Sixty-three-year-old Winnie Shilson, now a grandmother of six, was fired after working in Taco Bell and other preceding chains for thirty years. Her career was that of a dedicated employee, and was by many accounts exemplary:
After 30 years, Taco Bell didn't even offer her any hot sauce
Then in the final two years, a series of sub-par performance reviews sealed her burrito of fate, though the article suggests that this might have been a set-up. The Star Tribune article is only one side of the story, but in any case, the situation seems to be a shame. Ms. Shilson is now without medical benefits (I don't know whether she was otherwise entitled to them) and did not receive any severance pay. She's now seeking unemployment.
It's a hard pill to swallow, especially since companies were more loyal to their employees back when she started in the late 1970s. I imagine I would feel betrayed under these circumstances. It's surprising that her recent performance reviews forgot that she was shot while performing her duties. (I wouldn't have gone back after that!) It seems shortsighted of Border Foods, Inc., the company that owns that restaurant, to ignore this kind of loyalty and throw out company intelligence like this without so much as a handshake, if that is indeed the whole story.
But it did throw her out. And other companies are squeezing their employees and tossing out the ones that break rather than bend.
I'd go so far as to say that employees should expect to be treated like Ms. Shilson. Expect that the company doesn't really care about you beyond what value you give to them for what they pay you. Expect that they will make the end of the stick shorter whenever they can. Expect that they will add on responsibilities and cut your staff, yet expect you to continue to beat quotas. And not just fast food employees — all employees!
Or, inversely, if you expect not to be treated like a pile of dog food by your employer, you're deluding yourself unless your employer knows without a doubt that the value you bring to her company is easily portable if your employment situation gets too unfavorable. In this way, it's reckless not to have a Plan B.
You should treat yourself as a business and make the time to invest in yourself. No one on this earth cares for your well-being as much as you do. If you have a backup plan, you maybe will cry less when your employer thinks that you've outlasted your usefulness.
(Hat tip to EYLM for catching this article.)
Gotta admit that it does seem like a setup from that perspective. On the other hand that is a lot of money to be paying a taco bell manager who will not be moving up in the company. Everyone should have some sort of a back up plan in case of loss of employment. My wife and I have saved up six months worth of expenses for just such emergencies. This buffer makes life much more relaxed. If I ever had to I could just quit and find another job.
Working at a restaurant shouldn't be a long term game plan for anyone, unless they plan on owning a restaurant. The money's just no there and there's no real worthwhile path to move up the ladder. And grease…eww.
Too bad the chains are so virulently anti-union. Unions came into being exactly to balance the power disparity between corporation and individual employee. But if she had been a member of a union, I don't think she would have been treated so harshly and arbitrarily.
Studs Terkel told a good story recently:
gosh yeah maybe she was napping on Career Development day. seriously, as investors, you know and i know precisely how indifferent these entities are to our fate. we can die just don't die on the job, or there'll be messy paperwork. but people like her don't know how the game goes. they get fed a bunch of lies for 30 years and then their throat's cut. do you really think anyone reading your blog is in her shoes? this isn't a cautionary tale. it's an argument for Democrats.
Yeah, you smug SOBs. I don't care how well you've cross-trained yourself with multi-skills, you just try finding another line of work at 60 years of age. Or even 55. Good luck with that. Or maybe you can try re-inventing yourself. Just ignore those hip joints that seize up if you sit more than 10 minutes, or those arches that have collapsed from standing on concrete 8 to 10 hours a day. Smile through the pain, baby! No one likes a loser!
I guess she was too preoccupied raising children and working full time, and just plumb forgot to invest in herself. She should've just ditched the kids. We all know what a drain they are on the household finances. Then she could've easily squeezed a credit hour or two a year out of that minimum wage income she was probably making. What a dumb broad, eh?
