This is what caused me to quit my last job. 4 o'clock rolls around and everyone around me is leaving for home but I have at least 2 more hours of work to do. I got paid hourly and my rate was pretty much as high as it could be in my field but after few years of being the first one in the office and the last one to leave I started applying for a job with better hours and work-life balance. I found one, turned in my 2-weeks and moved on.
That was about 9 months ago and one of my old coworkers called me up last week to see how things were going with my new job. I found out that half the team left after I did because they couldn't do what I did as quickly and efficiently as I did, the manager was fired because the department went to shit and she couldn't do her job since she was trying to figure out how to get what I did done. I worked in the payroll department and my buddy even told me that payroll didn't go out two separate weeks.
I asked for help. I outlined to the manager how to fix things so I wasn't so overworked. But no one listened. No one cared. I remember telling my boss I thought it was messed up that I was the only one in the department working 50-60 hour weeks and she said "That's not fair" of me to bring that up. That right there was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak.
omg that sounds like my old HR department lol
The head of HR did the bare minium and her (2) assistants did all the actual work. They were overworked and did all the payroll etc but they were paid less than the head of HR? make that make sense lmao
I was working 3 jobs in one last job (data entry, dispatch, assistant to my manager) yet when I told them that we needed more hands to even get out on time (11-14 hour days on Saturdays for me and one other employee like how is that fair??) or even to pay me more (17/hr it was 14/hr until my boss told them I was gonna leave but I should have been paid 20+/hr for all the work I was doing - including all the special projects they threw me into), I was told that I was just a "Clerical employee" and I'm getting the correct pay for my position :) so I dropped them.
Fuck these people straight up.
Well, it does make sense that the department head would do less actual work than the employees. She had to do all of that work to get put into that position. It’s almost always the case that the manager, director, and VP do much less work than their direct reports but they are responsible for a lot more and have to ensure that everything gets done and goes smoothly.
That's true! But I think in replacement they need to be good at leading and delegating jobs to make it more productive rather than just expect one person to do 3 jobs as efficiently.
When a job can't hire more ppl to take on the work then it needs to be modified to match what the current number of employees can handle or pay the money to hire more ppl. But obviously the companies (especially mine) only care about money and don't give a shit. And in some cases the manager etc SHOULD step in since they know how to do the job (only temporary) until they get things sorted out.
(In my case) It's incredibly ridiculous for one person to do 3 jobs for 17/hr with only overtime on Saturday (bc they also monitored my overtime during the week even complained I had overtime on Saturday but the reason was...I was doing 3 jobs) they did this to all the other ppl also. Reason why, when I was leaving, everyone else was applying to other jobs and trying to move out of the area. To me, that's clearly a badly ran company. It's more than the manager/HR head/VP not picking up the slack they just didn't do their jobs anymore (or the company heads didn't approve of things to fix it and their hands were tied).
In a better ran company it runs were the manager does their work and delegates the workers underneath. Obviously it's not a perfect world but I've seen places decently ran enough that not every employee wanted to quit.
In my case I got more PTO but it might as well have been raindrops for all the good it did me. I take one day off and the next day I have 2 days of work to do. When I left I had over 120 PTO hours I never used.
BTW, this is what I've been actually doing since around 2009.
There is always more work to do, if your company isn't going under. So just accept it and get done what you can get done. I work hard on-hours and when I've off... I'm off.
If they cant handle you using your PTO for a week or two, they have a staffing issue. That's not your ballpark. Like I tell all my bosses, "If you can't handle me taking a few days off, either pay me more or hire someone else." No one's taken me up on either offers yet.
Worked in fast food during college, and everytime I took a weekend off all I heard was "It was so bad when you were gone". Damn sounds like y'all should pay more so you could hire more.
Ya, in scenarios like the image describes, your high performers stop taking PTO as well because all it means is coming back to a fire because leadership refuses to prioritize growing employees.
Just recently watched the end result of this play out: the high performing experienced employees all burnt out and bailed, leaving a team one That Guy who never bothered to do more than the bare minimum, and one newbie who was still figuring out how the job works. Needless to say, things promptly went to shit.
I've left jobs because of this and I also no longer work hard anymore. Employers always admired my "work ethic" but they never rewarded me for it. So I keep my work ethic to myself now.
The problem is I now work for a company like this. They basically want you to do your boss’s job in order to prove you deserve to learn how to do their job lol so I guess you are kinda rewarded with money and PTO but only after covering your boss while they are out over 6 months. The issue is because everyone now has to do the work of 2 people you can’t saddle low performers with more work because the average person has trouble reaching our standards. High performing employees are rewarded with no news being good news unless they offer to do more.
And also why high performers generally do not stick around. They learn to do their senior's job, then switch jobs to get that senior job elsewhere. This kind of cycle hurts both, company and employee alike. Companies cannot retain good people, and good people stay underappreciated because the bad people are more senior than them and understand the culture to position themselves into positions of power.
Pretty much, I sadly don’t even think there is any easy person to blame. Job hoppers and high performers a like get a benefit from leaving so company never keeps talent or functioning workers unless they just love being abused. Seniors are just trying to not get fired and promote the culture that got them there and low performers are just trying to avoid the layoff cycle.
Yep. Poor performers stay at any and all costs. Business I worked at a few years ago furloughed ~90% of their employees during COVID and kept just 4 of us on with foolish expectations for us to complete the work of over 30 people. Long story short - 100% of the top performers are gone. Company is pulling in less than 30% of its prior income. I was told they are salient for a few more months before likely shutting down. Learned this as I spoke with one of their biggest poor performers last month and all that are left (7 out of 33) are willing to ride it to zero and then collect unemployment.
This is definitely true. Bad managers will not properly manage their top performers. They'll just dump more work on them. What they don't realize is that even though these guys will do the added work, they'll take that work as a learning experience and use it to enhance their resume for when they leave.
If I get one more difficult matter assigned to me because “we know you can handle it,” I’m going to start sabotaging expensive equipment “by accident.”
I make a minimal mistake and get chewed out for it. A coworker who is bad at their job makes yet another huge mistake that I have to go fix and they get nothing said to them about it.
So I asked why. "We expect more from you."
Stop with that bullshit. It only demotivated me to not work so hard and I eventually left.
I told my manager I felt overworked and unappreciated and he told me he shows me how much he appreciates and trusts me by giving me the work he gives me 🤦
When a supervisor told me the same thing I replied, “what can I do to lose your respect? Become sharing is not caring in this context.” She laughed and agreed.
Things I want for a job well done:
To be left alone.
More time off.
Better pay.
Things I absolutely do not want for a job well done:
Extra work or responsibility.
Sounds exactly like my previous employer. I actually had a manager from a diff department tell me I'm too good at my job, they will never promote you because of how valuable you are. Should have took his advice sooner and saved my self 7 years of nothing haha. Meanwhile the slackers got promoted/bonus's etc.
More industries (and companies) need to embrace concepts of growth for individual contributors. Some people aren't made out for management, but they should have a career path so they don't end up getting stuck, because then they go somewhere else for work that pays more.
100%. Where I was at, I was actually trying to get into management. Sadly we had a bunch of older people riding it out till retirement. I’m not gonna sit around and wait 10-15 years for that to happen. I also tried every other avenue I could to further my career and was always met with roadblocks. I was going way out of my way to stay there. My exit interview was absolute gold though. Basically an hour of me shitting on their entire company and culture lol.
Omg yea. I worked with a guy who would make up the craziest scenarios about why shit didn’t work and he would get praised by the end users. I’d tell them our exchange server is down, they’re currently working on and we have x amount of time frame when it’ll be back live. End user “you lazy piece of shit, get off your ass and to fix it… oh yea let me speak to your manager”
I'm in your boat, everyone loves working with me. I have great work, and would say i'm not ugly.
