After all, the mind can get sick, too. Keep it well. :-)

Complete with being fired with cause completely manufactured. I fought it and won my UI with little effort as the company had developed a reputation and it was quite obvious the HR manager lied because I cited exactly what they accused me of after telling me to do that.

Trust no one, keep to yourself, do your job.

That’s the only way to survive if you don’t want to sell your soul.

^^^^^THIS. It happens ALL the time. It’s such a double edged sword, because until/if you get promoted (which is not always possible or guaranteed), that peer who’s doing 70% of the work that you are is getting paid exactly the same.

IRG, although I think you make some good and valid points, my experience is that not every company is as negative an environment as you paint. There are good and bad aspects of every job and every company. My philosophy is that if the work environment becomes so toxic that it begins to poison my personal life, I must leave and save myself!! Fortunately, this has happened to me only once, and leaving was the best thing I ever did for myself and my career.

Scotty, I so much agree with you that work is truly a social place. You have to take the time to get to know people enough to take the right approach with each, in order to get what you need to do your job effectively. If you don’t take the time to develop business relationships or at times, friendships with your co-workers, you will ultimately run into a brick wall. I can say that personally, I am much more inclined to drop everything and provide ASAP data to someone who has approached me in a friendly and professional manner. And, later, they will usually do the same for me.

Trent, thanks as always for providing another thought-provoking article.

Guess I’m lucky- this is a great place to work, and people are recognized for doing their best, no matter what job level they’re in or what their perceived “difference” might be.

I’ve worked at and heard of places that IRG is talking about. Toxic workplaces. If you can’t get ahead, you have to move on. The place I work now is wonderful…but I followed my old bosses here. It’s full of hardworking people and very few egos.

On the sick time…at my last company, they let you take as much as you needed. I thought this was great…when you are sick, you stay home. A female coworker constantly complained that she’d rather get 5 extra days lumped with vacation…but then again, she comes in sick ALL THE TIME. Because the whole place will shut down without her. No thanks. Keep your germs at home.

Here I only get five days…I’m not sure how I feel about that. In the last 10 years, I’d say my sick days have ranged from 2 to 7, with an average of about 3 or 3.5. (The 7 was the year I had a baby, was working FT, nursing, pumping, not sleeping…). At least I’m allowed to use half of them if my kid is sick.

Perhaps because of that dynamic, which is unique I know, I have really seen Trent’s advice pay off. People who work hard, do good work, and have appropriate social skills are in demand so they have a choice of projects if they are not happy in one. They get ahead with promotions an opportunities and see the company as a place with good career advancement.

The other people, the ones who just barely do their work but aren’t really even there mentally, live to gossip negatively, or talk inappropriately (real-life conversations I’ve heard discussed loudly in common areas: their boob jobs – “I looked like one of those National Geographic women with boobs hanging to their waists”! – or their first menstural period -no quote there it was just too gross – and childhood penis stories – I know, really??) they tend to find their jobs suck and life never really gets better as they get shuffled from bad project and bad manager to another. My company doesn’t fire, they just let people… linger… hoping the slackers will just quit and go somewhere else. Not terribly mature, but lots of managers hate to fire people and if they can take the passive route they will.

One coworker when we were both entry-level was very nice but just… not so good at anything, and after struggling mightily to find any work at all (it got so bad that I used to give her random made-up work to help her out) she came to me for advice just before her yearly review. I knew that this would be one of the few exceptions to the “no-fire” rule, and the review would be the first official wtite-up building a case against her, so I took her to a conference room and told her, absolutely as kindly as I could, that the review wasn’t going to be good… we made a strategy that she would say she wasn’t very happy with the work and wanted to switch to our corporate infrastructure (working for HR). It worked perfectly – they were so relieved not to have to be “mean” to a nice person but not still have to have her on the team, that they gave her a glowing annual review that helped her get into the corporate office. Since that’s far away, I have no idea what happened to her since we fell out of touch pretty quickly, but it seemed like a good transition.

