Is your workplace becoming more unbearable over time?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I won’t say yes or no… it really depends on when. For example, in many ways my first employer straight out of college in 1997 was one of the most progressive in terms of the way they treated workers that I’ve ever heard of- we had a VERY generous profit-sharing program (assuming we made a profit), a schedule where we worked 9 hours a day Mon-Thu, and got off at 11 every Friday, they let us wear shorts on Fridays in the summers, and jeans the rest of the week, honor-system sick time, etc…

Then my 2nd job was more conventional- but we got cost-of-living raises that weren’t linked to performance. What an amazing thing that was!

Third job was a consulting company; nothing really remarkable there except that it was very much a “get your job done, and we don’t give two shits what you do otherwise” type environment. So if we had a lot of work, we were staying late, but if things were slow, we were showing up at 9, taking 2 hour lunches and leaving at 3. No statutory vacation time either- we were expected to take it when we were slow.

Fourth (and current job) has varied wildly even within the same company. Started out as a privately owned, but mostly independent company- not a lot of cash for high salaries or raises, but a lot of other perks- essentially no dress code, extreme flexibility with hours and if you’re truly sick or someone’s caregiver, etc… We even had a variant of that 9 hours/4 days a week with every other Friday off for a while schedule. They were pretty generous with the free half-days and what-not around holidays too. But extreme resistance to working-from-home for some reason. Then we were bought by a HUGE company- working from home became acceptable, we got more in the way of raises, they poured a lot of money into quality-of-life type improvements, and generally made things awfully damned pleasant in many ways. Then we were bought by a much more… old school company a while back. They seem bent on making our workplace like something from the 1980s. Strict 8-5 workdays, no working from home, no early release the day before holidays, for example… July 3 of this year (not only was it a workday, but the asshole boss wouldn’t let anyone leave until 5), higher workloads, more oversight on internet usage, and a generally more oppressive environment than we’ve ever had in the past 9 years I’ve worked there. The ONLY thing the new company has done is institute more generous vacation time policies- I get quite a bit more than I would have under the other two regimes.

I constantly consider going somewhere else- I have the experience and education to do so, but I’m not quite convinced the grass is really greener. I hear way too many horror stories from former colleagues and incoming people to my company, and am not really interested in being a corporate ladder-climber, if only because that would require more hours and work, and I’m not interested in working more for any amount of pay.

22

Abso-damned-lutely. I work Maintenance in a manufacturing/production facility, and the demand is always “faster!” and “more, NOW!”

In spite of the fact that our product conveyor system is breaking down, as it was never designed or intended to handle the loads we’re now putting out; some MBA moron in the front office just decided, “Yeah, we can do that” without checking with our Plant Engineer/Maintenance Dept. as to whether or not our facility’s machinery/equipment actually could do it.
Our production equipment is also wearing out, partly due to Operator-level maintenance NOT getting done; Production Management has decided that the time that used to be allocated to Operator-level maintenance can be more profitably utilized making product, to the point that machinery is breaking down at an even faster rate.
And of course it’s all the fault of the Maintenance Dept., don’t you know, even though we don’t have enough people or time to do all the Operator-level stuff; we barely have the people and time to do Maintenance-level stuff!

23

My workplace became so unbearable, I was literally forced to leave. Add to that, they continue to pay me a percentage of my previous pay just to make certain I never return.

I call it, retirement.

24

Not unbearable, but definitely less pleasant. In short, same expectations, but greatly reduced support staff. Disheartening when you pass the point where you wonder whether TPTB even believe you can “do more with less.” And once you realize those in charge are flat out lying to you (and possibly themselves), and have no apparent interest in you or the product, it is hard to care much yourself.

So you just drop your expectations a little lower, accept lower quality as standard, and cash the paychecks. Standard existence as a government employee. Would be nice to have a clear explanation of expectations, an understandable rationale behind those, and resources sufficient to achieve them.

25

As a consultant, I switch jobs pretty frequently. There seems to be a split in the market right now, with high end jobs becoming better (more WFH, more flexibility, good tools and good usage thereof) and lower end jobs worse (don’t get me started). And those jobs are generally representative of the corporate culture of the end client, you’re unlikely to get a single department which happens to be different from every other group in the company.