Look, I don't disagree with the message that we're all just fungible assets for employers, and we need to look out for our own selves. But it's glib and facile (and a little bit mean) to make that point using this poor woman as an example. It's actually a LUXURY to be able to dabble in something else that might be turned into a means for income. If you can afford to do it, either from a financial standpoint or a personal time standpoint, then that's great. But a lot of people aren't in that position.
Ah yes, the young people that are self assured in the knowledge that they do, indeed, know everything.
When Winnie Shilson was hired at the restaurant Zantigo in 1977, it was during a time where not only were you expected to work at a single company for decades, but women in the workplace was nowhere near as common or acceptable. Doubly so for working mothers.
Back then, employees and employers were expected to forge a nearly lifelong relationship – an employee started at the bottom and worked their way up. An employer was expected to provide job security, and they expected their employees to provide long-term loyalty. Winnie Shilson did it like it was done then.
It's only recently in this age of information technology that it is even acceptable to job hop as much and as frequently as we do. Job security is a laugh, and neither employee nor employer can expect any kind of long term loyalty.
It's not Winnie Shilson's fault that times have changed, and it's a little absurd to expect that she would have kept abreast of (or cared about) the current en vogue in career management. She believed she was only six or seven years from retirement. After 30 years at a single company, that's the home stretch. Who in her position would expect this?
Don't use Winnie Shilson as an example for your lesson on how we should expect employers to treat their employees like shit. It's not difficult to find examples of technology companies who are wringing what they can out of people for the lowest wage possible, making millions of dollars from their creativity and skills, then laying them off when the going gets remotely tough.
Welcome to an increasingly common practice in the coming years. Boomers are aging – and with their aging, they are at the top end of the salary scale who are in much better health. While the company was supportive of her disability and time off, her advancing age would increase the probability of a disability or workers' comp claim for aging related injury.
Winnie will probably be replaced by a much younger employee in better health at a starting wage much less than Winnie's $45K p/year.
A reminder – no employee is "given" medical insurance or benefits. Once your employment ends, however, an employee does have the opportunity to remain on the company's medical insurance policy via COBRA – where the employee pays for the medical insurance out-of-pocket at the same rate as the employer.
The good news, however, is that there are not enough younger workers to replace the baby boomers who will be retiring over the next 20 years – so it is possible that those baby boomers who don't wish to retire won't need to do so. That said, the older workers will still face market place competition from younger workers who are in better health who don't have the same higher salary demands/needs as the older workers.
According to the economists, it is the genXers who were born in 1964 and beyond who won't be getting social security or medicare insurance. So, what does that mean for someone like me who was born in November 1963? Will I need to work until the day I die because there is no other option? Will there even be a job for me? What will happen if social security is bankrupt, my savings are exhausted, and no jobs available for a 75 year old woman?
Social Security is in good shape. The problem is Medicare/Medicaid, which consumes every more dollars as healthcosts rise. Perhaps eventually Congress will turn its attention to a serious reform of the nation's health "system," and provide a more rational plan with lower costs.
Thanks for the comments everyone. These are very thoughtful comments and I hope that I respond to them thoughtfully. (I'm staying out of the political issues, though. Sorry. 😉 )
John: The post applies to people of any age really, but especially to younger employees who are in a better position to do something about it. Everyone can do something, but if you have more time (as in you're younger) you have more options.
grapeshot: I wasn't intending to be mean. Ms. Shilson's work ethic is clearly not in question, and it is a shame that the company fired her unceremoniously as it did. But she's hardly a victim. She was on notice for over a year with her performance reviews, according to the article. Hindsight is 20-20 but there was writing on the wall, and it came into focus not suddenly, but gradually. On another point, I do agree and understand that it is a lot easier for some people to find the time to invest in themselves than for others. But in the end, this doesn't matter. You've either invested in yourself or you haven't. It's more inexcusable to have 3 to 4 hours a night and fill it with TV than it is to have only an hour a night, but you still have that hour. Or that 30 minutes. Or whatever. This may be harsh, but I don't think it's mean. It's accurate.
