Can this nobody ask what the other workers think about this?
Sigh, it’s really difficult. My shifu told me that the hotel has very close ties to China State Construction (I don’t even know which China State Construction bureau it is, and you don’t know whether it was built by them or what), and urged me not to call the police under any circumstances, let alone make a fuss. He said I wouldn’t stand a chance, and that no matter whom I reported it to, I shouldn’t go to the public police—I’d only be asking for trouble. The other workers think I was too reckless. They say that if I had just swallowed my anger, none of this would have happened. They seem to blame me a little, and it looks like there’s no way for us to unite.
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Same question here. You could also ask other workers for their opinions and thoughts; they may have encountered a similar situation. But it’s certainly more direct and obvious that reactionary capitalist society is backing these people.
But I’m not an employee. I can only have my mentor handle it. I just told him, and he said I was being too naive. He said this kind of thing happens all the time, and it’s not like he hasn’t tried dealing with it before—it didn’t work. He told me to give up.
This kind of statement must be refuted. We workers are not the ones causing such things; workers and peasants create the world, so why should we be subjected to the accusations of these parasites merely because some unforeseen incident occurs? At root, the problem lies in the reactionary revisionist society.
That’s incredibly absurd. Maybe he tried to fight back based on his own experiences but got nowhere, and couldn’t recognize that the root of the problem lies in the social system. He thinks it can’t be changed, so he tells you to give up.
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I wonder how things turned out afterward.
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In my post, “Thoughts prompted by reading ‘Reflections on the Association’s Period of Public Activity and Period of Clandestine Activity,’” I talked about the current situation. Feel free to take a look. At present, this ideological issue has still not been resolved.
Have you been catching up on your homework these past few days, you nobody?
No, I haven’t made up even a single day. I said in the activity diary from the past couple of days that I’d decided not to make anything up, but to go straight to school and fight Lao Jiu. Sitting there writing that useless, twisted stuff is sheer torture. I’m still working for the moving company these days and plan to keep at it until school starts—three more days.
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8.30
Today was my first day entering the workforce. I looked for a lot of jobs on Boss, and originally wanted to go straight into factory work, but unfortunately I knew very little about factories and had no experience. In the end, I chose the service industry, arranged an interview by noon, and immediately started working. It was a grilled-fish restaurant in a commercial plaza, and my job was to make drinks (fruit tea). From 4:30 p.m. until 12:40 a.m., I didn’t get a single second to rest. This place was insanely busy. Even though I was working nonstop, the dog of a supervisor still kept yelling at us to hurry up. All he cared about was his own interests, not the workers’—he didn’t care that our backs had been bent over all day until they were numb with pain, or that our legs were shaking so badly we could barely stand. (The rules stipulated working from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., with no breaks, no using phones, not even making calls; the punishment for coming in last in performance was determined by the gap between you and the person in first place; and so on—a whole series of fascist regulations that completely treated workers as less than human.) Today, we were even forced to work overtime until 12:40. If we dared to leave early, we would be fined three days’ wages. I’m still in the trial period (three days), and if I don’t work for more than three days, I won’t get a single cent. This fascist job pays a miserable 3,200!!! I actually feel like taking a cleaver, chopping the supervisor into minced meat, and throwing him in the trash to rot and fester. What a loathsome piece of shit he is!
Before this, I had been hiding away in my study. Whether I was reading theory or watching the news, I only thought that capitalists were hateful. But when I truly became part of the exploited class myself, I finally understood that this kind of “hatred” goes right to the bone—it makes you grit your teeth in rage. When I actually experienced exploitation, all my previous thoughts, such as being reluctant to leave my family or give up a comfortable life, suddenly seemed utterly childish and insignificant in the face of this deep class hatred. My heart was filled only with burning anger. Only by joining the ranks of the workers can one truly understand Marxism. This understanding is entirely new, something that cannot be gained anywhere except through social labor.
The fellow workers I know are also furious about this insane exploitation and oppression. But because their thinking has been infiltrated by petty-bourgeois and bourgeois ideas, they are extremely weak when faced with such frenzied oppression and fail to realize how powerful they are. If we unite and fight, we can eliminate all exploitation and inequality. It’s already 1:30 a.m., and I have to go to work again at dawn, so I’ll stop here for now. At present, I plan to do some ideological organizing among my fellow workers and let that shameless parasite understand that not everyone is willing to be his slave—to give him a good “slap in the face.” I’ll explain everything in more detail when I have time. I’ll keep updating.
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But this kind of thinking feels rather fascist.
Do you get paid extra for working overtime?
