The scenario – a bunch of former colleagues get together in a bar….
The conversation (or snippets of)…
Colleague 1 – ‘We get boxes of chocolates and cakes every time we finish a project’
Colleague 2 – ‘Crikey, We don’t. Sounds fun, I wanna work there...’
Colleague 1 – ‘Yeah, we get taken to the pub too sometimes.‘
Colleague 3 – ‘Wow, I wish my company did that.’
Colleague 1 – ‘Yeah although we often don’t get out for lunch though. People tend to be chained to the desk for most of the day.‘
Colleague 2 – ‘What? That’s crazy, lots of people at my place go to the gym and take lunch breaks. We have a fuss-ball room and table tennis tables too. People play adhoc through the day.‘
Colleague 3 – ‘Nice – I fancy some of that.’
Colleague 2 – ‘Yeah, but when we complete a project we’d be lucky to even get a thank you on email, mostly it’s not really celebrated.‘
Colleague 3 – ‘Are your stakeholders engaged? I’ve never worked in an office like mine where they’ve been so attentive and helpful.’
Colleague 1 – ‘Really? I have a real problem with mine.‘
Colleague 2 – ‘Me too. It’s a nightmare trying to even get them to join a conference call let alone make a decision.‘
Colleague 1 – ‘Yeah‘
The take away at the end of it all?
All companies do some things well and some things badly.
Some celebrate success some don’t.
Some have engaged stakeholders some don’t.
Some encourage a healthy work /life balance, some don’t.
You even get variations between departments within the same company.
In the end it’s horses for courses. Same shit, different branding.
It doesn’t matter what little things company a, b or c does to motivate or aggravate it’s employees, very rarely do any stand out as being much worse or much better than any other, they’re just different.
What does matter is what you make of it, and how you choose to deal with it.
You could bitch and moan about it, wish you were in a different job and imagine that the perfect role in the perfect company is waiting to pay you twice your current salary. Good luck with that.
Alternatively you could accept that nowhere is going to be perfect and find peace with where you are.
You could look to make the best of it. You could be bold and try to influence positive change. You could look for ways of implementing small improvements and show your colleagues different ways of doing things.
[Tweet “The more I focus on the positive, the more positive my life becomes. Julie-Anne”]
You are where you are. Be grateful for it. Cherish it. Don’t give up at the first sign of difficulty. Focus on the positive aspects of your organisation and your colleagues.
Of course, like any decent relationship it should be two sided with effort being made by both parties. If your efforts fail and it really becomes unbearable and you start showing signs of lingering then you should re-evaluate, and maybe even seek an alternative.
Just be careful if you hope to find the perfect role in the perfect office, and that the grass will be greener than where you are.
It might be.
But you might just find that it’s not so different after all.
