The Decline of The Co-Worker

[logicallefty]

I need to vent/rant. I try not to do this too often but we all need to once in a while.

I'm getting so sick of working with people. That's right, people, as in most people. I am loosing faith in most everyone I work with at all my jobs, even the people I once respected are disappointing me. At work people are just getting lazier and more incompetent by the day. All people want to do is do the minimum to get by and collect their check. And deflect their laziness and/or incompetence onto other people. Verbal conversations have become completely useless. People have what I call "Selective Memory Loss" in that they only "recall" things in a verbal conversation that benefit them, and then forget/deny action items they have to do or important pieces of information that put them in any kind of seat of accountability. To most people when they hear "give me a call" its nothing but that. To me it's "OK so what do you want to tell me on the phone now that you can deny saying later". That's how I think and what I expect anymore from people.

Example #1: At my police job I am also the department tech guy. I have officers who forget their passwords EVERY single time they need to get on a computer. They call/text/***** at me and take no responsibility for remembering their own passwords . Then I have to remotely reset it and that takes 10-15 minutes of my time when I'm not at work. Put some skin in the game people, I'm not your mama!!

Example #2: A guy told me a critical piece of info on the phone like a year ago. I Emailed him after the phone conversation and said "per our conversation bla bla bla". Today my boss talked to the guy and he denied the info. I showed my boss the 1 x year old Email and he told the guy about it. The guy says that I must have misunderstood what he told me a year ago. Even though he never refuted the Email a year ago that I didn't understand. And I remember back then, I had Emailed the guy originally and he called me back.

And i have dozens more....

Does anyone else notice the decline in the integrity and quality of people they work with, or did I just get "lucky" hit a bad bunch of apples multiple times?

 

[backseatjuan]

Welcome to 2003. Sorry, it was like this all this time.

ONLY if you work for yourself you get all the candey. But then you get other headache, ******* clients.

 

[BetterCallSaul]

OP, you've essentially revealed what the problem is. It is not working with people in general, it's where you work. Many people are like this everywhere; it's nothing new. Go get a job in the private sector working at a place with type A people and you will find what you seek.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

Go get a job in the private sector working at a place with type A people and you will find what you seek.

Not to rip on the OP, but this is a very good point. People that are attracted to government jobs (very hard to get fired, generally good benefits, etc.) are the kind of people MOST likely to behave this way. If you had a job working in a small startup that was keenly focused on their bottom line, this sh*t wouldn't fly and they'd be gone in a hurry.

You can have a more or less guaranteed income and a job, and work with the world's dumbest and laziest people, or you can always be one step from unemployment in a sink-or-swim environment, but work with some of the best people (self responsible, intelligent, forward thinking) people you'll ever meet.

Everything cost something. And sometimes the most expensive costs are the ones we least expect (like being surrounded by idiots).

 

[logicallefty]

@backseatjuan Come to think of it I do remember work getting different around that time, 2003 ish. I remember, around that time, thinking "Wow the economy has went to sh|t post 911 and jobs are getting harder to come by, yet people who have jobs are getting more lackadaisical in their duties". This year, though, 2017 is when I have noticed the largest decline. I have 3 x jobs and you will find past posts of mine saying how great the people are at one of my jobs, my police job. I take that back today. I have lost respect for some of them that, a year ago, I highly respected. At my I.T. job they have always been idiots. The difference lately is that they no longer try to mask it.

@BetterCallSaul That might be grounds for a survey. Maybe its just my area. I've lost 3 close friends in the past year who have quit jobs here and moved to other States. One of them in Texas hates his job. One in Tennessee loves his. The other in Wisconsin moved and hasn't found work there yet.

 

[ImTheDoubleGreatest!]

Because it's getting harder and harder to find a job you are passionate about. Sure you might like to travel and be a tour guide in the Grand Canyon and other landmarks like that, but will that pay the bills? What happens when you're old and want to retire? Fact is, jobs are getting harder to find and the jobs that actually are available are sucking more and more while paying less and less. Of the jobs that do pay a lot, you have to go through a rediculous amount of schooling to get and those are still ultra-competitive. You cannot be successful working 40 hours a week anymore, especially not if you have a family to take care of too. And because of all that time spent working, you fell like all you do is work and you NEVER get to do anything else. This is when resentment towards your job begins. You start to hate it. At this point, performance goes down and your attitude changes because you don't want to do it anymore; you'd rather be home relaxing with your family or with others. But since you cannot, this resentment begins manifesting into other aspects of your life and soon your entire personality changes. You don't have time to have sex with your wife anymore because you're working, and you can't give her any attention at all because of a low paying job. So she cheats on you with some schmuck who has all the time in he world because he doesn't even have a job. This happens very very often.

