If you don’t want to reach out, just follow them.
Edit 1: I didn't raise funding for the E-commerce site. These are two separate businesses.
Edit 2: Thanks for the great feedback guys, Keep the questions coming!! I didn't want to be self promotional in the post, but a lot of you guys were wondering what the companies were. My E-commerce site is [RageHats] the marketing consultancy I built afterwards is Rank Executives, and the startup that I just raised funding for is NeoReach.
Edit 3: Thanks for all the support. I posted an expanded version of this list for you guys with more explanation (and 30 additional tactics) here for those of you that are interested.
Top Comment:
Honestly, I thought this was another one of those annoying wanna-be list-post click bait linking to your own blog.
Much to my chagrin, I was wrong! Great list. Thanks for the no-bullshit post. :-)
It's rare to find such posts on Reddit or on blogs now a days.
Reddit - The heart of the internet
Main Post: Reddit - The heart of the internet