What are the things that make your experience of work so crap?
Here’s my far from complete list that I came up with as I wrote this week’s ‘The Decrapify Work Not-Newsletter’. What would you add to it?
I didn’t realise how dangerous my workplace was.
I mean, it was just an office, in a division of a big company. One that was generally reckoned to be a ‘good’ employer. What harm could I come to?
Since I entered the workforce a few decades ago, lots of new words about it have emerged
Stress
Downsizing
The extra mile
Burnout
Have you ever had a ‘Psycho Boss’?
I was amazed at how much it resonated with people when I talked about my psycho boss at a talk I gave recently. What really got to me was how strongly people felt it still, even when the experience was decades ago.
Careers can be prisons or playgrounds. Mine was both, only not the best way around.
The first half was a playground. I worked in two parts of the business that were small, entrepreneurial units that worked in new technology. They were innovative, creative…
They look tasty and alluring but are ultimately unfulfilling
You can never resist another meeting, even though you know they are bad for you.
I have problems with the word ‘Leadership’.
It is freighted with all sorts of hidden meaning and emotions and it brings up different images for each of us. Churchill. Caesar. Stalin. JFK. Genghis Khan. Mandela. Heroes and villains. Positives and…
‘Hybrid work’ is new and sexy, isn’t it?
Can you work effectively with arseholes?
I use to think so. That I could have a ‘professional relationship’ with people I nether liked or respected and still deliver.
Now I think I was wrong and that it was damaging to me personally. It’s why today I…
I once cleaned the toilets in a Corned Beef warehouse.
I was holiday cover for the regular guy and it was a bit of a doddle, I was done by lunchtime.