I guess my point is with your bad attitude, I wouldn’t consider you a good employee. I’d rather have 10 that try their best than one that bitches about having more ability and is bitter about having to use it.
My good employees are treated very well. Since all I have are good employees, everyone is treated well. They must like it here because the joke is I have more lifers than any place my employees have ever seen. My company started in 1996. The average employee has worked for me for over 8 years. ( If someone is good, I make sure I do what it takes to keep them. Although my definition of “good” conflicts with yours a bit. )
I absolutely agree with this. If you boss doesn’t have enough power to give you a promotion, he could at least put you in for a bonus or an extra day off or whatever it is in his power to do.
Although maybe he sees that you are doing the work begrudgingly and doesn’t feel it merits a reward of any kind.
It doesn’t sound like Biggirl’s co-workers are trying their best. though. If they were, you’d expect them to improve over time, rather than being content to let their assignments be foisted off on her.
And, really, you’d rather have 10 good-natured incompetents in place of 1 very efficient, but more prickly employee? I wouldn’t want to keep the incompetents on my payroll.
I don’t know… because the job is making you miserable and they don’t appear likely to do anything to rectify it?
That’s really the crux of it: employers everywhere learn to identify those who’ll take on the responsibilities and the others who are barely-get-by slackers. Good employers will reward the former and punish (or get rid of) the latter, but a fair number of companies just find it easier to keep everyone around and figure that everything averages out.
If you’re stuck in one of those jobs, you’ve pled your case and nothing changes, you can either move on to a company that respects and rewards your initiative, or you can stagnate in your misery and post periodic “I hate my job!” rants on a message board.
A friend of mine has been in this situation for years and years; he works hard, takes late shifts nobody else wants (then inevitably comes in during the day and on off days to handle extra work nobody else volunteers for), complains about the slacker attitudes of his co-workers, including a few who are so untrained/incompetent that their fuckups literally cause extra work for others to go back and fix their errors, and yet the company allows the slackers and bungling saboteurs to continue working there with nary a reprimand. Meanwhile my “go-to” friend occasionally gets an “atta boy,” a piddling raise every blue moon, and he stews year after year in his frustration, as though one day some Workplace Messiah is going to come along and transform the entire corporate culture and finally grant him the recognition and compensation he deserves.
It’s one thing to go the extra mile when there’s a real chance you’ll gain from it eventually, but in a lot of jobs that frankly just never happens: they’ve nothing to lose by exploiting the self-motivated, particularly those who make it plain (as you have here, literally) that you’ve no intention to quit anyway.
You actually sound like a good manager. A manager who both challenges AND rewards always seems to have a good crew. People generally like taking on new challenges.
I will say, people who do extra work for a long time with no rewards DO end up doing it begrudgingly, why shouldn’t they. The reward of a job well done doesn’t pay anyone’s bills, other than the companies.
This is me. My work quality is excellent. My work quantity is excellent. I’ve been here eight years, and management regards me as the most reliable and productive contributor in my group.
Nevertheless, were I to apply myself at maximum capacity*, my output would probably increase by a full third, if not more. But I would burn out in short order and need to leave.
In other words, I am applying myself 100% — for long term stability.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s win/win, for me and for my employer.
Why should I suffer because other people in my group do put forth total effort and barely get done half of what I’m able to accomplish at two-thirds full steam?
*For example, not reading the SDMB…
See I think that is the key–find the pace that works best for you and do that. If I go too slow I am not very productive–but if I go at full speed, I would burn myself out very quickly. If the average output is 6 widgets, and if I go full speed I could do 12 widgets, then I likely would find the pace where I am highly productive (say 8-9 widgets) and do that. 6 widgets I would be bored out of my mind and likely make mistakes (think driving 10 miles an hour on the freeway—I start to drift and fall asleep!). 12 widgets I would be totally stressed and feeling overworked and underappreciated. 8-9 widgets I am good
At that pace I would do good work, not feel I am being punished–but then again in any office I have been in if you do good work and are the go-to guy you get rewarded. I do that with my staff–reward my go-to folks.
If you stay at an office where your extra time and effort aren’t appreciated—you either have a martyr complex or you get something out of it. Maybe it feeds your ego that you are doing the work of 2-3 people, who knows. But clearly if you continue to do work you aren’t being compensated for you must get something out of it. It is the only logical explanation.
If you stop doing the extra work they will stop giving it to you. Path of least resistance and all that. Part and parcel of being a good employee is also learning to manage–that includes managing upwards as well as downwards and includes managing expectations.
I think there is a lot of assumption that Managers know what the hell they are doing and actively work to make their team/unit/department work the best and most efficiently possible.
But I have seen far too many managers, like my current Director, who are far too busy playing higher level political games and doing ‘make work’ that they do not have time (because they do not WANT to have time) for the “lower level” (read: petty, beneath them) functions of actually managing their people and dealing with personnel issues. My current Director and Assistant Director have ZERO skills in personnel management and do not seem to believe that such functions are necessary. They are actively hostile any time issues are brought to them, by anyone in the department. (It’s like they think that if they slap people down hard enough, people will go away and work things out on their own. Yet we do not have the power to do that, and their attitude only destroys people’s respect for them. Seriously - which is worse? An employee with a bad attitude toward their bosses, or a manager with a hostile attitude toward their subordinates?)
Obviously they’re going to get seriously burned at some point, and the signs have already manifested themselves, but they’re oblivious in their arrogance.
