Whatever happened to the work ethic?

[SEVERUSMAX]

Seriously! I don't know what's wrong with my co-workers. They "time-fraud" (code for getting paid for doing zilch) half of the time, mostly gossiping. And they don't bother to show up for work, leaving everyone else (the few who do bother to show up for work) picking up the slack.

Meanwhile, I'm working my ass off. Well, at least I get paid more than most of them. But it's getting old, very fast.

Call me old-fashioned. To make it worse, my supervisors are generally younger and less mature than me. Grrrr...Then again, a few are cool.

On the plus side, a lot of the women are babes, even if off-limits. The new e-Cage girl is particularly ravishing.

 

[Corylea]

When I was young, I worked in a bookstore. Sometimes friends who were in the area would stop in while I was working, and since I was out on the floor, I couldn't exactly turn them away. But I kept track of how long I spent talking with friends and deducted it from my hours when I filled out my time sheet. My co-workers thought I was crazy, but I wouldn't have felt right getting paid for time when I wasn't working.

 

[Darkniciad]

"Everybody's a winner." Microwaves. Don't have to get up and change the channel + fiddle with the rabbit ears + adjust the attached tinfoil + tell your sister to move to the chair on the other side of the room in order to get Woody Woodpecker to show up through the static. Suing for discrimination is far easier than working for a living. Air conditioning.

Most of the population thinks they're entitled to everything now with little to no work involved. It's all they've ever known.

They bring it with them to the workplace, and the rest of us pick up their slack until they get bored enough to move on.

 

[DeeZire]

Seriously! I don't know what's wrong with my co-workers. They "time-fraud" (code for getting paid for doing zilch) half of the time, mostly gossiping. And they don't bother to show up for work, leaving everyone else (the few who do bother to show up for work) picking up the slack.

Working for the government? Lucky you. Most of us actually have to earn our money.

 

[rgraham666]

When fish goes rotten, the head stinks first.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Oh! From what I've observed, from 50 years of working, is: 5% of employees do about 95% of the work.

The indolence is reinforced by insecure managers who fret about eager-beaver subordinants.

A work ethic is about the worse thing to have nowadays.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You stick people in jobs where they don't see the fruits of their labor, get meaningless and political evaluations from Human Relations instead of realistic and timely feedback from the person who pays them, and pretty soon they discover the essential disconnect between labor and reward. Their work becomes a "job" and they discover there's no relationship between effort and success or self-esteem, and that's what you get.

In a world of rugged individualism where everyone's looking out only for themselves, what do you expect? You talk about honor but reward thievery.

Maybe these people just came from jobs where they worked their asses off but were let go when the company downsized. Maybe they ran afoul of their department's HR officer who operated on the quota system and had to hand out "Unsatisfactory" ratings to 20% of the workforce. They probably know someone who went through something like that. Just what do they owe their employer anyhow? How committed is the employer to their wellbeing? Or is he ripping them off of their labor?

After what I went through in the world of Big Business, every time I see one of those "our employees are our most important asset" statements from a company, I laugh. They use employees like kleenex, and now they're just dumping them all together and going overseas. The employees are well aware of this.

 

[gauchecritic]

What Zoot said.

Plus the fact that 'the work ethic' is a management invention, people will work as hard as they like not as hard as you want them to.

 

[ravenmx]

In some ways I agree with dr_mabeuse and in others I agree with SEVERUSMAX.

I work in a large company that deals with a rather large call center and IT support desk. In recent years we have outsourced many of our call center to India and some of our IT to Malaysia. I have been with the company for ten years.

What I have seen over the years is two fold. You would get great people that would come in do their work, take pride in their job, be nice to the customers, get good raises and generally helped the company grow. Then the company got bought out by a large corporation, we grew hugely and work ethic, customer service ect went down hill. Managers didn't seem to care, upper management didn't seem to care, all that was on the horizon at that time was bigger company, more money for them ect. Over the years it has gotten to the point where we have people that come late, leave early but still put 8 hours, don't show for OT but still put OT hours down and sit for eight hours answering maybe three calls a day and managers that could care less while old time employees sit back and watch the company go to what seems to be down hill.

On the flip side we have also watched several of our co-workers get laid off in the years for no reason other then we could hire three agents to one in India to do the same thing. People saw this I suppose and figured what the heck will I be next, which I think in turn also led to some of the above behavior.