Have you saved any evidence from before you started working, such as records of the interview and discussions about the employment terms? If you need to fight back later in case they fire you, their refusal to pay you for those three days would definitely be illegal too, so you can prepare in advance.
This place is absolutely crazy. I’ve never seen wages this low in the coastal regions. Has anyone calculated the hourly rate? You could look into how wages are structured here, keep a daily record of your overtime, and prepare to take action later on.
We still need to learn more about the situation of the other workers. Different people may all be unhappy with this kind of brutal oppression, but if they’re skilled workers who have been here for a long time, they may well complain while still wanting to settle down and keep working here. They might even report what you say and do at work. Be very careful and prepare yourself mentally—people often encounter this kind of thing at work.
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I work in the kitchen of this restaurant. Every time we enter the work area, we have to wear a hairnet, gloves, and a mask; if we don’t, our wages are docked. Yesterday, there was an eyelash in a drink prepared by a coworker next to me. (I don’t even know whose it was—it wasn’t clear whether it belonged to the server or to him.) The supervisor then told him to pay for that customer’s entire bill—not just the drink, but the whole table’s food. I took a look at the receipt: 260 yuan. That guy happened to be on his fourth day of work and was already planning to quit. If they calculated his wages according to this awful company’s method, he would have to pay an extra ten yuan even after working his hardest for four days. When my coworker heard the news, he was so frightened that he started trembling, but he continued making drinks with shaking hands, not daring to stop for even a moment.
That evening, we were also assigned to move supplies, and we didn’t get off work until after midnight. We had worked nonstop for nearly 13 hours. (When we were recruited, we were told that each day would run from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., with a two-hour lunch break. In reality, there was only a one-hour break, and someone had to be selected to cover the shift. We ended up working overtime until nearly midnight almost every day.) During all this, the owners did nothing but urge us on from the side while eating cake and chatting. They also sexually harassed female employees from time to time. Whenever they felt bored, they would insult the workers. In the morning, they wouldn’t even let us eat; first, we had to stand at the entrance and shout the company’s culture slogan—something along the lines of “Good, better, and getting better”—and listen to them say that this awful company was supposedly dedicated to cultivating talent, and so on. They would also throw tantrums and organize so-called “games,” randomly selecting several employees to stand in a crowded shopping mall and dance, without caring whether the employees wanted to or even knew how to dance. Anyone who refused had their wages docked.
After I got home, I decided that I had to start fighting back. I planned to reason with him first, and if that didn’t work, to make a scene. (We didn’t sign any employment contracts, so going through legal channels probably isn’t an option.) I had worked for exactly a day and a half, which, according to them, meant I wasn’t entitled to any wages. When I got home, I first told him that I would not continue working there. Then I sent him screenshots of Articles 18 through 30 of the Labor Law and told him that all of this was illegal. Throughout our subsequent conversation, I repeatedly relied on the law and threatened to go to the restaurant and make a scene if he didn’t pay me. After I kept fighting and threatening, he eventually gave in and agreed to pay me. The wages I was owed came to 141.4364641 yuan (calculated according to the full-time wage formula), but he only sent me 130 yuan. He also insisted that he could not pay me until the 15th, claiming that otherwise he would have to pay me out of his own pocket. (This is a chain restaurant.) He also asked for my phone number and a photo of my ID card, which I sent him. I have not yet taken the next step in this dispute.
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Today there was another employee who was already cooking nonstop, but the dog of a manager beside him kept hounding him. He merely muttered, “Why keep rushing me? I’m working on it,” and was immediately fired and docked three days’ wages. If the food runners outside accidentally delivered the wrong dish, they had to pay for the entire table’s meal—basically three or four days’ wages. The few older women washing dishes had it even worse: their bent backs never had a chance to straighten, yet the supervisor still yelled at them for washing too slowly and not thoroughly enough. By the time I got off work each day, I could barely walk, and I could even hear my spine creaking. Everyone was furious, but no one dared to fight back. The staff meals were terrible too: they would toss in whatever leftovers customers had left, along with unused vegetables that hadn’t been put in the pot and some leftover hot-pot base. There wasn’t a single piece of meat in any of the three meals a day, and after eating, we still felt as if we had no energy at all. Standing for two hours would leave us so hungry that we trembled.
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Everyone was furious, but no one dared to resist. After asking around, they finally realized that they had been counting on what the boss had said: if they stayed on for three months, their wages would be raised to 4,000. So they chose to swallow their anger.
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LOL, trying to understand the proletariat’s plight is kind of hilarious—you capitalist, you’re already so savage.
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This restaurant is absolutely crazy. What happened afterward?
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