Much like a majority of the country, the “I want, I need, I deserve” mentality of the entitlement culture lives strong at XOM. Once a company of go-getters, the whining and blaming rings loud today.
Call us boomers or whatever it takes to self-justify your loathing of anyone who doesn’t think like you. While expat premiums were needed and well deserved for the significant sacrifices of working and living at hard to staff locations, I never even heard of a COLA for domestic locations, whether you were in Texas, California or the east coast. I read the complaints about expats, but how many of you have lived in West Africa, PNG, or the Middle East? Would any of you go tomorrow if the company said that is your only option? Many of us did. And would again.
The company match is a perk, not anything promised for all time. It depends on whether it is needed to hire and retain talent. And that will determine if it comes back.
When it takes an armed security detail to move around the country in which you are working, it is hard to have much sympathy for those afraid to report to the office in Houston. And I imagine all of the field, plant, offshore, drilling, etc. workers might like sitting at home too, but instead they have never stopped working at their assigned locations, just like much of the country’s blue collar workforce. After all, someone has to deliver goods and stock shelves and restaurants when you whiners sneak out of your safe space spaces at home to satisfy your wants.
And tens of thousands of XOM employees have been laid off over the years with no severance packages. Same for “forced early retirements” without any package whatsoever. If you can’t see and accept that, why are you here? If those things are important to you, why did you hire on? And enough of the cr-p about recruiters promising nirvana at XOM. We’re you that gullible and incapable of due diligence on your part? Are used car salesmen your financial advisors?
There is plenty wrong at XOM. Always has been. Always will be. But there is also excellent pay, benefits, a rare pension, and numerous opportunities. XOM may be tough, unfair and ugly, but that tough ugly unfair goose lays some employee gold too. For everyone, not just management. And the majority of you take all of that gold you can get, while whining and complaining endlessly.
The entitlement generation will never be satisfied or fulfilled, regardless of where they live, work or their wealth.