cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/1144192

you might be an introvert, passionate about your job, or simply old enough to disregard friendships at work because you already have enough friends and a family.

The coworkers I like the most are the ones that come to work, don’t like drama, do their job and go home. That’s what I try to do.

However, there are always some established cliques who know how to play the unit / supervisor and get away doing much less, even feeling entitled to order you around, even though they are not your supervisor.

To people who experience this. How do you tolerate it? Even after changing jobs, this can happen at your new workplace, maybe it happens in every workplace?

  • HobbitFoot
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    224 months ago

    It depends on what you define as lazy and popular.

    I’ve had staff that were visibly not working harder than other staff, but their work was of significantly higher quality than others. Since the “lazy” worker produced more and could be counted on to do the work with less supervision, I gave them more flexibility in the office. I was playing favorites, but the favorite was more valuable as an employee.

    And I’ve had other staff that would be considered more popular, but that was in part because they would help others at work doing coordination and mentoring tasks. I would also offload some of my managerial tasks to them if I was overwhelmed even though they didn’t have the title. If I offload the management of a task to someone else, I expect people to treat them with the same respect they treat me. I’ve seen that expectation not get followed and I’ve had to step in to remind staff that they need to coordinate with others, not just me.

    I find that a lot of people who “do their job and go home” don’t end up doing any of the coordination or communication required for their job, even though their job is technical design. They end up being worse than they think at their job because it is so hard to work with them and won’t chime in on cases where there is shared responsibility.