It’s quite funny that you seem to think nobody notices hard work in a professional environment. People are always keeping score, and you don’t know squat about the working world if you don’t know that much.
Bolding mine.
That’s what gets me about this whole thing. It’s not that you snapped an insult, per se, but that you had apparently gotten so frustrated with Unit A that you felt the need to do that.
It’s pretty clear from your OP that you’ve been aware for some time that “Unit A bullies Unit B” and that Unit A “are shits” when you’re not around. This is precisely the sort of thing that bosses are supposed to deal with before it becomes a problem from everyone and before snapping a lame quip about an employee’s mother.
While i don’t think your insult is the end of the world, and it might have sent a much-needed message to Unit A, the fact that you got frustrated enough to say it means that you, as the boss, haven’t managed to get your shit under control properly in the first place.
I’m keeping score. I’m proud of my work, and making sure it gets done well and on time is a source of pride for me independent of whether anyone notices (although, frankly, everyone notices).
Well, I guess that depends. If you never, and I mean never:
- Get stuck in traffic and arrive fifteen minutes late;
- Spend twenty minutes goofing around on the Internet before getting work;
- Left ten minutes early to pick up your [kids/dry cleaning/whatever];
- Taken a personal call on company time;
- Gone to lunch and taken 45 minutes instead of the proscribed 30; or
- Chatted with a co-worker on company time…
Then, OK, sure, your position is consistent. The problem is, most of us don’t want that kind of work environment and most of us don’t want to work with people who do. My job is flexible in both directions. No one cares that I am taking the ten minutes required to type this post. Today I’ll leave at 3:30, because my wife has a meeting after school and I have to pick up my daughter. No one cares. In return, if I’m working on a project that needs completion, I’ll skip lunch or stay late - sometimes very late. In this way, my superiors, my direct reports, and my colleagues know that I will be available to them when it counts, even if it falls outside the terms of my formal contractual obligation. And I know the same of them.
The guy/gal who insists on following the contract to the letter is within his/her rights, of course (so long as, again [s]he isn’t taking advantage of the company’s flexibility while refusing to have any him/herself). But (s)he is not someone I want to work with, because we work with strict and unchangable due dates and if I need someone to get me something and it hits 5:00 and they are out the door, they are complicating my job. Which, again, isn’t their problem in any ethical or legal sense. But it’s similarly not my problem if they are viewed as a lousy or undependable team member.
Ever done it? -I don’t ask that sarcastically or dismissively; in fact, you sound like you have some experience with this situation.
If so, you know it’s one of the more difficult things for a new “boss” to resolve when stepping into an existing working dynamic. And you really have to be sure you know enough about the situation, including the histories and relevant back stories, or any corrective actions may bite you in the ass.
I agree that the quip shows a level of frustration that indicates action is overdue, but I disagree that it necessarily shows a lack of proper workforce control. madmonk probably doesn’t have the luxury of much touchy-feely group consensus work-throughs of the problem, but an overly authoritative smackdown seems ripe for blowback.
Great. So you have a discrete task, and if you do it well, that success. It sounds like additional effort on your part would not substantively increase the margin of safety – am I on the right track?
Compare that to the work of an aid worker. Increased level of effort has a direct relationship on increasing returns. To put it simply, if you work 8 hours a day, or 12 hours a day, you’d still be getting the same output of success. But if an aid worker works 8 hours a day, they may be helping 200 people; but if an aid worker worked balls to the wall during his voluntary deployment to a war zone, he might be able to help 250 or 300 people. Can you see how that might make a difference?
So you think workers in war zones should be limited to 40 hour work weeks? Does that apply to soldiers, too? You know, because we don’t want them to get too stressed. If there’s some additional project to help ameliorate the effects of war on innocent civilians, well, maybe we shouldn’t do that, because it might take some aid workers away from watching movies in the evening, maybe playing a little Xbox 360. Just because war is hell and there are people who have been bombed out of their houses, living in misery, and struggling to get food to eat doesn’t mean that we have to like, totally bum out some American aid worker’s lives, right?
How many times have you worked in a war zone? Do you honestly see no difference between our careers sitting in front of computers as compared to how someone should approach a one-year temporary position of trying to help innocent people deal with the ravages of a fucking war?
I meant it more in the cosmic sense - when you get through life and realize you busted your ass the whole way through and wore yourself out doing it; missing a lot of opportunity to enjoy it along the way.
I don’t think everyone here gets you, Turnip. 
As one of those older workers (44), I tend to see Unit A’s side, too - burned-out workers aren’t more effective. Taking your lunch hour and working a regular day means you are more effective while you’re working, and can keep up the pace much longer. That said, I do my job very well and efficiently (with no backtalk) while still taking the breaks I need to keep going. You’re the only one who can tell if this is what’s going on with Unit A, MadMonk.
[hijack]
First, #4 and #6 are just stupid. Of course my co-workers and I talk as we work. And yes, sometimes I take a personal call when working (a call that takes longer than 90 seconds is gauche, tho). Those things aren’t forbidden in my contracts.
As for the rest, no, those things don’t happen. And I (and my co-workers) frequently work unscheduled overtime in order to complete a job. Leaving in a crunch isn’t an option.
But when I don’t want to do something unsafe, I’m the bad guy. When I call out an unsafe situation, I’m the bad guy who slowed work down. When I call for a coffee break after 4 hours of work in a crunch situation, I’m the bad guy. When I point out that something isn’t in my scope of work, I suddenly have a bad attitude.
It’s bullshit.
