Why is the workplace such a nightmare for so many of us? (apply, owner)
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1. Lack of accountability. This is completely gone from the workplace from what I see today. GONE. (especially on the heads of management making poor business decisions). Lack of accountability as well with connected, lazy nitwit employees. The best employees having to pick up the slack on EVERYTHING and eventually they get fed up and leave. Meanwhile the root problems fester, remain and NOTHING is ever done about it before its probably too late. The lazy employees know they can remain useless and middle management continue to collect a paycheck to sit on their rears despite bring no results or anything of note to the table.
2. Career Growth/promotions less predicated upon experience, skill, value and more on rear end kissing, clique building and the "buddy system". The best employees overlooked because maybe they are just focused on doing their jobs, not sitting around gabbing with management all day resulting in nothing etc. Internal promotions seem to be non-existent. Now its all external and combined with lack of training you just have clueless management brought on board that is never brought up to speed on what in the hell to do and what works and what doesn't.
3. Extroverted Sociopaths rocketing up the chain in quick fashion even if they don't have the slightest bit of ability/knowledge/experience. Style is only promoted. Not substance. They fool everyone with their know it all attitudes and 9 times out of 10 their ideas FAIL. Still.. Back to point #1. No accountability. They keep the sociopaths there. Or send them to a different position where they can just screw MORE up
4. High Turnover due to the last decade of poor treatment to the workforce so you have a revolving door of management and workers and "brain drain" with the company.
5. Training and investment in the workforce. GONE!! How long do these short-sighted idiot employers expect they can play "hot potato" with the same old employees? People don't live forever. Nor do they work forever. And theres no guarantee they will stay. When a better deal arises they are gone, taking all that knowledge with them. You need to invest in some other people and give them a chance to move up if you plan on surviving in the long term. But these people need to be those the most qualified/reliable/educated etc. Not Management's happy hour buddies.
These are big reasons why the workplace has turned into such a nightmare. If you can find a solid successful company to work at that promoted on merit and not sociopathic qualities, I would say stay put. Because there just isn't many around out there.
What people need to realize it takes less than a handful of people to completely SINK a company regardless of how big it is. . Just a small core of crappy leadership. Then only within 2-3 years the entire company slips beneath the waves. It doesn't take much destroy a company at all. 2-3 dingbats making one bad business after bad decision for 1-2 years. Thats it
And even if the company you work for is great, Doesn't mean it will stay that way. 5-6 years ago, I would have rated my company as one of the best to work for. Within 3-4 years they completely sank whatever good quality the company had. It only took about 2-3 people to do that. Now its record turnover, loss of business all over the place, and damage control throughout the company. Thats scary what just a few sociopaths can do.
If you put the wrong people in charge and LEAVE them there, you may as well kiss your company and everything you built goodbye. IF you someone is not paying out after 6 months-year and making questionable decisions, why in the hell would you wait YEARS to do something about it? Hello!!!!! Wake up!!! It doesn't take long to figure out someone is completely unequipped for the job.
Real, true LEADERS nip the problems in the bud from the get-go. They don't let core problems fester. And they don't make ridiculous business decisions lacking ANY common sense that even a grade school child wouldn't make. There just a lot of individuals running things that shouldn't be running them today sadly. Companies that were around for 100 years or more that were destroyed in 5 years.
Management can have a huge effect on whether you like or hate going to work. We just had a change over of both my boss and his boss this summer. The difference in morale is night and day. Previous manager and his boss were both nano-managers. Nothing ever got done. No decisions were made. Just study and re-study and re-re-study everything to death. And when deadlines were missed, it was always our fault, even when it had been sitting in his box for days. (He made it a point of never reading emails so that he could always say "he never got the message.")
We've made more decisions and progress in the last month than the previous three years. Example: Just sat down today with my new manager and new 2nd level manager for the summer budget review. Three of us. 30 minutes. Done. The spring review under the old management -- 20 people, four hours. And he refused to approve it for three weeks afterward.
1. Lack of accountability. This is completely gone from the workplace from what I see today. GONE. (especially on the heads of management making poor business decisions). Lack of accountability as well with connected, lazy nitwit employees. The best employees having to pick up the slack on EVERYTHING and eventually they get fed up and leave. Meanwhile the root problems fester, remain and NOTHING is ever done about it before its probably too late. The lazy employees know they can remain useless and middle management continue to collect a paycheck to sit on their rears despite bring no results or anything of note to the table.
2. Career Growth/promotions less predicated upon experience, skill, value and more on rear end kissing, clique building etc
3. Extroverted Sociopaths rocketing up the chain in quick fashion even if they don't have the slightest bit of ability/knowledge/experience. Style is only promoted. Not substance. They fool everyone with their know it all attitudes and 9 times out of 10 their ideas FAIL. Still.. Back to point #1. No accountability. They keep the sociopaths there. Or send them to a different position where they can just screw MORE up
4. High Turnover due to the last decade of poor treatment to the workforce so you have a revolving door of management and workers and "brain drain" with the company.
These are big reasons why the workplace has turned into such a nightmare. If you can find a solid successful company to work at that promoted on merit and not sociopathic qualities, I would say stay put. Because there just isn't many around out there.
What people need to realize it takes less than a handful of people to completely SINK a company regardless of how big it is. . Just a small core of crappy leadership. Then only within 2-3 years the entire company slips beneath the waves. It doesn't take much destroy a company at all. 2-3 dingbats making one bad business after bad decision for 1-2 years. Thats it
And even if the company you work for is great, Doesn't mean it will stay that way. 5-6 years ago, I would have rated my company as one of the best to work for. Within 3-4 years they completely sank whatever good quality the company had. It only took about 2-3 people to do that. Now its record turnover, loss of business all over the place, and damage control throughout the company. Thats scary what just a few sociopaths can do.
