Viewers of a recent TikTok video are coming to the defense of a worker who said he was called in to cover a co-worker’s shift after working two overnight shifts in one week.
TikTok creator P (@socialist_mac_miller) recounted the ordeal to viewers in an almost two-minute video. His post, which went up a day ago, has garnered more than 622,000 views as of Saturday.
@socialist_mac_miller #socialism #communism #capitalism #fyp #foryou #minimumwage #jobs #worker #workersrights #laborrights #strike ♬ original sound – P
He starts the video by letting viewers know he currently works a 3pm to 11pm shift, meaning he gets to sleep in for much of the day.
“And I actually have motivation to do stuff during the day,” P said in the video.
However, he says he recently was woken up out of his slumber at 6:51am by his boss’s boss, asking if he could cover someone’s shift who had just called out of work. The shift allegedly started at 7am. P asked the boss to figure out an alternative, but the boss insisted on requesting him to come to work.
P adds that he had already worked two overnight shifts, and wasn’t in the mood to further alter his work schedule.
“So I am stuck in my still half-asleep delirium, trying to explain to a man— that probably makes more than double that I do— that unless he wants me to take a f*cking Delorean to work, there is no physical way possible that I’m going to be able to get out of bed, put my clothes on, brush my teeth and still make the 30-minute commute to work in under 8 minutes at this point,” P says.
The boss then allegedly asked P if he could come in at 11am instead, which promptly led P to hang up on them and go back to sleep.
Many commenters sympathized with P’s situation.
“Here’s an idea….maybe one of the bosses should cover the shifts of the people calling out,” one person said.
“Don’t pick up work calls outside of working hours,” someone else warned.
“Poor planning on a company’s part does not constitute an emergency on my part!” a user exclaimed.
The Daily Dot reached out to P via Tiktok comment for further information.
P concludes his video by sharing his belief that just because higher-ups may make more money than those that work below them, doesn’t mean they’re good at their job or managing others.
“Every time I make a video about how all jobs should be livable jobs, I get motherf*ckers in my comments talking about how there are people who aren’t worth what they’re paid,” he says. “And it’s [taken] me until now to realize that they are right. They’re just talking about the wrong people.”
He continues, “You want to find someone that isn’t worth what they’re paid? Go higher up on the ladder. You will find them in f*cking abundance. Next time someone tells you that your boss is in the position they are because they’re smarter than you or because they worked hard, I want you to slap them upside the head.”
The Financial Times reported that research from the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics shows that inequality and belief in meritocracy go hand in hand, meaning the more unequal a society, the more people are likely to believe rich people have earned their wealth.
The Times article sites a quote “perceived” to be from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck to further illustrate why this phenomenon may be true: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
