In your present job or in past workplaces, do you have any experiences with other employees getting away with doing less work than you?

In every company I ever worked for—especially large ones—there were always people who (to me, at least) seemed to work diligently or less so than I did. And many of the latter type held better, higher paying positions that I did. That’s “standard operating procedure” in the workplace, and many factors impact that dynamic, including an employee’s political savvy and personality.

My advice to you: Focus on the quantity and quality of your work and ignore what others are doing or not doing. Though your hard efforts will not guarantee promotions and raises, less effort almost guarantees neither.

When I was younger, before I went into business for myself, I was the employee who deliberately avoided all situations in which I had to work and when assigned tasks I did everything I could to stall or delay, or pass the work to someone else. I used creative dialogue in solving problems by persuading coworkers to do the work for me or I used creative excuses for avoiding the work.

I never had a sense of loyalty for the corporation I worked for and the reason I was able to accomplish this is because of the boss’s policy decisions, the company’s bureaucracy, and by taking advantage of the anti-discrimination legislations/labor laws. At staff meetings, I displayed a perception of productivity to the boss by using technical jargon that the boss couldn’t fully comprehend.

There is no advice to give because this is an issue with incompetent management, policies, government laws, and coworkers who are easily persuaded. It is out of your control.

@Pachy: This is not my issue, as I explained. I’m looking to advise others.

I understood that. That IS my advice for you to give others.

@Pachy: Gotcha. Thanks!

Try not to worry about what other people are doing. Focus on one’s own performance.

Frequently. It’s hard to know exactly what other people doing the same role have responsibility for, but I’ve discovered I have and continue to do much more work than many of them. Not much I can do about it, so I focus on what I’m doing, the benefits that has to my own future and my students, and don’t allow myself to get resentful about other people’s workloads.

Sure, of course. I’ve been on both sides of the issue, and in all honesty I’m on both sides of it right now. That is, I work longer hours than some people in our office, and shorter than some others. I work harder than a few (not always the same group, either), and not as hard as some others.

To expand on that a bit, in our group of generally older folks (and some younger ones who, inexplicably to me, don’t much care for exploring the potentials of their computers, the internet or new ideas and software – and particularly Excel functions and macros in building spreadsheets and extracting and presenting data from large databases) I am “the computer expert”. I hasten to assure that I am in no way expert except in that grouping.

So I have spent a lot of time over the years expanding my knowledge of how to do work better: more reliably, more quickly, with more certainty in result, and just “better” overall. And for that reason I have inherited – and have been glad to inherit – more of this type of work in our department, and even within other departments when they see some of my capabilities. For that reason I often work to “sharpen the saw” on nights and weekends; I play with Excel and database tweaking as a hobby. I’ve built a web page for our field users to use around the world in accessing company information that is otherwise disjointed and hard to find. I “work hard” doing that. And I watch others without those kinds of skills work much harder, longer hours, constantly fixing mistakes, and actually doing less, but taking more time to do it, and being less certain of accurate results.

On the other hand, when I feel like taking some time off I just take it. And I don’t feel guilty spending time on Fluther or Facebook during the day (on the monitor with the excellent privacy screen, anyway), because I know that I’ll have my work done, correctly and on time, and still have some time to spare to help others when they need it.

The big thing is that I don’t feel envious of people who have it better than I do on the basis of a superficial thing like “the hours they work” – and I try not to live or act in such a way as to make others envious of me. I have a good life, and I hope that others do, too. Beyond that, I wouldn’t mind making more money, but on the other hand I don’t want to attempt to take on so much responsibility to have to travel more, or give up my comfortable position.

I’m lazy, and it doesn’t bother me too much that some are lazier than I am, or that some are far more highly motivated and driven. Live and let live.

Frequently. Sometimes it’s because I’m simply the most competent person there, sometimes because getting ahead of them gets me a break, but since my cross-country move, it’s most often because I have a New England work ethic that most of my coworkers lack.

oh yes! It’s been better than 30 years since I’ve been in such a situation, and it was a civil service job. It was in truth the closest thing to what I imagine the French Foreign Legion to be, and I still grin at the thought of the wonderful and diverse characters stumbling around in that vast grey rock building. There are so many riotously funny stories that remain with me from those days that I can actually sit here and laugh myself silly. Collectively, those had to be some of the funniest people put on the earth. I remember on my second day when walking down one of the corridors of the building, a nattily dressed portly man popped out of an office 10 feet ahead of me. He was as nimble on his feet as a ballet dancer as he spied me and twinkle toed to fall in stride. In a deep stirring baritone he said “Young man are you new to this game?” When I answered that I’d just started, the baritone reverberated through the corridor “Allow me to impart to you the 2 secrets to a career as a successful bureaucrat” “What ??” I yelped, sort of startled “The first is maximum gain for minimum effort ” the baritone rumbled as we reached the ornate lobby and he headed for the doors to escape the building. We reached the doors and exited the building as I stopped at the top of the stairs he was now descending to the sidewalk and shouted at his rapidly distancing back “What’s the second secret?” And without breaking stride or a single glance back, he replied “Never tell the truth to management”.

It’s been my experience that the more proficient you are at your job, the more that’s expected of you, regardless of position or pay.

The worst is a co-worker or supervisor that has been promoted because, “goshdarnit, they just try so hard”.
Translation: everyone take on extra duties because the powers-that-be won’t allow that sympathy to translate into lowered productivity.

Back in the 80’s when I was given a tour of the government run medical research institute that I was assigned, I asked the question, “How many people work here?” I was told, “About half.”. I thought that that was a pretty funny joke at the time. Later I came to realize that it was a close proximation.

Later when I worked in civilian medical labs I found that everyone pulled their weight in the workload. In fact we seem to compete with each other to do the most work. Working as a civilian was far more satisfying to me than working for the federal goverment.

Yes.