If you put the wrong people in charge and LEAVE them there, you may as well kiss your company and everything you built goodbye. IF you someone is not paying out after 6 months-year and making questionable decisions, why in the hell would you wait YEARS to do something about it? Hello!!!!! Wake up!!! It doesn't take long to figure out someone is completely unequipped for the job.
Real, true LEADERS nip the problems in the bud from the get-go. They don't let core problems fester. And they don't make ridiculous business decisions lacking ANY common sense that even a grade school child wouldn't make
There's always going to be something in each job environment that ruins everything. I asked my barber about it and he said it's standing on his feet all day and then cutting back his hours because his hands hurt from the repetitious movement. He owned the business.. .
Some of it is having the right attitude. Sticking through the lousy two year job and hope something else opens up in the company so you can move on. My husband complained how his healthcare changed over the years, what was covered and how it changed . . . Not for the better. Same with company policies. That companies aren't supportive of the workers and are out for the bottom line. That managers overmanage. That the new crop of workers are doing the work of 2 or 3 people. It's expected. And it's learning when to leave work at the office even if you're not done, haven't met your deadline, but for your own sanity you need a break. It's knowing when to say 'It's not my job' when a co-worker tries to dump their work off on you. It's management pushing to meet goals and too many management meetings to where you can't get your work done and have to work on weekends.
I remember when my husband said he has too much work he can't get it all done. So he was given a co-worker to train and help him. Then the helper was loaded up and both were doing even more work independent of each other without any back up. Unbelievable.
I've noticed more of the younger generation (generally) want to get the pay for less work. I don't know if it's being motivated or a general apathy. They have a job but they're not working it. I don't understand that mindset, yet it's common enough that it's brought up.
You nailed it, and something I pointed out before.
Many of us have perfectly fine jobs, some days better than others but certainly not horrible (and I left any jobs I thought was bad for me overall, not wallowed in my own misery).
Yep! Everyone has bad days, bad tasks, specifically bad people, bad policies that make the job harder, but to have an overall nightmare usually involves more than one side. Anyone can make a bad situation a lot worse if they only apply themselves
As a retired worker I'm always reminded of the fact of "forced association" when listening to the woes of workers. That's the one ever-present facet of our lives which has plagued many since their school days, military service or college days, or, that loooong stint we call work..
Seldom does any worker complain about the actual act of working, but most agree that the politics of human hierarchy's seem to be the thing which grinds them down. The end of forced association is commonly touted as one of the more enjoyable perks of retirement, and I'd have to agree with that.
Management can have a huge effect on whether you like or hate going to work.
I've had one really terrible job and one great one. All the rest fall somewhere in the middle. It's the office jobs that had the most drama. I had one retail job where there was an employee who was super immature, but I blame her youth. Besides, we were in sales, and she was competitive.
In an office job full of so-called adults, I expect people to behave with maturity. Obviously that is too much to ask.
In general society has degraded. Lot of it has to do with overpopulation. The rate of people grew more than the rate of jobs. At the same time, technology makes the jobs not only harder to get in terms of training and education required but altogether eliminates the number of people needed for certain jobs. So more people, not as much jobs, means more competition. This means companies can easily replace you or find someone else to do the job. This means that companies aren't as nice to employees as they used to be. The average worker is a commodity. When the worker is treated as a commodity, there is little security, and security is one of the main needs of a human being. The feeling of being wanted, needed, depended. Just not there anymore
Add to this the competition for resources or any item of limited quantity. Besides jobs which are obviously limited, there are limited houses for sale, limited apartments for rent, limited number of seats available in the college/grad school you want to get into, limited number of lanes in a freeway. In fact the one thing we do have a lot of is food. It totally shows as obesity is the highest level its ever been and through technology we are able to grow more and more corn and soybeans and crops to feed livestock. Soon this could possibly end as the earth's climate gets hotter and hotter and maybe crops don't grow as much in abundance.
Anyways, when you factor all this in people aren't treated as humanely by each other anymore. The workplace is where people depend on for their livelihood. If people are mean to each other on the freeway and shoot each other over road rage because someone cut them off or they are driving too slowly, imagine how people will act to each other in a place where you need to depend on to pay the mortgage and feed your kids? It will be a nightmare.
Society as a whole has gotten crazier and the value of human life went down a couple notches. There's no way we can expect the workplace to not reflect this reality. But in the meantime, we have access to cheap and unhealthy food. We can just go to Applebees and get two appetizers and two main courses for $20 and load up on 2.5 times the daily recommended sodium and cholesterol intake in one meal and at least be future loyal customers of the pharmaceutical industry.
It shouldn't have to be that way, but so many of us have awful times at our jobs. Many times, you leave one bad place and the next place is worse. Bad managers and bad coworkers are everywhere. I've heard all sorts of stories from family members and have experienced many nasty people at work myself. Why can't the workplace be somewhere you like going rather than hell on Earth?
Do you have a job? Cause what you've written sounds like what I hear people in their 20s still living at home with their parents say. They paint a picture of doom and gloom.
The truth is, if you don't like the work, company and co-workers no matter where you go or look, it's because you have a problem, or you don't know how to find what you are looking for, which is still your problem.
People who don't know what they want, don't plan, don't work towards it, don't ask for it, they end up with crappy jobs and then complain about everything and everyone. They come into the work force with unrealistic expectations, like they think working in an office is what they see on TV shows and movies, where the people don't actually do any work.
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