Have you ever had a job experience where people were told they were working too hard?
Maybe the others didnt want to look bad? Maybe they wanted to stretch the work out? Maybe bosses would even fire people if they found the work could be done with fewer?
I’ve felt that way at my job and I think its mostly to stretch a job out so we get overtime.
All the time, when I was younger and more energetic it aggravated me when I was told to slow down. I can now see the logic that a 40 year old should not be expected to carry the pace of a 20 year old testing his limits.
Running a truck shop I found some of the workers finishing too fast were taking short cuts that were not permissable. Using impacts where they should have been using torque wrenches. Lots of ways for mecanics to speed things up that may only slightly compromise a job, but the risk factor goes up with certain types of habits.About five years ago we sacked a grad who just would not go home from work. He stayed nights and weekends.
I get it all the time. I work retail and am very fast at my job, beating productivity quotas by 50% on average, often better.
Coworkers complain when they’re taken to task for lack of productivity, that they only look bad because of me. They ask me to slow down, to quit walking or moving fast, etc. It’s kind of annoying, because if anything, my speed is based on having worked out efficiencies and knowing how to use the resources the company gives me, not simply moving fast. I know in many (most?) cases, it’s to milk their time on the clock. Work one department in eight hours then going home vs. finishing beforehand and being sent to other departments to do more work.
Managers keep pushing me to go into management. I can’t imagine it, because then I’d be held responsible for the lack of productivity of associates who won’t do their work efficiently. At the same time, I’m rather tired of being the associate who has to bail out other departments after finishing mine. Last week, I had 12 hours of freight in pharmacy and 4 hours in cosmetics in one shift, finished in 5 hours, then bailed out the HBA, toys, sporting goods, hardware, and furniture stockers. According to the company’s standards, I shouldn’t have been able to even completely finish the pharmacy assignment.
I’ve run into this very thing time and again in my retail career. It doesn’t matter what kind of retail, but this very theory blares loud in clear where associates are expected to do a lot of “heavy lifting”, so to speak. I’ve described it as being a line cook – you’re not being paid to think, you’re being paid to JUST DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. I’ve worked for companies where excessive complaining and/or noncompliance was a reason for dismissal. Those who were dismissed always lost if they filed for unemployment because the company would maintain that the employee “failed to fulfill his/her job performance on a daily basis”.
I’m over 50 years old and I, on average, produce twice as much, if not more than my 20-something coworkers. My manager calls me a robot and thinks it’s funny that I’m driven like that.
My 20-something coworkers explain it to me like this: They refuse to kill themselves the way we’ve killed ourselves. They know of my permanent physical ailments brought on because of my job. They know the sacrifices I’ve had to make, what I’ve given up. I may be the senior person and have all the perks, so to speak, now, but to them what I’ve had to go through to reach this isn’t worth it.
It’s a generational divide, basically. This generation coming up wants balance. They’ve watched their parents (aka people my age) lose their jobs, their pensions, their homes, everything in one fell swoop, so the message they’ve taken away is, “Why should I bust my butt for a company that could let me go at any time?” In other words, loyalty doesn’t mean diddly to them. They have no intention of being lifers, so why push themselves? My manager sees his job as simply a JOB, not a career. He’s not going to kill himself working 12-hour days. If he can get away making the numbers he’s expected to make with the least amount of labor…so be it.
I’ve been in management off and on over the years. I’ve always stepped down in part because I can’t bring in a flamethrower in order to light fires under their arses 
I was this employee when I was younger. Yeah, there were plenty of times when it became expected of me to automatically do this and received no thanks for it. Other times I’ve been rewarded, sometimes with a quite handsome bonus or raise.
I could write a book about all this :shakes head:
Yup - when I first joined my current workplace, I had people tell me to slow down, not to be so enthusiastic or proactive because it would make everyone look bad.
I ignored it (actually I said come along with me or be left behind). We’re now a much more enthusiastic, proactive organisation, and I played a part in making that happen (and now I’m leaving to take a step up that I would never have been able to take if I had slowed down).
