Work Does not Equal Pay

You know, I am an administrative type. Not the airlines, “Coffee, Tea or Me”, but just answering phones, surfing the Internet, and making copies. On really ambitious days, I would send a fax. I really liked that job. You see, I worked beneath my skills. And I was freakin’ happy.

Now I do more work. Yeah, I get paid a little more, but not much. And I cannot understand what happened.

I had a philosophy when working. If my boss asked me to do something that seemed like it (1) would take a great deal of time, or (2) would take a great deal of brain-power, I would give him a sort of confused, vacant stare. I worked on that stare, and it was money. At times, I thought he would pat me on the head and say, “Don’t worry about the big bad work. I will get someone else to perform the tasks. Now back to your desk.” He was not that demeaning, but I am sure he was thinking it.

I had a co-worker who would purposefully screw things up. She made more money than me and was given greater responsibilities, but she did not want them so she screwed them up. Now managers give her no real work and she still gets more pay than me. No performance awards, but she still gets cost-of-living increases, so she at least keeps up with inflation.

And I am thinking about adopting the same strategy. There are two things holding me back: (1) they could actually fire me, and (2) part of me wants to do a good job, as long as it doesn’t take too much work. About the firing thing – well, sooner or later, managers are going to have to realize they are attracting dolts and freeloaders, and they will have to either make some people work (but that takes energy on management’s part) or they will start to fire employees they are turning into dolts and freeloaders.

So I have a problem. I am doing more work for nominally more pay. But I wonder if these things are isolated to the business world. I mean, in entertainment, can you think of people who really are not good performers and yet they still get parts year after year. And you know that the movies they will make will be stinkers – Carrot Top, for instance.

A shorter post than normal today. I got to get some work done!

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Oh, and by the way, apparently someone has noticed this little blog. If you want to vote for me, please click on the image below. Sort of cool that the award uses a word I rarely use.