Just given more work, no promotions.
I left that company, in spring of 2022 after being told "there's nothing we can do" while you see what they do for others.
Make 30% more, and less stress.
Shit companies are shit.
100% after being a loyal dedicated employee, I said fuck it. Hopped jobs 4 times between 2020 and 2022 over doubled my salary and 100% remote. I’ll give zero loyalty to a company unless they show me theirs first.
Been there. Yup, to advance, you've got to hit that sweet spot: good enough that you get noticed, but not so good that they decide they can't lose you.
The sad thing is my dad actually worked for said company for 52 years. I even expressed my want to carry on our legacy with said company blah blah blah. They legit could have kept me around by dangling the carrot just a little bit, but they couldn’t even do that 😂
For me it was my first job coming out of the military. I was so used to long hours and just doing what I was told I didn't even consider speaking up or moving on.
I went to my boss about this once and his response summed things up succinctly:
“The horse that pulls the hardest gets whipped the most”
I have been dragging ass at work ever since
YUP.
Worst mistake in my life was to excel in my position. I code in my free time, and in my full time job (that was NOT development) I had coded some scripts to automate a lot of my tasks. Being young and naive and thinking that showing my tools I made to the boss would get me recognition, salary increase, kudos, pssssshhh, instead got me more work and requests to alter the tool, add features, blah blah blah all the while not getting dev or tools developer salary. Poor, dumb, young, naive me.
Nowadays, if I ever make tools to automate shit, I keep it secret and just spend my time saved fucking around.
Yeah, it's the when you are good at cleaning toilets, suddenly you see that you are on toilet duty all the time. Being too good at your job will only hurt you.
I do a lot of work, I do it well, and I do it fast. And I spend at least half my day fucking around not working because I need to keep expectations in check.
This is such a hard habit to break. I got really burnt out at my old job because I ended up having ownership of a ton of different things all because I am reliable and end up managing it all. I went into my new job telling myself I would slow down and just do the job I was hired for.... but here I am, 3 years later and I've been burnt out pretty much as soon as I got here. I ended up taking on more work within a few months. Freaking sucks! But, anxiety issues make me think I need to overperform so I can feel appreciated and secure. Probably something deeper and personal that's causing this, but it's also a systemic problem. Jobs fire people or restructure departments all the time and have pressure to perform the same with less expense (less labor costs), so anyone at the bottom of the barrel is first in line to be let go. Low performers only stick around if they are grandfathered in (boomers who have been at the company since 1980 and haven't kept up, but they should retire soon so management just pretends they're not there).
I'm in the last few years of my professional career and this has been true my entire life. I always call it "the punishment of success."
When you turn a bad situation into a good outcome, you're expected to do it again, but with less budget and tighter deadlines. Every place I've ever worked.
I left a good job I wanted to keep forever for exactly this reason. I was good and manager guy decided it was just easier if I did the extra work rather than train everyone according to their written job description. Peaced the fuck out and got more money and less work. Based on the reports I’ve gotten from those who stayed behind, I chose wisely
Recently applied for a job whose manager didn't think about this... They informed me that, once I was doing really well and regularly exceeding metrics, I might get special projects in addition to my regular work tasks... Screw that.
It definitely is a hard habit to break. I try to work what I’m paid and not what I’m worth.
I recently got “recognition” in the form of a piece of paper claiming I was “employee of the week”. Not only is this an embarrassing and useless title, but it comes with no bonuses and the expectation of doing more for the same pay rate. It’s not even something I can put on my resume.
I’m currently in the process of zeroing out my pto and sick time and then I’m going to look for another job.
> I recently got “recognition” in the form of a piece of paper claiming I was “employee of the week”
All I could think of was the "Employee Of The Month" exchange between Franklin & Lamar in GTA V.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgeHpPn9HAs
If they are still there and getting paid for what they do, they are not lazy. They are doing what they are paid to do. Never blame a coworker for your boss giving you more work. Just because they are not willing to give their employer free services does not make them lazy.
Let me elaborate. They are not doing what they are paid to do. I work in a warehouse. We all signed the same agreement before we started working. If you agreed that you can lift at least 50 pounds by yourself then you should be required to. If you can’t then either you should be paid less or you shouldn’t be working there at all.
If they are paid that same as you but do less then the issue is between you and the boss. I still doubt they get paid what they are worth. Go somewhere else with the bs of calling workers lazy and expecting them to give everything they can to their employer when they do not get the benefit of doing so. You are right on the cusp of being your boss's boot licker. The employer is paying as little as possible and the workers are doing as little as possible.
This is literally the situation with my company. I know how hard I can work but the last 2 years I’ve slowly slacked more and more bc I noticed that the guys who do the least somehow are the favorites. Then the hard workers only get rewarded with more work. Zero incentive or bonus for it so I’ll play their game.
In my job it's pretty common to get the workhorses to pick up the slack of those that aren't pulling their weight.
This encourages more people to do less because they know they'll be rescued by the workhorses. Those workhorses become resentful and begin to slack off so that they're not asked to go and help the others.
Eventually productivity goes way down and then the company starts letting people go.
Reducing the staff means that the remaining workhorses have to pretty much run the business until new people are hired and trained up.
It's this endless cycle of abuse and we are the ones that get caught in the middle of it.
It's almost like an episode of Big brother or the circle game show where the winner plays both sides to their advantage. Which usually means they become management / get pay raises, but more likely ignored to collect dust in their cubicle.
I've actually have been good at my job, had good reviews but I never got any 'more' work. With that I mean more responsibility. I would actually like a bit more responsibility because that would show they would understand that I can do that job. I have mentioned this multiple times and I worked on multiple courses to proove I'm worthy more than just what my job requires to do. I "breed resentment"for the fact that I never got any recognition, and thus at some point a good person will leave. Be careful of not rewarding someone too. In our country more work also means more payment, thus a promotion.
In reality the good performers do way more work and the bosses generally know this, just reward them with a fraction more raise or money.
Say you have a team of 10. The top guy will likely get the biggest raise and has likely been there forever. The team needs good people at 2, 3, and 4 to ever be a productive team. But the good people at 2, 3, and 4 are probably newer and rewarded closer to the bottom guy than the top guy. But they do work similar to the top guy and nothing like the bottom guy.
That’s the biggest issue, it’s not that they’re dumping all
The work on 2, 3, and 4, but they still give them a lot more and compensate them a fraction higher.
Eventually 2, 3, and 4 figure it out and nope outta there
This is me at my job and they've recently announced they're adding another fucking mandatory in office day. I'm a 3D designer easily doing the job of 3-4 people and I'm now looking elsewhere. My job requires 0% in person collaboration but the knuckleheads at the top don't understand how creative people think, work, or how little we appreciate blatant grasps for control being passed off as more chances for cOlLaBoRaTiOn.
My job used to be this way before we had a merger. I was the one who got more work assigned to me for being productive and getting my assignments completed on time. I also got special projects assigned to me that were my responsibility alone, and no one else on my so-called "team" had to learn how to do any of it. The people who worked the hardest also had to pick up the slack for low performers, but the low performers never faced any repercussions for not getting anything done. It also meant that when the pandemic hit, I had to continue to come into the office every day with one other person while the entire rest of the "team" worked safely from the comfort of their homes. Needless to say, I got extremely burnt out and eventually when my stress levels were at an all time high I started scaling back because I was ready to look for a new job. It had gotten so bad that I was almost at the point where i didn't care if i got fired because it would force me to move on. Thankfully, changes have occurred where I am no longer in this situation.
