Monday, February 07, 2005

Public vs Private sector

So this Liberry thang is my first full-time public sector gig, and a lot of the stuff I always heard about working for The State has turned out to be true:

  • There is an employee here who refuses to do her jobs, and instead of being reprimanded or fired, her job description gets re-written to remove responsibilities. I'm not talking about someone who is physically incapable of performing job functions, I'm talking about someone who is just plain lazy, inconsiderate, and largely worthless. Not stupid, not incompetent, not unqualified, but simply confounded obstinate, mean-spirited, selfish, and completely deluded about her importance.
  • Often the worst slackers and worst employees get treated with kid gloves because supervisors are either unwilling or unable to cope with them.
  • People who show initiative get dumped on and dumped on and dumped on. There are a couple of folks working here with very challenging workloads who keep taking on tasks ignored by others who have less to do but who complain a lot.

All of these things happen in the private sector too, but it's much more likely that someone will be fired (or at least reprimanded) for failing to perform duties as outlined in a job description at a corporate job.

Our latest re-organization of Tech Services responsibilities, announced by an email memo that I received on Sunday, is absolutely ridiculous. First I burst out laughing, then I was pissed (even though it doesn't affect me), then I was incredulous, and then I talked today to the poor soul who was nearly overburdened before, and now is doing 30% more work in order to ease the workload of the laziest person on staff, the person least likely to help out, the person most likely to while away her time bitching about how much she has to do while not doing anything, the person who shows up an hour late, leaves on time, and takes a lunch break anyhow regularly. But I can't really judge her--hell, she's succeeding at getting paid to do next to nothing, and her truly awful behavior gets rewarded again and again with less responsibility for the same pay. She's obviously a genius at gaming the system, so in a perverse way I kind of admire her. And there could be things in her file I don't know about which prevent her from getting canned: I had two salaried employees at Borders I was not allowed to fire because they'd threatened to sue the company, and lawyers at the home office decided it was better to keep writing documentation and doing "coaching and counseling" and paying the salaries of these morons than to pay a lawyer to defend the company's decision to fire them. Perhaps that's what's going on here--there could be medical issues or mental health issues or maybe blackmailing of supervisors, what the fuck do I know? Only this: I just spent a month doing a brutal and tedious project that with periodic performance of rudimentary section maintenance by said slacker would have been wholly unnecessary. And yet she's being rewarded again by having her tasks taken away and granted to others.

Don't get me wrong--there are times here where I spend great stretches of time doing ZILCH, but I always do my assigned tasks and I offer to help out when there's something above-and-beyond that needs done. I think most people here fall into that boat. Most people here. I predict I'll get fired for blogging about my job before the one glaring exception even gets a talking-to.



8 comments:

Nick said...

Yeah, we have it here too...

It's not even the slacking and dumping that gets me--it's that they're so damn fake and mean and vicious on top of it all. And then we waste time and emotion talking about how terrible they are. Whatever.

People are so terrible! I want to know who destroyed the snowmen T and T made in front of our apt.-jerks!!

Geoff said...

That's just fucking rude--I don't get it. My neighbors probably knocked it over.

Anonymous said...

Apparently, I'm attuned to that place's vibe as I had a dream about her this weekend where I told her she was an asshole and that everyone was sick and tired of her bullshit.
Weird.

Geoff said...

OMG--stop that! I'm sure soon enough your connection will fade.

Strangely, I feel guilty for trashing Eskimo all the time, given that her son just enlisted in the Marines and she's freaked out (on top of the typical freaked outedness).

So--how's baby things? We're giving you a couple weeks of family/healing time before we bug you about coming over to pet your baby.

Anonymous said...

Oh my lord, don't worry about bugging us. We're too proud of her to keep her to ourselves. Plus, if left to our own devices, we just sit around and stare at her and get weepy.
Sometimes I'm sorry for Eskimo, but mostly I think "Hey, other folks have bad things happening, too, and they don't use that as an excuse to be a terrible person."

As for her kid, I'm just sorry he couldn't think of a more clever way to escape the house.

Geoff said...

Yeah, it always comes back to that with Eskimo--I think the exact same thing after feeling guilty, and then I think "fuck her," because there are many sad, lonely, and desperate people who manage not to take it out on others--in fact I think there are many sad, lonely, and desperate people here in Cook who manage OK.

The more I hear about her kid, the more I think he might need the Marines to straighten his lazy ass out.

How much time off does Rockstar have?

Nick said...

Don't waste your time obsessing about this "Eskimo"!!! Use your energy for other things. Like I think he might need the Marines to straighten his lazy ass out. Oh, Don't even!!!

Geoff said...

I don't waste energy on her--I relish the time spent loathing. There used to be many more targets for negative vibes at 043, now it's all rolled into one.

As for straightening out an ass:

click!