Work Avoidance

It's an epidemic. Worse than the flu or the ebola virus. It's a state where people are employed for a reason, and instead of doing their job, they hand it off to someone else ASAP... whether they should or not. Please forgive my vent. I swear I'll post something else today to make up for it.

This is especially rampant at the world's largest retailer, both from an internal employee standpoint and a customer standpoint. Perhaps you've heard this before: "I don't know; I don't work in this department." And then, they make absolutely no effort to help. The internal slogan (as I call it) goes like this: "Somebody else will do it." How many somebody else's does an average store have? Not very many.

Now, don't get me wrong. Verbally, they do not in any way endorse this policy. No, no. They talk about going out of their way to help the customer, and nonsense such as that, but internally, "somebody else will do it" is non-verbally blessed by management as well. If, God forbid, finishing your job will create overtime, personal responsibility goes out the window. They will literally say to "leave it; somebody else can do it." Pathetic.

This carries over into my other job as well. It's not as prevalent, but it is there. I work in an area that not a lot of people (acknowledge to) understand, and so any time something along those lines emerges, the tickets involving it get shot right over to us, whether it actually applies to that process or not. One just today had absolutely nothing to do with my primary responsibility, but the item had that classification on it, so to me it came. I can't count how many times I've explained the process to another department who won't do their job until I convince them that what needs to be done is their responsibility. And by convince, I mean get a lawyer and make a rock solid case for it...or that's what it feels like.

I know... Why aren't I doing these things I feel like others should? Well, in business, everyone has a specialty and certain responsibilities. These responsbilities are delegated to those who are most likely to be able to do them in the best manner possible. Those same people are also likely trained in some way to do that job well or they've received internal training to do it. This "other department" does something I know very little about, so when I get one of their tickets, I don't know how to resolve it except to send it to them. The avoidance I'm referring to involves people who do know how to do the same things or are training in the same areas, but choose to push work off onto other people just so they don't have to do it.

One such issue involved me doing something that really wasn't even my job to do, but it was for someone who called in. I helped to align this person's print image once, and so when they couldn't print all of a sudden, they called me. Their program was wanting to save a pdf file instead of printing it. Well, this means one of two things: file isn't associated with the app, or no app present to associate with. She handed me over to her IT guy...wait, an IT guy. Isn't he supposed to know this stuff. Oh, wait, it's our product, so clearly it's our issue.

He asked about it being blocked by a pop-up blocker, so I had to tell him where in Internet Explorer that was. He couldn't get the file to load, so I had to not only suggest reinstalling the app, but tell him where to find it (the app being Adobe Acrobat Reader, the singular most common free program on the planet). Then it would download, so I had to tell him when to unblock the file download ability in the IE security settings. Why am I doing this for someone who should be qualified?

Anyway, I guess my rant is over. Sometimes, people just really tick me off. They duck their responsibilities all over the place, and those who are responsible for themselves and try to take care of people (i.e. do their job) end up picking up the slack for the slackers. I don't mind slacking now and again, but I do it when I know I can. It's an ongoing issue that I know will never end. Even since I've began this post last week, more things have cropped up where people avoid taking work that should belong to them, so I just deal with it and do what they should be doing.

While it makes the boss love me, it's also a bit frustrating being the repository for all the tickets that no one wants to finish. I get it and complete it in a few minutes. On one occasion, the ticket was three months old. I did it in 5 minutes.

Well, I better get back to work.