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Work in a non-profit for a while. You will rethink everything you ever learned about work. Really, too much to go into here, but doing the bare minimum is a survival tactic. You will actually harm yourself personally and professionally by going above and beyond. It is hard to get used to, but eventually you will if you just want to get through the day uneventfully.
I've worked in really widely varying tiers of nonprofit (everything from a tiny grassroots startup with three employees to a huge Legal Aid firm that covered half the state), and to be honest, nonprofit organizational atmospheres and expectations vary just as wildly as any other sector of employment. There are warm, fuzzy, feel-good, crunchy granola places that value balance and self-care, there are places with cuttthroat environements that are hugely focused on outcomes, beancounting, and keeping manpower hours at a certain point due to obligations to funding sources, and everything in between. When I started out, I had a very specific mental picture of what it meant to work for a nonprofit, and in the intervening years, all of those expectations have been challenged and often exposed as inaccurate stereotypes. For better and for worse.
Some people are lazy. Some people are unmotivated to do work. Some people are passive aggressive. There are probably lots of possible reasons. These people drive the rest of us crazy.
Again, I ask, why is it characterized as "lazy" (or passive aggressive,or unmotivated) to just do your job?
I'm an above-and-beyond person, for the most part. But I don't see how somebody's lazy, unless they're NOT doing their job. Doing the bare minimum, I can't really complain. Not everyone's going to do extra work, at will.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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Originally Posted by TabulaRasa
Again, I ask, why is it characterized as "lazy" (or passive aggressive,or unmotivated) to just do your job?
I'm an above-and-beyond person, for the most part. But I don't see how somebody's lazy, unless they're NOT doing their job. Doing the bare minimum, I can't really complain. Not everyone's going to do extra work, at will.
I think it is just American pride that says work yourself to death. That is really what I get when I was in history classes in HS about the first half of the 1900s and how the nation really got built. The motivation then was building the country up then and supporting the wars going on. Then the 2nd half of the century came and companies started getting more and more greedy using that pride from the first half of the century as a motivating factor.
I try not to focus on other's behavior and/or performance. My new job, which I love, just got sticky with a person who has an attitude about me. That sucks. I work so hard and try to get along. This person just has a bad attitude. people all the time say "good luck with...that person" or "so how do you like ... that person" Apparently they have a habit of alienating people. Still sucks.
Just like someone said in an earlier post, I dont think it is so much as being lazy when a person does bare minimum, maybe they have no passion for the job. Maybe to them it is temporary until something better comes along. It totally depend on the job.
They've checked out after being lied to so they'd take the job, and the powers that be have made it perfectly clear they'll never get to advance their career at that firm. Unfortunately, because folks have this idea about job hopping they're stuck in a hopeless situation for at least a year.
I've been in the position as well , devoting 110 % without recognition, it's disheartening .
The best thing is to do your best on the things you are contracted to do ,and when some one asks something further you simply state," it is beyond your pay grade."
Keep a copy of the job requirements at all times, so that those whom don't know your contract, can view it for them self.
This both protects you in a dispute over athourity, and keep from being pushed into things they will not compensate you for, or from being framed.
It's a little hard to do that if your the one with your hand out, but as a professional one should have the courage to stand up for them self.
Again keeping records of your work is your business and for your protection especially now days.
I think of the scene in the T.G.I. Friday's that Jennifer Anniston's character in Office Space worked in where she was verbally reprimanded by her supervisor for having the minimum amount of flair on her uniform as stated by the employee handbook instead of more than the minimum. Honestly if you are going to complain about people working the minimum, maybe you need to make the minimum a higher standard. That said, not every job relates to this idea as a number of jobs and/or company set ups forces employees to go above and beyond the minimum. Take Walt Disney service standards for instance.
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