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lydyFor years, I have hated the managerial exhortation to "work as a team." In my experience, this management attempting to not do its job. Rather than paying attention to who does what, encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior, and generally, you know, manage, it is used like collective punishment. No need to sort out who is actually doing what, just hold everyone responsible. I hate getting the memo that I know is targeted at a specific person, which exhorts everyone to do or not do a specific thing that only one person is doing or not doing. Even more infuriating is the one-on-one, where the manager needs to scold a particular person, so he takes each person, in turn, and scolds them, regardless of who is actually fucking up and who is not. The people who work hard and care about their job get really stressed out by these meetings and the jack-off feels comfortable and camouflaged, since these meetings are always prefaced by the words, "I'm talking to everyone about this." Demotherfuckingmotivational, dammit. Most work environments do not have direct rewards for teamwork, only individual incentives. The one work place where there were specific team bonuses, there were also individual bonuses which were a) secret and b) significantly more than the team bonus.
Today, it occurred to me that exhortations for more team work are heard differently by men and women. Women are generally socialized to be team players, and are also usually the ones in the team who do the invisible team portion of the work. They organize the cupboard, wash the coffee cups, keep track of the birthdays, do things to make the physical environment more pleasant, work that is often not noticed. So when some dumb fuck of manager starts blathering on about how we all need to be better team players, and we need to pitch in and work better as a team, what he's really saying is that the girls should do more work. The exhortation is almost never specific, no guidelines as to what anybody should do. So guys stand around with their thumbs up their asses, and think that maybe they should, you know, work an extra fifteen minutes now and again, or not take a coffee break. And the women haul the team up the mountain on their goddamn backs.
Dear everybody: I'm tired. And ranty.
Today, it occurred to me that exhortations for more team work are heard differently by men and women. Women are generally socialized to be team players, and are also usually the ones in the team who do the invisible team portion of the work. They organize the cupboard, wash the coffee cups, keep track of the birthdays, do things to make the physical environment more pleasant, work that is often not noticed. So when some dumb fuck of manager starts blathering on about how we all need to be better team players, and we need to pitch in and work better as a team, what he's really saying is that the girls should do more work. The exhortation is almost never specific, no guidelines as to what anybody should do. So guys stand around with their thumbs up their asses, and think that maybe they should, you know, work an extra fifteen minutes now and again, or not take a coffee break. And the women haul the team up the mountain on their goddamn backs.
Dear everybody: I'm tired. And ranty.