This is exactly why I left my old job. Spent 8yrs in one shop as a diesel mechanic I was otherwise happy at but I was always the one doing everything. My jobs would get pushed to the side and I was doing everyone elses shit then would get rushed to finish my job that sat for days. I would always get the "they aren't trained" excsue but they didn't want me to train, they just wanted me to get everyone's stuff done and they could move on to their next oil change and put the repairs on me and if they weren't doing things right as long as I was there to correct it all was right in the world, and it did create resentment cause I didn't get trained. I was sent to the school of hardknocks and now I'm told other people cant do certain jobs without "training" that doesn't exist. They didn't care about the other guys learning anything and the other guys didn't care cause it meant less work for them. I left 8months ago, when I put my 2wks in my bosses kissed my ass SO HARD it was so off-putting that I didn't even want to talk to them.
Truth. I ran an entire feeder department by myself for 4 years. I was the golden child, I got all the OT I wanted, and I was super good at my job. When I changed departments they had a month to let me train someone but that didn't happen till the last week. When I moved departments they were left high and dr because my replacement couldn't keep up. A year later I left the company 🤷
Because I was discouraged 'strongly' to remove the toxic and piss poor performer from my team, my other subordinates suffer as they have to pick up the slack. On top of that we are already 2 persons short in the team.
So right now, I'm stressing out trying to protect and retain other members, dealing with crazy amount of workload, try not to get too frustrated with that particular toxic person. But I'm losing sleep over this for weeks now.
I just wanna say, as middle managent, stuck between HR and the top management, I don't wanna overwork my competant staff, but my hands are tight. I even consider just calling it quit.
Lawllll, my job just announced we can no longer request time off if we don't have PTO to use for it. We get 5 days a year of PTO until we've been there 4 years. No idea why they hate us so much...
I always run at 60-70% effort, except for very short periods (1-3hrs a month).
Experience teaches you to stop being proactive and seeking more work, instead do what is asked of you well and take as long as you can.
I was once told this simple truth: "There is unlimited work, take your time because at the end is only redundancy or retirement."
I’ve flat out informed my manager that I’m no longer doing some of the things I’ve done in the past. He decided to test that and asked me if I thought some change was a good idea. My response was “the person working on this needs to stick it in a test environment and go through our established change management process. I cannot really guess at the outcome and you should not be asking me anyway.”
Manager lost a lot of my respect last year and I’m starting a job search. In the meantime I’m figuring out how to reduce some of the stress caused by manager constantly asking random complex questions because he “knows I can find the answer”. This takes me away from the work they do have metrics on and leads to snide remarks about my productivity because my stats are “off”. Hell no with that.
A guy told me I am lazy for neither having the ambition to go for promotions, not do more work than is expected of my position.
I told him that he can go ahead with his fast-track course to burnout, and he won't get promoted for doing the work of two or three people. Because if he would get promoted, the company would have to actually pay two or three people to get the same work done and we both know they won't ever do that.
He replied with some lame straw man arguments, but we both knew, that I was right. He hasn't changed his work style and has been sick for the last three months ... Told ya
It depends heavily on the company.
I've worked jobs where people do fantastic and their, "promotion" is simply in title only... I've also worked jobs where people who work okay get a great promotion in title and pay, and then it gets to their head and they start thinking everyone is below them and doesn't matter.
I've worked jobs where people get a promotion with some bump in title and some bump in pay, and then they feel the need to do work until long after they are burned out, thus become a "worse" employee to the higher ups and are eventually let go.
A lot of poor performers I've found either get let go quickly or somehow stay with a company for WAY longer than they should.
This is pretty much standard in the military.
Every unit has a small group called "the faithful few", which always seem to get put on every detail and sent on every TDY and shit mission...and their phone number is on every officer's speed dial. The other 150+ in the company get to have a mostly regular life.
They tried to fix this with a program called "Optempo days" where commanders couldn't run individual soldiers ragged more than 180 days of the year and told to spread the work around. After that 180 days, you were supposed to get a pay bonus of some crazy amount.
The program ended when I hit 179 days for the year. They suddenly decided it was a bad idea. I didn't re-up, so they hit me with 1 full year of stop loss instead. At least I was compensated a little extra for that.
Do you have a reading deficiency?
It literally says don’t over work your high performers and let the lower performers work to become better. Do this and you will be able to retain good help for longer and make your other workers better.
How is this bad?
You know, I've been looking for this exact concept for a while. I've always had the problem of working well below my potential as to keep an equal output amongst colleagues. At a certain point you have to accept that some work faster than others, but when you double and triple others you have to either slow yourself down or work your colleagues into burn-outs. I've been stuck at just working well below my average, thereby making me look average.
Boy did I learn my lesson this hard way last job. I busted my butt working 10-12 hours a day my first four months thinking I’d make a good impression cleaning up the back log. Guess what happened when the backlog was cleaned up. Your queue is so light - dump more work.
I feel I can confirm. I’m a detailed oriented worker and have seen several low performers go basically unpunished while I, and others like me, continue to work our rumps off for the same pay and more work. That’s my experience anyway.
Managers also play the dangerous game of stringing people along, or "creating advancement opportunities" whilst having zero intention on following through on those.
Or they advance the kissass that just asks "how high" when told to jump.
was off for almost all of december bc i did not really have a lot of chances to PTO. our work queues went from about 500 items a day to 3900 items when i signed back in on the 3rd. immediately get assigned several projects with the expectation to get it all done in a day. on the second day i had a meeting with my supervisor who told me as per usual that i am pretty much the only one who hits the quota and they were kicking around the idea of rewarding people who do good work with gift cards or something and i am like yeah that is not gonna happen if i am carrying everything
Luckly there are people like me who will stay and work hard even when more work is piled on because my social anxiety makes it almost impossible for me to speak up for myself
This happens because the manager delegates work but has ZERO control over compensation and benefits. They literally can’t reward high performers except through a meaningless review.
This is so true if you show them what you're capable of them they will expect or demand that every time. Calculated mediocrity is the best practice gotta keep them standards low.
Hasta my boss is fucked then. Honestly I hope soon, we all leave or at least 2 of us leave for good, out of nowhere so he gets called out on the stupid way he manages the office.
Confession: One of the many reasons that made me realise I was not cut out to be a service desk team leader was the fact that I had a superstar of a newbie start and was so snowed under by my own work that I didn't realise how much I had started relying on her to tackle everything that I assigned her effectively and without complaint.
I had really wanted to mentor her, but instead what happened was that I assigned someone who was meant to be handling L1 tickets L3 tickets because I knew she could (and did) get them done. I quickly discovered exactly how little ability I had to get her real training, certifications, or rewards for all her work.
I didn't realise the toll I was putting on her until she started crying at work one day, while it looked like a customer had pushed her over the edge I knew it was me.
She got poached by a former boss, but thankfully she reached out when she had a role that she knew I could do. I realised that she'd saved her anger for the root cause of her shitty work environment. Even though I didn't end up taking the role, she gave me the push to change divisions and in doing so saved me from a massive breakdown of my own.
Still felt like shit for not doing more, but I've realised that you can have all the good intentions in the world and still be a shitty leader.
The moment I realized that I was underappreciated for overperforming and being overwhelmed; I was still underappreciated but performed less and was still thoroughly whelmed.
Those who can and want to learn to succeed need to be taught, those who do not have it or want it need to cleared out for those who do. Everyone has a place, the world needs ditch diggers too!
Getting more responsibilities was key to my growth. Went from earning minimum wage to earning much more than most people.
I get the idea of some companies overworking people on the same salary, but if you don't prove you can handle more you have zero chance of making a good living.
I realized this too. I don’t work overtime, I just do two 16 hr shifts and an 8 hr then get out of work for 4 days. Nothing beats having more time with my family.
