In this post I´ll talk about my own work experience, which I really know. In my wide work career I´ve suffer these bad behaviours, either with my own or other´s experiences. Let´s going to talk about it with some humour, even though it´s not a laughing matter.

Let´s start with presentism. There can be an exception to do presentism when you have to work for customer care. In other cases, the working hours should be flexible: for your own good and for the company´s. What´s the use of having an employee hired for forty hours and he/she stays at work for fifty? No use whatsoever. As a story taken from my collection of anecdotes, I can tell the time I was in a company where all minutes employed in one task had to be accounted for. When you had done your eight hours, you could go home. A have a co-worker that entered before me and criticized me behind my back because I used to leave the office on time: she usually stayed around an hour extra every day. When there was the need for staff reduction, she was the one chosen. I couldn´t understand why her and not me. My bosses were surprised at my question: “Do you still wonder why? Well it´s easy: you come to do your job and she dedicated more than an hour a day to make private telephone calls”. That´s when I learned that being isn´t synonymous of working.

Procrastination, such a difficult word to say that you feel like leaving it for later… 😉 That´s what it really means: leaving things pending to do for an uncertain future. It´s a bad habit that personally it´s difficult to get rid off… Who feels like doing something that is tedious/annoying/uncomfortable or all together at once? No one! It´s a defect that makes all more human. Let´s be honest, the sense of guilt wins over and you end up doing that task peevishly. I have to confess it: it´s ridiculously painful for me to organize a visit schedule to clients. It´s hard for the ego (even when it´s nothing personal) the fact that your petition for a date is rejected over and over again. You get over it with time but you keep on leaving it for later every time you can. Don´t you worry: you aren´t an alien.

I left the mania for meetings for last on purpose and that´s not because I wanted to procrastinate… The reason is because this is the worst behaviour of all for me and the one that gave me no satisfactions in my working life. Raise your hands who hasn´t suffered being in a meeting where they cannot participate, or what it´s discussed has nothing to do with the work they are doing or realizing that there´s no clear purpose of the meeting… or the three situations together. I still remember one of the useless meetings that I had in an important company where it was discused the project I was leading (well, I was the only person working on it) and the rest where arguing about closing the project all together and replace it for another. It seems that no one realized that my job was at stake and I was present hearing my (no) future in the company. There was no opportunity to express my point of view or anything. Many would think that my future was discuss in front of me at least. If I have to tell you the truth, I wasn´t obliged: I felt like an invisible being that no feelings where expected to have, as if the decision wouldn´t hurt anyone. And there I was, listening that in the near future I was in the unemployment office.

Have you realized that everything is related with time? Isn´t it curious?