TurboKitty

I've always taken pride in my work, but just recently I've started to wonder why. I have a good education, am good at what I do and I work hard to ensure that my skills are kept up to date and I remain good at my job. I've always been willing to stay late and work long/unsociable hours in order to get the job done, and even if something is not technically in my job description, if I can do it, I will. However, it's become apparent of late that nobody appreciates this sort of work ethic. Working hard and caring about what you do is not noticed, so does not open up any more work opportunities than are available to the slackers that just don't care, and the more willing you are to put yourself out, the more people take advantage. I am stuck in a crappy work environment at the moment and there is no opportunity to excel and work up to better things. The rest of the team are highly demotivated and I am sick to the back teeth of bearing the brunt of the workload solely because I care more than they do.

[Edited by TurboKitty - 4/3/2003 12:12:08 AM]

Steve Lawson

Edited out as I posted in anger.

Please ignore/delete whatever

Steve

[Edited by Steve Lawson - 4/2/2003 11:07:36 PM]

TopBanana

What's the world coming to? Is it just me or are things getting worse?

Crush

The reason nobody here gives a flying toss, is cause it is such a negative atmosphere to be in. The bosses have their little in-crowds, people think they should get paid more. People are scared to make a mistake & admit it, because the bosses care more about stats than the people they employ

I've had enough of the financial sector, it just aint for me

fast bloke

I'm self employed - The boss is brilliant - all the staff are brilliant. Morale is first class. At this point I would never imagine working for someone else again

Dizzy

I take pride in my work?
morale is up and down but I enjoy what I do... I know I'm sad

Markus

I take extreme pride in my job. OK, so from time to time I'm a tad sarcastic with clients, when I should not be, but that's only after the 8th call from them and they are not following my 'idiots step-by-step guides'

I take more pride when i get nice comments from our clients about how helpful I am. It's a lovely feeling when the head of the HP/Compaq LMS group tells you that he has never dealt with a more professional support person.

Even more pride in my job comes from the fact that I am one of three people in the world who have the expertiese and knowledge that I do, and that the bottom line is, if I don't know the answer, and the 2 others don't then well, that's it! It's not like an MS product where you could phone up any support center and get support, then go to MS, where it's still a support center. When you come to me with a problem, I know the product inside out and upside down, hell, I wrote the documentation for it, and helped on the R&D of it! In fact I coined most of the terminolgy for the parts of the products. Also, i work with the development team, in the same room, not in another building or even country like other products. Gives me a great sense of pride that I am there to help, and I can and do help.

hmm, sound like a bigheaded geek don't I? hmm, well, maybe I am

steve G MAN

im in the army i take pride in everything i do at work

NotoriousREV

Markus, I know where you're coming from.

Take today for example. I'm on-site installing a hardware firewall for a customer, but the BT provided ADSL router is knackered. I'm on the phone withBT, they ask me if an 08:00am - 10:30am engineer slot is available, so I check with the customer if someone will be in the office for 8. He starts going off on one about me being there when the engineer is on site, I keep trying to ask if someone will be there at 8, he keeps rambling on about the need to co-ordinate our resources so eventually I snap "I'm trying to book you an engineer, if you tell me what time your office is open, we'll both be here" to which he replies "well, I can be here from 6am if you want".

Suddenly all desire to do a good job is gone...

marty_t3

I actually cared about my old job. There was a great atmosphere in the plant, everyone helped out and everyone knew each other. It was a new business and after the first few years the business was well established and a fun environment to work in.

A new company bought us over and came in with heavy handed tactics and started threatening staff if they didn't work harder. The staff took great offence to this as the previous year the plant had built more PCs than any other single factory in Europe...Ever!! The new owners lost everyones respect right at the start and because of their sh***y attitude to the employees they had walkouts/industrial action/pay-offs.... in the end the new owners lost the contract and had to close the plant after 3 years.

I couldn't give a toss about my current job. The tasks have been split so to get anything done takes involvement from half a dozen different teams. As a result there is no satisfaction at having seen a task through from start to finish. The company care more about shareholders profits than their staff, so, expenses are cut, hours are increased and wage rises are cancelled. Thank god i finish up at the end of April.

TopBanana

Markus - what about the developers of the system? Surely they'll help when you get stuck?

Markus

When you say system, do you mean the OS? If so, yeah, Apple will help us, but we've had to write our own version of AFP as the public one is full of bugs, and the one that works is internal and Apple won't release it, which is fair enough.

If you mean the developers of the software I support, well, that's my Tech Director Gair, and the other coder Jim. and these are the other 2 people I mentioned as those who know as much as me. From time to time Gair asks me how the product should work, as I'm more 'in at the deep end' than he is, as I'm on-site and know how people use the software to achive things we thought it could not do!

Jodster

Markus, what piece of software are we talking about?

malvinas

I take maximum cash- do as little work possible and **** off home as early as I can. I love my job its so easy to get away with anything here. I'll keep on doing it and the to55ers have just promoted me.
I wish the people who employ me were reading this, without knowing its me of course;-), so they knew just how much one of their employees is taking the **** out of them.

TopBanana

TurboKitty - try working for a smaller company where you'll be appreciated and feel more of a team-member. Or go it alone?

malvinas

Small companies are the worst- they always expect "free" work from their employees. They also tend to be run by autocratic types who seem to think that their employees are little more than indentured workers.
Take my advice- work for a nice big blue chip company preferably in a remote office and basically no-one knows whether your doing any work or not. It works for me -4 yrs of doing jack sheet so far-just take the cash and do as little in return as possible.
The funniest thing is the MD of the EMEA takes a real pride in his hands on approach and "expects the maximum effort" from everyone. We all return his protestant work ethic with a 2 finger salute from down the pub.

