Asklemmy

Working for the federal government in Canada I learned that following the process is far more important than getting anything done.

Boundaries. Establish them and defend them with every ounce of your being. If you don't, most employers will grind you in to the dirt and send you out to pasture when you eventually crack under the pressure. Better to establish healthy boundaries up front. Not only will you find yourself more frequently surrounded by people you like and share mutual respect with, you will be happier and land fewer "shit" jobs because employers looking for people to send to the meat grinder will see that they can't grind you down and you'll be filtered from the hiring pool before you ever have to suffer at their hands.

Yeah, looking busy is way more important than being productive a lot of the time. You always need to be doing something, so you just go through the motions of doing things because otherwise you'll get shit from your employers. Waiting in good faith for more real tasks to emerge isn't enough, so you must invent chores.

At least, that was very consistently my experience in retail.

You can't get sick

I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.

Success is mainly about sucking up to the right people. No matter how good you are at your job, you have to know how to play work politics. Most bosses don't know how to evaluate actual ability, and they're much less objective than they think. Usually they favor more likeable employees over capable ones if forced to choose. Human life is a popularity contest, always has been, always will be. That's the side effect of being a highly social species...

That dealing with the bullshit of clique social groups and the fallout of not falling in with them doesn't end with high school. In fact, it gets even worse in the workplace.

If you make your work processes more efficient, you don’t need to tell anyone right away, if at all.

They're not your friends, even if they act like that.

The management just sees you as expense factor and does not care about you except for how to get the most work done for the least amount of money. Your team leader does not care about you and only cares if their numbers look good. Your colleagues do not care about you and only see you as competition or the idiot they can give their work to.

If someone is nice to you they want something from you not because they like you.

During covid: the government paid me more than my employer to sit around and do nothing, so I had zero incentive to go back to work.

Lesson learned: Get a better employer

life is so much better when u find a job u like ( or learn to like the one u have)

Dominant personalities and work styles almost always make it up to management.