Technical flair and ability are seldom noticed and under-appreciated;
Blind loyalty and being a ‘good little boy’ and a ‘yes man’ to The Guy That Pays The Wages are over-appreciated;
Disagreeing with TGTPTW’s methods is bad. Being open and honest about it is worse;
Unpopular decisions happen in secret; (Such as mr blindlyloyal-ass-kissing-yes-man being promoted above mr honest-technical-flair-man)
TGTPTW has a pathological inability to see his own faults or accept that he could possibly do wrong; (even on those oft occasions when he quite catastrophically does wrong)
This one’s a little specific to my own company: Parent + 2 children [companies] set up: Child A. Child B. Child A makes the most money. Child B reaps the rewards. Child A gets child B’s hand-me-downs. TGTPTW mainly runs Child B. An incompetent spineless yes-man runs Child A. (guess which ‘child’ I work for)
Yes I know I know: Look for another Job! I’m not looking for advice here. I’m partly moaning, and partly opening the floor for others to moan about their own shitty place of work.
I should say that recently I’ve done some mental re-structuring* that enables me to be relatively happy at work most of time time. But sometimes things happen or come to light that make it difficult not to revert back to disgruntled-employee mode. Today is one such occasion. I reckon I’ll be fine again tomorrow.
[sub]*Accepting that things are generally shit, and that’s just life, and allowing myself to seeth is only harming one person - me…serenity now![/sub]
Our mantra at the office is, “I am not careless, but I care less.”
Most of the time, getting your panties in a bunch is futile and pointless. So if you just decide not to care about what you cannot control, work gets a lot better.
I’d say most places are that way. I worked with one GM in a hotel Barry, and he was a class A jerk. The thing was he would like to argue. He LOVED to fight. I actually had him say to me, “I’ve never seen any place where eveyone in the whole hotel will do anything to avoid a confrontation”
I found the best way, for me at least, to handle these things is, I speak my mind but in a nice way.
I tell them they are wrong, in a non accusatory way, then I ask them to allow me to explain why they are incorrect in their thinking. Then I listen to them when they say “Sorry, we’re still doing it my way.” Then I just accept it.
The thing is if you like your job 51% of the time, stay at it. 'Cause that’s pretty much all you can hope for. If something bugs me I ask myself “Can I live with this?” If I say no, I’ll quit. I’ve done it before and I’d do it again. If I don’t like it but “can live with it” I’ll stay.
I am happy to say that, while my current work situation is not 100% perfect for me, there is nothing even remotely approaching this behavior here. Same with most of my past jobs, although there have been a couple of exceptions.
So, not all workplaces are like that – there ARE places where the staff and managemetn acts like grownups most of the time.
Well, should you find alternative employment, PM me with details of your current role so I can apply for it. Right now, I need money, and if they’re paying, I’m working.
In all fairness we are only getting your side of working in a company and we really don’t know what the company does.
In my experience there is usually something about every company that people don’t like. There are always people who get promoted who we think don’t deserve their positions. There are always bosses or employees we think are idiots or jerks. People’s assessment of their skills and contributions are often not in line with the company’s assessment. There is the way things should be and then there is the way things are.
The only advice I can give is just do what you are told as best you can, treat others with respect and demand to be treated with the respect you deserve.
My boss has never met a decision she couldn’t make in about one minute, despite the fact that she’s apparently never even taken a rigorous technical class, much less taught one. The reasons for decisions are clearly backfilling and post-hoc justifications. She then forgets to follow through on policies she’s been making a huge deal of (which can be a very good thing). She’s also not worth arguing with, because there are no reliable reports of her admitting anything because of reasoned argument, or apologizing. I could go on, but the really rich moment recently was issuing slips that allowed teachers to anonymously tell her how she could help. She’s shown such little grasp of the practicalities of the job that I don’t care to get her help.
