Ah, The Olive Garden Letter: everything wrong with a 9-5 job found here in one post.
So many people don’t understand this when it comes to their job. You are replaceable!
I never understood the appeal of climbing up someone’s else’s corporate ladder. Is it the fancy title? Perhaps the higher pay (mostly)?
The problem is that when you climb up someone else’s corporate ladder, you can be kicked off any time. And the rest is history.
This makes having multiple streams of income, especially passive income, all the more important. In fact, I would say a necessary essential!
You can’t rely on your employer as your only source of income.
You Are a Replaceable Cog in A Machine
I said this before and I’ll say it again: you mean absolutely nothing to your employer!
You could be a hard-working all-star employee, show up for work and stay late every day, hand in all your assignments on time, a go-getter who takes the very job seriously and gets along great with everyone.
The next thing you know, you’re in the boss’s office being handed your walking papers.
What happened? Your company found a way to save $10 a month extra which means your services are no longer required.
It doesn’t matter that you have a family to feed or even that you are sick and rely on your employer’s health insurance. Your employer doesn’t care.
You (like me) are nothing more than an easily replaceable cog in a machine.
If you are treated poorly or unfairly, you can complain or threaten to quit all you want. You employer will just replace you with another replaceable cog.
It’s doesn’t matter how good a worker you are.
The Olive Garden Letter
There are two things I often say. First, you don’t owe your employer loyalty (they aren’t loyal to you). Second, you need to invest in assets that produce a source of passive income!
This story from Olive Garden illustrates all of that and everything wrong with a 9-5 job.
To summarize; In December 2022, employees received a letter from the manager of an Oliver Garden in Kansas about calling out from work.
The letter stated:
“From now on, if you call off, you might as well go out and look for another job. We are no longer tolerating ANY excuse for calling off. If you’re sick, you need to come prove it to us.
If your dog died, you need to bring him in and prove it to us. If its a “family emergency” and you can’t say, too bad. Go work somewhere else…
If anyone from here on out calls out more than ONCE in the next 30 days you will not have a job.”
Nice right?
Unfortunately, many employees have no choice but to put up with that as they do not have another source of income. Nor savings or investments to fall back on to support themselves.
The manager follow up in the letter by stating:
“Do you know in my 11.5 years at Darden how many days I called off? Zero. I came in sick.
I got in a wreck literally on my to work one time, airbags went off and my car was totaled, but you know what, I made it to work, ON TIME!…
Do you think I want to be here until midnight on Friday and Saturday? No. I’d much rather be at home with my husband and dog, going to the movies or seeing family. But I don’t, I’m dedicated to being here. As should you.”
If that is true, the manager is sure a hard-working dedicated all-star worker that when above and beyond for her employer! And below is why this is wrong.
The Olive Garden Lessons
The lessons here are twofold:
The first lesson is that as workers, you need multiple sources of income. Preferably, you need sources of passive income.
This way you don’t have to be dependent on your employer for your livelihood.
Every dollar you earn from your investments weakens your employer’s control over your life.
If you don’t like they way your employer treats you, you have the option of just walking away! You don’t have to tolerate bad bosses.
The second lesson is this: no matter how fancy your title is, you are replaceable!
What happened to that hard-working manager, who sacrificed time with her family, to spend all those extra hours dedicated to her job?
She was fired!
So much for all those years of dedication to her job.
In the end, despite the fancy job title, she was also just a cog in the machine, albeit a larger cog with some shine sprayed on.
Conclusion
Thus, we conclude The Olive Garden Letter: everything wrong with a 9-5 job illustrated in once single incident.
We are taught from early school days to be replaceable cogs in a machine. But what we need to do is make out employer’s replaceable to us!
Time is precious and we only have a limited amount in our lives.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend my whole life or any extra time working a 9-5.
The goal is to break free of the rat race.
To that end, I am saving over half my monthly income and building up my investments in dividend growth stocks.
I’ve built a six-figure portfolio that generates a yearly average of over $1,100 per month in dividend income! That is passive income that I earn while I sleep!
If you are interested in beginning your own journey into dividend growth investing, personal finance, and financial freedom, check out my Getting Started page.
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So, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below!
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