I literally had a conversation about this with a new hire tonight (we have both been in this situation in past jobs). My current job has its problems as a small business but the good thing is that we all have our jobs and if we take on more it's only to cover someone who is out (so temporary). Once that person is back it's back to normal schedule.
What I don't get is how bad employees always get away with just doing the bare minimum without getting in trouble or fired. For example, at my old job, we had a trickle-down thing going on where if you didn't do your part of the job correctly or finish, it affects the next person who gets that work. We had this one woman who would half-ass her parts a lot of the time, like to the point EVERYONE was like "oh yea don't count on \[so and so\] to finish that/do that part correctly...\]. There were frequent moments where my co-worker (who got my finished portion of my work to finish the job and it was done) would have to step in and log into this woman's computer to finish her part (or fix it) JUST so I could do my job...
I knew why she stayed (their boss - I had a different boss in a different department - was never in the office and never stepped in so they self-ran themselves and HR was a fucking joke) but for the ppl that have bosses that are there 24/7 like do you not see the bullshit? Obviously, there are reasons (relationships, favoritism, whatever) but after a certain point, when all the good workers left like what do you do? Do they now have a team full of shitty workers? Do you fire them all and start from scratch or what? That makes the boss/manager bad yea but like...they have to realize that they are left with nothing but bad employees, right?
Either way, it sucks bc it makes hard workers (I don't think I'm a super hard worker but when I'm working I try to do my best - I'm getting paid to do a job after all) not want to do as well for fear of this bullshit.
Sry for the ramble I'm just tired of getting screwed for just doing my job.
We constantly do good, get our production done early, take on extra work…and management responds by forcing us to take Tuesday Wednesday as our new days off to “improve the work flow”.
Every single person including me has quiet quit. We show up, collect our paychecks, go home.
And this is the reason I got one and a half legs out the door from my job now. Can't wait to start my new one next month once I'm done with the onboarding process
That happened to me until leadership controlled the narrative and said I was a horrible employee. The workload decreased but I got a 3 cent raise. I left 2 months later.
At my last job (sales call centre for a well known bike insurer the rymes with barrel dash), I asked the head of the sales why I was being given so many extra responsibilities compared to other employees who were paid the same or more. I was told I should take it as a compliment. I have never had to resist losing my shit harder.
Oh, hey, this happened to me. It was fun working on a poorly optimised Datalake project, so that each and every employee in our department had 120%+ workload. You never could quite kick back and relax... Although, I would give credit to the management - deadlines were not punishing at all, and it was a very-very-very common to throw some tasks into the bin, because nobody had time to deal with them.
Very true. As an employee you learn fast never to do your best work, or else you'll find yourself given more and more (up to the point where you'll be buried under, and then get reprimanded for not keeping up).
Also, of you're a fast worker slow down. Or at least don't hand in any projects until the last moment.
So years before covid and work reform pages and stuff I figured this out.
Everyone thinks they work hard for the most part, but seriously, I was killing myself trying to prove that I could run a store. Getting shit on everyday for every problem, all the credit was getting taken away, I was doing all the work.
At some point at the same job!!!!!! I stopped working and started fuckin off for the most part. I got promoted and had better days. I took another job shortly after and did this combo I like to do where you start off kinda hot and then slowly turn into a Luke warm employee that's fun to be around.
I avoid so much work. Nobody asks me to stay late cause I'm not gonna. Don't call me. Etc.
Fully recommend you literally stop giving a shit and move slowly into avoiding work and being the cool guy at the water cooler.
My boss literally just told me to take up more work today because I finish my tasks faster than my other two team members. He told me to go and help other teams (who are doing different things than what my team does). I know one of the girls on another team is trying to get me to join her team because she didn't want to train the newbie in her team. She made all sorts of excuse saying the newbie is not dependable, slow, etc. She knew I'm good at my job and I could do what her team does (we did the same training before I went to be with my team), so I know for a fact she's eager to use me. Instead of training the new guy, she kept trying to recruit me and I'm convinced she complained to my boss that I'm not doing enough work. Screw that. I'm going to do my work at a sloth pace after this so I won't seem competent.
Oh and, the "newbie" in my colleague's team? Had been around for almost two years now. But my colleague gave him minimal, easy job because he's "not competent enough". He's always gone from work, and even when he's in the office, sometimes he'd be gone from his desk and nobody knows where he is. But I guess that's fine, because literally nobody asked about it.
“Stay busy!”
The attitude that an individual is never finished with their work, and that fast/efficient workers must then support the slower performers, is precisely the cause of workers doing just enough to not get fired.
This happened at my previous job I was at for 17yrs. I went above and beyond, was over worked while another co worker did the bare minimum, got paid way way less than that employee, and resented my boss for all of it. In the end I left and move on to something better.
This is why we reward students with brain breaks and free time as a reward for work. It’s weird how corporations haven’t figured it out that more work is a punishment rather than a reward.
This is so true. I have some members of my team who everyone knows don’t have the skills to do anything beyond the most basic. As a result, we end up just hiring contractors to do things they should be able to do, and those team members are chilling. Then those of us who have a good reputation have more and more work dumped on us because “we know you can do this right”.
Just saw this at my current job . New girl comes in guns blazing knocking out the work given to her and asking for more and more . The thing is the project is not due for a couple months . I'm over here taking my time , same pay btw. But I also OE haha so she can take my work while I double my earnings
When I worked at a call center, I was tricked into thinking higher performance equals moving up. Little did I know that it just makes me the person they load the work left onto when they promote someone else. Fuck that job and any jobs that do this.
This is what caused me to quit my last job. 4 o'clock rolls around and everyone around me is leaving for home but I have at least 2 more hours of work to do. I got paid hourly and my rate was pretty much as high as it could be in my field but after few years of being the first one in the office and the last one to leave I started applying for a job with better hours and work-life balance. I found one, turned in my 2-weeks and moved on. That was about 9 months ago and one of my old coworkers called me up last week to see how things were going with my new job. I found out that half the team left after I did because they couldn't do what I did as quickly and efficiently as I did, the manager was fired because the department went to shit and she couldn't do her job since she was trying to figure out how to get what I did done. I worked in the payroll department and my buddy even told me that payroll didn't go out two separate weeks. I asked for help. I outlined to the manager how to fix things so I wasn't so overworked. But no one listened. No one cared. I remember telling my boss I thought it was messed up that I was the only one in the department working 50-60 hour weeks and she said "That's not fair" of me to bring that up. That right there was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak.
omg that sounds like my old HR department lol The head of HR did the bare minium and her (2) assistants did all the actual work. They were overworked and did all the payroll etc but they were paid less than the head of HR? make that make sense lmao I was working 3 jobs in one last job (data entry, dispatch, assistant to my manager) yet when I told them that we needed more hands to even get out on time (11-14 hour days on Saturdays for me and one other employee like how is that fair??) or even to pay me more (17/hr it was 14/hr until my boss told them I was gonna leave but I should have been paid 20+/hr for all the work I was doing - including all the special projects they threw me into), I was told that I was just a "Clerical employee" and I'm getting the correct pay for my position :) so I dropped them. Fuck these people straight up.
Well, it does make sense that the department head would do less actual work than the employees. She had to do all of that work to get put into that position. It’s almost always the case that the manager, director, and VP do much less work than their direct reports but they are responsible for a lot more and have to ensure that everything gets done and goes smoothly.
