Politeness

[dragonjournal]

So. Today I learned that my current job will hold a merit bonus and merit raise hostage, if I don't volunteer my time. Ya know, the time I have off from thinking about a job. And, they're like, you must do x amount of hours!

I'm sorry, but when did volunteerism become mandatory? When? When did it become such a thing that my raise will be held hostage unless I volunteer? I don't understand it.

should volunteers get extra? Absolutely. If you have the physical and mental bandwidth to help? Good on you! But if I don't, I don't get a raise? That's a boatload of bullshit.

I'm attempting to come up with a way to tell my boss to fuck off, and that's bullshit, without using those words, because that'll likely get me fired.

I'm trying to be polite, but I'm failing. Because what I've come up with is this:

I don't feel that volunteerism is served by holding money hostage from hard working individuals, who may not have time, nor the mental or physical capacity to do so.

that's as close to polite as I've gotten.

It's not going well.

I also want to tell her this: This job sucks away my will to live. What little I have left, I save for my family.

But again, need this job. But I am going to enjoy telling them to stuff it if I ever get another job.

H,

While I understand the importance of volunteering, and the benefits of it, I am unable to. My son (and I) is disabled. While I can work, my son cannot and cannot take care of everyday things such as cooking, doing laundry, etc. When I am not working, I a caring for him. As you might surmise, I am often exhausted. I have to save what time I am not working for my son, as you can imagine. I don't get "time off" or "down time". I work, I take care of my son, I handle the household. As I'm sure you can imagine, having a 23 year old toddler to care for is rather hard.

Now, if there is some way that handling my son can be considered volunteer time? I'm all for that. But he can't be on the computer and I am unable and unwilling to take even more time from him than I already do.

Thank you for alerting me to this policy.

That's about as polite as I can get. I'm so sick of money being held hostage, because people think that's the way to force people to volunteer.

Comments

[jehanne1431]

If you haven't sent it, yet, I highly recommend submitting this to Ask A Manager. She gives scripts for people to say things in the best way and knows all the laws, etc. for situations like these. This just sounds shady. Your boss sucks.

https://www.askamanager.org/ask-a-question

I sent one in and she was pretty prompt in replying. If you don't get an answer, you can always throw the question out for everyone to comment on, on Fridays. She creates a post where people can post work related questions.

Also, you boss sucks.

[tattooofhername]

Sadly this is nothing new. The factory I worked in had mandatory 'voluntary' overtime - didn't do the overtime, you didn't get any work the next week. McDonalds did it too.

[dragonjournal]

This isn't about OT though. This is straight volunteering at an outside organization, on your own time. Meaning, working in your off time.