Workplace incompetence and games

Post Reply New Topic

I've gotten a lot better at things over the years, but one of the things I still *really* struggle with is dealing with people at work who are either incompetent (and yet kept there) or who engage in drama and manipulation and games to get their way on things.

My current job is like that, and I've become so distressed over it that its costing me sleep, and wiping out my other life energies so I have no energy to do anything but be lifeless and depressed.

I've had this or something similar on other jobs, too. Last job, for example, I had to deal with people who were outright lazy and/or stupid, and it was my job to make sure their legal stuff went into the computer right (and I got watched minutely and reports made to my file if I didn't catch everything every time). I quit that one when I was a few weeks from being fired, because I couldn't take it any longer.

The job I had before that involved very real government and union corruption that I was stupid enough to believe I could make a difference in just by trying to fix it. I got driven out of that one, as you can imagine I'm sure.

I've always gone through the same phases on jobs, it seems.

First, I go in believing that everyone is like me and is obsessed with doing a good and ethical job according to the stated dictates of the company (i.e., making a profit if its a private company, serving the public if its government).

Second, I am stunned and confused for some time when that doesn't turn out to be the case.

Third, without realizing it at the time, I make myself a pain in the rear and make a lot of enemies by trying to be helpful and help fix the situation. I just can't believe that people would be like that on purpose.

Fourth, lately, I start to realize I'm making myself a pain and making a lot of enemies (at my level, but also among those "below" me and those all the way up to upper management), but I'm so obsessed that I can't stop trying to fix it anyway. This part can now go on for months. I just can't - can't can't can't - let go of wanting to make things "work" according to what our goal is *supposed* to be according to our owner/whatever. Even when I know its not making any difference, and that I'm only hurting myself.

Last, after sometimes years and sometimes months of this, I am either driven out of the company or so exhausted I quit.

Perhaps its my middle-aged crisis, but this is really starting to wear on me past recovery. The idea that I have to keep doing this for another 25+ years before I can retire makes me beyond hopeless.

The idea that my attitude - wanting to do a good job for my employer no matter what, being willing to do the hard things to make it happen, etc - theoretically makes me a great employee but in the real world makes me a poor employee... well, I don't know how to handle that.

Right now, I've already talked to HR and management. Even those that agree with everything I say still say there's nothing that can be done about any of the situation.

So my answer for the next 25 years is to somehow disconnect my obsessive caring about the job -- like these other people do -- and "just show up for the paycheck" without becoming an emotional and psychological meltdown?

How do I DO that? I have no idea. And I think understanding that almost makes it worse.

Any ideas?

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you are investing too much passion and emotional energy into your work, when in reality, all you need to do is keep your head down and work 9-5.

Instead of focussing on improving the companies that you work for, what about devoting your energy to a just cause or charity instead in your spare time? They're always looking for enthusiastic people.

I feel the same.

I work with some people that it just flabbergasts me they are still employed.
I have talked about this with other coworkers and they seem to agree that these people are incompetent but they just laugh it off while I try to figure out how to correct the situation yet my attempts at correcting it make me look like the bad guy.

I have reached a point where I just don't care and am again looking for a new job where I hope things will be better but realize that they won't.

I think the only way for me to get away from this is to start my own business but I've fantasized about that for the last twenty years and haven't been able to make it happen.

1. start your own business
2. find a hobby that you can obsess about

well, i understand you completely, i can not bear myself to do stupid things (things that i think are stupid anyway). well i can but only if that enables me to do other thing that i think is smart.
the thing is the higher one gets in a position, more freedom one has so that thing gives me strength to bend my rules somewhat.

One thing you can do is open your own business or become self employed. I have given up working for others.

I have the same problem to a lesser degree. It's aggravating, but I do my best to just keep my head down. I've gotten better about it. Management doesn't want to hear me complain. My near spotless record, time on the job, and high quality of work have earned me respect. Nobody needs to ever check up on my responsibilities. Less for management to worry about. But it's tedious having to work with people who just don't give a damn about their quality of work. I've just learned to be a misanthrope.

It's so difficult to stop caring about the faults of others especially when it directly affects you.

In my personal experience in working IT, my fellow IT employees were extremely competent and I believe truly enjoyed the work. The one concept I had so much trouble dealing with at that job was when a computer problem would occur because of a user's error. A normal person would both correct the error and teach the person who caused the error how to avoid it. Every time I tried this, I'd get so frustrated when they would keep repeating the same error even after telling them exactly what the cause was. Eventually I stopped trying and instead looked for ways where I can prevent them from ever getting to a point where they can create a problem (which in many cases either wasn't possible or created a huge inconvenience to the user). It was difficult to speak to management about this and I felt so powerless at times.

