Career Sins

[cheyne]

I find it interesting that "sabotage" is getting the most votes currently, yet I've seen work places where sabotaging other people in order to get ahead was part of the normal path for clawing your way to the top.

I agree that it's a lousy thing to do, but unfortunately it's not always bad for your career out in the real world.

Bolding mine.

I am not sure if you are being serious or snarky with the bolded above.  I've been working in the real world for 36 years, and I've never seen true sabotage get anyone moved up.  If you are talking about gossiping against someone, toadying to a boss or not telling a co-worker about a meeting, that isn't true sabotage to me.  Sabotage would involve the potential loss of life, limb, or setting someone up for a criminal arrest and prosecution.

I work with dangerous machinery and heavy equipment.  Anyone sabotaging said equipment could cause the death and/or dismemberment of one of my crew or myself.  We tend to take that pretty seriously and no employee will move up any career ladder by doing this.  Jail would be their most likely career track at that point.

[gen xer]

The "we're a family" type of closeness.....too much!!!  I can't begrudge how other people want to socialize - that's their business if their work is their whole life....but not everyone wants that kind of enmeshed, boundary-less relationship with their coworkers.  I for one like my coworkers very much for the most part....but i don't want them in my business and knowing everything that goes on in my life.

On another note....something I find creates a really ugly atmosphere is the workplace rat.  you know the one who watches everyone's comings and goings,  who is late, who took an extra twenty minutes at lunch, who snuck out early etc etc and reports it. 

If we teach kids not to tattle why do we do it in the workplace?

[oceanus]

On another note....something I find creates a really ugly atmosphere is the workplace rat.  you know the one who watches everyone's comings and goings,  who is late, who took an extra twenty minutes at lunch, who snuck out early etc etc and reports it. 

I agree this is not sabotage.  Saboteurs are proactive, (very much so) - not reactive.  Their schemes are on a much larger and more serious scale than watching and tattling.

[creativecat]

I voted sabatage... it's one thing to be late or just annoying. It's just completely innapropriate and unprofessional to actively hurt another person via words or actions.

I've been on the receiving end of it, been demoted, bullied, and had a cw assume I was throwing her under the bus. It didn't stop until I told her she was being childish and assuming what my actions were. We're good now, but I still tread carefully if I feel uncomfortable or bossed around. I have to stand firm but polite when she tries to take over parts of my job, when she isn't happy with hers.

[Sharnita]

Habitual tardiness seems like the most noticable. Some of those other things are bad  but could maybe be hidden, it seems like habitual tardiness is very overt.  It also seems like eventually ten minutes a day adds up to hours and hours that the employee is being paid for when they aren't even physically at work.  The presonal business comes close but at least in a crisis they could shift to company business.

COnflict with the boss is bad but some people cover their animous.  Same with sabotage.

[Auntie Mame]

Not attending office parties is probably a worse "sin" in small companies where people are a little too close for comfort.  Your absence is noticed to a degree it isn't in a larger place (or department) and if the people talk about each other "like family" you will definitely have an issue if you like to maintain a strong boundary between work and private time.

Amen to that.

It got to the point that when I went on interviews, if someone said "we're a family", I thought to myself "I need a job, not more relatives.  Certainly don't want my co-workers all up in my personal business." 

At one place it was a team interview.  Six people sat at a table and asked me questions.  Then the kicker:  "We're family.  If you have any personal problems, feel free to share.  We care."  (YIKES)    No, thanks.

Oh yowza, that would send me screaming into the night.  Ugh to "we're family", sIf I heard that I would think so you treat each other with scorn, disrespect and trample eachother's boundaries?  Yeah, that sounds like a fun place to work.

[oceanus]

Habitual tardiness seems like the most noticable. Some of those other things are bad  but could maybe be hidden, it seems like habitual tardiness is very overt.  It also seems like eventually ten minutes a day adds up to hours and hours that the employee is being paid for when they aren't even physically at work.  The presonal business comes close but at least in a crisis they could shift to company business.

COnflict with the boss is bad but some people cover their animous.  Same with sabotage.

Yes, habitual tardiness would be the most obvious.
Sabotage is almost always hidden due to the nasty nature of it and because getting caught often results in serious consequences.

Re: conflict with boss:  I mentioned upthread that I was guilty of that sin many years ago.  I didn’t hide it, and as I think back it made others uncomfortable. (Who is right doesn’t matter; it gets old..)  People can quickly pick up on who the boss does/does not like, and often use it to their advantage.  They know the boss has the power and the problem employee is often ostracized.  It’s much smarter to hide animosity towards the boss, keep one’s nose to the grindstone, and keep your mouth shut.

[pierrotlunaire0]

I, too, voted for sabotage because it seemed the most malicious. 

