Unpleasant Workplace Situations

Happiness in life depends upon what happens to one in the home, at the workplace and elsewhere. One key point to be noted is that the control and influence one generally has on the home matters is reasonably high, on the workplace matters is moderate to less and elsewhere is very less.

It is an important characteristic of the modern society that one's identity and social status has a lot to do with one's standing in the workplace. For example, the Prime Minister of a country is a Prime Minister every second of his or her term and hence enjoys all the privileges that comes with the workplace position, both material and social. Similarly, an IT Support professional has a certain social status because of his being an IT Support professional. Friends may refer to the IT Support professional as "he is the network guy" or "he fixes IT systems".

The control and influence one has on the workplace matters and the fact that one's identity and social status has a lot to do with one's standing in the workplace implies that happiness in life depends a lot upon what happens to one at the workplace.

Unpleasant situations happen at every workplace and to almost everyone in their careers not once but many many times. Here are some unpleasant situations one experiences in the workplace, especially in the corporate setup:
  • One is not at all copied on an important email
  • One is not copied on an important email and receives it as a forward from someone else
  • One is not copied on an important email and receives it as a forward from someone else who might be in the reporting chain of the recipient but adds only as much value as a post-redirect does
  • One is the head of a function for all practical purposes in actual practice but is not invited to inter-functional meetings as someone else is the function head on the papers
  • One as the function head "in actual practice" holds all accountability for failures but has to share the successes with the "on the papers' function head
  • One is not invited to an important meeting and the "on the papers' function head represents the "in actual practice" function head
  • One as the head of a support function is given clear indication by the marketing head that"sales and marketing" is all that matters as they bring money (revenues, clients)
  • One is not proactively informed by a team member regarding the progress of an assigned task unless asked about the same
  • One gets to know from a team member only at the last moment that a certain critical task will be delayed
  • One is not informed by a team member about him or her being on leave 
  • One has a team member who doesn't communicate the stakeholders who might be waiting upon him or her regarding possible delay in completion of certain tasks leading to avoidable escalations

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