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“Yes, It’s Very Seinfeld-Ish”: Employee Shares How Their Company Seemingly Just Forgot About Their Existence
The bigger the organization, the messier it can become. And a recent post on the famous r/antiwork subreddit by user u/jerichomega perfectly illustrates just how ridiculously inefficient large corporate structures are.
He has shared his experience of being employed by a major property owner but not being given any responsibilities to do for over half a year now.
At one point, he even started looking for someone — anyone — that could use him, but nobody seems to care. Even though they are paying him.
RELATED:
This person confessed on the internet that he has yet to receive a single task at work despite being with the company for 7 months
Image credits: Jud Mackrill (not the actual photo)
And nobody there seems to care about it
Image credits: Damir Kopezhanov (not the actual photo)
As his post went viral, the original poster (OP) shared more information on his predicament
Image credits: u/jerichomega
While not as extreme, similar stories aren’t uncommon. According to Ron Carucci, who is the co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, a company that works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations and leaders, four of the most common irritants he’s seen arise as a result of ineffective organization design are competing priorities, unwanted turnover, cross-functional rivalry, and inaccessible bosses.
In u/jerichomega’s case, the latter seems to be the most evident. “Too often, when employee surveys return low scores for metrics like ‘my manager is available when I need them,’ people assume it’s because of a time management issue or because leaders don’t make an effort to meet with their direct reports,” Carucci explained in Harvard Business Review. “When this happens, managers are given canned tools that tell them how to hold more effective one-on-one meetings or better prioritize their tasks. Training on empathy may get added to the leadership curriculum. Coaches may even get hired. But, in reality, this issue tends to reach far beyond individual leadership practices.”
Image credits: Sebastien Bonneval (not the actual photo)
In fact, this was the case in one organization Carucci himself had worked with. “Their employees complained that they never had enough feedback or direction from their leaders. Leaders, by contrast, complained they had to work through too many layers above them to get decisions made or secure resources, and had too many direct reports below them to give each enough time. The average middle manager had 12-18 direct reports.”
“The organization, like many others, treated spans of control as badges of honor to ‘stretch’ leaders — the more direct reports, they philosophized, the more important you must be.”
Image credits: Mario Gogh (not the actual photo)
However, for teams to run effectively, the number of layers within a hierarchy and the number of direct reports on a leader’s team must be determined based on two factors: the type of work people are doing and the amount of coordination that work requires. “Highly complex or high-risk work — such as scientists running clinical drug trials or analysts interpreting sensitive data — often requires extensive coordination to execute effectively. Therefore, it makes sense to keep a manager’s span narrow to ensure high-quality performance. Standard, more repetitive work — such as engineers writing technical code or teams working on manufacturing lines — typically enables employees to be more autonomous, which allows a manager’s span to be wider,” Carucci said.
When these nuances are overlooked, a manager’s accessibility can become severely constrained. Or, as we just saw, even non-existent.
It has received plenty of reactions
Some people even shared more similar stories
What do you think ?
Debbie 1 year ago
I'd become quite depressed about it tbh. I once, as a contractor, had an assignment where I was bored to death. Had maybe 10 phonecalls a day. At 10:30ish usually all the sites I read were read. And I was bored. My biggest challenge was staying awake. I was in an office space with others, so no, I couldn't sleep. I felt worthless. Sure, I was paid, but doing nothing while I could be doing so much other stuff was killing me, I was seriously thinking of a career switch eventhough I love IT. Thankfully it ended, someone more junior took over and I moved on to one of the best projects I've ever had, and really rose from the ashes. As much as it may look/sound like a dream, to me it would be more like prison/torture, to not be able to do anything usefull al day, just sit and wait till time/life passes...
Rocco MZ 1 year ago
He got hired by the woman who was fired? Weird. This happened to me at a temp job years ago. I show up, they put me in a corner office with views of the ocean. They tell me that someone will come and give me random assignments. The first day no one came into my office. I sat there reading a book. I didn't have access to a computer yet and this was before smart phones. This went on for two months. Then one day this woman walks in and asks who I am. I told I was a temp. She asked me who I worked for and I told her that her guess was as good as mine. She asked who hired me, I said your company hired me through my temp office. She asked how long I'd been there. I said two months. She asked why I didn't ask around. I said I was told to stay in this office until someone brought me work. She started to complain and I said, "I've been coming here every day for two months and not one employee has even acknowledged my presence and I used the bathroom, the breakroom and I came and went for lunch.
Rocco MZ 1 year ago
She burst out laughing and said, "Good for you!" This place is a s**t show. So, she "claimed" me and gave me some really cool projects. Here's the kicker. This company only had 20 employees. It's an old building so the office doors don't have windows. I was in the old VPs office and the employees were told it was being used for storage (storing me LOL). Why no one ever wondered who the stranger was in the break room and bathroom is beyond me. It was not a gov't job.
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Debbie 1 year ago
I'd become quite depressed about it tbh. I once, as a contractor, had an assignment where I was bored to death. Had maybe 10 phonecalls a day. At 10:30ish usually all the sites I read were read. And I was bored. My biggest challenge was staying awake. I was in an office space with others, so no, I couldn't sleep. I felt worthless. Sure, I was paid, but doing nothing while I could be doing so much other stuff was killing me, I was seriously thinking of a career switch eventhough I love IT. Thankfully it ended, someone more junior took over and I moved on to one of the best projects I've ever had, and really rose from the ashes. As much as it may look/sound like a dream, to me it would be more like prison/torture, to not be able to do anything usefull al day, just sit and wait till time/life passes...
Rocco MZ 1 year ago
He got hired by the woman who was fired? Weird. This happened to me at a temp job years ago. I show up, they put me in a corner office with views of the ocean. They tell me that someone will come and give me random assignments. The first day no one came into my office. I sat there reading a book. I didn't have access to a computer yet and this was before smart phones. This went on for two months. Then one day this woman walks in and asks who I am. I told I was a temp. She asked me who I worked for and I told her that her guess was as good as mine. She asked who hired me, I said your company hired me through my temp office. She asked how long I'd been there. I said two months. She asked why I didn't ask around. I said I was told to stay in this office until someone brought me work. She started to complain and I said, "I've been coming here every day for two months and not one employee has even acknowledged my presence and I used the bathroom, the breakroom and I came and went for lunch.
Rocco MZ 1 year ago
She burst out laughing and said, "Good for you!" This place is a s**t show. So, she "claimed" me and gave me some really cool projects. Here's the kicker. This company only had 20 employees. It's an old building so the office doors don't have windows. I was in the old VPs office and the employees were told it was being used for storage (storing me LOL). Why no one ever wondered who the stranger was in the break room and bathroom is beyond me. It was not a gov't job.
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