Quite frequently, I find myself asking why can’t people just do their job? There are countless stories. I just watched a story on CBS Sunday Morning about two men in prison in Missouri that have been proven innocent by the district attorney. They been in prison for decades and apologies have been made by city district attorney’s, and yet they remain in prison. The attorney general and/or governor have the power to release the men, and yet stand behind the fact that both men missed their appeal deadline dates. Seriously? Ugh. Oh, just do your job. Sometimes allowances must be made, and common sense needs to prevail.
At work, there are annual computer reports that are pulled by directors and in order to compile what is needed, 5-6 different reports need to be pulled and some have to copy and pasted line by line, or cell by cell. Repeatedly, the IT department has been asked to create a simple report that would easily allow directors to pull this information, but apparently they don’t see it as a priority.
I see this: that report takes about 40+ hours to compile x 45 directors x 5 separate departmental reports (and 45 for each of those) = millions of annual dollars in wasted labor hours vs. the time for one programmer to create that report for each department – a max of 3 hours. Seriously? Ugh. Just do your job.
I can go on and on about other coworkers who don’t do their own job, and even take it so far to blame others for why they don’t. It’s exhausting. An employer told me recently that I know my job better than any other employee, and this was an eye opener for me. My initial thought was…doesn’t everyone want to be the best employee they can?
Perhaps it’s why I get annoyed and can clearly see how they are not doing their job. Or perhaps I’m annoyed because most people don’t even realize they don’t know how to do their own job, and they’ve been doing that job for 5-10 years. Seriously?
In one of my classes, we talk about the various efficiency processes and this art of constantly improving our job. Kaizen is one of those processes. By continually making small tweaks and changes, we can improve ourselves, our job, and the company. It doesn’t involve a lot of effort, but it does take some research and thought. I try to show my students why this is important, and encourage them to see how their job fits into the overall department and company. And why it’s important to ask questions about how certain tasks they complete fit into the overall company.
A few years ago, a coworker missed something in her job that greatly affected mine. I yelled at my boss (knowing she was around and could hear me)…”she’s been in that job for 4 years now…how long will it take for her to understand how to do her job?!” She never made that mistake again, and as far as I can tell, she understands her job much better now. I wish it didn’t need to come to this. Just do your job. 🙂
Creating a Simplified Life 