Slackers

Today on cbs2chicago.com there was an article about an Iowa woman who was denied unemployment compensation because she kept a journal of her daily activities. At first this journal was handwritten, but after a supervisor forbid her to write the journal on Company time she began to keep it on her office computer.
This journal was 300 single-spaced pages long and was about how she avoided working at the highest paying job that she had ever had. One quoted entry was;
"This typing thing seems to be doing the trick, it just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."
And better yet; "I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access. I haven't really accomplished anything in a long while ... and I am still getting paid more than I ever have at a job before, with less to do than I have ever had before. It's actually quite nice when I think of it that way. I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it." At least she writes fairly well!
She has also brought slacking in the workplace to new unimaginable heights. Hopefully our Federal Government employees in Washington, DC will not read this article will while they are surfing the internet on our tax dollars.
Years ago, a friend of mine (who calls me his mentor) had a temporary position (a 6 month position with no Federal benefits) at the GSA in DC, while working on his Masters in Accounting. He was taught by his parents to have a good work ethic and tended to do more than his job actually required. His Supervisor at GSA told him that he was working too hard and that it made it look bad for the other employees. Two weeks later he was discharged because they needed to hire another full time minority employee. He is Puerto Rican; isn’t that a minority? We just laughed.
In our conversations about his working for the GSA, he mentioned that the supervisors were greater slackers that the employees working under them. He told me that his supervisor actually promoted slacking and incompetence at the workplace. This supervisor probably assumed that it made him look better in his supervisor’s eyes; who was more than likely also incompetent.
Which brings us to the Peter Principle. In the late 1960’s Dr. Laurence J. Peter wrote a book about the level of competence of the human resources in hierarchical organizations. The principle explains the upward, downward, and lateral movement of personnel within a hierarchically organized system of ranks. Hierarchical Organizations exist in Government, Corporations and the Church.
The basic premise of the Peter Principle is that employees will rise to their highest level of competency and then be promoted to a level of incompetence. According to my Dad, I reach a level of incompetence before my time. Therefore I was never a victim of the Peter Principle.
Needless to say this book is available on Amazon.com – click on the Amazon button on the right hand column.
The Beach Bum