How do you respond to work injustice/cruelty?

I speak up.

What is your line of work?

I’ll tell a story from my early working days.

It happened in 1974, a year after I’d graduated from college. I married two weeks after graduation (don’t do that) and we did a number of things a whole lot of people did then. We had about $400, mostly wedding gifts, and we stepped into the world. He landed a job at a local college in IT, and with my diploma in English and Sociology, I found a job in the headquarters of a locally founded but rapidly growing grocery chain.

I started as an accounting clerk. Not because I knew anything about accounting, but because they hired me. I started at $90 gross per week. That was actually worth enough in 1974 to drive to work for.

We furnished our biggish whole floor apartment at an auction and we had to cut the legs off the couch we bought there to get it in the house.

My job was to review the daily reports of vendor deliveries, check the accuracy of prices paid and either total it out as approved or flag it for discrepancies. At that stage, there were two of us doing that particular job. My associate was a man roughly my age, 23, and he had four months of seniority on me.

I was a very fast typist, and, it turned out I could operate an old fashioned table calculator at a speed that nearly made it smoke.

My pay rate was $2.25/hour. We had 13 grocery stores, and the record of receipts (RRs) from every store had to be completed every week. Grocery stores receive a LOT of deliveries. A LOT.

About five months in I was doing nine stores’ submissions and my colleague was doing four. I was getting frequent raises, but one day my associate let it slip that he was earning a little over $6/hour and my pay was at $3.50. (This is why companies forbid discussing such things.)

At my monthly reviewI brought up the pay to my supervisor. She said she already knew that and I just had to be patient. I argued calmly. She gave me permission to speak to the VP of Finance,. Somebody seriously “important and powerful” in our little company. 😂 He was 27 at the time. He was a kid, I later realized.

I knocked on his door and asked for five minutes. He agreed and invited me in. (Open door policy was a big deal back then.)

He was a numbers guy. I wasn’t, except when it came to my wages. He talked about ranges and budgets and company profits. I said I wasn’t there to discuss financial philosophy. I just wanted to know why I was getting paid almost half of my colleague’s pay when I was doing more than twice the work.

His final argument was that my colleague with two children was getting that money because “he has a family to support” and I was only married.

Silence fell. Then I said, “I understand. I’ll go back to my desk and work like I DON’T have a family to support. Of course you’ll have to hire at least one more clerk, probably two, with benefits and training.”

He said, “You won’t do that.”

I stood up. “I guess we’ll see.”

It might not have worked, but it did. That same afternoon my supervisor handed me a paper that increased my pay to what my colleague was getting

It still wasn’t fair, but it was a lot better.

I’ve been retired for awhile now and don’t miss some of the ugliness that I witnessed.

But one thing I did, since I was fortunate enough to work in a union shop, was become a steward, at the urging of a good friend.

I was able to help turn things around for some people who had basically been getting screwed—and that was very satisfying.

Depends on who is doing it, and my assessment of their personality. Over the years, I've discovered the people I don't get along with tend to have rubbed multiple people the wrong way. So instead of going at them head to head, I start finding ways to bring the people they'll clash with into their lives. Maybe I'll add them to meetings where I figure one of them will say something that sets off the other. Maybe I'll "bring their expertise" into business areas that I know they've neglected, and will likely get them in front of hard questions. So rather than it becoming a conflict/HR issue between me and this person, I try set up a spark elsewhere, between them and someone I know doesn't like them and may be likely to escalate shit. And when that happens, I'll be around to describe what I observed, and bring in my own beef with them as additional ammo

I react by writing. Good way to get those tentions solved. Perhaps I'll publish the book some day :)

I leave.

My immediate superior, the company president, asked me to do something in direct violation of the contract I was working. When I refused, I was demoted. I accepted the next job offer that came my way, and the company I left went bankrupt a year later.

I'm working on that myself. If I figure anything out that works I can talk to you about it if you'd like

Not giving a fuck is an art. It takes practice.

In my case I just withdraw. If you make an effort and just get kicked in the teeth for it, you learn to put more effort into protecting your teeth. This will result in more kicks to the teeth, but it hurts a lot less if your ready for it.

Sometimes I've fought. Sometimes stayed silent. Sometimes just left.

In my years working (retired) I always liked the work. The people, the politics, and the mgt not so much.

there were times i fought (mostly when i was younger) but nowadays i keep my head down and either deal with it or look for an exit and slip out the backdoor.