I have a fun anti work story for all of you. Im gonna keep this super general cause I almost ruined it for the employees while I was there and I don’t want to ruin it for them now that I’ve left.
I used to work at an employer that had VERY high production standards. Definitely an 80 hour a week job. It was exciting and high profile so I loved it but then I had kids and needed more family time. A friend recommended a certain employer. We’ll call employer B.
Now some important background about my old branch at Employer B is their management structure. First level management is far removed from the work we do. They look at numbers only and have very little interaction with us except for a once a month all team meeting. Team leads, who are senior team members that are effectively unpaid first level managers handle all of the work review and assignment of work. There are about 120 front line employees doing my job or similar in this branch of the employer. About 16 of those are team leads and my team had about 12 on it. Then we have 8 or so managers.
When I started at Employer B I still had my crazy work ethic. So I come in for my first week. I complete the orientation and training videos and then I’m given my first assignment. I finish it in about 4 hours and I email my lead what I should do next. No response. Another email a day later. I’m just sitting in my office at this point watching esports on YouTube and getting increasingly anxious because I’m not getting work. I start documenting my attempts to get work in case they are trying to fire me. I continue emailing. etc. nothing.
Eventually, my lead comes in super relaxed one day and says, “Shovernor, it’s your first month. just take it easy while it’s slow and don’t worry about it.” Ok sure.
Then covid hits and we are sent to work remotely. I continue not having any assignments or maybe one or two. Working just a couple hours a week but I’m assuming it’s the chaos of Covid. Over the course of the first year I complete 32 of these assignments and work maybe 4-8 hours a week. I don’t know ANYONE in the office so I can’t approach someone and subtlety ask if this is normal. Im super scared they are gonna fire me.
My manager does my annual review and this is one of the few times I’ve spoken to her. She said great work and that my productivity was right at average level (this level is average? Odd but I didnt think much of it.) Well, that’s no good I think to myself, I’m a go getter and I want to excel. I ask her what the highest was and she said 44.
So now I’m actively pulling assignments for myself because I want to beat that and get promoted and I have no chill. So in the first 6 months after my review I bang out 51 assignments. And still working maybe 20 hours a week.
This starts me thinking. What the hell is everyone else doing. Each of these assignments takes 4–6 hours tops and people are hardly producing anything. I kind of hint that I’m kicking ass compared to the numbers at a requested one on one with my real manager and she says a lot of these are harder than what you’re doing and take more time.
So I double down. In my specific area there are about 300 assignments per year for about 12 people. I pulled another 50 and finished them without breaking a sweat. I did fully 1/3 of our teams work (I’m not complaining, it was so easy I don’t care). Still same response, some are harder than others.
Now I start paying attention at meetings. Every single person in my group is complaining about our workload. I thought they were just whiney but manager IS BUYING IT. She keeps promising new hires and then they hire more!!!
Wtf is going on? Are these people lazy? Idiots? Both? I start going back to the office and trying to bring it up with my team mates who are all “slammed with work” and get weird looks that are making me uncomfortable.
I feel like I’m being gaslit here. Eventually a really good opportunity comes up at a different employer. As much as it pained me to leave a job where I didn’t have to do much, my profession is one of those that if I don’t practice my skills I’m screwed. So I left.
A few months later my lead calls me to gossip because there had been some juicy stuff with upper management. Since I’m no longer there I finally say it straight out. “Nancy, am I going crazy? Are people really bad at this or lazy or what? I never worked more than 20 hours on a bad week.”
And she laughs and says, “yeah we have management thoroughly convinced our job is really hard because they’ve never bothered to do it themselves. We keep complaining to keep the illusion up but we are all doing nothing and totally chill about it.”
I was being gaslit!!!! Never have I seen a large group of people so united. Completely amazing, brilliant, group of people. I can’t believe I thought they were idiots! And I almost blew it!