There's no such thing as something for nothing for "The Boxer": lie la lie

Toshi writes in the Employment Offer Letter thread:

In my offer letter almost 3 yrs ago it was written that I would get a $300 a month car allowance, no mileage documented. About a year later the Board decided that no one would get a flat rate but rather .40 a mile. In the time since my job descrption has changed drasitically and I no longer dirve much for work so my mileage check are an average of $80. My question is are they legally bound since it is writing to pay me the $300 still? That was a large amount of money and a reason I accepted the position and now I go without it. Do I have any claim to it?
Thank you

My response: note that I am NOT a lawyer:

You don't say whether it's USA law but the law in the G-8 hyperdeveloped countries is fairly the same.

A written offer letter, in the absence of words in the letter "disclaiming" a contract, constitutes in American, and mostly G-8, business law an enforceable contract: even verbal promises do so under many circumstances.

I think you may be elsewhere than in America because American managers know this, and they don't make specific promises in offer letters as a result, or they add disclaimers: most American employment "contracts" are reduced by American courts to a single, atomic, arm's-length, caveat emptor and screw U employment at will relationship, in which the company is not only free to welsh upon promises but may fire you at any time "for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all".

[Ah, the unintended Dada poetry of the law...]

If the 300.00 flat amount was described as being for mileage you cannot expect this money if you don't have the mileage under another common rule, that you are responsible for fair dealing; you were offered this money to make you whole after driving to work, but you're not driving to work.

However, many corporate lawyers don't believe in "fair dealing". If someone promises a big company, foolishly, a monthly stipend originally "for" a product that is not deliverable under changed circumstances for an unbounded time, the fool must pay.

However, most people continue to believe in fair dealing and equity. The corporate form of organization creates an Entity which not only cannot know about "equity" but which is required by its shareholders NOT to care about "equity". Its CEO can be fired for being too fair, while CEOs are not only retained but receive extraordinary bonuses for straight failure, as long as they are failed sharks, not failed Ghandis.

This is one foundation of corporate power. We pay our bills on time or even early, and feel virtuous despite the fact that our charity is charity to an Entity and not a person. Alienated as we are from other people by things and corporations it's impossible to know how paying our debts benefits real people.

The company should have realized that in your case an explicit written revision needed to be presented to you at the time when the company changed the rules to .40/mile.

My advice is never to expect a chunk of change based on a bogus situation that doesn't apply any more. This is called "corruption" in Hong Kong and the authorities here take it seriously.

I worked in the late 1970s for a Chicago "consulting" firm that provided all sorts of cash make-whole benefits including payment for every hour worked (not just billed to a client).

As a result, many of the firm's designs were perhaps over-elaborate...mine included, although in many cases people came up with enough elaboration to solve real problems in a culture where solutions are often too simple.

The company pushed people to show loyalty by silently and without discussion staying on the job for unbounded lengths of time.

But as it felt financial pressures from paying people even for nonbilled time, it continued to exert this pressure...while not recognizing either that people were putting in the hours or that the hours had value in and of themselves.

Some employees, aware of the pressures on the firm, stopped reporting even billable client time, therefore garnering reputations as highly "productive" employees because they silently externalized a cost onto their own bodies and their family's emotional health.

Such was the pressure on the owners that in a Maoist move (where as in the aftermath of Mao Zedong's Hundred Flowers campaign, he persecuted intellectuals he'd encouraged to speak up in 1958) they began to talk loudly about "over-elaborate" designs and technicians "too" senior, "too" knowledgeable to connect with the by-definition rugged honest desires of the End User of song and story.

Performance reviews became Inquisitions in which the senior techs in the firm were expected to make anti-intellectual autos da fe and repeatedly acknowledge their limitations in written and signed confessions called "reviews".

After six months of this shit, new faces started to pop up randomly in positions of power, colorless people who'd escaped the general doom by virtue of being free of technical insight, intelligence, or even a distinctive personality.

The company more or less self-destructed and today bottom-feeds in ways I won't describe.

Now, this started with the ease of making promises INCLUDING promises of extra money. The corruption on the management side is in thinking that it can "print money" with "offer letters", but that these offer letters don't constitute under American or G-8 law enforceable instruments.

