[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Okay, one more post and I’ll drop it. I’ll even us my own office as an example.
We have person A and Person B.
Person A is like a 47 year old version of OP. Fucking psyco to the max, married to his job, you need to be chained to you desk and piss in a bucket or you aren’t dedicated enough. Is, without question, the Might Mouse of the firm, as in if he didn’t work there we’d never get anything accomplished.
Person A is very good at his job, puts in max effort and does excellent work. However, Person A sucks with clients, because he doesn’t know how to act and relate on a human level to normal people. Person A’s attitude towards work is a total and absolute fucking cancer for moral. God it’s fucking annoying. I’m literally the only person in damn near twenty years that’s been able to work with him. Through time I’ve become a buffer between him and, well pretty much anyone else, lmao, whenever possible. How was I able to do that? because I know when to turn it on and turn it off, and getting staff to laugh and enjoy their life when you’re asking them to work 8am until 1am six months out of every year is a lot better than acting like a fucking nutcase about “productivity”.
In fact, acting like that nutjob about “productivity” is counter productive. It communicates a lack of trust, lack of respect and a general air of massive insecure pussy. People don’t like working for massive insecure pussys. So all this flipping the fuck out actually makes people slack even more, and not even begin to feel guilty.
But again, someone who’s been at the firm a year (lmao) would think I was a “slacker” in a lot of ways too. I laugh and joke around, I send people out for coffees, and beers. Sometimes i call it a night and bring the staff down the street for a drink. I’ll tell jokes, I’ll get a conversation going about current events. And GASP I might have a non-OP approved webpage open once in awhile. He’d call me a slacker, but… I’d make triple what he does, and be complimented by the people that sign paychecks for my calm, rational dedication and demeanor. And, end of the year I get more done billing 2k hours as a couple people do billing 2200-2400…
Now, Person B… He is apparently a lot like dude OP is describing. Fucking guy flat out naps at his desk in the afternoon. And good lord is it irritating when he tries to give people the “talk” about “productivity”. But, you know what I don’t have to do when he walks away form a staff? Walk over and make sure they are good to go, and still able to be productive, as he isn’t physco. He can be hypocritical, and an asshole, and I have to smooth over the asshole times, but people will flat out say “thank god he isn’t a phsyco like Person A.” Yes, people would rather work for the Max Slacker than Mr Super Worker Man.
Think about the beds you want to make OP. And if you act anything like you have in this thread at work, you could accomplish a lot more if you learn how to take pride in what you do, but also be able to down shift, and recognize there is more to both life, and being part of a team than acting like an uptight asshole and productivity police. Managing people isn’t easy. And a touch of “slacking” here and there is significantly more beneficial for the team than stomping around like Hitler’s Yes Man.
Or you know, you can ignore all this, and figure it out for yourself 15-20 years from now when no one respects you and complains to ownership about you behind your back. Or you have a heart attack, or you actually rage and “smash a face into a keyboard”… But you’ll be super productive, so all is right in the world right?
Jesus when you have teenagers your head is going to straight explode. [/quote]
This was an outstanding post. It’s really a shame that it appears completely lost on the OP, but at least anyone else who reads this thread will get something out of it.
If I were watched like a hawk by the Office Police they would notice that I, too, go get a cup of coffee every so often, or spend a few minutes mid-day perusing T-Nation and the SI or ESPN headlines, and might be so judged as a “slacker” for not spending every second of every day glued to the screen banging away on statistical programs. But those brief spurts of down time makes me better, not worse. That shit you hear about taking breaks making you more productive? It’s true. That 10 minutes to walk out, grab a coffee and clear my head is what lets me come back to the desk refreshed and ready to roll; I’ll come back with fresh eyes and finish the analyses that I was working on in half the time it would have taken if I just sat there banging my head on my keyboard until the right answer came out.
There’s another guy across the hall who does the same exact job I do, working for a different group in the hospital. Always tells me stories about responding to emails and getting projects done at midnight, or getting an email at 3 AM and immediately coming to the office (BTW, this is just plain stupid in our field; there are places where that actually might be necessary, this isn’t one of them).
My collaborators roundly and effusively praise me for getting things done, presenting the results they need concisely, and helping us write good papers; his collaborators have been complaining about him for months and trying to get him fired (unfairly, IMO, but that shows it isn’t a contest to see who LOOKS like they’re getting the most work done; it’s about what you’re actually getting done).
So before we even get to the quality-of-life stuff that also should be part of this discussion, I just wanted to reiterate beans’ point that the chained-to-the-desk guys are NOT always actually getting more done than the would-be office slacker. Sometimes they are, but sometimes the apparent “slacker” is just better at managing their time, better at actually performing the task, and therefore can afford the luxury of the occasional break to help themselves decompress and refocus (I think Brick alluded to this earlier). Yeah, going to get my cup of coffee may be 10-15 minutes I could have spent grinding away, but if it helps me clear my head and finish the next task in one hour instead of two, isn’t that a winning exchange?
Maybe the guy is like this; maybe he’s a total deadbeat, I have no idea. However, if this guy is really that much of a deadbeat, soon enough his manager will notice and either put him on some sort of performance-improvement or fire him (as nighthawkz already said). OP’s mistaken belief is that it’s HIS job to fix this, and even worse (as his response to LoRez’s question shows) he actually thinks it will benefit him to call out the slacker, impress his employer and speed his inevitable rise up the ladder because HE is taking this company to the TOP and everyone else can GTFO! Fuck the fuck off, all of you, carbidius is the fucking god of engifuckineering, and (even though he started an advice thread asking how to handle this situation) already has all of the answers to the corporate world!
Here’s the thing, dude. Early-20’s workers in the first 2 or 3 years on the job do NOT stand to gain by knifing coworkers in the back and using the corpse as a stepping stone to reach the next level. That just isn’t how shit works, and honestly is just as likely to get you into trouble as it is to get you promoted. You’ve already been told this, and ignored it because you apparently can’t believe that is how the world works…so maybe you should just go ahead and find out yourself the hard way. People who stir shit up in the office can and will be replaced, no matter how “valuable” they are, even if they’re a better worker than the person they’ve come to stab in the back.
If you absolutely feel compelled to act, the farthest you should take it is informing your direct supervisor that you’re concerned by the behavior of your office mate, and think it would be worth asking his direct supervisor to check into his productivity and make sure it matches the company standard. Full stop. More than that and you are risking your own job for being a dick.
You don’t like to hear this and will probably give me some spiel about how I don’t even know you, but whatever - frankly, I think you’re heading for a long career of changing companies every few years, probably leaving of your own accord most of the time but getting fired at least once for being the company hothead who couldn’t play nice, probably cussing out the place you leave every time because it was filled with idiots and you haven’t learned that not everyone works exactly the same way that you do.
Have fun with that.