by Flack » Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:34 am
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Am I even letting people delete messages?
Good question! No you are not!
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:My comment is that I think this is a really shitty thing to do when people booked flights months ago. But that's me looking at things through my personal prism.
We signed Mason up to visit Washington D.C. this summer. The trip is $1,700. Mason is working a fund raiser every month this year to raise the money. We're also having at least two giant garage sales. One of the things Mason is looking forward to is seeing the White House. Last week, due to the sequester, the White House cancelled all public tours.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/ ... 4U20130309
So yeah, expect government agencies to become dicks. If you have a trip planned during that time, fully expect TSA agents to handle everyone's "junk" roughly.
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:At jobs I have had, there are the workers who will tirelessly "get shit done," going above and beyond the call of duty. There are the dependable workers who will work tirelessly when needed. And then there are the guys who can only focus on one thing, very slowly.
(There's a fourth category, "the fuck up," but those don't last too long.)
When cuts to hours happen, is there a sort of feeling that maybe the slow workers need to get their ass in gear? Slow workers love to talk and chat, usually. Is there a sort of unspoken thing that maybe these guys ought to get their ass in gear?
What I *suspect*, and this is based on nothing, is that the guys who can't get shit done don't know what operating at superhuman efficiency is like. So they are oblivious to how long it takes them to do things. If they COULD buckle down and be more efficient, they would. More, because there is a desire for the public to see the cuts hurting, I can totally see this kind of worker thinking, "Well, I had better slow down, too."
To be clear, I am not saying that this kind of worker is exclusively in the government. In fact, I have never encountered one such worker in the government, just IT. But it drives me crazy in times of crisis for these guys to not step it up.
Good question!
Here are my opinions.
First of all, almost everybody I work with is located in another state. My direct supervisor -- the guy that approves my time sheet and does my reviews and stuff -- works in Washington D.C. I talk to him a couple times a week over the phone but haven't physically seen him in 2013 and probably saw him less than half a dozen times in 2012. My wife has 30 or so people in her branch, 2 of which also work in Oklahoma. This style of organization makes it very easy to "fly under the radar" and not do much. It's very easy to avoid e-mail or not answer your phone or turn off IM and just avoid contact and come up with an excuse later. In addition to this, we have also embraced teleworking to the point where every employee (with manager approval) can work from home up to 3 days a week. For people who are disciplined or who have work to do that goes well with teleworking, this is great. Then there are those who abuse it. ADDITIONALLY, there are a LOT of us that work on multiple projects for multiple people. When manager A asks what an employee was doing, they'll say they were doing something for manager B -- and they do the same thing when manager B asks what they've been up to (working for manager A). And when manager A and B both work in different states than the employee and don't know one another, it's pretty easy to pull off.
Where I work, it seems (to me, my opinion) that managers assign tasks and work that needs to be done to the people that get things done, and things that aren't urgent or critical to the people that they expect not to do them. So as new high priority tasks come in, they tend to end in the same people's laps over and over because those are the people that can handle it. And when busy work comes in it gets shuffled off to people that will never do it.
It is very, very difficult to fire government workers. It has happened, sure, but you pretty much have to get caught lying on your time sheet, stealing, or doing something like that. I have never seen anyone get fired for non-performing. Those people just end up being sent off to training or assigned to indefinite busy work. You can't even demote somebody. The way we move people along is to promote them "up and out" -- give them a raise and move them somewhere else. That's how you end up with guys making six figures who sit in basements doing nothing. If you ever want to see one, we have basements full of them.
To write somebody up for non-performance in the government, they have to be verbally warned the first time, then notified on paper the second time, and then they'll get written up the third time. This rarely happens, but if it did, the person would call the union and complain about unfair treatment by the manager. I just heard about a guy who was complaining because another employee was harassing him because he was sleeping at his desk. The solution was to move the employee who keeps sleeping and put privacy glass doors around his cube so nobody can see him. Seriously. I could tell you a million stories, but probably shouldn't.
Anyway, back to your question. I have tried offloading tasks to those people that "aren't doing as much" (putting it politely) and every time I do the result is that those people ask so many questions and do things so wrong that it's never worth the effort. It's easier for me to do the work once than have someone else do it wrong and then have to figure out what they did wrong and have to fix it. It's also easier to do it myself than to have someone call or IM me every 5 minutes asking the same things over and over or asking questions on how to do something when I just tasked them to come up with the solution on how to do something.
So while it's a great question and a great idea, the reality is, no -- those lazy, non-producing employees will continue to be lazy, non-producing employees while the rest of the good apples (and fortunately, there are a few good apples) continue to pull most of the weight. The good news is most of the good apples tend to band together, so when we really get in a tough spot, we call on one another for help.
[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Am I even letting people delete messages?[/quote]
Good question! No you are not!
