Indulging Indolence

Where I work, laziness is not a malady that management seeks to extirpate through aggressive application of the rules, but a tolerated, almost encouraged, behavior of the employees.

Before I go further, I should note that my co-workers and I belong to AFSCME(American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) The contract with our employer is more than adequate for punishing the work shy, for it allows the supervisors plenty of latitude to find a way to remove an uncooperative employee.Management has the tools it needs to hold people accountable.

Alas, rare is the moment when they actually apply the hammer to the incorrigible nail.

The permissive attitude towards the idle is concerning for we work at a hospital. This is a place where lives are at stake. How can people be permitted the luxury of not doing their assigned task?How can a managerial team with adequate disciplinary weapons at their disposal, permit rampant indolence?

How can management permit a weekend employee to punch in, sit around and do nothing for his two scheduled days? How can they allow the supplies of a unit to so dwindle that come Monday morning the stockroom as well as the nurse servers(small closets that we also stock) have yawning holes, where supplies once were?

What makes this all the more infuriating is how simple the task it. Resupply the nurse servers, inventory and resupply the stockrooms, and go home. That is the job. It is not particularly arduous from a physical standpoint and the job requires no intellect at all. Trained Capuchin Monkeys could do the job.

This issue spotlights the incompetence and insouciance of the managerial team. For no competent person who cares the slightest bit about their job would countenance such inactivity. But tolerated it is and it plagues many more units than just my own. Mondays are a dangerous time for those with an aversion to cuss words to pay a visit to the warehouse.

Management concerns itself more with the issues of Ipods, call offs, and to matters of dress then people actually doing the work. While those are of some importance--particularly of habitual call offs--people not doing their job is infinitely more important. We are here to do a job. If a person is not doing that job than we are failing to do what the department was created to do.

The worker himself is responsible for his languid approach to work, but only to a certain extent. He can only do what he does with the tolerance of the supervision.It is their apparent acceptance of his "do nothing" approach that allows this this type of behavior.

It is not just a problem of lazy union workers, but of lazy, indifferent, supervisors, who refuse to do the most elemental part of their job--making sure that their charges do theirs.