26

Yep, it’s been a miserable year. Restructuring, new management, new software, mass confusion and exodus. Someone left a few months ago and her duties were simply reassigned to me. I’m drowning and ineffective, my supervisor is leaving soon anyway. Some days I work really hard. Others I don’t. When you’re bailing out the ocean with a spoon, what difference does it make?

27

Exactly my image. Hard to convince yourself to do anything above the average around you, when you could work twice as hard 24/7, with zero effect on the pending workload.

28

I don’t think it’s worse in recent years than when my career started, but more that I’ve become very, very good at spotting dysfunction early so now I have trouble staying with a company for more than a few years. This is my fourth year at the current gig and I’m job hunting. In my experience corporate jobs always have these issues that I can’t tolerate:
[ul]
[li]a shitty definition of quality work[/li][li]managers don’t recognize good work so they reward the wrong things*[/li][li]not replacing people who leave so that everyone remaining has twice or three times the work to do with no additional pay[/li][li]no promotions regardless of documented performance so the only way to advance your career is to leave[/li][li]no training so you have to apply for jobs identical to the one you’re already doing and end up never learning anything new[/li][/ul]

  • I’ve been on both sides of this, so it’s not a “Wah, nobody knows what I do” whine. There have been a few times when I’ve been publicly recognized and rewarded for doing a very tiny part of a project while the coworker who did the bulk of the work (or even better work) was ignored.

In this SDMB thread I discuss why I start out every job ambitious and excited and wanting to do a great job and end up just turning off my brain and showing up for the paycheck: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=801159

29

Maybe I’m lucky in that as a consultant I move from client to client and project to project. The better-worse measure is very dependent on the client culture, etc.

That said, my last client/project was really good, my current client/project is really not. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of choice or leeway. I go where they send me, and there is not a lot of work in my field at the moment, so I’m happy (in the abstract) to be working. So, Is my workplace becoming more unbearable over time? - Yeah, it is. Maybe the next one won’t be.

30

Not any more, because I’m retired but…

I worked in a call center. When I started it was owned 50% by a financial company and 50% by a regional bank. In 2006 the regional bank was taken over by a big bank. Suddenly, in 2007 the two owners couldn’t stand each other any more and split the company between them. Some of the assets and workers went to the financial company and some to the big bank; I was part of the latter group.

The big bank was slowly switching things over to the way they do things, but after 2008 this slowed down quite a bit. In January 2015 I took a look at the financials and decided I should put it off until after my birthday in March 2016; then I’d get a bump in the Social Security and have another year to sock things away in my 401k.

Then in February we got discovered that we were a cost center by the big bank’s bean counters. Up until then, the emphasis had been on customer service. While call time and number of calls taken in a day were certainly looked at, the supervisors immediately above us peons and the manager above them said we should do our customers right. If we spotted something that would cause trouble in the future, take the time to point it out, and if the customer had the time, fix it. One of the metrics on our performance was First Call Resolution and I was consistently highest in the center at 97%

I don’t know how many layers up the command came from – it was probably someone not even in the building – but the new regime decreed that the FCR was out the window and the main thrust would be shorter call times and more calls taken in a day. Naturally, the message came through loud and clear: Get on, get off, and take the next call. Before the change, our customers would spontaneously tell us how more pleasant it was to interact with us as a call center than some of the others they had to deal with. “You guys know your stuff, you’re friendly, and I don’t feel like a number” was a frequent refrain. After The Change, those comments stopped.

Before, I got good reviews and was always in the top half, sometimes the top quartile when the raises were handed out after the semi-annual review (the actual percentage suffered for a few years after 2008 but at least I was getting a bigger raise than most). My ratings were down and in the two reviews I had after The Change, my raise was in the bottom quartile. My sup would start to apologize but I stopped him. “It’s okay; I just don’t fit in with the new philosophy.”

The only thing that kept me sane was the number in the upper left hand corner of my whiteboard, the one where I’d erase the last digit and replace it with a lower one before walking out at the end of the day. Once a co-worker asked how long I had before I was done. “158 days, three hours and <glance at watch> 42 minutes.” “You’re not counting, are you?” he grinned. “Not one little bit.”

