What's your attitude to work? Does it mean the world to you?

You don't switch personality traits on and off at whim. In my experience those people who do the bare minimum to get by at work are the same in all other aspects of their lives. Those who get the head down and work hard do the same in other aspects of their lives.

Show me a lazy **** at work and I'll show you a lazy **** everywhere else he goes as well.

unhappys10 wrote: »

Absolute rubbish.
I do what I need to do, 9-5, then I get home to my family.
I did 4 years in college and a further 3.5years of professional training and exams etc.

I got a 1:1 in my degree and passed the professional exams then.
7.5 years of study and hard work.

There is more to life than work, something a lot of people don't realise.

You "do what you need to do". Don't try and pretend that only holds true at work, as if you become some different person from 9-5.

unhappys10 wrote: »

Don't be ridiculous. Everything else in my life is for me not my employer so I'll put the effort in.
Why should I kill myself working for someone, putting in extra hours for no thanks while being away from my family and the things that interest me.
Your argument is rubbish, if I was lazy I wouldn't be where I am.
The fact that I couldn't be bothered wasting my life behind a desk has no impact on the rest of my life other than making it better.

Its seems to have struck a nerve anyway, but my opinion remains the same. A hard worker is always a hard worker, a guy who does what is needed always does what is needed, and a guy who does the bare minimum will always have that mentality. Again, people are who they are.

Note that I said nothing about working extra hours, a guy can put a great shift in at work but still insist on leaving on time. My point was about the consistency of mentality, for good or bad.

bucketybuck wrote: »

You don't switch personality traits on and off at whim. In my experience those people who do the bare minimum to get by at work are the same in all other aspects of their lives. Those who get the head down and work hard do the same in other aspects of their lives.

Show me a lazy **** at work and I'll show you a lazy **** everywhere else he goes as well.

I’d kind of agree and disagree, and say that I’ve found it’s more that the positive opposite is true in that someone who has a great work ethic will apply it to whatever they do because they get pride in just doing a good job regardless of circumstances.

But lazy is a buzzword people often misuse. There definitely is a personality type that it applies to, but people can also be disengaged in places they don’t feel valued or appreciated and that can get mistaken for laziness. A bad manager, for example, can make a potentially great employee disengage then rot can set in if circumstances like pay/perks in the position are good enough to keep the person in the job for a long period of time. But I’ve seen loads of people who’d have been pretty much written off as ‘bad’ at their job come to life with a bit of decent people management that values and recognises their strengths and sees them as an actual person with a lot to contribute. You can’t necessarily teach work ethic but you can teach standards and the end result is often the same. On the flip side, you can also get great workers who are capable of so much but have that laziness gene, so nobody will ever be able to get through to them. So what you say definitely exists but it’s misapplied a lot of the time.

Deleted User wrote: »

Working smarter not harder tends to be a good practice. There's a lot of presentism out there i.e. must be seen to be in the office - ha!, well Covid has certainly put paid to that nugget TG.

I know of a few people who through the years that would be in the office from early morning until about 6-7 in the evening- most of these were married but no kids. I never really knew what they did all day, but their head was down and didn't lift until lunchtime. Their characteristics tended to be:

1. Very intense when you spoke to them- i.e. very forced conversation - they always look like the just wanted to go back to their desk
2. No apparent interests outside of work
3. Obviously no family of their own

In the early years, i would nearly feel guilty leaving the office when they were still there- but I got over this quite quickly as I was putting in decent hours myself- I wasn't going to get into a competition as to who can stay the longest in the office.

People with young families have a natural, nearly built in, motivation to do what they have to do in work, so they can get out and back home to look after their family- if you don't have something pressing to get you out of the office, I find that people will tend to stay longer, usually unnecessarily.

These days, the focus should be on outputs, not time spent at a desk or in the office. Most people I know will spend longer than their paid hours but have a huge degree of flexibility around how they organise their time/ home work vs office work etc- I'd take flexibility and a few extra hours a week over rigid 9-5 presentism any day.

I think the above point is very interesting. How we define hard-work is changing fast. Traditionally I thought of it as someone who kept the head-down and was always busy.

I am constantly reminding myself that EQ is far more important than IQ. I'm sure we can all think of examples of people in our workplaces that work diligently, always on time, stay long hours, very strict and disciplined routine, and it always feels like they are sprinting toward an impending deadline. They keep to themselves and always seem too busy for a light-hearted chat. I would consider this a form of laziness.It is often much tougher to take 15 mins every day to greet and show genuine interest in the people you work with.

A better question to ask I try to ask myself is how much am I contributing?
Do I make an effort to greet people, organise events in work, send genuine thank you emails. I know plenty people who may not be outstanding in meeting the specifications of their job title but their overall contribution to the work environment makes them invaluable

I like my job. I work with vulnerable people and while it's challenging its rewarding too. It's a great feeling to see someone improving their life and know you had some small hand in it. I like being able to leave after my shift and that's it, I don't think about the place until I'm back in again. My other half is working in a manager role and seems to constantly be on call and he gets paid well for it but I don't think the money is worth it. There's a lot to be said for never having to take the work home with you.

Personally, my attitude changed dramatically over 20 years. When I started, I'd go the extra step, put in the extra effort, thinking it would make a difference. I've done plenty all-nigthers and insane shifts like going home at 3am and being back in the office at 7.

It didn't matter in the least. Zero. Wherever I worked, it has always been the case that the employers were very quick to point out the faults and very slow to acknowledge the merits.

So now, it's means to an end. Get in, do the job in the most reasonable way possible (in other words, straight to the point), get out. Pays the bills.

Gotta say that being in IT, it's a field where the interest, innovation, excitement and research has been basically killed by fads, unnecessary complexity and ****ty practices over the last 10-15 years. It's all about following this or that fad now, until the next one comes round the corner, then rinse repeat - be it agile, scrum, "cloud", angular, SSaS - you name it it's there. Every few years you're rehashing the same utter sh1te in a different wrapper and pretty much being asked not to think, just "use this stuff that everyone else uses".

Deleted User wrote: »

Working smarter not harder tends to be a good practice. There's a lot of presentism out there i.e. must be seen to be in the office - ha!, well Covid has certainly put paid to that nugget TG.

Not at all - I think there's pretty much a "workers cold war" shaping up for when the Covid-19 emergency will finally be over. Many, many, many businesses are still led by people who are attached to the "everyone in the office 9-6" mentality and see remote working as basically dossing. My own company (again, a tech one which theoretically doesn't even need offices) already has all the high-ups rubbing their hands about "when we'll be back in the office".

On the other hand, companies who will offer telecommuting across the board will be at an advantage - I can see people lowering their salary expectations as long as they get to avoid the DART/LUAS/Bus squeeze in the morning. I certainly would and probably will do.

In the middle, you know, there COULD be governments taking a stance and realizing that pollution and traffic can be effectively mitigated by drastically reducing the need for workers to commute...but yeah, fat chance.