Things We Do Badly Regardless of Technology - In The Workplace

In my society, which is mostly Engineers and business professionals, I find the thing that we are worst at is assigning and receiving work.

As an employee, I expect my manager to tell me once that something needs done. Included in that is an expectation of quality, a due date, and a clear definition of what they want done or which problem they want solved. In reality we get things like, "I want you to paint me a picture." Four days later we are told we are past due on our picture. Then we are told that the picture we made is of the wrong thing. Eventually we will be told our picture is of the correct thing but not done well enough. As an employee, it is my job to ensure I have that information before I accept an assignment and my manager should provide it.

Every business has strengths and weaknesses. The ones that have really bad weaknesses usually don't last long unless they have a near monopoly on something.

I see both sides of this issue.

I absolutely agree that hiring someone to do stuff to free up skilled workers to do skilled tasks makes sense.  If I were running a company I would try and minimize the amount of time my skilled employees spend doing bullE36 M3 tasks.  An engineer might bring $1000/hr in value to the company... I don't want him spending 30 minutes trying to do something super tedious. 

But I certainly expect that employee to do that task if that is what is asked of them.

Now, if you have a bunch of employees that constantly forget to do the same mundane task - that's a fault of the system or process, not the employee.  You need to fix the process and everyone's life will be easier.

pheller said:

Sorry your offended. 

I don't mind doing mundane tasks once in awhile, and will do those tasks to stay sharp. Some managers, owners, etc, get so attached to not doing those mundane tasks that they not only can't do them, they refuse to. 

If you can "bounce" someone for forgetting a mundane task you choose not to do, I have equal right to ridicule you for being useless at anything other than "the hard thinking." 

Worse is when people hire others to do the things they don't want to do. It's not about "I need someone to help out so we can focus on making more money." It's more about "I don't like doing this mundane task, I should hire an assistant to do it, then fire them every time they forget to do it. But I'll need to have a replacement lined up quickly, because hell I'm going to do that task." That's how we end up with all of these temp jobs to no-where. 

There is difference between someone screwing up on regular occasion that costs the company money and someone being occasionally (say, once every 3 months) forgetful of something. It was said in the other thread - sometimes being a manager or owner is trading doing mundane low-value tasks for occasionally have to remind someone of something that is non-essential, but important. 

"The hard thinking" lol.  This is certainly an interesting take on things.  

pheller said:

If you can "bounce" someone for forgetting a mundane task you choose not to do, I have equal right to ridicule you for being useless at anything other than "the hard thinking." 

Go ahead and ridicule. You’re still fired. 

ProDarwin said:

 

Now, if you have a bunch of employees that constantly forget to do the same mundane task - that's a fault of the system or process, not the employee.  You need to fix the process and everyone's life will be easier.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I expect the people I hire to fix their own processes. I give them their tasks and figuring out how to remember them is their responsibility, be it taking out the trash or filling out time sheets or completing their next service call. They are not my children that I should have to remind them to do their jobs. 

My job is to figure out what we, as a company, are doing next so we all stay gainfully employed, not reminding people to do things they have already been told to do. 

In reply to pheller :

There are times when I am really supportive of you and your ideas. You are really smart, well reasoned, and bring a fresh perspective that I need to hear. 

And there are times when you seem to have an entitlement mentality. This is one of those times. 

Toyman01 said:

I'm not sure I agree with this. I expect the people I hire to fix their own processes. I give them their tasks and figuring out how to remember them is their responsibility, be it taking out the trash or filling out time sheets or completing their next service call. They are not my children that I should have to remind them to do their jobs. 

My job is to figure out what we, as a company, are doing next so we all stay gainfully employed, not reminding people to do things they have already been told to do. 

You have a small shop and people are empowered to fix their own problems and that's great.

At larger companies that flexibility is often not there.  When you are talking about hundreds or thousands of people and the majority of them are forgetting the same stupid task, you have a process issue.  Now I would still argue its a process issue on the smaller scale too, but those are a lot easier to overcome.

I go above and beyond at work, but I hesitate to say I act like an adult.

pheller said:

Sorry your offended. 

I don't mind doing mundane tasks once in awhile, and will do those tasks to stay sharp. Some managers, owners, etc, get so attached to not doing those mundane tasks that they not only can't do them, they refuse to. 

If you can "bounce" someone for forgetting a mundane task you choose not to do, I have equal right to ridicule you for being useless at anything other than "the hard thinking." 

Worse is when people hire others to do the things they don't want to do. It's not about "I need someone to help out so we can focus on making more money." It's more about "I don't like doing this mundane task, I should hire an assistant to do it, then fire them every time they forget to do it. But I'll need to have a replacement lined up quickly, because hell I'm going to do that task." That's how we end up with all of these temp jobs to no-where. 

 

Wait, what? You realize you just said that it is unfair to fire people for not doing their job, right? So what are they doing? 

T.J. said:

I need to print this out... 

ProDarwin said:

Toyman01 said:

I'm not sure I agree with this. I expect the people I hire to fix their own processes. I give them their tasks and figuring out how to remember them is their responsibility, be it taking out the trash or filling out time sheets or completing their next service call. They are not my children that I should have to remind them to do their jobs. 

My job is to figure out what we, as a company, are doing next so we all stay gainfully employed, not reminding people to do things they have already been told to do. 

You have a small shop and people are empowered to fix their own problems and that's great.

At larger companies that flexibility is often not there.  When you are talking about hundreds or thousands of people and the majority of them are forgetting the same stupid task, you have a process issue.  Now I would still argue its a process issue on the smaller scale too, but those are a lot easier to overcome.

 

Not really a process issue in this case. From the original post:

"I've gotten to the point now where the reminder is pointless. It doesn't matter when it is, I always ignore it and forget to do my timesheet."