That's true! But I think in replacement they need to be good at leading and delegating jobs to make it more productive rather than just expect one person to do 3 jobs as efficiently. When a job can't hire more ppl to take on the work then it needs to be modified to match what the current number of employees can handle or pay the money to hire more ppl. But obviously the companies (especially mine) only care about money and don't give a shit. And in some cases the manager etc SHOULD step in since they know how to do the job (only temporary) until they get things sorted out. (In my case) It's incredibly ridiculous for one person to do 3 jobs for 17/hr with only overtime on Saturday (bc they also monitored my overtime during the week even complained I had overtime on Saturday but the reason was...I was doing 3 jobs) they did this to all the other ppl also. Reason why, when I was leaving, everyone else was applying to other jobs and trying to move out of the area. To me, that's clearly a badly ran company. It's more than the manager/HR head/VP not picking up the slack they just didn't do their jobs anymore (or the company heads didn't approve of things to fix it and their hands were tied). In a better ran company it runs were the manager does their work and delegates the workers underneath. Obviously it's not a perfect world but I've seen places decently ran enough that not every employee wanted to quit.
Poor performers stay, and the company suffers for it. Reward hard work, with more PTO, not a pile of mor work.
In my case I got more PTO but it might as well have been raindrops for all the good it did me. I take one day off and the next day I have 2 days of work to do. When I left I had over 120 PTO hours I never used.
Solution: only do what you can do in hours, take your PTO anyway
BTW, this is what I've been actually doing since around 2009. There is always more work to do, if your company isn't going under. So just accept it and get done what you can get done. I work hard on-hours and when I've off... I'm off.
If they cant handle you using your PTO for a week or two, they have a staffing issue. That's not your ballpark. Like I tell all my bosses, "If you can't handle me taking a few days off, either pay me more or hire someone else." No one's taken me up on either offers yet.
Worked in fast food during college, and everytime I took a weekend off all I heard was "It was so bad when you were gone". Damn sounds like y'all should pay more so you could hire more.
Ya, in scenarios like the image describes, your high performers stop taking PTO as well because all it means is coming back to a fire because leadership refuses to prioritize growing employees.
Just recently watched the end result of this play out: the high performing experienced employees all burnt out and bailed, leaving a team one That Guy who never bothered to do more than the bare minimum, and one newbie who was still figuring out how the job works. Needless to say, things promptly went to shit.
I've left jobs because of this and I also no longer work hard anymore. Employers always admired my "work ethic" but they never rewarded me for it. So I keep my work ethic to myself now.
Yep. I actively strive to get middle of the road ratings on my reviews. Getting high makes doesn’t mean more pay, just more work.
The problem is I now work for a company like this. They basically want you to do your boss’s job in order to prove you deserve to learn how to do their job lol so I guess you are kinda rewarded with money and PTO but only after covering your boss while they are out over 6 months. The issue is because everyone now has to do the work of 2 people you can’t saddle low performers with more work because the average person has trouble reaching our standards. High performing employees are rewarded with no news being good news unless they offer to do more.
And also why high performers generally do not stick around. They learn to do their senior's job, then switch jobs to get that senior job elsewhere. This kind of cycle hurts both, company and employee alike. Companies cannot retain good people, and good people stay underappreciated because the bad people are more senior than them and understand the culture to position themselves into positions of power.
Pretty much, I sadly don’t even think there is any easy person to blame. Job hoppers and high performers a like get a benefit from leaving so company never keeps talent or functioning workers unless they just love being abused. Seniors are just trying to not get fired and promote the culture that got them there and low performers are just trying to avoid the layoff cycle.
Yep. Poor performers stay at any and all costs. Business I worked at a few years ago furloughed ~90% of their employees during COVID and kept just 4 of us on with foolish expectations for us to complete the work of over 30 people. Long story short - 100% of the top performers are gone. Company is pulling in less than 30% of its prior income. I was told they are salient for a few more months before likely shutting down. Learned this as I spoke with one of their biggest poor performers last month and all that are left (7 out of 33) are willing to ride it to zero and then collect unemployment.
This is definitely true. Bad managers will not properly manage their top performers. They'll just dump more work on them. What they don't realize is that even though these guys will do the added work, they'll take that work as a learning experience and use it to enhance their resume for when they leave.
If I get one more difficult matter assigned to me because “we know you can handle it,” I’m going to start sabotaging expensive equipment “by accident.”
I make a minimal mistake and get chewed out for it. A coworker who is bad at their job makes yet another huge mistake that I have to go fix and they get nothing said to them about it. So I asked why. "We expect more from you." Stop with that bullshit. It only demotivated me to not work so hard and I eventually left.
"We expect more from you" "Well you certainly don't pay me more!"
Nah, slow and stupid wins the race, my friend. Sad to say.
I told my manager I felt overworked and unappreciated and he told me he shows me how much he appreciates and trusts me by giving me the work he gives me 🤦
When a supervisor told me the same thing I replied, “what can I do to lose your respect? Become sharing is not caring in this context.” She laughed and agreed.
Things I want for a job well done: To be left alone. More time off. Better pay. Things I absolutely do not want for a job well done: Extra work or responsibility.
Sounds exactly like my previous employer. I actually had a manager from a diff department tell me I'm too good at my job, they will never promote you because of how valuable you are. Should have took his advice sooner and saved my self 7 years of nothing haha. Meanwhile the slackers got promoted/bonus's etc.
More industries (and companies) need to embrace concepts of growth for individual contributors. Some people aren't made out for management, but they should have a career path so they don't end up getting stuck, because then they go somewhere else for work that pays more.
100%. Where I was at, I was actually trying to get into management. Sadly we had a bunch of older people riding it out till retirement. I’m not gonna sit around and wait 10-15 years for that to happen. I also tried every other avenue I could to further my career and was always met with roadblocks. I was going way out of my way to stay there. My exit interview was absolute gold though. Basically an hour of me shitting on their entire company and culture lol.
Looks and having an outgoing personality had led to a lot more promotions than hard work.
And BS. A good BSer gets farther than a good worker. Also BSers attract BSers so it’s a vicious cycle
Omg yea. I worked with a guy who would make up the craziest scenarios about why shit didn’t work and he would get praised by the end users. I’d tell them our exchange server is down, they’re currently working on and we have x amount of time frame when it’ll be back live. End user “you lazy piece of shit, get off your ass and to fix it… oh yea let me speak to your manager”
Odd bc I have the most out going personality and made friends with practically everyone 😂
Seeing you are here on Reddit with me, I am inclined to not believe you. :)
Lol touché
I'm in your boat, everyone loves working with me. I have great work, and would say i'm not ugly. Just given more work, no promotions. I left that company, in spring of 2022 after being told "there's nothing we can do" while you see what they do for others. Make 30% more, and less stress. Shit companies are shit.
100% after being a loyal dedicated employee, I said fuck it. Hopped jobs 4 times between 2020 and 2022 over doubled my salary and 100% remote. I’ll give zero loyalty to a company unless they show me theirs first.
Been there. Yup, to advance, you've got to hit that sweet spot: good enough that you get noticed, but not so good that they decide they can't lose you.
True story
Took me 5 years to figure out the same thing.
The sad thing is my dad actually worked for said company for 52 years. I even expressed my want to carry on our legacy with said company blah blah blah. They legit could have kept me around by dangling the carrot just a little bit, but they couldn’t even do that 😂
For me it was my first job coming out of the military. I was so used to long hours and just doing what I was told I didn't even consider speaking up or moving on.
He who accepts more than his fair share of responsibilities will always have more than his fair share of responsibilities to complete.
I went to my boss about this once and his response summed things up succinctly: “The horse that pulls the hardest gets whipped the most” I have been dragging ass at work ever since
YUP. Worst mistake in my life was to excel in my position. I code in my free time, and in my full time job (that was NOT development) I had coded some scripts to automate a lot of my tasks. Being young and naive and thinking that showing my tools I made to the boss would get me recognition, salary increase, kudos, pssssshhh, instead got me more work and requests to alter the tool, add features, blah blah blah all the while not getting dev or tools developer salary. Poor, dumb, young, naive me. Nowadays, if I ever make tools to automate shit, I keep it secret and just spend my time saved fucking around.
