{"id":8866,"date":"2018-12-19T09:05:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T17:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/?p=8866"},"modified":"2021-08-26T18:27:27","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T01:27:27","slug":"was-having-a-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/2018\/12\/19\/was-having-a-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Was having a conversation&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I commented on another WordPress post<\/p>\n<p>The original poster on <a href=\"https:\/\/armyvetchic.com\/2018\/12\/17\/workplace-politics\/\">Army Vet Chic<\/a>&nbsp;was talking about office politics and that they&rsquo;d been told, based on their social media that perhaps they weren&rsquo;t the right person for the job.<\/p>\n<p>I suggested that perhaps social media could be used to make people wonder and thereby figure out who could and could not be trusted.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" title=\"Social media cuts.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Social-media-cuts.jpg\" alt=\"Social media cuts\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" border=\"0\" \/>The original poster said they&rsquo;d normally do just that but they&rsquo;d already figured out the lay of the land and that they were going to just keep their head down and do their job.<\/p>\n<p>As I wrote my response (below) I thought it might make an interesting post. So without further preamble here it is.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Got ya, and in times past I&#8217;d say that&#8217;s a great option.<\/p>\n<p>I work in a company that is basically &#8220;Romper Room&#8221; too. What I&#8217;ve encountered is that from HR &amp; upper management down, everyone is looking for something to hold over someone else&#8217;s head.<\/p>\n<p>The environment is not about doing good job or rewarding a job well done. It&#8217;s about <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">punishment<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone is repeatedly punished for the &#8220;<em>sins<\/em>&#8221; of a few. I think this is because the company is terrified of appearing to be &#8220;unfair&#8221; to those that are taking advantage, so rather than address issues with the select individuals they make the entire department pay.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve found that keeping my head down and doing my job well isn&#8217;t the way to promotion, it&#8217;s the way to be <em><strong>ignored<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time when you&#8217;ve been maintenance free for a while, and then have any kind of issue it&#8217;s treated as a much bigger deal than it should be, or actually is.<\/p>\n<p>Because I don&#8217;t post my life on every social media platform 24\/7 it presents a problem, because my word isn&#8217;t good enough.<\/p>\n<p>This new business model seems to expect your employer to be able to research your social media to verify that you&#8217;re actually taking time off to attend to family matters, they expect to see a timeline of posts that you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with some disease.<\/p>\n<p>Only then will they be reasonable about letting you have time off without penalty. Which is why I have over 100 hours of vacation time and can&#8217;t get permission to take a few days off for personal reasons.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Business Needs&#8221; are always cited.<\/p>\n<p>I said to my supervisor, &#8220;<em>So you&#8217;re telling me that the company would rather lose the investment they&#8217;ve made in my understanding of the product over the past few years, and have to pay out all my vacation time and current pay period, than let me take a few days off?<\/em>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p>My supervisors response floored me. The answer was, &#8220;<em><strong>Yes<\/strong><\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s about to change, as companies and poor management come to realize that with a dropping unemployment rate they&#8217;re going to have to stop thinking of their employees as replaceable machines.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>After I&rsquo;d posted the comment I thought to myself, &#8220;<em>This is why so many companies are in trouble<\/em>.&#8221; This may also speak to why interviews have become &#8220;interview by committee&rdquo; and have the same feel as becoming <strong><em>prom king or queen&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong>instead of being about whether you and the hiring manager can work together.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A department that an employee will never interact with, should have zero say in another manager&rsquo;s hiring decision.<\/p>\n<p>And yet interviews have become popularity contests and about checking off irrelevant boxes instead of looking at what the potential employee can <em>actually<\/em> do.<\/p>\n<p>I really miss the good old days when you sat down with the person you were going to work for and actually discussed the freakin job.<\/p>\n<p>Social media may in fact be the worst idea ever. I have nothing to hide, but I also see no reason to stand naked on my front porch.<\/p>\n<p>No-one is perfect and everyone needs privacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I commented on another WordPress post The original poster on Army Vet Chic&nbsp;was talking about office politics and that they&rsquo;d been told, based on their social media that perhaps they weren&rsquo;t the right person for the job. I suggested that perhaps social media could be used to make people wonder and thereby figure out who &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/2018\/12\/19\/was-having-a-conversation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Was having a conversation&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,88],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-8866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-working","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8867,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions\/8867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}