Saturday, December 21, 2024

The Laziness Double Standard In The Workplace

A number of factors like the extent of the pressures from above (if any), the scope of the workforce they allegedly monitor, the importance of any projects they supervise, the specific industry they are in, and individual personality could all contribute to laziness or productivity on a manager's part.  Managerial authority is not necessarily coupled with a sincere attitude, rationality, professional competence, and respectful behaviors.  As lazy as frontline/low-ranking employees are sometimes fallaciously stereotyped to be (and some of them are), it is those with supervisory roles that can be among the laziest of all.

Stay in the workplace for a while or work for different companies, and it is likely that one will eventually encounter a lazy manager who demands or expects machine-like output and at least the facade of joy out of employees, including the ones that are being actively mistreated by under-compensation, illicit discrimination, or deception.  This kind of management often does nothing but parrot things from higher management and observe other people's work every now and then to appear useful.  Sitting in a private chair while denying workers the chance to consistently catch their breath, refusing to lift a finger to fulfill their own role, and gloating in their capacity to get away with sheer inaction might be routine for them.

There could legitimately be little to nothing for them to do even if they want to have something to pass time or keep them productive.  They could also take advantage of the ability to more easily hide behind their title when dealing with anyone of a higher position and retreat to an office to sit and watch Netflix to get away from those with lower positions.  The nature of the job might call for a lesser involvement with interactions with others and there is no laziness in them, or they could be genuinely relying on the hope that the consequences of their own laziness can be blamed on lower-level workers with less hierarchical authority.

For some consumers, the workers they see/hear when they enter a restaurant, call customer service, or purchase from a supermarket are the ones that they think are lazy for irrelevant reasons.  An employee standing still to keep exhaustion at bay six hours into a shift of constant work is assumed to be lazy.  A worker who is sitting down, though it has no impact on their labor quality, is assumed to be lazy.  Workers objecting to pointless tasks or to doing the work of multiple people all by themselves is assumed, by such observers, to be lazy.  The manager is actually being lazy but refusing to hire in sufficient numbers or forcing additional work onto the people with the least flexibility to reject it.

Some people think managers have earned the right to arrogance or laziness as opposed to lower workers, but it is only hypocrisy to encourage or defend the one and condemn the other.  It is also not as if certain individuals cannot be given managerial positions by means of biased favoritism without working their way up a corporate ladder.  This is like thinking men who commit sexual assault are evil but not women, or that black people with guns are automatically malicious but not white people.  If laziness is some error, it is an error for everyone, but there is nothing about being a standard worker or a manager that means someone is or will be lazy.  Managers can just get away with it more easily in plenty of cases.

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