I get the sense most of you don't have jobs, you have careers in which you work with people who have actual jobs.
As a line cook, I'm making about $12/hr. I close daily, which means I leave when everything is done. If we get some late table that sticks till 10:00, I don't get off till 11:00, which means I don't get home until midnight. Do I get overtime? Yeah, but you can bet your sweet arse it's only because our owner is legally required to give it to me. How do I know that? We're numbers to him. We've got guys that have worked there for 5 years, and he still doesn't know their names. We get $10 Walmart gift cards with our identical, typed, and (literally) rubber-stamped Christmas cards. He doesn't even come to the party he is nominally hosting.
Do I mind that much? No, I barely interact with the guy. What really pisses me off is that, when you really get down to it, it's my fault that I get sick and need to take a day off. F**k me for using our insurance. I should be perfectly happy to work on my girlfriend's birthday since it's just like any other day, but then I have to tell our bakery crew he wants a three layer cake for his own birthday, and they need to get it done, nevermind the wedding we're doing.
After all that, is it any wonder I really don't care if the guys I'm in charge of screw around a bit? Is it any wonder I milk my smoke breaks for everything they're worth? Of course, if one of the guys calls me up early, I'm flying up those stairs. We're all in it together, and we take care of each other. But I don't feel the slightest bit guilty for being payed to sit on my arse for a few minutes; he owes the entire kitchen staff a hell of a lot more than that.
None of us give a single damn about his profit margin, because he doesn't give a damn about us. I'm privy to some things I'm not officially supposed to know, but let me say we could triple the pay of every staff member, our GM included, and the guy could still buy another one of his fully original Thunderbirds every year with his spending money.
Bottom line, upper management makes no effort to make us care about how well the place does, does an insultingly trivial job of trying to make us feel appreciated, and really feels we exist solely to make their profit margin.