Can you see why people begin to dislike work over time?

 

[logicallefty]

@ImTheDoubleGreatest! that's a pretty darn good summary there ^^ over all. Very applicable.

What I personally am seeing are people who are in positions that:
1) They are not qualified to be in, so they aren't pulling their weight, AND/OR
2) They are qualified but are lazy, so they aren't pulling their weight

Then on top of that, people who don't want to be accountable for anything they say or happen to actually do . Which is often times the same group as 1 or 2 above. Usually it is.

So no matter which of the two above applies, or if both do, this in combination with that fact that workplaces are scraping by on a bone marrow staff as it is (as in less than a 'skeleton' staff), you have one person not pulling their weight and that weight has to be pushed on to other people. Logically, you would think that workplaces would not tolerate #1 or #2 above and want the best of the best working for them, so they would deal with bad employees swiftly. But they don't. They just expect the good employees to cover for the dead weight. And even worse, often times the people running the workplace are #1 or #2 themselves. So it becomes a spiraling out of control situation.

 

[ImTheDoubleGreatest!]

@ImTheDoubleGreatest! that's a pretty darn good summary there ^^ over all. Very applicable.

What I personally am seeing are people who are in positions that:
1) They are not qualified to be in, so they aren't pulling their weight, AND/OR
2) They are qualified but are lazy, so they aren't pulling their weight

Then on top of that, people who don't want to be accountable for anything they say or happen to actually do . Which is often times the same group as 1 or 2 above. Usually it is.

So no matter which of the two above applies, or if both do, this in combination with that fact that workplaces are scraping by on a bone marrow staff as it is (as in less than a 'skeleton' staff), you have one person not pulling their weight and that weight has to be pushed on to other people. Logically, you would think that workplaces would not tolerate #1 or #2 above and want the best of the best working for them, so they would deal with bad employees swiftly. But they don't. They just expect the good employees to cover for the dead weight. And even worse, often times the people running the workplace are #1 or #2 themselves. So it becomes a spiraling out of control situation.

Well I think this is where the saying about its who you know rather than what you know holds true. They know them better because they're more like friends with their bosses rather than employees, or because they actually know someone. The dynamic never really works out too well in the end if they get too close, it allows them to temporarily get away with certain things. Not only that, but you can't be TOO good at your job either. If you are too good at it, people will take advantage of that and leave you where you are, and just take you for granted overall. It's the equivalent of being a 'nice guy', but in the workplace. Let's say there's something that needs to be done, but no one wants to do it. If you are the guy who's too good and too hardworking, then you are the go-to guy for doing sh!tty part of the job. And if you say yes to those sh!tty things all the time, then it's essentially saying that you don't mind being walked all over on because you have no boundaries. This is where you become the 'nice guy' of the workplace. You are now the guy who people rely on to carry deadweight. Why not just hire someone else? Well it's harder to find someone else willing to do all they're supposed to. Most people are like those lazy assh0les you work with, so why replace him when you know that some other guy will take on his failed responsibilities anyway?

 

[sazc]

MY turn to vent....

Lazy a$$ co workers not finishing their user stories and blaming it on instruction by another co worker, John, who isnt even there at the time, who told him to reduce scope. I'm POSITIVE that, come tomorrow, when this is discussed, the co worker who isnt going to finish his work will blame it on a 'miscommunication' between he and John (because thats what he does)

the last time I dealt with this co worker he made changes to the DB that broke everyone. When I remarked "we're not suppose to change the DB without approval, why did you do it?" He said "john told me it was okay" When john came to my desk to assist me, john said "why did you tell co worker it was okay to change the DB?" I said "what?!" and John said "Coworker said you gave him permission to change the DB. I scrolled up in my IM and showed John "he told me you said it was okay to change the DB, see..." and John just shook his head. When the co worker was confronted about blaming us to each other, co worker said "it must have been a miscommunication"

 

[ubercat]

What I have noticed in the last 10 years is that management has become more and more focused on the short term. Which naturally is going to advance the political animals because they are all about Brown nosing and looking like they're taking action on whatever the boss said. Of course when the boss isn't around they slack off deflect work and manipulate all day long. The reality is In most places I've worked now you have to deal with everyone by email and send them follow up and reminder emails. One thing I always do is at the end of my email I say please get back to me if I've got anything wrong or if there's anything you'd like to add or explain. That pins them down a bit in the circumstance were they just played possum