There’s a little buttony, widgety thingy over to the right that says “Tell us why work sucks.” (It’s right above the RSS buttony, widgety thingy.)

Many of you have been clicking on it and telling us your stories. Thank you! We can’t solve the problem of work unless we’re all talking about it as a problem. Please keep writing and venting and sharing.

Here are three stories that we hope inspire you to tell us yours.

Work sucks because . . .

I’m micromanaged, work for someone who is completely anal, controlling and swears at his employees on a weekly basis. Everyone of my co-workers, except the “boys club”, feels sick to their stomaches to come into the office everyday, unless our boss is gone. We are all afraid of making mistakes…and that right there leads to numerous mistakes being made. We over-analyze everything because we are always second guessing ourselves. I call it the 50/50 rule; you have a 50% chance of doing something right but chances are its going to wrong!

**

Work sucks because . . .

When clients need my help, I’m asked to search the internet for a book because someone else is too important to that for themselves.

***

Work sucks because . . .

I work for a large university with over 45,000 employees. You’d think there might be some open mindedness, right? I draft benefit plan documents, employee newsletters, respond to high level employee complaints. I spend over an hour driving 60 miles round trip to work. I have discussed the possibility of telecommuting with my manager. Oh no, no, no. He even has issues with requests to work from home when I need a repairman over or weather conditions are inclement.

Why? He cannot be assured my home “work space” is safe and there are liability issues. What if I fell and broke my arm at home while on “company” time? He is more comfortable when I am available on the spot if he needs me (I’ve seen him twice this week for a max of 3 minutes).

And, he really cannot monitor my productivity if I am not there.

I write for crying out loud! What is not measurable?

This post is for you managers out there. Without a doubt, a Results-Only Work Environment really puts managers and leaders to the test. Because you’re no longer keeping track of when and where you work (and because you have to get crystal clear about goals, expectations and deliverables), managers find themselves having to grow and change after they say goodbye to the traditional work environment.

We don’t see this as a negative. In fact, a lot of Best Buy managers we know have found ROWE to be liberating both personally and professionally. They find themselves able to focus more of their time and energy on the work as opposed to playing hall monitor.

In any case, we encourage everyone to head on over to this forum post to see how managers are talking about ROWE, and to put in your two cents.

We were delighted to see this piece in Slate that talks about how the practice of law firms billing by the hour is coming under fire.

As the story notes in the opening of the second paragraph:

“For years, critics have argued that tracking the work day in six-minute intervals—the standard billing system used by big law firms—discourages creativity and efficiency.”

Amen. (And not just for lawyers.)

But what we found interesting is that it’s the client who is driving this change. It’s the client (and not lawyers searching for more work-life balance) who are finally getting sick of the waste and inefficiency of having knowledge work being tied to the clock. While the idea of a Results-Only Work Environment isn’t widespread enough yet for a company’s customers to start asking for ROWE, we can see this happening in the future.

The reason is that a ROWE allows a company to serve its customers far more intensely than a traditional work environment.

First, because people can choose to work at any time of the day, someone, somewhere in the company is always working. As a result, the entire company is more in tune with the global, 24/7 economy.

More importantly, because employees are rewarded based on results rather than filling hours, they are more innovative, more focused on solving problems, and more responsive. They have more incentive to complete their work quickly and efficiently because once their work is done, their time is their own.

So if you’re out there wanting ROWE for your organization, don’t stop there. You can also add the companyies you work with to your wish list for this exciting new way of working.

This was so exciting we almost forgot to post it: we recently appeared in Lisa Belkin’s “Life’s Work” column in The New York Times. She wanted our take on what the big bosses should resolve to do to make their workplaces better in 2008.

Here’s the link to the whole thing (subscription required).

Here’s the part that’s just about us:

“Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson also favor shaking up the workplace. In the last few years, they have polished a simple but revolutionary concept called Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) based on the idea that workplaces operate best when employees come and go on their own schedules. Their approach is already in force at Best Buy, and they chronicle its effects in their blog, caliandjody.com.

When I asked for resolutions, they wrote a manifesto that a business leader might do well to sign: I, important C.E.O., resolve to stop saying things like “people are our most important asset” and start doing something about it.

I resolve to listen to what employees of all levels need to live their lives, and then not dismiss what they say because it makes me uncomfortable.

I resolve to stop thinking that people’s lives outside of work are at odds with their lives at work.

I resolve to start putting results first and the clock second.

Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to get to the gym a little more often.”

Good advice, yes?

Here’s some holiday cheer for you: a casino worker who was fired for posting a Dilbert comic strip that likened managers to a bunch of “drunken lemurs.” The best (as in worst) part: they challenged his unemployment insurance.

Fortunately, the state ruled in the worker’s favor in terms of the insurance, although in our opinion the right thing would have been for the worker to be offered his job back.

Work is not the military. It’s absurd that an at-will employee could be fired for “insubordination” as if they were a conscript in the Army.

What is most galling to us about this story is that it represents a problem we find all over corporate America: respect flows in one direction. According to the story upper management found the cartoon “very offensive” but then later, the casino worker’s boss told him he wasn’t being a “team player.”

So it’s not okay to joke about managers in general, but it is okay for the boss to dress you down with vague criticisms about your lack of school spirit?

Happy Holidays!

Nice mention today in Miki Anderson’s Leadership Turn blog. We talk a lot about how a Results-Only Work Environment is a “people’s movement” as opposed to coming from the executive level. While this is true, we’d also like to acknowledge the leaders at Best Buy who enabled this change. Cheers to those who recognized that ROWE could be good for business as well as good for individual employees.

We also think it’s important to note that this tension between what’s good for business and what’s good for the individual employee is divisive and unnecessary. Many so called work-life balance solutions (flextime, telecommuting, etc.) are underutilized by employees and/or reluctantly supported by employers because of the assumption that working in a non-traditional way is not a good idea. Employers feel like they’re making a concession or a special case. Employees feel like they’re taking a career risk by not being in the office when everyone else is.

The success of a Results-Only Work Environment proves that making employees happy and driving business outcomes are not mutually exclusive. The work-life problem is not a zero-sum game. So hats off again to Brad Anderson and Best Buy. To the rest of you executives out there, maybe it’s time to think about a new way of working.