I am not stupid. I am fast and efficient. I hate being wrong and I like to do things right. Things end up on my desk that are not ‘my’ things. Not my case, not my responsibility, not in my job description and, most annoyingly, not easy. Yesterday I told my manager that he was taking advantage of me. He answered:
“There are only a few people here that I would trust with these things. I’ve got my go-to guys and you’re one of them.”
When I complained to my husband (complain, whine-- what’s the diff?) he told me that’s what managers do (he’s a manager)-- assign work to those who will do it best.
Do you find this to be true at your place of work? Do employees get punished while the slow and dumb get to skate?
Food service and retail are both based on the credo “The faster you do things the more you can do”. If you’re the type that can do things both fast and correctly, the more work you’ll be assigned because you’ve just demonstrated that you can do it.
It’s useless to pull the wool over management’s eyes once they get wind of your performance. You will automatically be the “go to” girl or guy whether you like it or not.
I gave up the fight a long time ago. Now that I’m management, it’s now crystal clear to me why I’d want to give additional assignments to those who are both fast and correct: If you want something done, ask a busy person.
Personally I enjoy being tasked with things outside my normal scope. And besides, what are they paying you for? If you don’t want to be flexible and take on challenges I wouldn’t want you working for me.
Do these extra things cause you to stay late at work? If it’s just part of your regular workday, what’s the problem? What is so unpleasant about these tasks? It’s actually to your benefit, the next time you apply for a new job (or are up for a promotion), to be able to say that your last boss could trust you to do things that were not your case, not your responsibility, not in your job description, and not easy.
From what you’ve said in your OP, I don’t understand what you mean by “punishment.”
Unfortunately, Rewards are totally unrelated to this concept.
*“So wait. I get work dumped all over my head, I’m expected to work insane hours, yelled at if I don’t get things done…But your drinking buddy over there got a promotion over my head and a big fat raise for showing up 5 hours a day, socializing the whole time and organising that party where you got laid?”
“Um, yeah. But I swear he deserved it.”*
Last night I channel skated past a movie based on an Ayn Rand book just long enough to see a scene about a man who decried geniuses because they can’t be trusted and the only useful virtues are those that can be commonly shared. That mentality seems to describe my current work environment, which quite ironically, is a UNIVERSITY. Stick your head up and try to get something accomplished and you’ll find yourself being beaten down by an angry mob of the incompetent and mediocre.
Hooo boy, perhaps you can convey that to my boss! Maybe he’ll fire me and get someone else to do all this extra work.
They are paying me to do MY job and not my co-worker’s jobs. Until and unless my bosses start giving me a portion of my slower, dumber co-worker’s salary, than I’m being taken advantage of.
I disagree. They are the ones paying your salary, therefore you’re not being taken advantage of unless you are in fact working lots of extra hours for no pay.
I have gladly taken on challenges and extra hours with no pay to help my company achieve results. If it became part of my every day expectations (long hours - no pay) I’d have a problem. But surely you want to help your place of business achieve results, right? 'Cause if not, you’re not working for the right place.
Again-- not my job. Not in my job description. I process claims on MY cases. I am not supposed to process the ‘hard’ claims on other people’s cases. I am not supposed to be doing receipts and deliveries and yet I do. I am not supposed to be doing my co-worker’s out of balance reports-yet I am.
I dunno, am I speaking in some strange tongue here? I and about 3 others here are given other people’s work to do. We have to do EXTRA work while the slow, dumb ones get to not do their own jobs. It probably wouldn’t irk me so much if there were such a thing as merit raises and bonuses here. Managment is taking advantage of us.
My complaint these days - and I am in a similar situation - is I am being asked/expeted to deal with confidential HR shit because HR can’t get their shit together. I don’t like this, I’m afraid we’re all going to get in trouble one day, and it’s just not right. There’s plenty of things they dump on me that aren’t part of my job but I can suck it up for those.
But it does piss me off when stuff falls on my plate because my boss won’t do them. He makes three times my salary! Let the fucknut do his own work!
Where doesn’t this happen, I wonder? SOP everywhere I’ve ever worked. My favorite was the place where I gradually picked up more than a third more of the workload than most of my coworkers, still finished in no more than 45 hours a week, and had my boss tell me that I had to take more because the “perception” was that I was not working as hard as most of the rest of the team. The same boss killed my chance for a long-deserved promotion because the “perception” was that the person they gave it to had a better degree than I did (oh, I had trained the other person and written the documentation on the job, too).
After I left that job, the IRS came in and reclassified it as an hourly position so we all got back pay for overtime. Upshot is - I did more work and got paid a lot less in the end. Screwed even after leaving the company.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. It is the manager who decides that the go-to people should do Mr. Mathematically Dyslexic’s out of balance report.
To the managers and bosses: Is it really that much easier to shift work to the few than to hire, train, address the weaknesses and productivity problems of the rest? Or do you really think like Leaffan– to hell with the good workers who complain? Surely it becomes impossible to keep the good workers, no?
Sing it, brother! I like new challenges at work. But I’d like it even more if my efforts were reflected in my salary and position. My university does not give merit raises, despite claiming to do so during the hiring process. Joe Go-Getter receives exactly the same 3% raise as Mary I’ve-Done-My-Job-The-Same-Damn-Incompetent-Way-For-30-Years. (On the other hand, I know they’ll never fire me.)
This was standard at my last job (a TV job), where everyone was working on a particular pool of work per day - I’d find myself getting stuck with the stuff that others “couldn’t finish” because I had already finished my share of the daily work. This came to a head on Christmas eve, when I had already finished not only that day’s stuff but the NEXT day’s stuff with 30 mins left to go on the clock - and my boss was scrambling looking for MORE work for me to do intead of just, you know, LETTING ME GO HOME (it being Christmas eve and all!).
That’s when I learned to drag ass and be as slow and incompetent as my co-workers.
It’s funny because all of the claim administrators here think we should be getting merit raises (we all get the same raise every year). I’m sure, however, that if that happened and the ‘go-to guys’ got bigger raises there would be a revolt.
I was a part-time employee at a coffee chain for about four years.
For about three of those years I was doing the day-to-day duties of a manager, because the stores I was in did not have (or could not keep) a manager.
I was supervising shifts, opening and closing the store (including coming in at 3 am when the cops called to tell me someone had broken the lock on the door), supervising cash-outs, doing deposits, holding keys, managing inventory, receiving deliveries, training new employees (including managers), and probably more stuff that I’ve blocked out. Once I covered four people’s shifts on my own because three of them called in “sick” (the fourth being me) and the manager wasn’t to be found.
This was worth substantially more than $6.85 an hour (with no guarantee of hours, job security, or training or advancement opportunities, let alone recognition).
This crap happens all the time, and it’s wrong. If you want me to take on a job that isn’t the one I was hired for, then pay me for it. Otherwise it is pure exploitation.