Is everyone incompetent or am I just grumpy/hormonal?

[HettyMeg]

I feel like the working world is gradually becoming more incompetent, or maybe I'm just grumpy.

• I work with someone who is just the right level of competent to avoid losing job but needs constant hand holding from their manager, reminders, other people checking their work. They do the bare minimum required.

• Have to upwards manage my boss to remind him to do anything e.g. not responding to annual leave requests for weeks on end. Either let me do it myself or reply sooner!

• I regularly turn up to virtual meetings that have either been cancelled by someone but not removed from the calendar, or it's only me and one other who turn up.

• regularly attend meetings that have no agenda or clear purpose, 1 or 2 people do most of the talking and no minutes will be shared after

• We recently changed the way we do a process - the department leading the change conducted "training" but failed to inform us that the process would now take double the time than the previous one. Complaints have been met with "oh well we can't change it back now however frustrating it may be"

• A friend works with someone who is too scared to pick up the phone to clients and only emails them

Anyone else got anything they want to share or should I accept I'm just grumpy.

Why are you concerned with what others are doing…are you their manager? If not I’d say you’re grumpy, not everyone wants to go to work to slog their guts out for the shit wage people are on now a days.

It’s both / and. Not either / or

I’m grumpy too op.

It feels like everyone goes the bare minimum now and if there’s any difficulty they shrug and walk away from the problem.

As a result we’re all encountering problems, delays, frustrations, and it’s demoralising, so we start looking out for ourselves and it’s just become a vicious cycle.

I sometimes think of the young woman in 1944 who was out celebrating her 21st birthday, and still went and took the evening measurements for the weather report. It was a remote weather station on the west coast of Ireland, so probably felt fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things but she still did her job diligently and professionally. On the basis of that reading, D-Day was delayed by 24 hours and avoided a storm that could have changed the outcome of WW2.

My gm was of that generation and believed if a job was worth doing it was worth doing well. She’d be laughed off the internet today.

It just makes me feel like why should I bother if other people aren't.

I hear you , I am on my 3rd line manager in 12 months. None have been competent and I’m getting tired of having to help them do their job as well as my own.

AI is employing more men because they are men and use AI to do their CV's. I strongly suspect a lot of issues are coming to the fore because there are many people employed in jobs that they are not actually qualified in. Men use AI more than women so we end up with a torrent of rubbish spewed out and never checked which causes issues all over the place.

There’s just no excellence in this country anymore.

I had not heard this story - fantastic! I do tend to agree that it feels like everyone is doing the bare minimum. It feels that standards have slipped in our company and I think everyone feels very disengaged.

I think you need to think about working somewhere else. This sounds very frustrating to me. I’d be feeling grumpy too 😬

Your company sounds crap OP. If you're not in a position to change the culture then look for a new job.

It astounds me how mediocre most people are in the work place, if that. The lack of common sense or proactivity.

I’m recruiting at the moment and it is excruciating. AI has made it so much worse (and I love AI generally, but fuck me it’s made recruiting so much harder). I am sinking with my workload atm but I know I will be underwhelmed by whoever we manage to recruit and will likely lose even more time trying to manage them than just doing it myself.

Im no doubt grumpy.

I'm looking into it but not getting anywhere as yet (quite a specific role so I've somewhat backed myself into a corner career wise). The general feeling of things sliding is slowly chipping away at my overall happiness.

I haven't had to recruit since AI started being used - do you mean that people are able to more easily overstate their abilities in an application?

That sounds very tiring. I used to worry about how I was relating to my line manager but I now think he isn't concerned about how he relates to me, or anyone else. His idea of management is making bland statements about how busy it is and how we will all have our heads down for the next few weeks. Rinse and repeat every few months

Sound like the Peter Principle is in place. It's nothing new, OP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

Every application just looks the same. The same jargon, the same voice. Some may be disingenuous in their ability, but worse is the fact I think some are potentially good candidates (looking at their job history) but now they’re all morphing into one corporate blob. I’m having to interview way more candidates than I did in order to get past the crap. If they were a minority I would just rule them out, but they’re the overwhelming majority.

It sounds like you're frustrated with a lack of accountability and efficiency at work, People experience similar issues. Complacency and poor organization can lead to these frustrations. It's okay to feel grumpy about it. Focus on what you can control and keep your standards high. Address frustrations constructively when possible.

Other incompetent or you grumpy and hormonal?