I think the thing that bugs me is that, if my coworkers did work efficiently, none of us would be pushing ourselves hard. None of us would be having to go stock another department. We had time to socialize, make new friends, etc.
It’s not totally generational at my store. We’re about half and half older/younger (half under 30, half over, up to mid 60s), and virtually none of them make the effort. Out of about 50 regular workers on my shift, management relies on five of us to get things done; our ages are ~ 18, 22, 24, 25, and I’m the outlier at 40.
In some cases more work doesn’t mean more productivity. Ive worked on teams where people were killing themselves to make ever more schedules and templates and reports, but either didn’t have enough information to these products to be valuable or just didn’t have the capacity to make then useful. This stuff doesn’t help the project, and slows down the real work when people try to each through it.
Yes. My department has been under a huge amount of stress over the past year, and a couple of people consistently work 12-hour days, every day, even when we aren’t on a deadline
They are both great employees and my manager is worried that they will burn out. So he’s told them “no nights and weekends” and said that if a deadline isn’t do-able in normal work hours (we work 40-50 hours a week) then the team needs to work together to help, or to change the deadline.
I have that attitude myself. After developing chronic migraine, being harassed while on short term disability trying to get a handle on a treatment plan, being demoted, and finally fired because I wasn’t “better” and needed long-term-disability to keep working on the right combination of medications, I said fuck it. I’d been with the company for 15 years, had been consistently rated an excellent employee, had saved them millions of dollars, and when I got sick, they screwed me over and denied a “benefit” that’s part of the “total compensation package”.
I’ve seen similiar things happen to my friends.
Companies have no loyalty to their employees. I don’t have loyalty to employers. When they killed pensions and put in 401(k)s that aren’t half as stable, that was a huge sign that they didn’t give a damn about their employees.
For reference, I’m solidly Generation-X. I don’t mind working late on a project, but not on a regular basis. And unless the fucking building has burned down, do not call me at night or on the weekend.
A lot of people don’t see the “efficiency” part of it. They tend not to be team players in the sense of “Why should I bust my butt if X and Y aren’t busting theirs?” It’s highly contagious.
It’s the other way around where I am. The outlier is a senior in college and only works weekends, though.
Sometimes the advice to slow down is an important reminder that work can be more like a marathon than a sprint. Yes, you may be able to keep up that pace for a short time, but you will wear out. A slower, consistent, productive pace–interspersed with sprints when necessary–may be better for you and your employer. So I wouldn’t dismiss the advice to slow down without giving some thought to the experience of others.
I am going to use this thread for getting something off my chest. I worked for a large coffee company years ago. I had managed the truck shop for the past 10 years and the owner of the company asked if I would be willing to go to work in the plant as they were having trouble on the production line. This particular line packaged the little 1 1/2 oz pouch packed coffees in the mylar bags. They had 2 full shifts going plus saturdays and were still running behind of production. The entire line was a disaster area, filthy, unroganized, and machines were broke down as much as they were running.
Within 2 months I had updated all the machines t the oint that we were now working 1 forty hour shift and more than keeping up with production. Within 4 months I had the entire area reorganized. All the repair manuals for parts etc had been updated. Maintenance procedures written. Stock levels for replacement parts established, quality control was at a higher standard than they thought possible. Waste product went from an entire dept dedicated to reprocesing to virtually nothing was handled durring the course of the shift. It became a model dept.
We went from 22 employees to 8 employees. My reward, I was fired after being accused of theft, and then collaboration to try and get the girls to strike, I was called on the carpet for taking too many smoke breaks. I used to step outside when doing paperwork or reading up on things and have a smoke. Bottom line my boss was jealous and convinced I was after his job. I was after his job but perfectly content to wait another ten years until he retired. I tried to include him in the upgrades every chance I got but he was so loaded with contempt for me it became impossible to even be in the same room with him.
I was real bitter after this one and it took some time to get over it.
