What I Owe

Friday, January 28, 2011
I try not to complain too much about work. After all, my company pays me good money to perform tasks for which I'm both highly qualified and usually enjoy. There's something to be said for that, and I'm acutely aware of how very lucky I am.

But.

Why do certain types of people believe that others have an obligation to clean up their professional messes? You know the type of person I'm referring to - the ones who think they're somehow entitled to drop the ball on a continual basis, and then look to others to "fix" the issue.

It's not that fixing problems isn't the right thing to do, nor is working as a team a burden. But if there's an individual who is always the source of problems, and yet always considers it someone else's responsibility to resolve them, I think it's probably past time to reevaluate their effectiveness.

Why do incompetents believe that others owe them their expertise? They might as well come right out and say, "I can't do my job effectively, so it's your responsibility to do it for me so that I don't get fired."

I don't get it.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

3 comments:

Anne C. said...

If the author wasn't a bee-otch and not in line with your more social responsibility leanings, I'd recommend Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Of course, I'd also recommend fast-forwarding through the incredibly boring twenty page speeches. (If any book NEEDS to be condensed into a graphic novel, this would be the one!)
Basic premise: smart people leave the incompetents to fend for themselves. Pretty cartoonish in its division of humanity into deserving and not deserving, but it has some appeal when you're feeling frustrated with other people's shit. :)

WendyB_09 said...

As I work in am very small firm - da boss, me, and 2 parttime folks, it's either fix your own mess or go home. I'm pretty there hasn't been a month since I started there where I haven't gone to the boss at least once to say "oops, I'm sorry, tell me how to fix this."

Fortunately, he really likes both me and my work, so is usually pretty forgiving if I goof. Although it took him awhile to accept that I really DO want to fix my own mistakes so I can learn from them.

Janiece said...

Wendy, I think most bosses are pretty forgiving if you own up and don't make the same mistake over and over and over.