Personally I like the idea of finding a charity or something you feel could benefit from your passion. I would think the people involved in volunteer work feel a genuine pride in doing things right and to their full abilities rather than just grinding out their life for money to survive. But as it stands I think many of us have to go through that grind and try to sop caring about pride in a workplace we feel so disfranchised with.

Good luck with your struggle, I hope you can find a solution that works for you.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I think the worst of this job is that others constantly affect my work. Meaning, no matter how well I do it, others can and do muck it all up. And they don't care. But I still do. It's like making a nice cake but then others come along and spit on it or drag their fingers through it, and I'm not supposed to care.

I guess I need to keep looking for that job where my performance is based on what I do but others can't affect that.

About finding a charity/etc to obsess on. That sounds great, but when you're beat to crapola from the nonsense you've had to live in all day, there just isn't energy for that. I wish there was. I

I totally sympathize.

I have faced this kind of crap in every job ever.

I can offer no solutions

Kia Kaha

peace j

I can totally sympathise with your experience. I also know how hard it is to find solace in outside activities when life at work is beating the stuffing out of you.

Maybe Book a holiday. Recharge your batteries away from work

Or Book a hobby course at your local community college. Turn up and have fun, don't worry about whether you have (eg) the best painting in the room - as long as you are learning and having fun.

Take Care

Today at work I practiced not caring that my work is being trashed by coworkers re-making it (even though they aren't supposed to, but it gives them access to things they aren't supposed to have access to). And all day long people kept coming up to me and saying, "What's wrong? Are you mad at me?" I don't get it. It was very hard for me, but I didn't feel mad. I felt depressed. And I certainly wasn't expressing anything at any one person. In fact, I was trying to be noncommittal. Trying to focus in on my tasks and block everything else out. Trying to take care of myself.

Every time I think I have the world figured out, it manages to let me know how little I really understand.

I get through the working day by detaching from it. To me, the workplace isn't quite real, or it's a necessary evil. I've learned not to get emotionally involved with "my" work there, because it's not really my work at all, it's just some kind of prostitution job for some selfish boss or other. Of course sometimes I catch myself taking a pride in what I'm doing.....so I try to keep my work to myself, I conceal a lot - what the others don't know about, they can't easily interfere with. Or I lock it away so they can't get it. Just treat them like the meddling kids they are and you'll be fine.

Not that I think it's all the fault of capitalism and rotten hierachies - I see similar things going on in a small music group I'm in....there's no salary for that, so anybody can quit without threatening their livelihood. Strangely, one band member seems to be well on the spectrum, he's younger than I am, and displays more of the classic autistic symptoms than I do. While I'm having fun learning to "go with the flow" (which feels surprisingly liberating as long as I don't worry about the end result), he has a lot of trouble with any ad-lib, unscripted stuff, and will annoy the others by bringing in meticulously-planned written scores that he "expects" us to follow to the letter.

It's weird - with me, so much is about how close I feel to the people I'm working with, how much I trust them.....so I don't feel very Aspie at all while I'm with these people - it's in the workplace where I'm surrounded by potential enemies and forced interference that I feel anxious and trapped in cruelty and danger, that's where my traits come out. But this guy seems to feel in an amateur setting what I feel in a "professional" setting. I guess he just doesn't hate straights and love dropouts the way I do. Meanwhile, one as*hole told us we should chuck him out because he's "way out on the spectrum" - no freaking way! Sure, he'll piss us off occasionally, but we just have to find solutions or get over it. Employers don't have the time for love, they're obsessed with production, which is probably why they don't usually get quite what they want from human beings.

It would have been nice to start understanding this 33 years ago, when I first started working. Bah!

This is what I've started figuring out (hopefully I'm right this time):

I either need a job that I'm independent in my output and so on. So I'm not overrun by the drama and clawing that goes on in the "normal" world that I can't figure out, plan for, or truly even begin to properly fight back against even when I finally realize it.

OR,

I need a brainless job where I can truly zone out - body doing one thing, brain engaged elsewhere.

My current job requires my brain be engaged in it at the same time I sitting in a rat hole of backstabbing and complain-games and not-doing-what-they're-supposed-to-do and so on.

Bad combo. Bad!

There is some hope, however, in that I have 2 managers and 1 of them is trying really hard to get me laid off . Although it will hurt big financially, right now I would sell everything I have to get away from this.