Oh sure, very common. As a kid in high school and college working summer jobs delivering sheetrock and building supplies, the older, permanent employees would tell me to slow down so we could draw out a job for an entire day rather than go back to the yard and be given another load to take out. Can recall us sitting in the truck somewhere hidden, waiting until it was “safe” to go back, usually after about 3-4 pm. If you took out a big load later in the day you might not finish until sometime in the evening. Sure, you’d get paid for it, but it was more important to get home at a decent hour, especially for the guys who had families.
I’ve known quite a few coworkers over the years who run into something exactly like this. I’ve had quite a few former coworkers who ended up quitting for the same exact reason too. I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve always been treated decently whenever I’ve had to go on short-term disability. I wish I could say the same for anybody who’s ever been on it.
I’ve never heard somebody saying that about a 401K. Most people I know are thankful they have one.
I used to the the “on call” person up until a few months ago. It was taken away from me and my coworkers were told they all had to pitch in before I burnt to a crisp. It’s very strange no longer being that person because I’d been doing it so long I just accepted it as part of the job.
Henry Ford said he hired the laziest people he could find, because they were inspired to find more efficient ways to do things.
I tell people at my workplaces to slow down all the time. Because they seem stressed out, overwhelmed, and complain all the time. Yet they bring it on themselves. I’m fucking tired of their whining.
One co-worker at pizza is particularly stricken. He won’t stop moving, even during staff meetings, he has to be folding boxes, cleaning drains, prepping food, doing the dishes that are assigned to someone else… His entire self-identity is tied to his work ethic. But he also makes busywork for himself that interferes with the running of the store, he isn’t available (because he hides in the back) when the phone rings or someone else needs help, and he’s a burden to the store because he’s so hard to manage. But everyone says, he works so hard, he’s amazing! Yet he does all the work so no one else CAN do it, and then looks down on them for being lazy.
He doesn’t work appropriately. Argh. There’s a limited amount of work to go around. Share. I find that people who work themselves to death are horrible delegators who have no trust in their fellow man. Unhealthy.
Tying your self-worth to work is toxic and dangerous and stressful. Chill out. I used to feel like I would get fired if my work wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t doing great all the time. That was a horrible way to feel, and ultimately unnecessary.
Stop and smell the roses, people.
Diminishing expectations.
401ks are a complete scam and make money for the 401k administrator, not the employee. Forbes, hardly a liberal rag, even says so.
I’ve had my 401ks bottom out two or three times. Why would any sane person want their retirement based on “the market”, which isn’t at all stable?
I have a pension with my first employer, so a guaranteed $1.5 K or so per month. I’m thankful I have that.
In your mind, what “loyalty” is expected or implied from an employer/employee relationship? Why should they push themselves so some vice president in corporate’s stock can go up a quarter of a point? Companies of all sizes have repeatedly sent a strong message to their employees that “you are just a resource to be utilized at our discretion”.
I don’t know that “loyalty” is even a desirable trait in business. To me, it implies entering into an unbalanced deal due to some misguided emotional attachment. Someone should work a 70 hour week for below market wages at some company just because they’ve been working there?
You should bust your ass working for a company because that is what they are paying you to do. But it’s not unreasonable to expect employees to stay if they can get a better deal somewhere else.
My problem is that there are two categories of things on my plate (as a teacher)–the things I have to do, and the things I want to do, because I think they are useful, or fun, or will pay off in the future, or because they are really, really needed by students. If I just did the things I absolutely have to do, I would have a solidly busy job–but I’d hate my life and wouldn’t ever want to go to work. I’d also hate myself because I would literally have to be turning kids away for things they need that I could help with. I would be doing a job poorly that I was able and willing to do well, and I just can’t do that.
On the other hand, if I focused only on the things that I find worth doing, I wouldn’t have a job. This is 75% bullshit paperwork compliance type stuff.
So I am doing both, and doing both is wearing me out. Because the bullshit compliance stuff is non-negotiable, I am pressured to let up on the innovating/creating/inspiring type axis, and it’s not fun, because any response that comes out sounds smug or self-righteous, but I don’t really feel that way. I just really like doing this job well. It’s a joy. An exhausting joy, but a joy nonetheless.