They do not in fact in many cases in data processing because data processing people in general are not likely to go to court. It will they think be a black mark on their resume, and generally they don't have the deep pockets needed to succeed in American and other G-8 courtrooms.

On the employee side, the corruption is in believing that in today's laissez-faire market, where the powerful players have so much raw power, they can snag a sweet deal of any sort, such as getting "mileage" for not actually driving their goddamn car to work.

We think we know, as seen on TeeVee, farmers who get money for not growing things, and "rocket scientist" programmers who are offered 150,000.00 out of school to produce nothing in particular except unearned profits. But in the real world, 99.999% of us have to produce value.

You wind up in the situation of the real estate salesmen portrayed in the play by David Mamet, Glen Garry Glen Ross, later made into a movie. They are easily nailed and rendered into beasts without language, without the ability to so much as say "what's your name" in the scene where Alec Baldwin says "third prize is you're fired".

This is because they participated enthusiastically in the company's corrupt sales practices back in the day when it was sweet.

I'm serious. There is no something for nothing, buddy. I'm not saying in any way that you are scamming, because I'm talking about ordinary and accepted ways of doing business, which are conducted under caveat emptor. The problem is that the little guy has to cultivate in addition to surplus repression, surplus equity, to survive.

The corruption at the firm I described, where I too thought I was a big success because I'd found a firm that would pay me for sitting for hours at a computer, and for driving to goddamn Schaumburg, ruined my life and blighted my kids' lives. I escaped it to a real job doing real things in Silicon Valley and took a cut in pay to do so.

Companies pretend before they hire you that You Are Unique and make you feel like a combination of James Bond and Albert Einstein. As soon as they get you, you find that you are just another "resource" that has to accept any sort of change to your agreement within the law.

As long as they stay within the law, the companies are playing the game fairly enough given our system, which won't pay people a minimum "negative income tax" to be surfers at Sai Ko.

I find today that you must play the game as best you can by their rules while never taking something for nothing.

Under Chinese business law, a riddle within an enigma in a mystery, a firm on the mainland tried in the normal course of business to screw me out of my last paycheck based on a claim that I had trashed the apartment that was part of the deal.

In fact, apart from one problem I caused (a cigarette hole in the upholstery back in the day when I would occasionally smoke) the apartment was in excellent condition, and, I'd made a cellphone video of the joint before vacating.

This allowed me to team up with the company as the opponent in a three-person game with the owners of the unit, because the company was pressuring me because the owners of the unit was pressuring them.

I sent them the video and a letter mentioning specific law applicable as far as I could tell by examining translations of mainland and applicable Hong Kong law, and got paid.

But, they in fact and under equity owed me for showing up and a few weeks extra that were promised as severance. Yes, I did not work the severance and arguably I was here trying to get something for nothing: but I believe that "severance" recognizes a basic inequality of bargaining power between corporations (which don't have to worry about equity) and people (who do in most cases).

Here I think of the brutalized/brutalizing way in which ordinary military veterans condemn their buddies when their buddies are screwed by the VA. We say to each other "you got nothin' coming" in a Protestant world.

I realize here that I am always verbosely either trying to take a moral inventory, or doing self-justificatory casuistry depending on how people feel about this sort of thinking. I realize that if I were in your situation, I might very well find a reason for accepting "money for old rope", 300 bucks a month for not driving to work.

The problem is a real contradiction. Most Americans are among the fairest and most equitable people on earth. Many of us left Europe because we couldn't stand the bullshit, such as Reichs-Chancellor Bismarck's bullshit in my case.

But today we find ourselves in a regime where economic efficiency is assured by allowing the public corporation an inordinate amount of power over our lives.

It's a tough fucking world. Paul Simon summed it up, and his refrain "lie la lie" ain't no lie.

I am just a poor boy.
Though my story's seldom told,
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles,
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.

When I left my home
And my family,
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station,
Running scared,
Laying low,
Seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go,
Looking for the places
Only they would know.

Lie-la-lie...

Asking only workman's wages
I come looking for a job,
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores
On Seventh Avenue
I do declare,
There were times when I was so
lonesome
I took some comfort there.

Lie-la-lie...

Then I'm laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone,
Going home
Where the New York City winters
Aren't bleeding me,
Leading me,
Going home.

In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains

Lie-la-lie...