31

This part is annoying. We’re always way behind the times on that kind of stuff so it’s only starting to decline now after numerous attempts with no results anyone can point to. Sociology is pointless with engineers, they need stuff like Sheldon Cooper’s friendship algorithm.

32

I’ve found that consulting firms themselves can be pretty unbearable over time, depending on your manager, team, client, amount of travel and how busy you are (or aren’t) and seniority.

33

My workplace has been fine since the day I hired in, in 1985. It’s a great job and there isn’t much I’d considering switching for. People have left over the years, for a better job, but they almost always come back.

34

I’ve been here for over 20 years. Definitely better. We have fewer people in our department, but we’re able to handle more work. I’m part of support staff of a university research lab. When I first started, it was pretty awful. The scientists didn’t like or trust us. They had that idea in their heads that university admin employees for the most part were paid to keep a seat warm all day and say no. And I’ve worked with a few like that: if you don’t say the magic phrases, I’m going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about. I HATE those people. I worked with more than a few in the housing and food department. And they’d complain about “kids these days”. Honestly, if you don’t like 18 year old kids who are just experiencing their first tastes of freedom, a 3000 person dormitory is probably not the best place for you to work.

Anyway. I had a boss who was brought in to make our department shape up or ship out. Except that she actually understood the motivation part of it. So we got better and more efficient, but we started demanding a little respect, too. Eventually, the people who always found a way to say no to everything left and the new hires were told up front what to expect. Management is open to suggestions for improvement. Oh, and after a few years, they upgraded our positions to professional class (Requiring certification, etc.) and as a result, salaries have increased considerably.

I won’t get rich doing this, but I’m retirement eligible and not beating a path to the HR office. I’d just as soon work full time a few more years. Research is unpredictable and I like it that every day is not the same. Keeps my old ass from getting in a rut.

35

Unless, the manager IS the unbearable problem.

Worked for a lovely family owned company for years, a direct report to the owner/founder. His son-in-law, who’d never worked for anyone but a family member, and in fact had been fired by his wife’s mother, came to work for us. Rumor was that his wife, who worked for her father, demanded he be employed.

And he became my manager. Inconsistent, unable to make a decision, no idea of how his actions appeared to other (optics), prone to spitting temper tantrums that sometimes resulted in an apologetic email, completely disdainful of his employees ("a trained monkey could do what I’m asking)…in short, no one who had any business trying to manage.

I quit. I still have nightmares. I am still friends with some of our vendors who quit dealing with him when I left.

36

Indeed, my current gig is like that too. Except the shitty manager is actually a VP now, promoted at the beginning of this year from managing director. He’s the kind of arrogant leader who inspires his reports (which are our managers) to back-bite and spend time in CYA activities. This defensive behavior trickles down to me and my peers. He is a very poor communicator so you never know what he’s asking for and then he rips it apart when you show your work to him. It’s an open secret how terrible he is and that he’s the source of our dysfunctional division.

Not coincidentally, we’re trying to do some major cultural change right now, where HR put the onus on us bottom level workers (sorry, individual contributors) to identify the problems and propose solutions to the leadership. Not surprisingly, our VP refused to listen to our report and just condescendingly justified himself instead. A large part of the cultural change that the leadership wants is for us to become innovative. This asshat actually told us that we needed to adhere to the chain of command for everything… but still innovate.

I know a large chunk of our division is job hunting right now.

37

Over the 37 years of my adult life, I’ve found that your immediate manager has a much greater impact on your mental health and work enjoyment that anything else.

I’ve had shit senior management be ameliorated by good direct managers. But all the senior management support in the world won’t make up for some angry or ill mannered piece of shit supervisor. Frankly, I think it should be SOP to rotate out any managers who are getting burned out, excessively disciplining their own people or just have bad attitudes. They’re killing morale, driving people away and hurting the company.

Then of course, there’s the senior management JCWoman references, who can personally destroy entire divisions and lay waste to inside business knowledge but keep their jobs because they’re good golfing buddies with their own bosses.

38

I’m an adjunct for a small, private university. I teach algebra and physical science. I get paid $1100 for a 17 week course.

39

The truck repair industry changed a lot before I retired but I welcomed the changes. A lot more accountability made it harder for the coasters to keep coasting. People were actually expected to know what they were doing and able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. Any medium skilled mechanic could easily keep up with the times allotted for various jobs.