[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]My comment is that I think this is a really shitty thing to do when people booked flights months ago. But that's me looking at things through my personal prism.[/quote]
We signed Mason up to visit Washington D.C. this summer. The trip is $1,700. Mason is working a fund raiser every month this year to raise the money. We're also having at least two giant garage sales. One of the things Mason is looking forward to is seeing the White House. Last week, due to the sequester, the White House cancelled all public tours.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/09/us-usa-fiscal-whitehousetours-idUSBRE92804U20130309
So yeah, expect government agencies to become dicks. If you have a trip planned during that time, fully expect TSA agents to handle everyone's "junk" roughly.
[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]At jobs I have had, there are the workers who will tirelessly "get shit done," going above and beyond the call of duty. There are the dependable workers who will work tirelessly when needed. And then there are the guys who can only focus on one thing, very slowly.
(There's a fourth category, "the fuck up," but those don't last too long.)
[b]When cuts to hours happen, is there a sort of feeling that maybe the slow workers need to get their ass in gear? [/b] Slow workers love to talk and chat, usually. Is there a sort of unspoken thing that maybe these guys ought to get their ass in gear?
What I *suspect*, and this is based on nothing, is that the guys who can't get shit done don't know what operating at superhuman efficiency is like. So they are oblivious to how long it takes them to do things. If they COULD buckle down and be more efficient, they would. More, because there is a desire for the public to see the cuts hurting, I can totally see this kind of worker thinking, "Well, I had better slow down, too."
To be clear, I am not saying that this kind of worker is exclusively in the government. In fact, I have never encountered one such worker in the government, just IT. But it [i]drives me crazy[/i] in times of crisis for these guys to not step it up.[/quote]
Good question!
Here are my opinions.
First of all, almost everybody I work with is located in another state. My direct supervisor -- the guy that approves my time sheet and does my reviews and stuff -- works in Washington D.C. I talk to him a couple times a week over the phone but haven't physically seen him in 2013 and probably saw him less than half a dozen times in 2012. My wife has 30 or so people in her branch, 2 of which also work in Oklahoma. This style of organization makes it very easy to "fly under the radar" and not do much. It's very easy to avoid e-mail or not answer your phone or turn off IM and just avoid contact and come up with an excuse later. In addition to this, we have also embraced teleworking to the point where every employee (with manager approval) can work from home up to 3 days a week. For people who are disciplined or who have work to do that goes well with teleworking, this is great. Then there are those who abuse it. ADDITIONALLY, there are a LOT of us that work on multiple projects for multiple people. When manager A asks what an employee was doing, they'll say they were doing something for manager B -- and they do the same thing when manager B asks what they've been up to (working for manager A). And when manager A and B both work in different states than the employee and don't know one another, it's pretty easy to pull off.
Where I work, it seems (to me, my opinion) that managers assign tasks and work that needs to be done to the people that get things done, and things that aren't urgent or critical to the people that they expect not to do them. So as new high priority tasks come in, they tend to end in the same people's laps over and over because those are the people that can handle it. And when busy work comes in it gets shuffled off to people that will never do it.
It is very, very difficult to fire government workers. It has happened, sure, but you pretty much have to get caught lying on your time sheet, stealing, or doing something like that. I have never seen anyone get fired for non-performing. Those people just end up being sent off to training or assigned to indefinite busy work. You can't even demote somebody. The way we move people along is to promote them "up and out" -- give them a raise and move them somewhere else. That's how you end up with guys making six figures who sit in basements doing nothing. If you ever want to see one, we have basements full of them.
To write somebody up for non-performance in the government, they have to be verbally warned the first time, then notified on paper the second time, and then they'll get written up the third time. This rarely happens, but if it did, the person would call the union and complain about unfair treatment by the manager. I just heard about a guy who was complaining because another employee was harassing him because he was sleeping at his desk. The solution was to move the employee who keeps sleeping and put privacy glass doors around his cube so nobody can see him. Seriously. I could tell you a million stories, but probably shouldn't.
Anyway, back to your question. I have tried offloading tasks to those people that "aren't doing as much" (putting it politely) and every time I do the result is that those people ask so many questions and do things so wrong that it's never worth the effort. It's easier for me to do the work once than have someone else do it wrong and then have to figure out what they did wrong and have to fix it. It's also easier to do it myself than to have someone call or IM me every 5 minutes asking the same things over and over or asking questions on how to do something when I just tasked them to come up with the solution on how to do something.
So while it's a great question and a great idea, the reality is, no -- those lazy, non-producing employees will continue to be lazy, non-producing employees while the rest of the good apples (and fortunately, there are a few good apples) continue to pull most of the weight. The good news is most of the good apples tend to band together, so when we really get in a tough spot, we call on one another for help.