An Employee’s Responsibilities
All of my working life I have had to be responsible for how I spent my time while on the payroll of my employers. I was expected to show up five days (or more) each week. I was expected to work on their behalf at least my full 40 hours each week (and often times it was extended to 50 or even 60 hours when my employer had need of me to get their work done). The rules of my employment allowed me a fixed limited number of days off each year for vacation, personal or family illnesses and medical care, and, in some cases, even a few “personal time” days off. And if I had not lived up to these expectations of my employers, I would have been reprimanded, warned, disciplined, and, ultimately, terminated. If I had not behaved responsibly I would have lost my job, and justifiably so.
Most other Americans work under these same general set of circumstances. If we show up on time everyday and do our job, then we get paid our salary (for so long as we get our work done properly and on schedule, keep our boss happy, the company remains profitable, and our jobs are not out-sourced or off-shored). If we don’t follow those rules, then we can justifiable expect to be fired.
Why is it so different for all of the politicians whom we, the citizens of these United States, “employ” to take care of the general oversight, management, and direction of our various governing bodies? Almost all of them are paid as much or more than the average American worker. They are given jobs that seem to have more work needing to be done than they even get completed. And they promise to do so much more than they ever accomplish.
On the one hand it seems that the politicians aren’t devoting enough of their energy and attention to getting the work we “hired” them to do, nor doing a very good job in terms of the public’s interest in what they do get done, and yet they seem to be running around on “our time” doing all sorts of things for their own benefit. They have time to campaign for their next elective office, spend time raising money to spend trying to make us believe that we should “re-hire” them, taking trips with narrow focused “special interest individuals and groups,” visiting exotic foreign places on “fact finding missions,” attending meetings in expensive vacation retreat locations, and deciding for themselves just how many days of “recess” or “vacation” time they will take off from doing the public’s work.
Why is it so different from how I always had to perform for my employers? Why is it that I had to stay until my employer’s work was done, and these elected politicians get to run around socializing with their friends and donors and taking off several days around every holiday known to mankind, a few extra days off here, and a few more there, and still more for their political parties, when their work is not yet done?
It seems to me that it is time for the “employer” to issue a reprimand to many of our “employees,” and maybe even “fire” a few of them for the poor performance they have given us. Our expectations need to be raised to a level more like we have all had to meet for our employers.
And it is certainly time for our politicians to start behaving more responsibility toward their employers, the American public. Our elected officials need to show us that they take their jobs seriously (or if that was never their intent, then resign and let someone else take their job who will). They get paid for a full week, and so they need to put in a full week’s work … and do that every week. They shouldn’t take more vacation than the average American worker (that’s about two weeks putting those with more up against those who get none). And when there is more needing to get done than can be done between 9 and 5, then they need to stay on the job until the work is done (it’s called “overtime” and salaried workers don’t get any extra pay for doing it, it’s one of the benefits salaried workers get when their happens to not be enough work and the hourly people are sent home without pay, so be happy about it).
That’s how an responsible employee behaves towards his employer.