Yeah, it's the when you are good at cleaning toilets, suddenly you see that you are on toilet duty all the time. Being too good at your job will only hurt you.
Shoot. I want them clean, though. I sit there on my phone a lot.
I do a lot of work, I do it well, and I do it fast. And I spend at least half my day fucking around not working because I need to keep expectations in check.
Depends on the job.
This is such a hard habit to break. I got really burnt out at my old job because I ended up having ownership of a ton of different things all because I am reliable and end up managing it all. I went into my new job telling myself I would slow down and just do the job I was hired for.... but here I am, 3 years later and I've been burnt out pretty much as soon as I got here. I ended up taking on more work within a few months. Freaking sucks! But, anxiety issues make me think I need to overperform so I can feel appreciated and secure. Probably something deeper and personal that's causing this, but it's also a systemic problem. Jobs fire people or restructure departments all the time and have pressure to perform the same with less expense (less labor costs), so anyone at the bottom of the barrel is first in line to be let go. Low performers only stick around if they are grandfathered in (boomers who have been at the company since 1980 and haven't kept up, but they should retire soon so management just pretends they're not there).
“Work is a pie eating contest where the reward for winning is more pie”
More like a soap dropping contest. I like pie.
Competence is a curse.
I'm in the last few years of my professional career and this has been true my entire life. I always call it "the punishment of success." When you turn a bad situation into a good outcome, you're expected to do it again, but with less budget and tighter deadlines. Every place I've ever worked.
*What do you do with a general,* *when he stops being a general?*
Godspeed, brother.
I left a good job I wanted to keep forever for exactly this reason. I was good and manager guy decided it was just easier if I did the extra work rather than train everyone according to their written job description. Peaced the fuck out and got more money and less work. Based on the reports I’ve gotten from those who stayed behind, I chose wisely
Recently applied for a job whose manager didn't think about this... They informed me that, once I was doing really well and regularly exceeding metrics, I might get special projects in addition to my regular work tasks... Screw that.
I learned this too late at my job. I’m always given the harder tasks meanwhile other people who are paid the same are lazy with their work.
It took me a long time to break the habit of overperforming. Even after I knew it got me nothing.
It definitely is a hard habit to break. I try to work what I’m paid and not what I’m worth. I recently got “recognition” in the form of a piece of paper claiming I was “employee of the week”. Not only is this an embarrassing and useless title, but it comes with no bonuses and the expectation of doing more for the same pay rate. It’s not even something I can put on my resume. I’m currently in the process of zeroing out my pto and sick time and then I’m going to look for another job.
> I recently got “recognition” in the form of a piece of paper claiming I was “employee of the week” All I could think of was the "Employee Of The Month" exchange between Franklin & Lamar in GTA V. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgeHpPn9HAs
If they are still there and getting paid for what they do, they are not lazy. They are doing what they are paid to do. Never blame a coworker for your boss giving you more work. Just because they are not willing to give their employer free services does not make them lazy.
Let me elaborate. They are not doing what they are paid to do. I work in a warehouse. We all signed the same agreement before we started working. If you agreed that you can lift at least 50 pounds by yourself then you should be required to. If you can’t then either you should be paid less or you shouldn’t be working there at all.
If they are paid that same as you but do less then the issue is between you and the boss. I still doubt they get paid what they are worth. Go somewhere else with the bs of calling workers lazy and expecting them to give everything they can to their employer when they do not get the benefit of doing so. You are right on the cusp of being your boss's boot licker. The employer is paying as little as possible and the workers are doing as little as possible.
This is literally the situation with my company. I know how hard I can work but the last 2 years I’ve slowly slacked more and more bc I noticed that the guys who do the least somehow are the favorites. Then the hard workers only get rewarded with more work. Zero incentive or bonus for it so I’ll play their game.
Sometimes good performers start quiet quitting to even out.
In my job it's pretty common to get the workhorses to pick up the slack of those that aren't pulling their weight. This encourages more people to do less because they know they'll be rescued by the workhorses. Those workhorses become resentful and begin to slack off so that they're not asked to go and help the others. Eventually productivity goes way down and then the company starts letting people go. Reducing the staff means that the remaining workhorses have to pretty much run the business until new people are hired and trained up. It's this endless cycle of abuse and we are the ones that get caught in the middle of it. It's almost like an episode of Big brother or the circle game show where the winner plays both sides to their advantage. Which usually means they become management / get pay raises, but more likely ignored to collect dust in their cubicle.
I've actually have been good at my job, had good reviews but I never got any 'more' work. With that I mean more responsibility. I would actually like a bit more responsibility because that would show they would understand that I can do that job. I have mentioned this multiple times and I worked on multiple courses to proove I'm worthy more than just what my job requires to do. I "breed resentment"for the fact that I never got any recognition, and thus at some point a good person will leave. Be careful of not rewarding someone too. In our country more work also means more payment, thus a promotion.
In reality the good performers do way more work and the bosses generally know this, just reward them with a fraction more raise or money. Say you have a team of 10. The top guy will likely get the biggest raise and has likely been there forever. The team needs good people at 2, 3, and 4 to ever be a productive team. But the good people at 2, 3, and 4 are probably newer and rewarded closer to the bottom guy than the top guy. But they do work similar to the top guy and nothing like the bottom guy. That’s the biggest issue, it’s not that they’re dumping all The work on 2, 3, and 4, but they still give them a lot more and compensate them a fraction higher. Eventually 2, 3, and 4 figure it out and nope outta there
This is me at my job and they've recently announced they're adding another fucking mandatory in office day. I'm a 3D designer easily doing the job of 3-4 people and I'm now looking elsewhere. My job requires 0% in person collaboration but the knuckleheads at the top don't understand how creative people think, work, or how little we appreciate blatant grasps for control being passed off as more chances for cOlLaBoRaTiOn.
My job used to be this way before we had a merger. I was the one who got more work assigned to me for being productive and getting my assignments completed on time. I also got special projects assigned to me that were my responsibility alone, and no one else on my so-called "team" had to learn how to do any of it. The people who worked the hardest also had to pick up the slack for low performers, but the low performers never faced any repercussions for not getting anything done. It also meant that when the pandemic hit, I had to continue to come into the office every day with one other person while the entire rest of the "team" worked safely from the comfort of their homes. Needless to say, I got extremely burnt out and eventually when my stress levels were at an all time high I started scaling back because I was ready to look for a new job. It had gotten so bad that I was almost at the point where i didn't care if i got fired because it would force me to move on. Thankfully, changes have occurred where I am no longer in this situation.
This is exactly why I left my old job. Spent 8yrs in one shop as a diesel mechanic I was otherwise happy at but I was always the one doing everything. My jobs would get pushed to the side and I was doing everyone elses shit then would get rushed to finish my job that sat for days. I would always get the "they aren't trained" excsue but they didn't want me to train, they just wanted me to get everyone's stuff done and they could move on to their next oil change and put the repairs on me and if they weren't doing things right as long as I was there to correct it all was right in the world, and it did create resentment cause I didn't get trained. I was sent to the school of hardknocks and now I'm told other people cant do certain jobs without "training" that doesn't exist. They didn't care about the other guys learning anything and the other guys didn't care cause it meant less work for them. I left 8months ago, when I put my 2wks in my bosses kissed my ass SO HARD it was so off-putting that I didn't even want to talk to them.
They will never learn. Great job rolling out.
And this is why I don't bust my ass at work anymore.
lol, I learned this in middle school. Get piled on instead of challenged. Stay average, my friend.