In one of my old jobs, tardiness was irritating, but nothing more, but in my current job, it causes havoc.  We open at 9 am, and we have to be ready to take care of the flood of people waiting at the door.

I also remember a thread from a few years ago regarding socializing outside of work, and there were a few people who insisted that it was vital and mandatory.  Well, not in every position, and thankfully, not in my current one.

[jeni]

Interesting topic.  Sabotage is the worst of the lot in my opinion, however if the question was, what from the list had I experienced that affected me the most as a team member or supervisor, I would answer in this order:

Too much time on personal business (calls, texts, etc.)
Habitual tardiness
Gossiping too much about co-workers
Not getting along with/complaining about the boss
Refusing to socialize on any level (lunch, parties)
Sabotaging another person for revenge or to get ahead

Thankfully I have never experienced or witnessed sabotage.

Question:  When I view the poll results, the results don't align with the questions. Is it my computer screen?  though it's a large size, so I can't imagine it would be.

[Just Lori]

I don't see sabotage as deliberately destroying others' work.  It's much more insidious.  I see it as the little digs, the comments, the taking credit for others' work.  It's "forgetting" to tell someone about a meeting, it's interrupting others during a meeting, it's neglecting to provide crucial information for a coworker's report.  That's the sort of behavior that seems to be rewarded in certain workplaces, though, and that's the kind of behavior that turns off the good employees who try to be team players.

The other behaviors mentioned in the OP seem more self-destructive, unless you're in upper management.  But sabotage destroys the decent people around the guilty party, and I think that's why it's hitting a nerve with so many of us.

[artk2002]

I don't see sabotage as deliberately destroying others' work.  It's much more insidious.  I see it as the little digs, the comments, the taking credit for others' work.  It's "forgetting" to tell someone about a meeting, it's interrupting others during a meeting, it's neglecting to provide crucial information for a coworker's report.  That's the sort of behavior that seems to be rewarded in certain workplaces, though, and that's the kind of behavior that turns off the good employees who try to be team players.

The other behaviors mentioned in the OP seem more self-destructive, unless you're in upper management.  But sabotage destroys the decent people around the guilty party, and I think that's why it's hitting a nerve with so many of us.

That's what I think of when I hear "sabotage" in the workplace.

[Sirius]

Other than refusing to socialize, which I don't consider a sin at all, these are all "Professional Darwinism" in my book.

What Art said.  I've been on the receiving end of most of these, although in the case of sabotage it was done so clumsily that I caught on to it and told the Big Boss.  (It was a case of someone deliberately shorting my cash drawer to try to make it look like I was stealing.  However, something told me to count my cash drawer that night and every night thereafter, and I found out what was happening and brought it to the Big Boss' attention since the person doing the sabotaging was the assistant manager.)

[bansidhe]

I voted sabotage as being the worst offense, but have a few words to say about socializing. I took "Refusing to socialize at any level" literally, meaning that the person not only doesn't go to happy hours and work-sponsored social events, but also goes out of his or her way to avoid talking to fellow employees at work, not even exchanging a simple "hello" in the morning or brief small talk in the break room.

I work with two people who consider any amount of socializing at work to be verboten. One of them sits just a few yards from me but I haven't had a conversation with her in months. The other eventually started working entirely from home so as to completely avoid the rest of us.

Neither of them is exactly well-regarded by their fellow employees. Because they isolate themselves and people are afraid to seek them out, they frequently aren't in the loop about important trends or upcoming changes in the business that often travel by word of mouth. They certainly don't work as part of the team or derive any benefits from being part of the team.

I consider myself to be more antisocial than most and avoid parties and such, but I know my co-workers and talk to them. I haven't encountered anyone antisocial to this level before now and find it puzzling and very off-putting. And there are two of them. 

[oceanus]

bansidhe
Saying hello or responding to a 'hello' is not socializing - it's just being civil and is expected in the workplace.  Acknowledging a person's existence at the workplace and exchanging a simple greeting, or saying "excuse me, please, thanks" is not socializing.

I think your interpretation was too literal.

[GreenEyedHawk]

Habitual tardiness drives me around the twist. 

Where I work, we start at 8, unless other arrangements have been made with the boss.  (For example, we work 8-4:30, with a half hour for lunch and two fifteen-minute coffee breaks.  I worked out an arrangement with my boss where I don't take the two coffee breaks, and leave half an hour earlier.)

My one co-workers between ten to thirty minutes late every.  single. day.  This drives me CRAZY.  As far as I am concerned, being on time is one of the most basic requirements of almost any job, and if you can't meet this one simple requirement, why should I believe you'll meet any of the others?  If you can't even be on time for work, then I guess you can't do this job.