I mean, if you set a reminder for yourself to do a task, then just blow off the reminder.............I'm not really sure what else to say.  

Despite all the computers and reports our shop can't track orders.   Every day we're looking for an order to find out the paperwork is missing.  
 

A big part of this is the current team - also we are stretched on personnel so they miss details.  

z31maniac said:

ProDarwin said:

Toyman01 said:

I'm not sure I agree with this. I expect the people I hire to fix their own processes. I give them their tasks and figuring out how to remember them is their responsibility, be it taking out the trash or filling out time sheets or completing their next service call. They are not my children that I should have to remind them to do their jobs. 

My job is to figure out what we, as a company, are doing next so we all stay gainfully employed, not reminding people to do things they have already been told to do. 

You have a small shop and people are empowered to fix their own problems and that's great.

At larger companies that flexibility is often not there.  When you are talking about hundreds or thousands of people and the majority of them are forgetting the same stupid task, you have a process issue.  Now I would still argue its a process issue on the smaller scale too, but those are a lot easier to overcome.

 

Not really a process issue in this case. From the original post:

"I've gotten to the point now where the reminder is pointless. It doesn't matter when it is, I always ignore it and forget to do my timesheet."

 

I mean, if you set a reminder for yourself to do a task, then just blow off the reminder.............I'm not really sure what else to say.  

This one I actually kind of understand. I have an average of 6 meetings a day on my calendar, and probably about 200 inbound emails a day. Really easy to ignore an outlook ping if it isn't pertinent. I'd say Pheller needs to build it into his start-of-day or end-of-day routine rather than a reminder.

mtn said:

z31maniac said:

ProDarwin said:

Toyman01 said:

I'm not sure I agree with this. I expect the people I hire to fix their own processes. I give them their tasks and figuring out how to remember them is their responsibility, be it taking out the trash or filling out time sheets or completing their next service call. They are not my children that I should have to remind them to do their jobs. 

My job is to figure out what we, as a company, are doing next so we all stay gainfully employed, not reminding people to do things they have already been told to do. 

You have a small shop and people are empowered to fix their own problems and that's great.

At larger companies that flexibility is often not there.  When you are talking about hundreds or thousands of people and the majority of them are forgetting the same stupid task, you have a process issue.  Now I would still argue its a process issue on the smaller scale too, but those are a lot easier to overcome.

 

Not really a process issue in this case. From the original post:

"I've gotten to the point now where the reminder is pointless. It doesn't matter when it is, I always ignore it and forget to do my timesheet."

 

I mean, if you set a reminder for yourself to do a task, then just blow off the reminder.............I'm not really sure what else to say.  

This one I actually kind of understand. I have an average of 6 meetings a day on my calendar, and probably about 200 inbound emails a day. Really easy to ignore an outlook ping if it isn't pertinent. I'd say Pheller needs to build it into his start-of-day or end-of-day routine rather than a reminder.

You nailed exactly why I mentioned my tedious Thursday tasks. Whether I'm in the office or at home, log in, check one email account, enter timecard, download correct label, do import................then go on with everything else the rest of the day. 

6 meetings? 200+ emails? 

Cripes! When do you have a chance to get any work done!

z31maniac said:

 

6 meetings? 200+ emails? 

Cripes! When do you have a chance to get any work done!

Many of the emails I'm CC'd on and don't need to be. Probably 50-60% of them are deleted with not much more than a glance. 

A lot of the meetings I put myself on mute and do other work. Most of them are only 30 minutes at least.

My point is, for all of you out there who think you are the perfect employee, you are likely not in the eyes of someone. We all have flaws. There is some quirk you have that bugs the living daylights out of somebody. 

You are correct, a successful business is usually built on a group of people who all see eye-to-eye on what matters, but eventually, that group is big enough that there are variations. 

The point of my post was to discuss "what are things that we're bad at that we can't seem to fix despite numerous attempts and methods", and maybe develop strategies through the hivemind on ways to fix them. 

Maybe some of you just say "you just fix it, simple" but I'm sure there is someone out there who has waited years for you to fix your flaws that you don't even know you have. 

I'm ok with the mod deleting the thread completely. 

pheller said:someone out there who has waited years for you to fix your flaws that you don't even know you have. 

I thought we were talking about work - not marriage.

z31maniac said:

Not really a process issue in this case. From the original post:

"I've gotten to the point now where the reminder is pointless. It doesn't matter when it is, I always ignore it and forget to do my timesheet."

 

I mean, if you set a reminder for yourself to do a task, then just blow off the reminder.............I'm not really sure what else to say.  

Agreed to some extent.  But, a reminder is not a robust process.

A great example of this is safety on plant floors.  You don't put up a reminder that says "don't use this machine, I'm working on it", you use a lockout-tagout process.  When someone gets hit by a forklift, you address the safety issues that led to that, you don't just say "well, the forklift had a beeper (reminder) and that guy didn't move so *shrug*"

You don't use a sign/reminder for workers to check bolt torque, you use a gun that auto-torques the bolt correctly as its driven in each time.

Computer reminders pop up on my screen 5-20x a day for meetings.  I can easily dismiss one completely subconsciously (just as people on job sites get used to the back up alarms and tune them out).  Thankfully there is a follow up reminder, but even then I'll be late once in a while.  If we fired everyone who was late for a meeting once, or forgot to do such a simple task once in a while, we would have zero employees remaining.

In reply to pheller :

Definitely.  I'm sure I annoyed no less than 3 people today at work. One of them was my boss. To me, it's because I can be a stickler when it comes to following procedures. To them, it was me just being a PITA.   

But I have almost 19 years of working at a place where not filling out your timesheet means you don't get paid on time.  So to me, filling out my time sheet at least once a day is habitual.