Are you paying a price for being a fast worker?

Why is that fast workers are always condemned by their speed in getting things done. There is this global conspiracy that indicts those who like to do their work quickly. They are labelled as being slipshod and what further exacerbates the situation is the same world heaps praise on those who dawdle over their workload.

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http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarti ... orial&col=

Experience has exposed me to the very points made in this editorial.

Very interesting. I think it scrapes the surface though. There are many factors and i have seen idiots that do no work get promoted because they are good at politics. The quiet ones get passed over. The squeaky wheel always gets the grease. Reminds me of office space. LOL

He stopped going to work and got promoted.

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Agreed. Office politics and speaking up though not saying anything often reaps rewards. It's something that has pissed me off since I'd rather work quality and timeliness were rewarded in stead of ass kissing and spouting off without ever saying anything significant. My experience is that frequency of speaking up if for only to ask informational questions are placed ahead of those whose few who ask insightful questions or points of inconsistency by the presenter. As such critical thinking is not being rewarded, though an organization's success benefits from it.

Or I have also seen the guys "who put in the hours", work overtime for free, but aren't as efficient get praised.

That is the whole crux of the issue. Just because you work long hard hours does not mean you are producing more than the person who is efficient, knows what they are doing and doesn't waste time getting it done. This is not to say that the fast worker does not also put in long hours from time to time. I consider myself a fast and hard worker, especially so when there are deadlines. Sometimes deadlines are a bit flexible, not so when you have responsibility to reach a course on a given day and you need to have your training manual finished. I lived in the office for two days straight and the better part of a whole week because I wanted to write a new training manual while working at Shell. I got it done, albite with lots of typos and spelling mistakes that the students pointed out to me. Looking back, I'm amazed even at myself for getting this done. It had lots of original material, even exercises I designed specifically for the course. In all the training manual ended up being over 200 pages in length. Even with the errors, I'm proud of that piece of work because of the depth and quality of the material presented in it. But, unlike where I worked later, Shell recognized and rewarded such achievements.

I actually got disciplined once for working too fast. "Making the rest of the team look bad." At the time I worked for a city government department. Figures.

cydl wrote: I actually got disciplined once for working too fast. "Making the rest of the team look bad." At the time I worked for a city government department. Figures.

lol Now that brings back memories of when I worked for an organization that made check out counters and display cabinets. I'd just gotten out of high school and went to work there. The same thing happened to me as you describe. The experienced hands got up in arms and told me not to work so fast and that I had to take breaks. That was an interesting introduction to the real world.

I was working in a mail room at the time, and I got disciplined for stuffing envelopes too fast! It was mind-numbing work. So I had little competitions with the clock - how many I could stuff in 15 mins, in 30 mins, etc. Setting up the envelopes, contents in different configurations to find the most efficient hand movements.

So much for showing efficiency and creativity! :bash

cydl wrote: I was working in a mail room at the time, and I got disciplined for stuffing envelopes too fast! It was mind-numbing work. So I had little competitions with the clock - how many I could stuff in 15 mins, in 30 mins, etc. Setting up the envelopes, contents in different configurations to find the most efficient hand movements.

So much for showing efficiency and creativity! :bash

Most interesting. I used to do the same thing (competitions in this case against the clock) while chopping trees down and cranking the cement mixer by hand when a kid.

...and now I'm older and just half-fast anyway...