Fight The Fights Worth Fighting

are YOU a former tiktok user trying to learn how to use tumblr to fill the void the american tiktok ban is leaving in your soul? here are some things you should know, from someone who’s going on their eighth year on this hellsite:

1. you can say anything on here. gone are the days of having to use words like “unalive” and “seggs.” murder! kill! sex! fuck! speak your mind!

2. there is a community for you on here. regardless of what you’re into or however small the fandom is, you have a place here. at least one other person will have heard of your weird obscure interest. strike up a conversation!

3. followers don’t matter. tumblr is one of the last remaining social media sites in which your number of followers means absolute jack shit. this can be disorienting at first, but once you lean into the fact that everyone on this website is equal, it’s very freeing. clout means nothing here.

4. similarly, you can post at any time. while tiktok has an algorithm that favors certain times, tumblr has no such algorithm. post whatever you want, whenever you want. every post has virtually the same chance at getting notes, regardless of when it is posted.

5. tags can have spaces between the words! this one is very exciting. tags can be a whole sentence. you can also use the tags to comment on someone’s post without actually adding onto the physical post itself (which is sometimes frowned upon and called “derailing” if you use this feature to bring up a completely different point other than the one that’s being made on the original post).

Basically the way a time study worked is an “able-bodied” worker was timed doing a task. This became the standard. Then disable workers would be timed doing the same task. If they performed 60% as fast as the set standard, they’d only be paid 60% of the hourly wage set for the task.

Which sucks.

But, it gets even worse.

I was tasked with conducting the time studies so I head out and start doing them. The majority of the disabled workers were performing to 85% or better of the “able-bodied” times.

I turned the reports in and was told, “that’s not possible. Do them again.”

So I did them again. We’re talking a few hundred time studies.

The results were the same. In fact at least a dozen of the workers actually improved their previous times.

I turned them in and was told, “This can’t be right. They can’t be doing that well.”

I told them results spoke for themselves. They (the head of the client services department [at this ARC disabled workers were called clients]) said it wasn’t possible for the workers to be performing above 65% at the highest. So I must be doing something wrong or falsely reporting to try and get the clients more money.

I vehemently denied this.

So they sent me to do the studies a third time. This time with a supervisor to ensure no funny business on my part.

Once again, the disabled workers performed to an average of 85% of the standard.

With the supervisor’s approval I turned in the third set of reports.

I was told that the standard time must be out of date. Go and time one of the abled workers and use the new time as the standard and conduct all of the hundreds of studies a fourth time.

So, I went and timed an abled worker. Their time was slower than the existing standard. Not wanting to get yelled at, I decided to time 10 Abled workers and average their times to get the new standard.

The new standard was only 6 seconds faster, but it was faster.

So, using the new time standard, I did all of the time studies again.

And again, the disabled workers times averaged out to about 85% of standard. With a good number of them performing at 100%.

I girded my loins and turned the studies in.

I feel like I should mention that these studies are reviewed by ADA and the State Labor Board for compliance with the “sub minimum wage” rules. So they’re a big deal. Because if an ARC or similar organization is found in violation of the rules it could be the end of that organization.

I was already pretty nervous about the fact that we’d conducted so many studies and how that would look. But I was just a 22 yr old worker bee also earning just minimum wage ($8.25/hr) and didn’t want to lose my job.

So yeah, turned in the studies. And was told by the DIRECTOR OF CLIENT SERVICES - the person who was supposed to be the TOP advocate for the disabled workers at this ARC - that if we paid the disabled workers at their reported rates that it would impact her annual bonus.

She then told me to go back and falsify the reports to average 65% performance.

I refused.

So she fired me for “violating dress code”.

I couldn’t afford a lawyer, so I couldn’t file a lawsuit for illegal dismissal.

This was 20 years ago.