Norma: I agree that it's not Ms. Shilson's fault that times have changed. But the times did change. How people weather the changes they are subject to — in the service sector, in retail, in tech, in finance, wherever — depends on how they react to them, how well they've prepared, and how clearly they see the changes coming. If a change flattens someone like a steamroller, might part of it be that they heard the steamroller coming but chose to ignore it?
Also, it's not a matter of what's en vogue with career management as much as it is realizing that everyone absolutely has to do this for themselves. Letting the company you work for manage your career — as it looks like Ms. Shilson did — is simply not enough. It's more like asking a wolf to shepherd your sheep, actually.
All I have to say is 1 word. Marriott! They have been doing this kind of shit for YEARS now. I have a friend who is young, working for the company 4 years now, one of the top sales people in his area and when the office "reshuffling" occurred, he was suddenly not offered a job because he made too much money. I can't tell you how many times I have spoke with people and told them my husband worked at Marriott (he doesn’t anymore, his job was eliminated), and they told me some horror story about how their father, brother, husband, or wife was fired for a bogus or they needed to downsize and they were the one cut. If you notice their employment rates go down every year. And talk about a company that doesn't like unions. They freak out at the very word. They will not let any union groups have meetings at their hotels in fear that they will try to recruit their underpaid and overworked help staff. Let me also tell you that some how Marriott gets away with forcing their sales and property employees a mandatory 10 hours a day, and use some sort of bogus salery/houry pay structure. And it made me sick how many people are brainwashed by the company. They prey on people who do not have college degrees because they know that they will feel indebted to the company for giving them a chance and will not want to leave and put up with their low wages (a sales manager starts out at 35K a year in Washington DC and normally gets a cost of living increase of 2-3 percent if they are lucky a year). I am all for unions and I wish our government would stop bailing out big business and stop pandering to the uber wealthy. The higher ups at big company and stock holders keep getting richer while middle income workers are subject to low wages, long hours, and marginal increases. It is a sad world we live in today.
Walgreens is the same way. Do not work there because they will suddenly take inventory of all their staff and create reasons to not only fire you, but make you pay them. My brother and best friend worked at two different stores and both got fired at the same time. My brother worked in photo, people would come in and pay for next day pick-up. Sometimes these people lived close by and would stop in again later that day just to see if the pics were ready. If they were ready, he would give it to them as part of good customer service. Well apparently Walgreens called this stealing since they did not get the money for same-day processing which costs more. Even though the photos were done, he should not have given them to the customer. They never told him this "rule" Not only did they fire him, but they estimated he must have done this around 50 times in his 2 years there and made him pay $3 x 50 out of his last paycheck to "reimburse" them. Something similarly risiculous happened to my friend.
Where are unions, now that we need them?
This is really sad, but so reflective of our current times. The pressure on managers to keep on making more and more money for their employers is incredible. So to protect their jobs, they look at ways and means to cut expenses. And this cutting often causes pain to the lower level employees.
I agree with you, MBH. Whilst it is sad, it is true. It is solely our responsibility to make sure we do not get trod upon like this.
Taco could have done better, but they are in business for making money, period.
I have made it my passion that my children develop their plans B, C, D and E, so that they shall never get themselves in this unfortunate lady's position.
As this kind of sad stories are happening and being told by old-age loyal employees all over the world, the rest of us should have make something good out of these stories.
These companies are just trying to distribute their world-wide competition pressure out of their cold heart. They shouldn't have kill loyal high-performer off, but from time to time, they did! And most old-time employees don't see this coming until it's too late.
So for everyone who still has it, they should start to save big, be frugal in live, do some serious investing or do whatever to keep your feet standing when the pilars of monthly paychecks are crumbling down.
J.C. Carvill
Email: support@cosmosing.com
URL: http://www.cosmosing.com/jeanclaudecarvill/index….