Well, that’s an absolutely stupid policy. But just because a policy exists doesn’t mean that you can’t ask for a raise. You apparently have a policy that you don’t do other people’s work, but that doesn’t stop your managers from violating it.
It sounds like you have an excellent case that you deserve better compensation. I wouldn’t let company policy prevent you from asking for something that you deserve. The squeaky wheel gets the grease! So get in your manager’s office and don’t let up till you get some more grease! Then ask yourself: “What am I going to do with all this grease?”
It sounds like if **Biggirl ** did work for you, she would see that extra work and excellent work was rewarded and would not have an attitude. You have stated you do what you can to keep good workers. Biggirl’s place does not have this philosophy and apparently she is getting sick of it.
The place I described earlier, when I started, I had no kids, was happy enough do put in the extra hours and worked for an extremely straight forward boss that appreciated my work and effort and did what he could to reward it. Then the company got shuffled, I ended up reporting to two bosses and no longer had a buffer from any manager or VP in the company. I never had clear priorities any more and the work kept piling higher. After a year of this I went from loving my job to despairing of it.
If you came into the company in the first 2 years, you would have thought I was a great employee. If you ran into me the final year I was there, you would have thought I bitched a lot. I was burning out by then.
I hate to break it to you, but there are actually 3 options:
Resolve it
Fire you
Continue giving you extra work, which you handle competently and quickly, and let you complain a few times a year, while doing nothing to change the situation.
Without your willingness to leave your boss doesn’t have to do shit to change the situation, you’ll still be his go-to guy as long as he wants you to be. Unless you can back up a desire to be a “senior” claims administrator who handles the tough jobs for more pay, with an exit plan, you’re not giving them any reason to pay you more.
In BG’s defense, I think she overlooked the part where you mentioned how well you treat your go-to people. (Sorry if it sounds a little snarky put that way, and I could be wrong, but that’s my guess.)
I don’t think Biggirl has a bad attitude; I think she has exactly the attitude that her company has cultivated in her.
I have an intense dislike of the corporate mentality, cream-skimming management and rampant, thoughtless capitalism, but this thread is bumming even me out. Do the managers of the world know how absolutely bleak their employees feel about employment? Do they care further than how it affects their bonuses?
It’s like I said. The bosses I have now are some of the worst I have ever had. I’ve looked back and found that those “worst bosses” had in common was their inability to deal with people. Sometimes it was blinding cluelessness, sometimes pure asshattery, sometimes (like my current bosses) it’s because they somehow think that they are above such petty issues.
(Well, that and my current bosses are retired female cops. I think that they had to stomp around with sticks up their asses and a surly attitude just to earn their male counterpart’s respect in the old days when there were not a lot of female officers, and that they just do not get that this isn’t professional in a non-police environment.)
The best managers I have had realized that a good chunk of their job was to help their subordinates do their jobs, most often by simply getting the hell out of the way, but sometimes by tackling the problems that prevent their people from getting things done - whether that be training, discipline, morale, conflicting goals, people in different departments, the managers own bosses or problems between the employees themselves.
Hear, hear! That’s why I love my first and current boss. She’s always willing to help me out, but knows when to just let me do the work on my own. She’s also always willing to answer a question and never makes me feel stupid for asking about anything. She always tells me that we’re there to help each other and we should feel comfortable enough to ask for help for anything.
Since she’s so awesome and makes me feel like a good employee, I want to give more and put more effort into my work. Not only that, I actually do it with a genuine smile because oh my god, I work with some fabulous people!
I lucked out with this being my first job and I hope to hell that karma doesn’t bite me in the ass later on for having it so good now.
And to answer the OP, I think that if you’re not receiving the compensation that you richly deserve, then why not leave? Sure it sucks that you have to be the one to leave, but why let it eat at you inside and make you all bitter in the end? No one else is having the problem except you so there’s only one person who needs to fix it somehow (you or your boss).
The situation described by the OP isn’t something I would consider punishment - so long as there was recognition (new job description, pay increase, whatever). That attitude has gotten me two promotions so far, in different companies.
But I’ve had jobs where I was fast, efficient, got to be as much as three months ahead of the project calendar - and the manager still made me go in every day for twelve hours, plus forbade me from doing things which less-efficient people were allowed to do, including others that by law he couldn’t forbid (“no studying while at work!” Spain’s basic Labor Law says people can study or read at work so long as it doesn’t take priority over, you know, working). In that one and other jobs, I’ve had managers who mistrusted me because they didn’t understand the work I did or how I did some parts of it (if you don’t know Vlookup let me teach it to you, it doesn’t take eight years of college). Now* that* I do view as punishment.
I’m temping right now at a company that is desperately busy and short-handed, and I think they would love for me to sign on as a permanent employee. I won’t do it, though, because of the manager of the accounting department and her boss, the controller. They both snap at their staff frequently, and when explaining things to new staff, take a demeaning tone with the new employee who can’t possibly be expected to know things.
In my case, I’m doing what I consider to be a very good job for a temp who was brought in for a project, with virtually no training on their far more complicated than usual systems (I’m doing forensic accounting, looking into old invoices and finding out why they haven’t been paid and doing what it takes to get them paid), and the only feedback I’ve had has been subtle criticism of how long it’s taking me and that I’m not doing the job good enough.
I understand that these ladies are extremely busy and stressed, but as management, they have to find a way to not infect their staff with their stress. It’s part of why they get paid more than a lower level employee. They’re supposed to be a buffer between their employees and other people getting on their case, not a conduit.
