I’m very confused about quitting my current position as a nurse. This is not a typical one man job, but you need a team. I’m pondering staying for some members of the team:
I get along with 40% of the staff, 30% of staff are absolute slackers who master the social game and get away doing way less than the rest and go smoking with my manager, who enjoys and needs the attention. I’m indifferent to the other 30%, who also work well.
I know I may not sound like a reliable narrator, it’s just that I don’t want to get anywhere near this 30% of lazy, childish, gossip staff.
I had a meeting with management with my union representative present. Long story short, I told management as soon as I find a new job within the same hospital system, I’d stop working at my current unit with my manager. She forgives the ones she likes and treats me differently, I’m not likable and being forced to give attention to people I’m indifferent to is very tiring. I’m there to work, she seems to expect I give her attention and stop doing my job to ask about her weekend. Not gonna happen.
Day 1 post meeting: manager and all her friends ignore me, go somewhere else when I enter the room.
Day 3 post meeting: friendly call from manager asking if I can come in on a free day, cause somebody called in sick.
Every other interaction with my manager since day 3 has been friendly, which is something new.
I have no problem working with people who understand they’re at a workplace to work, because we all need the money and want to go home afterwards, it’s the lazy ones that sit, talk and then expect me to do their job the ones I hate with a burning passion.
Since the meeting I’ve decided to use my current unit to learn as much as I can before I (possibly?) leave. Not because I suddenly feel this is a calling, but because the more I know about my field, the easier is gonna be to find a new job, either within my system or in a new one. I’ve also discovered I like explaining patients what happens to their bodies after their operation and how medicines work.
But I don’t dislike the whole unit, I just want to keep my manager at a distance and don’t work with that 30% of slackers.
You will never escape the lazy people. They’re at every job.
While this is absolutely true effective supervision and competent management make a world of difference with this issue.
Lazy staff continue to exist because they are typically inadequately supervised. As a result the extent of their behavior is not clear to management. So that needs to be corrected. But if that’s corrected (it could be) management needs to respond to the problematic behavior with appropriate consequences (eg constructive feedback, warnings, corrective action, firing) to shape the behavior going forward.
There’s a lot more to it; a huge part that is often overlooked is that management should also be providing ongoing consequences in a positive sense to entice the desired behaviors. Fear of punishment isn’t really a great consequence for operant conditioning. So we look at some other options: how do we create motivation to make people want to do their job tasks? How do we build morale? How do we build enthusiasm? This can be as simple as “if you get [x] done consistently you get [special privilege]”. Corrective and punitive action should be a last resort for when these systems are failing, even if you’re adjusting them to try and make them work
This is a cultural problem in the us (and many other places) though. We have this view of “I gave you a job and I’m already paying you so you should be so fucking grateful to me”. We love the hierarchy model. The idea of management and ownership taking care of workers is something that’s laughable or, at best, paid a pittance (here’s a small bonus, keep working a lot). It’s only very recently that companies have started giving a shit about industrial and organizational psychology/organization behavioral management/etc and even when they do it’s usually lip service to buy street cred
But ultimately it’s managements job to create an environment that makes employees want to work. The frustrating part though is that this isn’t really a problem to most management because the financial impacts are hard to measure. They’re definitely there and sometimes they’re more directly measurable, stuff like increased turnover as you burn through staff, but more often than not it’s stuff that’s far more subtle and difficult to measure like decreased utilization and productivity.
You need a different manager. Distancing yourself from the one you have doesn’t sound realistic: Their job is to not be distant.
Move, but leave a good impression.
You need a different manager. Distancing yourself from the one you have doesn’t sound realistic: Their job is to not be distant.
I’m lost here: what is their job?
Also feeling a bit lost now :) What is the job of a manager?
They are responsible for the work, productivity, and well-being of everyone they are managing, both individually and as a group who needs to work together.
You’ve got the right mentality, of finding a new job before quitting your old one. This is healthy.
But I would strongly recommend you learn to work with the slackers. The very few places I worked at that had no slackers… I suspect 99% of people don’t want to work there.
Pareto’s law is universal: ~80% of the work is done by ~20% of the staff. Either find a place where managers recognise who the 20% are and act accordingly, or don’t be one of the 20%.
I’ve done both, I aim to be the 20% and see if it’s valued, if not I aim to be one of the 80%. Successfully moving from 1 to the other isn’t too challenging, you’ll find a lot of the extra work load wasn’t noticed anyway and a little weaponised incompetence sheds the rest. Just be better than the current worst person and you’ll be fine.
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