PITTSBURGH. When Floyd Kutcher got a smaller-than-expected end-of-year bonus Monday, he asked his boss, Kevin Klinesworth of Amalgamated Flanges, if they could discuss it in a conference room. “You did okay until Q4,” Klinesworth told him. “Then the Knightsworth Hasp deal fell apart, so we didn’t book that revenue this year.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Kutcher replied, his voice rising even as he struggled to keep his emotions under control. “The documents got lost in the crush of holiday mail, otherwise we would have closed December 31st.”
“Not really my problem,” Klinesworth replied, before adding in what he thought was a consoling voice, “better luck next year.”
But Kutcher took the remarks as patronizing, and finally his frustration got the better of him. “Screw you,” he screamed, standing up and beginning to unbutton his shirt. “I am so out of here,” he said, then began to wave his shirt above his head in the manner of Antonio Brown, wide receiver for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as he left the field last Sunday against the New York Jets.
Brown: “I got your back, Floyd!”
“Where are you going?” Klinesworth asked, fearing that he’d overplayed his hand in a tight labor market.
“I have nothing but respect for the secretaries and the guys in the mailroom,” Kutcher said as strode through the company’s reception area on his way out the door. “But I have a huge problem with management, which won’t let me work to my full potential around here.”
The abrupt departure is being repeated around the country as Brown’s “take-this-job-and-shove-it” attitude sparked admiration among frustrated white collar workers, who like him feel that they are under-valued and even put at risk by the bottom-line focus of many employers. “If you listen to the Tampa Bay owners Brown was healthy, but he says he was injured,” notes Roy Stewart, a 20-year-veteran in Amalgamated Flanges’ shipping department. “I had a paper cut in November that I told Klinesworth about, but he said to put a band-aid on it and get back in the game. I’m lucky I still have ten fingers today.”
“Here’s what I think of our new employee benefits brochure!”
There is some speculation that Brown’s issues were monetary rather than health-related, as he would have been eligible for incentive compensation if he exceeded an agreed-upon number of passes caught by the end of the season, but the Bucs’ offensive coaches cut down on the number of times he was “targeted” for passes from quarterback Tom Brady.
“Same with me,” says Sue Ellen Minorkle, a secretary at Schleinkopf McElliman, an accounting firm in Altoona, Pennsylvania, as she ripped off her maroon blouse. “Yes I took a two-and-a-half-hour lunch to go shopping in December, but that shouldn’t mean I don’t get overtime for working late.”