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Office goof off!
October 30th, 2008
On the job: The Office Goof-Off, a problem for everyone
If you’ve ever wondered why your boss seems so tense about keeping people busy and productive, it’s for a good reason.
Most employers have had some difficult experiences with employees.
Although it’s fair to say that nearly everybody, in any workplace, does put in a respectable effort, and does their jobs well enough without being supervised every second, some don’t.
The Office Goof-Off is the exception. These are people who put in minimum effort, and often do such poor quality work more time is spent undoing the damage they do than doing productive work.
They’re not just lazy. They’re arguably insane. They seem to honestly believe that they’re being clever by getting paid to do very little. The result is that more work is put on other people.
For employers, that means cost, sometimes a lot of cost.
Examples, from personal experience:
- The Office Goof-Off will be given a project. The actual work of managing the project is palmed off on a subordinate. The Office Goof-Off will then have a peaceful time supervising, particularly if the subordinate is competent. Sometimes, however, the subordinate isn’t, and the result is a project in ruins, usually out of time, and a budget with a large hole in it.
- An inquiries clerk is hired. The clerk is courteous, charming, and will instantly refer inquiries to another person in that section, all day, every day. The result is that everyone else in the section is deluged with inquiries, and the inquiries clerk can then sail off home happily while everyone else tries to catch up with their own work.
- The supervisor is getting a lot of work sent up for approval prior to being sent further up the management chain. The supervisor, seeing the amount of work piling up, lets it sit there for a while, explaining how busy he is. He then sends it all back to staff with minor grammatic corrections or an extra unnecessary sentence or two, so the dates on the work are more recent. Result, the work arrives for management approval a month or two after the original drafts.
The result of the above cases:
- The project manager was sacked.
- The inquiries clerk mysteriously left the office, after 18 months.
- Management eventually figured out what was happening when one of the drafts went up with the original draft date on it. A Please Explain was issued to the supervisor.
As you can see, the Office Goof-Off is a joy to employers, a built in disaster area. They’re often clever to the point of being sacked at the slightest opportunity by managers who’ve had enough.
Some survive, however. They can be good office politicians, slithering through management circles because they’re easily manageable by real managers. Their inefficiency and general uselessness comes at a cost. They have to cooperate with anything management wants, because they’re very sackable. They’re tolerated on that basis, if for no other reason.
Some, however, are managers, or are built in to the organization in some way. If you’ve ever worked in a place where everyone seems to be in some form of relationship, you’ll know the problem.
Office Goof-Offs occasionally strike it lucky, finding a place where they’re right at home among other Office Goof-Offs. It’s like a colony of moths, all circling around the same light. You can spend years just finding out what’s supposed to be being done.
If you’ve seen one of these workplaces, there’s only one option for a person who actually knows what they’re doing: Find another job. Even if you can stand working in that environment, the business will be on its way down the tube.
So if your employer seems to be going bald about 20 years too soon, and is startled by the sound of efficiency, that’s probably why. Office Goof-Offs are bad for business, and they’re bad for the workplace.
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