People on the Street: Tim and Kara
September 16th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
This installment of “People on the Street” involves a husband and wife: Tim and Kara. We’ve learned from experience that when someone thinks their work sucks, it doesn’t just affect them - it affects people around them, too. With that in mind, in this post, you’ll hear Tim’s account of his entry into a new work environment and how the focus on time progressively became too much to handle. You’ll also hear Kara’s account of what she was witnessing as Tim became more and more dissatisfied.
In Part 2 on Friday, you’ll hear how reading Why Work Sucks affected Tim and Kara’s life and the life of their family.
Video #1: Tim’s new job
[About five months ago, Tim got a new job. Shortly after entering the work environment, he was reprimanded for coming in 2 minutes "late" and leaving 2 minutes "early". He was also "checked on" by his boss no less than 12 times a day. And the stress level began to rise...]
Video #2: Tim: My work sucks
[Tim went to HR to express his unhappiness and was told to go back to the grind. He continued to be reprimanded for how he used his time - to the point of feeling guilty about going to the bathroom.]
Video #3: Kara’s view of Tim
[Immediately after the new job started, Kara noticed that the Tim she knew was slipping away. He was withdrawn, crabby, cold, and short-tempered.]
When you’re in a less than stellar work situation, how do your relatives/friends perceive you? Or, if you have a relative or friend in a stressful work situation, how have you seen them change?
It gets better for Tim and Kara - we promise. Stay tuned for Part 2…
Our parallel to Tim and Kara’s story is not a micromanaging boss, but rather a micromanaging admin and traffic system that sends alerts to all the “powers that be” whenever you are late but never when you’re on or ahead of schedule.
Most days when my husband comes home from work he is less than he was when he left in the morning — as though something was taken from him just by going to work. It’s like he was less of himself, smaller somehow. It’s hard to articulate well.
He’s a very passionate, funny, innovative and insightful man who is a genius at building and maintaining relationships. He is not, however, good at bureaucratic process — checking off every little box on the 300+ step job checklist or doing the task exactly on time when the traffic schedule says it has to be done. He prefers to just get the job done for his clients in whatever manner is best that day, time, etc. And he delivers!
The company where he works has grown to a point where they need these massive processes to operate. Their larger clients need it, too. But my husband, who doesn’t operate well in those types of highly defined roles is dying. He is not praised because he has happy clients or has increased his clients’ net revenue. No, he is criticized because his task is late or he didn’t sign on the right line on the form. Please note that some people in this company flourish with this system of tasks and checklists. He just does not.
So last Friday, he met with his boss and told him that the company has outgrown him. And he told him that it was about his poor fit, not the company’s good work. He told him that his time remaining there was going to be measured in weeks and not months. And that it was not a negotiation.
In the few days since he has talked to his boss, I can already see a difference in him. Hope for the future, perhaps?
@Kris - yes, definite hope for the future. Just voicing that you will not stand for inhumane, childish treatment anymore is liberating. It’s trying to deal with it in silence that causes the slow death. Kudos to your husband for having that conversation. If Tim and Kara read your comment, they’re probably vigorously nodding their heads up and down!
I’d have to say that for the past year, I’ve been the person my friends and family have seen differences in. I transferred last year to a different location within my organization and my management has made life miserable. My friends and family have told me that they have seen me more depressed than ever before. At one point, I actually forgot I had made a dinner date with a friend who was flying in from out of town! I was sleeping less, because all I wanted to do each night was preserve how much time I had awake before I had to go back to work. And I was actually crying while at work… a lot. Sometimes for ridiculous reasons. If you knew me, you would probably find this shocking. I was the type who would privately laugh at other girls who cried at work for stupid things. Finally, I pretty much diagnosed myself with job burnout, which was actually somewhat of a relief since all of the leading experts in the field place the blame on the organizations, rather than the individuals. I finally felt like it wasn’t that I had become a completely worthless, incompetent pile of dog doo. I had gone from loving my job, never once feeling like I couldn’t do it every day for the next thirty years, to interviewing with other companies, daydreaming about other careers, and actually not caring about my own job performance, all within the span of a year.
Recently, there have been a few things that have revitalized me at work, one of which was learning that almost everyone else on my team is having similar difficulties with management and similar results in how they feel. I’m not totally back to where I was before, but I feel like I care for the first time in more than a year. And that is really cool.
These videos hit home hard — as I am sure for a lot of other people as well.
For me it has been a long time since I looked forward to going in to work. I enjoy my job, just not the people I work with. I am but one of two people who perform the job I do in an agency of 1,000 employees. My supervisors do not understand what I do — nor will they really ever. Because of this all they have to measure my accomplishments with is TIME.
It takes years to learn what I have to perform on a daily basis and I am continually learning new things every day. How can they every really appreciate the service I perform for our agency? Their answer is an 8 hour day within your cubicle sitting in your chair…