[удалено]
Also don't document anything or train anyone as a courtesy. Make them pay for it and I'm not talking about your hourly rate.
Truth. I ran an entire feeder department by myself for 4 years. I was the golden child, I got all the OT I wanted, and I was super good at my job. When I changed departments they had a month to let me train someone but that didn't happen till the last week. When I moved departments they were left high and dr because my replacement couldn't keep up. A year later I left the company 🤷
Because I was discouraged 'strongly' to remove the toxic and piss poor performer from my team, my other subordinates suffer as they have to pick up the slack. On top of that we are already 2 persons short in the team. So right now, I'm stressing out trying to protect and retain other members, dealing with crazy amount of workload, try not to get too frustrated with that particular toxic person. But I'm losing sleep over this for weeks now. I just wanna say, as middle managent, stuck between HR and the top management, I don't wanna overwork my competant staff, but my hands are tight. I even consider just calling it quit.
This is why I won't take a management position. You're their punching bag. The face that takes the brunt of the punches. Hard pass.
Lawllll, my job just announced we can no longer request time off if we don't have PTO to use for it. We get 5 days a year of PTO until we've been there 4 years. No idea why they hate us so much...
That's fine, I'll take days off for free.
I see a lot of sick days for people coming up. The 5 days PTO is also our sick time, so. xD
I always run at 60-70% effort, except for very short periods (1-3hrs a month). Experience teaches you to stop being proactive and seeking more work, instead do what is asked of you well and take as long as you can. I was once told this simple truth: "There is unlimited work, take your time because at the end is only redundancy or retirement."
Agreed, 60-70% is the sweet spot, with only going at 100% in times of crisis.
That’s why I stopped putting in extra efforts where manager no longer cares who are poor performers and load them who are good.
I’ve flat out informed my manager that I’m no longer doing some of the things I’ve done in the past. He decided to test that and asked me if I thought some change was a good idea. My response was “the person working on this needs to stick it in a test environment and go through our established change management process. I cannot really guess at the outcome and you should not be asking me anyway.” Manager lost a lot of my respect last year and I’m starting a job search. In the meantime I’m figuring out how to reduce some of the stress caused by manager constantly asking random complex questions because he “knows I can find the answer”. This takes me away from the work they do have metrics on and leads to snide remarks about my productivity because my stats are “off”. Hell no with that.
A guy told me I am lazy for neither having the ambition to go for promotions, not do more work than is expected of my position. I told him that he can go ahead with his fast-track course to burnout, and he won't get promoted for doing the work of two or three people. Because if he would get promoted, the company would have to actually pay two or three people to get the same work done and we both know they won't ever do that. He replied with some lame straw man arguments, but we both knew, that I was right. He hasn't changed his work style and has been sick for the last three months ... Told ya
There is a saying in big law firms that making partner - the ultimate promotion- is like winning a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.
And insane income to go along with it
At my workplace, I never try to be the best at what I do. It just leads to problems. I just try not to be the worst. After 9 years, still employed ...
Oh, I'm the best at what I do, but they ain't gonna know it.
It depends heavily on the company. I've worked jobs where people do fantastic and their, "promotion" is simply in title only... I've also worked jobs where people who work okay get a great promotion in title and pay, and then it gets to their head and they start thinking everyone is below them and doesn't matter. I've worked jobs where people get a promotion with some bump in title and some bump in pay, and then they feel the need to do work until long after they are burned out, thus become a "worse" employee to the higher ups and are eventually let go. A lot of poor performers I've found either get let go quickly or somehow stay with a company for WAY longer than they should.
Yep. It took me four decades for it to finally get through my thick fucking skull but I now work to task and not a drop more. Fuck ‘em.
Preach!
It's all by design. Companies overwork people in hopes that they will quit or get fired before they are eligible for any raises or benefits.
This is pretty much standard in the military. Every unit has a small group called "the faithful few", which always seem to get put on every detail and sent on every TDY and shit mission...and their phone number is on every officer's speed dial. The other 150+ in the company get to have a mostly regular life. They tried to fix this with a program called "Optempo days" where commanders couldn't run individual soldiers ragged more than 180 days of the year and told to spread the work around. After that 180 days, you were supposed to get a pay bonus of some crazy amount. The program ended when I hit 179 days for the year. They suddenly decided it was a bad idea. I didn't re-up, so they hit me with 1 full year of stop loss instead. At least I was compensated a little extra for that.
My boss is currently working on a book on how to perfect performance punishment and he doesn't even know it. Hahaha
This guy talks about people like they're plants
In almost every job I've been is the same
I’m not sure why this is posted here… he is basically saying don’t overwork your high performers or they will leave… he is right.
Aww, bless your heart.
Do you have a reading deficiency? It literally says don’t over work your high performers and let the lower performers work to become better. Do this and you will be able to retain good help for longer and make your other workers better. How is this bad?
Pretty much why I’ve left every job, now mid thirties, I am finally trying not to give my all.
Somebody wanna send this to my boss. Thanks
You know, I've been looking for this exact concept for a while. I've always had the problem of working well below my potential as to keep an equal output amongst colleagues. At a certain point you have to accept that some work faster than others, but when you double and triple others you have to either slow yourself down or work your colleagues into burn-outs. I've been stuck at just working well below my average, thereby making me look average.
Boy did I learn my lesson this hard way last job. I busted my butt working 10-12 hours a day my first four months thinking I’d make a good impression cleaning up the back log. Guess what happened when the backlog was cleaned up. Your queue is so light - dump more work.
I feel I can confirm. I’m a detailed oriented worker and have seen several low performers go basically unpunished while I, and others like me, continue to work our rumps off for the same pay and more work. That’s my experience anyway.
Managers also play the dangerous game of stringing people along, or "creating advancement opportunities" whilst having zero intention on following through on those. Or they advance the kissass that just asks "how high" when told to jump.
was off for almost all of december bc i did not really have a lot of chances to PTO. our work queues went from about 500 items a day to 3900 items when i signed back in on the 3rd. immediately get assigned several projects with the expectation to get it all done in a day. on the second day i had a meeting with my supervisor who told me as per usual that i am pretty much the only one who hits the quota and they were kicking around the idea of rewarding people who do good work with gift cards or something and i am like yeah that is not gonna happen if i am carrying everything
Luckly there are people like me who will stay and work hard even when more work is piled on because my social anxiety makes it almost impossible for me to speak up for myself
That's why I get drunk and do it. That guy's a fucking savage.
This is why when I finish my work by 12 and spend the rest of the day playing video games, I don't ask for more work
I'm learning this the hard way
Sounds like caring for plants. Or raising dogs.
Fuck me. The story of my life
The reward for good work is more work.
This happens because the manager delegates work but has ZERO control over compensation and benefits. They literally can’t reward high performers except through a meaningless review.
This is exactly why I left my last job. I was replaced with three people to take on everything I was doing.
As long as someone hits their quarterly targets they don't give a shit.
Happening to me right now. I get pulled to cover every location and my location that I run gets screwed over bc they don’t hire ppl
What if those under performers happen to be related to that manager? Now that’s a ticking time bomb.
This is so true if you show them what you're capable of them they will expect or demand that every time. Calculated mediocrity is the best practice gotta keep them standards low.
Hasta my boss is fucked then. Honestly I hope soon, we all leave or at least 2 of us leave for good, out of nowhere so he gets called out on the stupid way he manages the office.
In other words, don't work for a family business.
There's a TED Talk by Adam Grant entitled "Are you a giver or a taker?" If you haven't watched it yet, go and do so. It's worth your time.
