Not Another Workout Blog Movie

Cynic: A person whose outlook is scornfully negative.

That is me lately. And it is related to my job. Or more to the point, the people on my team. Or certain people on my team.

You see, I work in a team that is lead by someone who is, shall we say flexible on the issues of attendance and work hours. The general philosophy I am fine with…as long as the work gets done, and the clients are happy, then why do we need to be here the entire 40 hours out of the week?

However, in practice, this doesn’t work as smoothly as some would like. Because while it is nice to have the flex time when emergencies come up or whatever, it tends to get quickly abused. The “my kid is sick and I need to run him to the doctor” excuse quickly becomes the “I need to go get my oil changed, so I will be gone for the rest of the afternoon (leaving at three hours early)”. Yes, most places are open on Saturdays.

The other reason I don’t like how things have progressed is that since a person is not in the office until closing time, they don’t see the work not getting done. Because someone else on the team has to do the work. Phone calls get forwarded to whoever IS there, even if it’s not strictly their project. Emails get forwarded; people looking for you come to whoever they can find. But since we do work in a team environment, it is generally expected that you will have to cover for someone at some point. But it seems that it happens very regularly.

There are 7 people on my team. I would say there has not been a full week in an entire year where every person on the team worked all 5 days, for the full day.

But hey, our team is doing pretty well. We are one of the top three sales teams. So who cares if we don’t have to put in as much effort as everyone else does? The point is we could probably sell twice as much if people put in a full effort. We probably wouldn’t have had to hire a new person.

However, the real reason I am writing this is because I don’t like who I have become as a result of this. People on the team have been giving lame excuses for so long, that now that they have serious family issues and probably legitimate reasons for missing work, I don’t give a flying flip. It is like the little boy that cried wolf. I mean it has gotten so bad that another woman in the office was actually crying about one of my team member’s trials right now, and I barely give it another thought. Each day I listen to her news, but it is not really affecting me. Sure, I feel bad that she is going through all of this, but I do not have real empathy for her anymore. She will be off for a few days because of the emotional trauma. And each day that I hear she is gone, my first reaction, is, of course. And so far her being gone hasn’t impacted my work load. So imagine if I did have to lay a finger for her. My blood would start boiling I’m sure. And she’s definitely not the worst offender. That’s what makes it bad…she really hadn’t had any bad reasons for missing work in the past. But it is my cynical viewpoint that casts a black cloud over everyone now.

My attitude about actually doing work has also been bad. In my head, I say, well I’m here everyday, all day. So I can justify goofing off too much. At least I’m available to take calls or answer emails. I know that is not right either, but that’s where I’m at.

That’s about it. I could go into more detail, but it is their private lives, and it won’t do any good. But I guarantee it would make you wonder how these people keep their jobs. I just need to vent. And don’t suggest I go to my boss, b/c he set the tone for the whole team and he is the worst.

I really hope no one at work knows about my blog.