I know when I was a supervisor I asked my manager why we let these people get away with half-assed work, his philosophy was like the learning curve philosopy. You have really good workers, mediocre workers and shitty workers. Using the learning curve all workers get equaled out in the end because the mediocre workers pick up most of the slack from the shitty ones, and the good ones pick up the work the mediocres can't complete. My question was why not fire the shitty ones and hire more mediocre...you know I never got a good answer on that.

Maybe it is because my work ethic is you have a job, you get paid to do so just do it. To many people these days I see, their ethic is I have a job I can make a bit of money and as long as the complany lets me get away with crap I will until either I get fired or written up. If they never get written up then they never have to get better at what they do. Sometimes I think it is due to growth and turning turning a blind eye.

 

[amicus]

What an odorsome obscene rolled up ball of left wing bullshit, chicken shit and turkey poo, feathers and all, wrapped up and stinking to high heaven as the 'usual suspects' make yet another assault on the free enterprise system.

Such a deal.

Ya wanna hear the real truth? Look in a mirror asshole, your work ethic is an individual moral choice. you are either honest and give a days work for a days pay or you are dishonest. Look in the mirror...if you can stand what you see.

Have a nice weekend...


amicus..

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

You need to get a job and see how it is these days.

Workers and managers are different than they were when we were kiddos.

Managers are now vampires who suck the blood out of everyone, and employees are parasites.

I just read a book about how to excel in business, and the canons of success remain the same across time, but virtually every company aims to violate these canons for immediate gratification. So youre safe assuming that employees and management intend to fuck each other.

 

[R. Richard]

I think that I can explain the work problems that many of you see. The base of the problem is 'The Management View' (TMV).

Let's consider the case of two managers, A and B. Each of the managers starts out with six people reporting to the manager.

Manager A runs a tight ship. He/she demands production and replaces slackers until he/she gets production. At the end of a typical project, manager A delivers the goods and gets another six person project. Manager A is an idiot.

Manager B is a politician. Insted of demanding production, manager B spends a lot of time in his boss' office, whining about needing more people. In manager B's world, slackers are good. Since many of manager B's people are slackers, manager B needs more people to do what little work gets done. At the end of a project, manager B needs to call in expensive outside consultants in order to deliver the goods. At the end of the project, manager B has 12 people reporting to him/her. In addition, manager B has just managed a project with a much higher budget than manager A.

At promotion time, manager B gets the promotion over manager A, since manager B manages larger projects with higher budgets.

Fuck up and move up!

 

[amicus]

If one sleeps in a gutter among pigs, JBJ, sniff, sniff, don't expect to come out sqeaky clean.

The basic work ethic has never and will never change, it takes honest hard work to create products and services regardless of the environment, company, or those around you.

The proof of my assertion is all around you, everywhere you look as you find excellent quality in both products and services, anywhere you go, for anything you purchase.

It is merely a matter of definition and reality. You slack in your work, produce inferior quality at high prices, unless you are government funded, your business dies on the vine.

Quality and excellence are still the bywords of American enterprise and it is driven by individual pride and honor. Much as our socialist friends propagandize otherwise, it remains quite the same, thank you, regardless of the rhetoric.

Amicus...

 

[gauchecritic]

It is merely a matter of definition and reality. You slack in your work, produce inferior quality at high prices, unless you are government funded, your business dies on the vine.

Quality and excellence are still the bywords of American enterprise and it is driven by individual pride and honor. Much as our socialist friends propagandize otherwise, it remains quite the same, thank you, regardless of the rhetoric.

and the company which gives the lie to your dreamy-in-the-clouds laissez faire, economic myopia once again: Micro$oft.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

I agree Brother Amicus.

But the optimal standard aint the perceived reality. Management perceives labor as parasites, and labor views management as blood sucking vampires.

Today all a work ethic does is arouse suspicion in everyone.

Look around you, most enterprises are suckled by the government.

 

[Liar]

This is one of the reasons why I'm self employed these days. Noone takes credit for or cash in on my hard work but me.

Plus, I get to sleep with the entire staff.

 

[Corylea]

I agree that companies have no loyalty to their employees these days, so they naturally induce no loyalty in their workers.

But I don't do my job well to please my employer -- I do my job well to maintain my own self-respect. If I did crummy work for a crummy company, they would have lowered me to their level, and I don't want to allow that.

