What are office politics?

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No kidding, it's an honest question!

I've heard that word bandied about so much and I even use it myself occasionally (to describe a general pain-in-the-ass-ness about working with people) but are there actually specific rules and pitfalls out there that I should be aware of?

I'm worried not so much that I will get embroiled in it, more that it will sail quite cleanly over my head and I will accidently antagonise people without realising.

I'm just curious if anyone can give examples of 'politics' and how they resolved the issue/what they think was the best way to solve it?

Office politics is the same stupid gossip and favoritism you may have seen in Jr. High, in the work place. I'd recommend avoiding it altogether if you can afford to do so. Unless you're a vapid, status obsessed social parasite, you can't win the game of office politics, so don't bother.

I don't think it is totally possible to avoid them. For me it is when there is a trade, so someone is allowed to so something outside the rules as long as they do something else that is good. It's difficult to tell when it is happening because it is sometimes best that these trades are not public knowledge. For someone who likes rules to be the same for everyone it really annoys me that some people seem to have 'special' jobs and perks.

I avoid office politics by being a diplomat.

My objectives are simple.

1: Stay employed.

2: Get my job done. See objective 1.

I accomplish these goals by maintaining a positive working relationship with every part of the team. "The Team" being everyone involved in the same work flows as i am.

That gets confusing at my workplace because my boss does not actually report to the most senior management on the premises - he reports to someone in another office hundreds of miles away. Thus, the Big Boss doesn't actually fit into my mental org chart and i have to remind myself that he is a de-facto member of the team.

But everybody who does actual work at the office i'm in is part of The Team one way or another.

So, the three rules i keep repeating in this forum:

1: Be rational - keep emotion out of it.
2: Be conciliatory - these petty personal disagreements are not relevant to the Work.
3: Be positive - in a conflict, you need everyone who matters to know that you just want to sort things out and Get The Job Done.

Never go to a company Christmas party.

I'd say it cannot be avoided in most work-places - it seems that working hard isn't enough, your hard work will be ignored and thus get passed-over for promotion time and time again, or if you're particularly unlucky you risk losing your job too.

When I worked for British Airways I was performing far above my colleagues and worked hard to make my department the best, I even carved myself a few little niches, thus was promised a promotion. Then new management came in and around the same time a new guy started working there who was terrible at the job but really good at brown-nosing and undermining his colleagues. I was passed-over and this guy was promoted ahead of me after he'd only been there a few months, and thanks to my not playing the game the manager who promoted this guy also targeted me so I was forced to leave a job I loved due to constructive dismissal. Something similar happened in my last job too, I've seen some truly useless despicable disgusting people get ahead purely because they get pally with the management, while I work hard and get screwed-over. It's pathetic...not that I'm bitter of course

It's not fair, but it's how many employers and work places work - best case scenario not getting involved with office politics will allow you to get on with your work, but worst case it'll cost you your job. This is one major reason why so many aspie have trouble staying employed, doing the job well and keeping yourself professional by not getting involved with office politics isn't always enough.

I would suggest, if unsure about rules in employment, try getting this book;
The Rules of Work: A Definitive Code for Personal Success by Richard Templar
Not the best books in the world, however they have some basic rules that are easy to understand and good to follow, some of these do support office politics in which case you don't have to follow if you don't want to, but it will give you a better understanding of how these things work and possibly give you some protection against other peoples games.

hahaha.. oh god it's become a joke.. so quickly too!

blauSamstag, have you any advice for when people pull office politics on you? Do you let them walk over you or risk making enemies? I'm honestly not sure which route to take;

one hand, I could be stuck with these people for a while

On the other, maybe that's even more reason why I shouldn't lie down? Not to go into details, but the problem has only escalated because I didn't put my foot down first time..

In my opinion, it is something your boss must give you in print if you request it. Otherwise, it just does not exist.

Edit: I wanted to add that I haven't been diagnosed with AS, just have been reading about it and suspect I have it, I'll be going to a therapist soon to see.

Office politics are very challenging. In my current job I transferred to a new state and my strategy in the new state was to always be really nice and positive and to always help people (and be very nice to then while doing so) when it looked like they needed it. It worked well and everyone liked me and thought I should be promoted.

Since being promoted my job has become extremely dissatisfying. I realized a lot of it was the difference in managers. In my last job I had the greatest manager I've ever worked for. He was very approachable, always made sure we had whatever we needed to get our jobs done, and always tried to keep things as fair as possible. Unfortunately, he succumbed to office politics. He was working too many hours so they told him he could step down or deal with it (expecting him to deal with it) but he called their bluff and stepped down. The worst part of this is that they replaced him with two managers so all they did was lose a great manager.

My new job is a sales job. They always say that the goal is to do what's best for the customer but they're really only concerned with their own sales numbers. It's hard for me because all I strive for is happy customers (which is, oddly enough, the biggest reason I was promoted) so I don't really worry that much about sales because I also believe that giving great service brings in sales.

The first manager I had after being promoted wasn't that bad. He would set high expectations at the morning meetings and sometimes tell us we couldn't go home until we reached a certain sales number but then he wouldn't really hold us accountable, if we didn't hit our numbers we'd just kind of ignore it. The best part about him was that he pretty much just sat at his desk all day and didn't bother us so we could each work the way we wanted. I really liked that because I have a tendency to struggle with managerial interaction (as a result I avoid management like the plague) and I know that if I'm given a few months to get this job figured out I'll at least perform adequately with a possibility that I will be exceptional. Then, on July 8th, he quit.

Our new manager started last Monday. The company's daily sales goal is 8.5. I'm averaging 5-6/day so I'm not that far off but I am still new and learning. My old manager never bothered me about it but this new lady expects me to get 8.5 every single day from what I can tell. On top of that she asks us for sales "commitments" every morning which really bothers me because how can I commit to something when I don't know what my customers will be like? She also apparently expects you to give her a high number for no reason other than making her happy (this is the part of office politics I alwas fail miserably at) but I like to set goals that I can achieve (I set a goal of 8 every day last week, which was too low of a goal for her, and never even met it). Then at the end of the day we have a cool down at her desk where she discusses our sales numbers with us. I also think this is a game of politics because on her second day she looked at my last two days of sales numbers (2 and 6) then asked me what I thought I did differently to contribute to my success. I thought it was ridiculous to even ask a question like that because you can't draw any meaningful conclusions from two days worth of data. I answered nothing (the truth even I knew she was looking for a different answer). Of course she wasn't very happy with that answer and she doesn't like me very much. Then a day or two later I had to have a "one-on-one" with her and another manager about my selling abilities. They told me that one of them would be sitting in on my customer interactions to make sure I'm doing okay (an absurd notion considering my customer satisfaction is one of the highest on the team). Of course it has only happened once since then because they never seem to follow through on anything. They made the assertion that I'm "overanalyzing things and making a decision for the customer". I think she could also tell that I didn't trust her (I'm sure my words made it obvious) so she told me that her "only motivation is to help you succeed" and that I shouldn't read any further into it because that's all she's trying to do and I'm just overanalyzing it. Of course I believe her only motivation is to make herself look good so she can get promoted. While that does give her motivation to help me it's not the right motivation because her motivating question is always how to maximize sales (the main way our "success" is judged) instead of what is best for the customer and best for my personal development.

I realized I just started ranting about my own specific experiences with office politics so I hope that's okay. I'm not really sure where I was headed with that so I'm just leaving it as-is. Anyway, my advice with office politics is to just try to find a really good manager. They are hard to find but when you do working is much more enjoyable.