There Are No Brownie Points!
I'm sitting on a tram, heading into the city of Adelaide, South Australia. It's 2:35pm, Friday afternoon and I'm listening to a finance podcast to take my mind off of today's events.
I'm not too angry because it means that I can visit a post office to pay my rent. It's due tomorrow, and it can take a few days to process.
(I've just paid it; I'm walking while I type this).
The Job
A month ago I had to walk away from a full time, permanent job because it was giving me anxiety attacks.
It meant going back to the part time event work, which is sporadic and often doesn't pay the rent.
This morning I was scheduled to do a 9 - 5 shift picking up and stacking carpet squares onto wooden crates.
It's a job I've done before, and normally we'd get around 6 people turn up, only this time there were nearly 10 people. I knew this would mean that the job would get done faster, we'd leave early and I'd be paid less than expected.
The Abuse
We started working and it wasn't long before I started getting blisters from carpet tiles rubbing against my fingers.
I asked for some bandaids from a supervisor, and he walked off and got some along with some gloves for us all and he walked off back to his office.
There was a guy who I'd seen a few times over the last six months, from his first day with the labour hire company. When he first started he seemed happier, briggter and was friendlier.
Today his face was serious and matter-of-fact. He didn't greet me like he normally would. This is a red flag that I didn't pick up on at the time, but I am aware of now upon reflection of the day's events.
He also chose to be the only one not wearing gloves.
It didn't long before it was time for a break.
After the break we'd naturally formed into groups.
I was in the centre of the room with two Indian guys, there were five white guys on the right side of the pavilion and 2 other Indian guys on the left side.
The two Indian guys on the left side weren't working all that hard apparently and were messing around.
The other two Indians and myself had to stop what we were doing and tidy up a stack of tiles the other Indian guys had made messy. We were talking while doing this and I had stopped for a split second in order to hear a question one of the guys had asked, properly.
The next thing I know the new guy starts asking me what the issue was, what I was talking about and how we'd apparently not done anything for 45 minutes and we're all on the same payrate so pull some fingers out, etc.
This angered me because we hadn't anything wrong. The other guys were like "What was that about? We were working...". He stormed off.
We got the carpet tiles finished at 12:30pm, all that was left was the removal of the double-sided tape from the floor, but that was something for after lunch.
After lunch, I came back and asked one of the white guys who had been on the right side of the pavilion, who had stirred up the new guy. It turned out it was him and that he was referring to the other Indians who weren't working, not me and the other guys.
The new guy had mistunderstood and because he was racist, just picked the first group of Indians he saw and proceeded to go on a power trip.
We were all getting paid the same amount, he said as much as a way to crack the whip, but he didn't have the authority to speak down to anyone they way he did.
Coming back to work, I noticed the new guy sitting near the client: brown nosing.
The removal of the double-sided tape took less than an hour meaning that we finished at 2pm instead of 5pm.
That's 3 hours of pay he cost us all.
The client thanked the new guy personally, having saved him so much money, which turned my stomach a little bit.
It also dawned on me that the new guy was being manipulated by the client.
The Cost Of Ambition
It's been my experience that those who have have ambition beyond their current position, while they might appear to work hard, often destroy a business from the inside as an unintended consequence.
They are focused on climbing into management positions, and when you give certain people a little power, bad things happen.
Their attitude can discord with other employees who then harbour grudges and they either quit or start taking sick days off more often. Workplace bullying increases and also hampers productivity.
What's worse is the potential risk to the business relationship with clients. People talk and reputation matters.
It's people like this that have cost me every job I have ever had, and has left me with a bad impression of the companies ever after.
In closing, there are no brownie points in working harder than everyone else, especially when it costs your coworkers' hours. You're cutting your own throat in the long run.
There was a time when management would have relegated people like this to the crappiest jobs and prevented them from being promoted. Now it seems it's a pre-requisite for promotion.
Just as a reminder, we are in late-stage capitalism and with global greedflation; anything could happen.
Be mindful of office politics, and steer clear if possible.
Thank you for reading.
Shaidon
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