Anyway, I agree with Trent… I also agree with IRG that work can easily devolve into a locker room (which I’ve also seen, and Trent himself talked about his experience at a research lab where his enthusiasm pissed off his slacker coworkers enough that they sabotaged him into getting fired). I have optimism that someone smart enough to see the writing on the wall can find a way to transistion to a less toxic atmosphere somehow, somewhere. Recession notwithstanding.

Another thing I saw a lot of in government was the “promote ‘em out” style of conflict management. When you had a non-performing or difficult employee it was easier to help them find another position or support them in a promotion to another department than it was to implement proper discipline.

I thought these types of behaviors (and many others you described) were limited to government (silly me). I found out very differently when I was recruited to work for a GIGANTIC private sector company. Early in my employment, I requested an observation of top performers in their specialized areas so that I could learn to be more effective. I consistently saw these much-lauded top performers skate around the rules, break the law, etc.

I eventually concluded that the company was filled with liars, cheaters, and thieves. I could no longer work for them. Even though I did not have another job, I gave my notice. I stepped out on blind faith that things would work out because I was doing the right thing. And they did work out. I worked for several different employers before I landed where I am now, a place where I’m valued and can grow.

The workplace environment described by IRG is real and is awful. It is possible to work for a person or organization who values you as an individual and is in line with your personal ethics and beliefs. You just have to go for it.

Where I work, we get 15 vacation days a year, and anyone who’s been here longer than five years gets 20. We also get 10 sick days, and nobody ever takes them all.

No article of this sort ever addresses the subject of the misfit and how to work around this problem. As a disfigured individual who has been through the last-hired first-fired revolving door more than a few times, it would be wonderful to hear some creative ideas for how to make the concept of “fit” sufficiently irrelevant to management to eradicate or minimize job insecurity.

Regarding sick days. My employer (IBM) doesn’t limit sick days – if you are sick you can stay home – as long as your work is done. Nobody even keeps track of sick days. I think if you are sick for a long period of time e.g. a month, the manager needs to do some paperwork – if he bothers. I am not sure, though. But… at the end of the year you are still evaluated on your accomplishments and you are graded on a curve relative to everyone else. Not just in your immediate group, across groups as well, all the way up to the 5th management level. Notice, it’s accomplishments, not how you spent your time. So you can be sick for a long time, but in the time that remains, you still need to accomplish at least as much as everyone who isn’t sick. And still meet the deadlines. You can also work from home if you wish assuming you are there for critical meetings (although in recent years more and more meetings are teleconferences).

I noticed an interesting thing. When people have 10 days or so, they tend to take them. During the 25 years I’ve been with IBM, even before the current evaluation/ranking system was introduced, even in the 80s when we still had full employment policy, I haven’t seen a single person take a sick day when they weren’t really sick. If anything, people coming to work when sick has always been more of a problem. Now we can work from home, so this is less of a problem, although occasionally someone shows up sneezing.

One I talked with someone and mentioned our policy of unlimited number of sick days. He said – “oh but this is terrible. It means that you only take sick days when you are really sick”. I said “well, yes, this is the idea”.

I think these companies that limit number of days should think about it. As to putting all days – vacation, sick, etc. – together, I think it’s terrible. All it means is that some people will be coming to work sick, infect others and productivity will drop. Some other people will just take more days. Doesn’t make sense to me, at least not in places where the type of job allows evaluation based on accomplishments.

DDFD: #29: “Nice advice, but the sad thing these days you can do everything right and still get laid off . . .”
Unfortunately this is very true. Good evaluations may reduce your risk somewhat, but not eliminate it. Especially in large corporations where the decisions are often made 4 levels above your immediate manager. It’s very demoralizing too even for those who stay, especially when you see very good people laid off. You are asking yourself “why him and not me?”, and if the choice seems random or just luck (e.g. being on a critical project at the right time), it’s really scary.