 

[Stella_Omega]

this book was published in '78; "As You Sow" by Walter R Goldschmidt.

It was based on a study Goldschmidt was commissioned to do back in the thirties, in which his studies of two California towns yielded very clear, incontrovertible results, namely that towns comprised of family farms ans independent businesses were overall healthier and more prosperous in every way, than were towns dominated by one or two large employers.

This study was challenged of course-- Gallo Wineries began attacking him via radio, during the course of his field work, in fact, and the controversy went all the way to Washington. But the Agribusinesses won the day.

and the company which gives the lie to your dreamy-in-the-clouds laissez faire, economic myopia once again: Micro$oft.

And Walmart. And Exxon. And Bauer-Nike. And the Gap. And Mattel...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

STELLA

The flip side of that is people always go for the lowest price.

 

[gauchecritic]

STELLA

The flip side of that is people always go for the lowest price.

and once more: Micro$oft (and Nike, Gap and Matell)

 

[sweetness6280]

A couple years ago, I took an extra job working nights at a megamart that will remain nameless as a stocker. Not rocket science. They explained their system, then handed me a pallet to stock. I guess they expected it to take me all night. After about 2 hours, I was looking for something to do. The supervisor told me to go finish my pallet. When I told her that I had, she figured I had screwed it up, and insisted on checking every item. Finally satisfied, she sent me to help others.

The next night before my shift, 2 night supervisors took me aside and told me to slow down, others were complaining that I was finishing too quickly. I thought the idea was to work efficiently.

LOL, I didn't last long at that job.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

A couple years ago, I took an extra job working nights at a megamart that will remain nameless as a stocker. Not rocket science. They explained their system, then handed me a pallet to stock. I guess they expected it to take me all night. After about 2 hours, I was looking for something to do. The supervisor told me to go finish my pallet. When I told her that I had, she figured I had screwed it up, and insisted on checking every item. Finally satisfied, she sent me to help others.

The next night before my shift, 2 night supervisors took me aside and told me to slow down, others were complaining that I was finishing too quickly. I thought the idea was to work efficiently.

LOL, I didn't last long at that job.

I don't know about other places, but our last principal told us that she'd never seen teachers work as hard a we do. Personally, by the end of the week, I'm exhausted. Hell, I'm not sure I can even get interested in sex until Saturday during the school year. I admit to being well paid but I earn every nickle of it.

 

[jomar]

I want to work for google. Or SAS in Cary, NC.

There are good and bad at every size of business.

 

[Monazwx]

Oh! From what I've observed, from 50 years of working, is: 5% of employees do about 95% of the work. The indolence is reinforced by insecure managers who fret about eager-beaver subordinants.

A work ethic is about the worse thing to have nowadays.

IF!!! I couldn't agree more. And my last job, the newbies where sorted into 'groups' with the highflyers at the top, i.e. on the fast track for early promotions. Ironically, one of the guys who started out great, a really brilliant guy, was dubbed 'average'. I figured, he'd be pissed, but he was cool with it, noting that during the first year, he slowed down considerably because, "the harder you work' the more work they give", and if everyone's getting paid the same, it wasn't fair for him to bust his @ss every day while others were skating on by. I had to agree. He eventually left and set up his own shop.

The next night before my shift, 2 night supervisors took me aside and told me to slow down, others were complaining that I was finishing too quickly. I thought the idea was to work efficiently.

It's not. "The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut down."

While I don't believe in slackness, i.e. showing up late, and not doing the assigned work, certain workplaces create an anti-wrok environment.

 

[wordofvirtue]

I work and I take pride in what I do at work. I want to do my job well and I think that, for the most part, I do. I have very little supervision which is wonderful. Generally speaking, I like what I do.

But don't even bother me with company loyalty. I'm a "human resource" to be used up and the waste products thrown away. My company doesn't give a shit about me nor I, they. Every year the benefits package gets worse and costs more. Going to a different company wouldn't do any good -- they are all the same. My parents had company loyalty that you just never see anymore and it's not because the working masses have failed, it's administration. I'm sure there are exceptions, but generally speaking employees are under-valued and it really shows. I'm damned sure not going to do anything more than the minimum for such people. Anything more than minimum I'm doing for my own satisfaction.