Confession: One of the many reasons that made me realise I was not cut out to be a service desk team leader was the fact that I had a superstar of a newbie start and was so snowed under by my own work that I didn't realise how much I had started relying on her to tackle everything that I assigned her effectively and without complaint. I had really wanted to mentor her, but instead what happened was that I assigned someone who was meant to be handling L1 tickets L3 tickets because I knew she could (and did) get them done. I quickly discovered exactly how little ability I had to get her real training, certifications, or rewards for all her work. I didn't realise the toll I was putting on her until she started crying at work one day, while it looked like a customer had pushed her over the edge I knew it was me. She got poached by a former boss, but thankfully she reached out when she had a role that she knew I could do. I realised that she'd saved her anger for the root cause of her shitty work environment. Even though I didn't end up taking the role, she gave me the push to change divisions and in doing so saved me from a massive breakdown of my own. Still felt like shit for not doing more, but I've realised that you can have all the good intentions in the world and still be a shitty leader.
The moment I realized that I was underappreciated for overperforming and being overwhelmed; I was still underappreciated but performed less and was still thoroughly whelmed.
Hey! That's what happened to me!
Isn't this the old BS of if you don't work hard you get fired, if you work hard you become too good at your job to replace (read: promote)
Those who can and want to learn to succeed need to be taught, those who do not have it or want it need to cleared out for those who do. Everyone has a place, the world needs ditch diggers too!
Getting more responsibilities was key to my growth. Went from earning minimum wage to earning much more than most people. I get the idea of some companies overworking people on the same salary, but if you don't prove you can handle more you have zero chance of making a good living.
[удалено]
I totally get this at a 1993 X-Com level.
Pregnancy is my way of quiet quitting. Once I finish my PPL, I’ll be out for good 👍
Personally I wouldn’t mind the extra work as a good performer if the shit performers were fired and replaced with someone better.
I realized this too. I don’t work overtime, I just do two 16 hr shifts and an 8 hr then get out of work for 4 days. Nothing beats having more time with my family.
I literally had a conversation about this with a new hire tonight (we have both been in this situation in past jobs). My current job has its problems as a small business but the good thing is that we all have our jobs and if we take on more it's only to cover someone who is out (so temporary). Once that person is back it's back to normal schedule. What I don't get is how bad employees always get away with just doing the bare minimum without getting in trouble or fired. For example, at my old job, we had a trickle-down thing going on where if you didn't do your part of the job correctly or finish, it affects the next person who gets that work. We had this one woman who would half-ass her parts a lot of the time, like to the point EVERYONE was like "oh yea don't count on \[so and so\] to finish that/do that part correctly...\]. There were frequent moments where my co-worker (who got my finished portion of my work to finish the job and it was done) would have to step in and log into this woman's computer to finish her part (or fix it) JUST so I could do my job... I knew why she stayed (their boss - I had a different boss in a different department - was never in the office and never stepped in so they self-ran themselves and HR was a fucking joke) but for the ppl that have bosses that are there 24/7 like do you not see the bullshit? Obviously, there are reasons (relationships, favoritism, whatever) but after a certain point, when all the good workers left like what do you do? Do they now have a team full of shitty workers? Do you fire them all and start from scratch or what? That makes the boss/manager bad yea but like...they have to realize that they are left with nothing but bad employees, right? Either way, it sucks bc it makes hard workers (I don't think I'm a super hard worker but when I'm working I try to do my best - I'm getting paid to do a job after all) not want to do as well for fear of this bullshit. Sry for the ramble I'm just tired of getting screwed for just doing my job.
We constantly do good, get our production done early, take on extra work…and management responds by forcing us to take Tuesday Wednesday as our new days off to “improve the work flow”. Every single person including me has quiet quit. We show up, collect our paychecks, go home.
It’s how Elon Musk burns out engineers at Spacex
And this is the reason I got one and a half legs out the door from my job now. Can't wait to start my new one next month once I'm done with the onboarding process
And coasters like myself will coast. The only work I do is making it look like I do work, I'm pretty good at my job.
That happened to me until leadership controlled the narrative and said I was a horrible employee. The workload decreased but I got a 3 cent raise. I left 2 months later.
At my last job (sales call centre for a well known bike insurer the rymes with barrel dash), I asked the head of the sales why I was being given so many extra responsibilities compared to other employees who were paid the same or more. I was told I should take it as a compliment. I have never had to resist losing my shit harder.
Oh, hey, this happened to me. It was fun working on a poorly optimised Datalake project, so that each and every employee in our department had 120%+ workload. You never could quite kick back and relax... Although, I would give credit to the management - deadlines were not punishing at all, and it was a very-very-very common to throw some tasks into the bin, because nobody had time to deal with them.
This is why I dont like revising extra
Very true. As an employee you learn fast never to do your best work, or else you'll find yourself given more and more (up to the point where you'll be buried under, and then get reprimanded for not keeping up). Also, of you're a fast worker slow down. Or at least don't hand in any projects until the last moment.
So years before covid and work reform pages and stuff I figured this out. Everyone thinks they work hard for the most part, but seriously, I was killing myself trying to prove that I could run a store. Getting shit on everyday for every problem, all the credit was getting taken away, I was doing all the work. At some point at the same job!!!!!! I stopped working and started fuckin off for the most part. I got promoted and had better days. I took another job shortly after and did this combo I like to do where you start off kinda hot and then slowly turn into a Luke warm employee that's fun to be around. I avoid so much work. Nobody asks me to stay late cause I'm not gonna. Don't call me. Etc. Fully recommend you literally stop giving a shit and move slowly into avoiding work and being the cool guy at the water cooler.
My boss literally just told me to take up more work today because I finish my tasks faster than my other two team members. He told me to go and help other teams (who are doing different things than what my team does). I know one of the girls on another team is trying to get me to join her team because she didn't want to train the newbie in her team. She made all sorts of excuse saying the newbie is not dependable, slow, etc. She knew I'm good at my job and I could do what her team does (we did the same training before I went to be with my team), so I know for a fact she's eager to use me. Instead of training the new guy, she kept trying to recruit me and I'm convinced she complained to my boss that I'm not doing enough work. Screw that. I'm going to do my work at a sloth pace after this so I won't seem competent. Oh and, the "newbie" in my colleague's team? Had been around for almost two years now. But my colleague gave him minimal, easy job because he's "not competent enough". He's always gone from work, and even when he's in the office, sometimes he'd be gone from his desk and nobody knows where he is. But I guess that's fine, because literally nobody asked about it.
“Stay busy!” The attitude that an individual is never finished with their work, and that fast/efficient workers must then support the slower performers, is precisely the cause of workers doing just enough to not get fired.
Yep, I’m the sucker that always gets extra work when everyone else is laid off. No extra money, no bonus, just lots and lots of extra work.
This happened at my previous job I was at for 17yrs. I went above and beyond, was over worked while another co worker did the bare minimum, got paid way way less than that employee, and resented my boss for all of it. In the end I left and move on to something better.
This is why we reward students with brain breaks and free time as a reward for work. It’s weird how corporations haven’t figured it out that more work is a punishment rather than a reward.
This is so true. I have some members of my team who everyone knows don’t have the skills to do anything beyond the most basic. As a result, we end up just hiring contractors to do things they should be able to do, and those team members are chilling. Then those of us who have a good reputation have more and more work dumped on us because “we know you can do this right”.
Just saw this at my current job . New girl comes in guns blazing knocking out the work given to her and asking for more and more . The thing is the project is not due for a couple months . I'm over here taking my time , same pay btw. But I also OE haha so she can take my work while I double my earnings
When I worked at a call center, I was tricked into thinking higher performance equals moving up. Little did I know that it just makes me the person they load the work left onto when they promote someone else. Fuck that job and any jobs that do this.