CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Economy Boosting Professional Stupidity?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

As someone who is often in City and County Building Departments, I have definitely seen them go through their ups and downs throughout this recession. In some cases, lines are long, people are overworked, and sometimes due to change of staff, employees are not 100% on top of things or able to answer your questions correctly. This is to be expected.

However, in some cases the employees themselves are getting lazy, and not at all caring about their positions and what they entail. I have always bitched about Miami Beach, because anyone who has been there knows that the permit clerks work in extra slow mode, and the 'router Desk' is pretty much a complete waste of time, not to mention where the majority of your time waiting is.

Here is my complaint for this particular post: Employees not performing up to par, due to pay cuts. One building department recently has really gone down hill. Now I have never like Hialeah's Building Department, though the wait is always long and uncomfortable, it was pretty easy to get your plans and applications dropped off. Now however, someone from this building department has told an employee of ours, that everyone is pissed off about getting paycuts, and therefore slacking. Um, three customers in three hours? All you have to do is stamp the plans, and log in the information that is already supplied for you ON the applications.

Now when you call in for status reports, you get transferred all over and ultimately end up getting someone from another departments answering machine. I understand that working for the City/County can be tedious and stressful - but a pay cut does NOT make it okay to perform poorly at work, especially when there are so many people who are still out of work, even though it's being said that our economy is back on the rise. Sadly, knowing this particular city, nothing will be done. In fact, two employees recently took early retirement because even they could no longer stand everyone else's inability to perform their job.

I ask, 'So what?!' People all over this country are losing jobs, struggling with pay cuts and worse. But they aren't practically going on a rebellious streak that will in the long run piss off their customers and possibly put their position in jeopardy. I, as well as everyone else in the company I work for have taken pay cuts, lost benefits such as 401K contributions and paid holidays, we've even taken hour cuts! Do you bitch about it, sure. But the ONLY way to survive in this economy is to keep pushing forward. Manage yourself and your assets as best as you can, even if it means taking time to sit down and plan out a budget for yourself. Because in the big scheme of things, treating your job like they are beating you down when in reality you are still pretty well paid, and have plenty of benefits...is like beating a dead horse. It's pointless.

So wake up people! If you use this form of rebellion and slacking to express your disappointment, you are only making it harder on yourself. Your customers get angry and lose respect for you, because now you are making THEIR job more difficult and stressful. They are going to yell, scream, and say things you don't want to hear. Because we are all going through it too. But if you don't suck it up, and perform at your best...you just might find yourself on the unemployment line, while someone else settles nicely into your position at a lower pay scale...simply because people these days are REALLY struggling and would sacrifice for even a small income that beats that $250 bi-weekly that they get on unemployment.

Ask yourself this - is bitterness over a few bucks really worth jeopardizing your career and making minimal bucks?