A marketing employee who was asked to use their personal laptop faced being on the outs with management when they refused.
There’s this funny thing that happens in organizations, where dated technology begins to become a liability. It starts off innocently at first, with just asking you to use your own laptop for one small task, or asking you to take just a few calls from your personal phone. Before you know it, your company phone has been revoked because you don’t “need” it and were “using your personal one anyway.”
During certain 2020 global events that shall not be named, a great many of us may have suddenly found ourselves being asked to join company standup meetings from our personal computers since we hadn’t “needed” our own laptops, and taking calls from our personal phones. Absolutely, as with any relationship, flexibility in such situations is important, but the implication that a lot of us were givenis that we either use our own money to “make it work.”
And this makes sense in some ways, why pay for something you don’t need or only use seldomly? Being pragmatic about the situation, one can see the argument from this theoretical employer’s point of view. But these requests generally aren’t made often by reasonable employers in reasonable employment conditions. And a one-off is fine, of course it is, but the issue becomes clearer as the erosion of workplace conditions occurs, as we slide down that metaphorical slippery slope toward severely worsened working conditions. Things that might have represented anything from small fringe benefits like coffee or milk in the break room, to things that actually represent actual monetary value and compensation, often making up for what otherwise would be a substandard salary. Worse, things that cost you money out of your own pocket, like using a laptop
It’s almost comical to join one of these workplaces as a new hire. You ask for your company phone because you’re expected to take both internal calls and calls from clients as part of your role, but you’re just told by your confused new compatriots that they’ve been using their personal phones to do this for years. And, especially, when you’re doing creative work, not being provided the necessary equipment to complete that work just seems a little bit silly and short-sighted.
This marketing employee shared how their employer had been asking them to use their work computer to complete their necessary workplace tasks. When they refused to use their own computer, their manager was stunned, and things were only made more difficult for them when their coworkers agreed to use their own equipment.
Author: Kayitsi.com