^Qwerty^

You have to be a "yes" man to get on here, or at least in the area I work in.
You also have to be able to write english, such that something that could be written in one or two sentences instead, involves writing about 7 sides of A4 and the completion of 12 stage approval process.

FollowThrough

I've worked my butt off, get in early, stay late to make sure things get done, never take sick days and generally show commitment - this has not been rewarded in any respect neither with cash or any verbal acknowledgement by anyone. I gave it one more year to see if things changed. They haven't sooo as well as surfing scoobynet for the last few weeks I have also been looking for a new home for my talents.

So it is with great joy that I can now say the following to my rug munching, lesbian, hairy lipped, tuna breath boss

**** you and your job

Markus

Emma - I can sympathise with how you feel, before the new management came in about 2 years ago I spent the previous six months doing not a lot, the odd support call, but that was about it, rest of the time was spent surfing or playing games. Now to some this might sound like fun, but after 2 months of doing this, it got a bit boring! At that point I did wonder about changing jobs, but I did not, the new team came in at the right time and things have been pretty darn good, now culminating in the relocation to Canada.

Jodster - The product, well products, are; MacAdministrator, MacPrefect and WatchIT!
No offence intended but I doubt you've ever heard of them, as they are Apple Macintosh products, and they are not that stimulating as they are for Network Administration and control, and desktop lockdown, oh, and time monitoring.

However, saying that, our main rival for MacAdministrator is Apple's Macintosh Manager and Workgroup Manager products, and we have our product installed at locations where Apple's products were not as scaleable as ours (with a MM or WGM setup you'd need at least 5 servers, and they would have to be Apple servers, with ours it would be one server, and it could be and AFP or AFP/IP compliant server, eg; Windows 2000 running Services for Macintosh).

p3t3-th0m

You want to move to the states... the air is FULL of enthusiasm and respect for ideas!

I went to Arizona for two weeks, and Im now plannning to live there as the sun always shines (hot!) and there is no-one to knock you down (not cause its a desert!) You go there and say "I want to build a castle, with a moat and crocs" they say "How big?" Over here its "you'll never do it, you wont get permission, where you gonna get the money for that? Your not allowed cos we wont give you planning permission (even though 24 houses have just been built in a tiny village)" etc. etc.

Im currently hating this country, for all its laws that dictate what we do, instead of laws that provide the limits of social behavour.

You can stretch your arms as wide as you like over there and still have room to spin

As for working for businesses: It seems all we do is put more effort in, that effort gets converted to more cash, that cash get put into the directors upgrading their cars to sportier models! Hardly boosts moral when we have to scrimp and save for anything we want.
Time to do it all ourselves, those with iniative and willing to be somethign other than a sheep...


[Edited by p3t3-th0m - 4/2/2003 3:12:24 PM]

[Edited by p3t3-th0m - 4/2/2003 3:13:02 PM]

Mr Gee

Cost of living has gone up 3 fold since Mr Blair came to power....Have wages gone up 3 fold ? No, I didn't think so.
Thats why everyone is moooooooooooooooooooooody !!

zero_to60

how do you know when it's time to start looking for another job

marty_t3

Malvinas..... i think we might be working for the same company

I still can't wait to get out of here though. I'm sick to the back teeth of having no work to do all day then being asked at 5pm if i can stay back for a few hours.

I'd say it's time to look for a new job when you get up in the morning and cringe at the thought of another day at work.

Badger Stuffer

Marty.....Why not use your time at work to look for another job on some online job boards?

zero_to60

thing is my job is relatively safe, I know the job pretty well and it pays well too, problem is it does nothing for me, I turn up to bank the cash.......this was ok for a while but there must be more to life than this.......**** IT support is boring

I was putting in a shed base at the weekend and laying a patio and I really enjoyed the sense of achievement working with your hands and actually seeing something that you've created yourself, all I do is fiddle around with log file, processes **** like that

Trouble is I am now trapped with a largeish mortage, car loan you know the score live to your means

marty_t3

Badger stuffer.... that's what i have been doing.

get to work in the morning,
check e-mail,
read news sites,
check job sites,
check SXOC and SN,
go home.

Not exactly a satisfying job. It may well be time to get myself on a plumbing course

zero_to60

how long does it take to qualify as a plumber?

marty_t3

Zero, I know what you mean mate. I was decorating the sprogs bedroom last week and i actually enjoyed doing it. Same with working on the car. I'd rather be doing something a bit more constructive than sitting in front of a PC all day waiting for some muppet user to forget their password. I'm sure I could live with a drop in wages for a while as long as i was happy doing the job.

A few years ago i finished up in an IT job and went to work in a factory for 5 quid an hour for a few months till i found another IT job. I actually enjoyed it... no stress, no hassle, just turn up, put in a shift and get paid. Weekly pay was a huge benefit for me too cuz i'm hopeless with money... end up skint for the last 2 weeks of every month. With weekly pay i'd somehow manage to get by on less money with no bother

marty_t3

To get corgi registered can take a fair bit of time but just to get into the trade i'd guess about 6 months. I've seen a training course that said it lasted 9 weeks... not sure what it covered though cuz there was another 9 week course that followed on from it.

zero_to60

I'm involved in trader support in the City....so all I do is allow traders to punt on the stock markets...it's hardly constructive

at the end of the day I feel like I've achieved didly squat

thing is I am at the stage where sometimes if someone says "**** they're gonna be out of the market if that's not sorted" I think do I really give a toss........that's bad, my attitude is getting bad

It's like work is just becoming a bind, got a lovely daughter who I hardly see and I'm stuck here doing a job that bores me rigid