I work at a family business that isn’t open to the public. There are three of us who run the place – Jim is my uncle, who is supposed t be our manager. Len is a family friend.
Jim is a very selfish conversationalist and absolutely dominates any conversation he walks into, uninvited or not. The running joke is that Jim can here people talking from up to 5 miles away and can travel at light speed to said conversation and immediately start a full on TED talk. Jim will often take a break during work and sit and tell stories about how awesome he is, how everyone loves him, he saves the day in every story. His stories can melt into each other and before you know it, he’s been talking for over an hour. Sometimes he does this at the end of the day and talks until it’s time to leave.
Len kind of just goes along with whatever Jim does or says and is basically his “yes man”. Len is also terribly unorganized and will often sit down in a chair and fall asleep at work. He makes stupid mistakes that cost us a lot of money and time, and forgets important tasks.
Both Jim and Len are of the older generation that believes you should work yourself to the bone, never ask for a raise, and be satisfied with an “attaboy” for being such a dedicated worker. They live to work.
The typical work day goes as follows: work begins at 8:00. I arrive on site sometimes a little early, sometimes right at 8. Jim and Len sometimes arrive on time, but often are 30 min to a few hours late.
Jim sits down and starts talking about how he saved the day at the bowling alley last night and his personal life with his wife and terrible in-laws. Typically about 30 min to an hour of talking and standing around. Len is cool with this, but I just I usually duck out and start work right away. I do all I can to avoid story time with Jim.
Len and I work together a lot, and he seems to want to take the wheel on projects since he has more experience and seniority than I do, which is fine. But he has a hard time working in an efficient way and moves slow and slacks off a lot. He will forget tools or supplies for the task at other locations and constantly driving back and forth looking for the things he has lost.
I typically just want to work the entire time. I don’t want to sit down and chat. I don’t want an hour long lunch. I just want to do my job and go home. I’m not there to hang out.
Lately, they have been talking about hiring in another person because we just can’t seem to stay caught up with our work. The problem with this is a pay decrease if we hire another person. Their pay would have to come from our pot (we are paid a certain percentage of profits). It has to be a unanimous vote, and I’m holding it up. We don’t need another lazy worker for Jim to dazzle with his stories of olde. We need to be more efficient with our work.
Our work days could be cut in almost half, if we just did our fucking jobs. Yesterday, Len and I were assigned to a task that was expected to take 2 days. Len stated to do his stupid shit where hI starts one thing before finishing another, leaving messes for me to clean up. I was keeping my head down and just work work working. He stopped and said what’s the rush? Why are you working so fast, we are going to be here for two days. I got pissed and I said I would like to just finish the job and go home. He bet me actual money we couldn’t get it done in one day, and he agreed to let me lead. Well guess what? Under my leadership, we finished our task, PLUS another one, AND GOT DONE AN HOUR EARLY.
Guess who gets to have another early day today since we completed our task ahead of schedule yesterday? Plus, I won the bet.
So how do I convince these old fuckers that if we just do our jobs, we could spend more time at home, more time with our families, we can go on vacations and have fridays off. We don’t have to work a 40+ hour week.
Please help me, I’m so close to working less and getting paid more. I’m so close!!