 questions came through about how can we stay motivated? If we're not going to get a bonus, what can we do, what can we do? Some of them were nice and some of them were not so nice. So I'm going to address this head on. The most important thing we can do right now is focus on the things that we can control. None of us could have predicted COVID, none of us could have predicted supply chain, none of us could have predicted bank failures. But what we can do is stay in front of our customers, provide the best customer service we can, get our orders out our door, treat each other well, be kind, be respectful, focus on the future because it will be bright. It's not good to be in a situation we're in today, but we're not going to be here forever. It is going to get better. So lead, lead by example, treat people well, talk to them, be kind and get after it. Don't ask about, what are we going to do if we don't get a bonus? Get the damn $26 million. Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need and not thinking about what are you going to do if we don't get a bonus? All right? Can I get some commitment for that? I would appreciate that. I had an old boss who said to me one time, you can visit pity city, but you can't live there. So people leave pity city, let's get it done. Thank you. Have a great day. That was Andy Owen, the president and CEO of Miller Knoll, which is an office furniture store. And you just listened to her berate her employees after some of them reached out to her and told her that they lost motivation to keep working after learning that the company would not be giving out their annual bonuses that they were relying on. Now that rent right there is incredibly rich, no pun intended, coming from her, considering that she still got her bonus and she didn't just get a bonus the size of these employees, she got a very, very large bonus. As the daily dot explains, Andy Owen made just shy of $5 million last year with $1.2 million in bonuses, holy shit. Nevertheless, she seemed irate at the notion that employees lacked motivation because of a lack of a potential lack of incentives. Lots of use of the word lack here in this article. Anyways, her company Miller Knoll is best known for producing office furniture, which has taken a hit during the pandemic. The company recently also closed the plant in Wisconsin laying off 162 employees, makes a lot of sense here. So bonuses for me, but not the. See, I wonder if she'd be going to pity city as she put it herself if the money that she expected and relied on didn't come to her. I wonder if she would lose a little bit of motivation. And look, most employees acknowledge that sometimes companies, they go through tough times, but when you claim that they're the ones who have to tighten their belts and the tough times affect them, but not you, that's when they take issue, right? Now, according to salary.com, the annual base salary for Miller Knoll employees is $63,490 on average, but it ends up being around $1,700 higher on average due to employee incentives and bonuses. So if bonuses are an expected part of your annual income and you rely on it, but you're no longer getting said bonus, you're just taking a pay cut full stop. But let's look at Andy's salary because her base pay is much more than the average employee. So it's over a million dollars. Her bonus is actually higher than her base pay at $1.3 million dollars. And her total cash compensation is $2.4 million dollars. That's what it was in 2022 alone, mind you. Now that's not taking into account the equity that she has in the company, but by comparison, her employees get paid crumbs and after she announces that they're going to be getting slightly less crumbs, well, she then has the nerve to berate them for going to pity city in the most smug rent imaginable. I need CEOs and elites to understand not that they watch the humanist report, but if they're watching, if one of you happens to tune in, I need you to understand that if you're confused as to why there's been the sudden rise of popularity for socialism, this is why. If you're confused as to why so many people are talking about their desire to eat the rich, that right there is why. Because your greed is so brazen, so shameless, and your disregard for your own employees is so overt that it makes them hate you. It's not just that they're disillusioned with their job. Your actions lead to them cultivating an actual fucking hatred for you because you are so fucking greedy. Maybe they would understand if there were no bonuses because the company is experiencing a loss in revenue if you yourself did not take a bonus. That doesn't mean that they still wouldn't lose motivation or they wouldn't be discouraged. But the fact that they're losing a bonus but you're still taking a bonus, it goes to show you that you don't give a shit about these people. If you were a decent human being, rather than accepting that bonus and rubbing it in your employees' faces, you would take your bonus and distribute it to them. I don't know how many employees are part of this company, but I'd imagine that if you split $1.2 million, I mean, they would be happy with that. Maybe it wouldn't go as far as their usual bonus, but it's better than nothing. And again, when you're making so little money anyway, you rely on that extra income, but they're losing it and you expect them to just take it on the chin while you yourself, you don't have to experience what they're experiencing. You still get your bonus. It's just, I mean, what is there to say about this? The commentary that I can provide you with won't do it justice. This is rage inducing. This is why we fucking hate you. I mean, everybody has these stories about the retailer that they work for, the fast food company that they work for, posting record profits, but yet them not getting their annual raise because of inflation or the minimum wage increased in their state. And it just, these reasons are complete and utter horseshit and we know it. And what makes matters worse is that these CEOs think that their employees are stupid, but they're not stupid. And again, this is why they hate you because of things like this. You genuinely don't care about them. You only care about yourself. You're exploiting them. And again, when you see these articles about Gen Z and millennials and more of the population being really intrigued by socialism and workers owning the means of production, you have yourselves to blame for making it popular because no amount of preaching by socialists like myself or Bernie Sanders is going to make it as popular as these CEOs being just openly greedy will. Seeing that is going to turn any reasonable person into a socialist because how could you not want something better when this is what we have to look forward to in perpetuity with this late-stage capitalist hellscape that we're living in?