I have a contract. My scope of work and working conditions are laid out in the contract. And the contract is there to protect both me and my employers/clients. If they didn’t like the contract, they didn’t have to sign it. You won’t see me or my co-workers breaking the contract, now will we ask our employers/clients to break the contract. But sometimes we do get asked to break the contract by our employers/clients, and if we refuse, we suddenly are seen as uncooperative, etc. That’s bullshit.
[/hijack]
With regard to the OP, I think I made it clear that asking for Team A to do something clearly within their scope of work is an obviously reasonable request. Asking them to work more hours than they are compensated for, not so reasonable.
A good manager wouldn’t let a situation get so out of hand that it results in them snapping at coworkers. You should have talked to them much sooner about their attitude, and resolved the issue - That would have left you with everyone’s respect … but in this case, not so much.
As for your attitude, I don’t like it. If I VOLUNTEER and I’m told I’m gonna have to bust my ass, and I accept that, then I’m on the hook for it. If the ass busting is more than I agreed to, I leave. If I take a JOB where I’m told I will work 8h/day and get a 1h lunch break, and effectively get paid an hourly wage, then I will work accordingly. I would have no respect for anyone that explicitly hired me for 40h/week and then changes the terms, and demands I put in an extra 20h/week for free. Why would I respect an employer that lies to my face and breaks the terms of our contract? “Because everyone else is doing it” is not good enough - I don’t care about the details of other employees’ work contracts. If someone wants to lose their self-respect and get bullied into working 60h instead of 40h for the same pay, that’s not my problem. If you wanted 60h/week you should have said so.
Also, as other’s have mentioned, some people can do 60h of work in 20h. You should be paying those people 3x as much. If you don’t, then you should expect them to 1) ask for a huge raise, 2) spend less time working, or 3) quit.
Color me amazed that more people can’t see the difference between their 9 to 5 job and a temporary, voluntary deployment to a war zone.
I wonder if the search and rescue crews who have gone to Japan to try to find survivors of that disaster are insisting on overtime pay.
11/8 = 1.375. By making me work 37.5% more, you’re actually paying me less. That 40h/week job I left behind for a 10% pay increase seems like it actually paid me more now.
Also, the last time I wen’t overseas for a month or two for training or sales, I still had to pay my rent/mortagage back home. So really I wasn’t saving anything just because they were paying for my temporary residences.
Okay, I’ve skimmed the replies, but just a couple of things:
Unit A isn’t getting their work done in less time, they are actually doing the bare minimum, and any time there is a task that they don’t feel like doing, they claim it is not in their scope of work. An example, part of what we are doing is putting files in boxes in preparation for a big move from one place to another. They claim it is not in the SOW to actually move the boxes, so they call Unit B to “come over and get your boxes.” It’s not an issue of not being able to lift the boxes because we have support staff to help with that, Unit A just has to manage the process, tell people where to put the boxes and create an archive, but they can’t be bothered.
Unit A director, my direct report comes back from leave today. I like and respect him, but he has protected these people and created their sense of entitlement. He and I are going to hash it out.
Unit B’s director is also out of the office, bad timing to have them both out, but his mom died. That’s why I’m more involved in this than I normally would be. Someone from Unit B thanked me for sticking up for them.
No action from Unit A other than a couple of them stopped by my office to say hey and kind of show a happier face in the building.
Where’s the link to the milf pics?
madmonk28 - I understand. When I am on Exercise or deployment, I get up and 0600 and am lucky if I can get to sleep within an hour of lights out at 2300, and I am working that entire time…it’s the way things are.
What you said was inappropriate (although FUNNY and we wouldn’t bat an eye here, but that’s not civilian-land). I can read the frustration in your voice and hope things resolve in your favor (everyone does their damn job).
It doesn’t fucking matter. It’s a job, not a moral debate. They signed a contract. If the contract is based on 8 hour days, then their pay was negotiated based on an 8 hour day. If the contract was to work 12 hour days, then their pay would be multiplied by 1.5x.
That is an interesting point, do the contracts specify a work hours and lunch breaks?
I wonder what environment you would create if you started giving Unit A a 7 hour schedule/pay and Unit B a 9 hour schedule/pay. Yeah, yeah, I might be ignoring overtime rules if they apply…but this is just a scenario I’m setting up here.
Madmonk, are you able (capacity) to pull off such a change on a temporary basis?
Yeah. Perhaps their contract said employees can take sixty unscheduled breaks, each one minute long.
Madmonk: “Unit A, pick up some boxes!”
Unit A: “Sorry Boss, one minute break”
I think they should be paid by the second, so they can multiply their asses off and *really * make sure they aren’t getting screwed.
Look, the point is that Unit A always and every time does the bare minimum, and deflects work at every turn, compared to Unit B which, realizing that there really is a greater good being served than just showing up for work, pitches in and does what needs to be done, regardless if it means a shorter lunch, or longer hours. Is Unit A technically and legally on solid ground? Maybe, although the “let Steve do it” mantra sounds like insubordination to me, if we are picking technical nits. Nevertheless, this is not production line work in a toy factory, and you can’t just pay overtime or hire more people when demand is greater. The success of the operation is not determined by a balance sheet. It is measured by how many people are helped in a fucking war zone.
Once again, it’s nice to know that some people place the principle of clock-watching ahead of the principle of meeting the needs of people displaced by war. I suppose some don’t see war as a moral catastrophe, just a job like any other.
I ask you the question I referred to earlier: if you were running a search and rescue team in Japan, would you insist on taking your 60 minute lunch breaks?