“What essential work advice do you wish you knew earlier? Learn how to navigate office dynamics to avoid being taken advantage of and increase your chances of success. Discover key insights such as the importance of perception, the reality of workplace relationships, and the significance of written agreements. Explore strategies for handling gossip, power plays, and office politics effectively. #WorkplaceAdvice #CareerTips #OfficeDynamics #SuccessTips”
Important Work Advice:
- People will take advantage of you, if they can get away with it
- Your colleagues aren’t your friends
- Anything you say or do at work will be used against you
- If you hear gossip, assume that people do the same to you too
- New workers always get the crappy work nobody wants
- Perception trumps reality: Your boss’s opinion matters
- Being efficient might make you a target
- Working harder doesn’t necessarily earn you more money
- Power plays are common in the workplace
- Written agreements are essential for validity
- End dates on contracts are final
- Blame often falls on the least popular worker
- Talking negatively about your boss can backfire
- Rank matters, regardless of title usefulness
Everything here is 💯 if you come from an emotionally abusive parent you will fall victim to all of this because you were trained from birth to be a people pleaser
To add:
Additionally because your parent took the easy way out on raising you with fear and or emotional neglect, you will make less money and endure more stress over your lifetime than your peers. Not only will your salary be less than your peers it will lead to more medical expenses for your health due to chronic work related stress, resulting in a lower net worth over your lifetime, that is if you don’t learn all of the above rules to the workforce early on.
So everyone reading this in your 20s with even just an inkling that you have a weird relationship with your parents read this list over and over before bed until you have it memorized. The hard part will be implementing it when push comes to shove but knowing is half the battle
Don’t wait until your 30s-50s most people piece this together all the way back to their childhoods triggered from job related burnout only to realize they have wasted away their optimal career and wealth building years
**15. Don’t ever go 100% when you get a new job because you’ll be expected to keep up whatever standard you set. Set your work rate lower. Don’t ever go above and beyond.**
**If you drop to 80%, some fucker will say that you’re slacking. But the people operating at 80% from the off won’t get called out ever because they’re doing what’s expected of them.**
*As an example:*
*You come in and want to impress. You pack 2,000 oranges into a box every hour – way more work than everybody else.*
*Sally packs 1,250 every hour like she has always done. That’s fine. She does her work*
*But if you drop to 1,250 – you ain’t doing enough.*
Yeah this is all valid.
Forgot #16 HR Is not your Advocate. HR is there to protect the company. They will try to spin the problem and get you to sign a waiver
17. “Before you get the promotion and the salary you need to prove you can do the job, then we’ll talk” is an empty promise and should only be entertained if there’s a clear timeline and measurable success criteria IN WRITING. And even then it’s likely to not be honoured
Corollary: Any promise that’s not a signed contract, if it has a timespan more than a couple of weeks, is to be treated as if it was never made: even if there’s no actual intentional malice involved, (for example) the manager who promised you a promotion or a change in job description or a transfer to a more prestigious team could be gone tomorrow and nobody else in the company will know or care about what they promised
You don’t want to be the outlier.
Twice now I have been hired directly onto business development teams in a marketing role, even though the company already HAD a marketing department. Believe me, you will be loved by your team, but absolutely hated by the marketing department people because you’re an outlier beyond their control. They will make your life miserable and do everything to torpedo you.
All good points. 👍
18. Don’t work for free. Clocking out on time doesn’t mean you care less about the company or your work. It means you value your time. It’s toxic bullshit spouted by corporates to make you feel guilty, or like you’re not doing enough, when in reality they just want the free work.
14. What’s the difference between between rank and title? Aren’t they the same thing?
If you let yourself get steamrolled you will be. This list is all true but honestly you can avoid 90% of this if you just stand up for yourself.
I was told “if you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen “ and “if you have to testify in court, what documents do you want to support your testimony” by one of my first trainers in my line of work. That was about 25 years ago, but I still live by it.
You should take a look at my manuscript lol. I’m trying to write a book on this topic
https://nooneofanyconsequence.substack.com/p/escape-from-serfdom
19
Join a union
You’ll need them one day
20. Co-workers can steal your work and cheat
21. They are not afaird to cut hours and make you do more work.
Don’t help anyone else unless you have documentation that you’ll get credit (e.g. your name is on a ticket for the task.)
In my career I have worked retail, then small boutique companies and agencies and eventually in corporate America / Big Tech and this list is :100: percent Big Facts Truth. In my career journey I’ve personally been burned hard by not fully understanding rules 1, 6, 8, and 14.
I would also add: ‘If you’re too useful – you’ll get all used up.’
Damn man. I just got fired yesterday from my job and these ALL are things I wish I knew. Fuck corporate America
👏👏👏👏👏👏
Adding on to #1, 6, 7, & 8… when you have a lack of boundaries at work & allow work to take advantage of you, you will be deemed a “good” worker, reinforcing you to overwork yourself & take on things regardless of how it affects you.
(Note- this is not suggesting you shouldn’t have boundaries or allow your work to take advantage of you—it will wear you down horribly! Just an observation of the unfair lengths the workplace often expects their employees to go to in order to view them as “good workers.”)
BRB Punching the air rn because every single thing here is happening to me at my job and like a sucker im still somewhat happy here lol
Absolutely agree that people will take advantage of you. One of my biggest regrets is that in my early twenties I let several managers take advantage of me and treat me badly because I wanted to “show a good attitude” and was not brave enough to say “No, I won’t do that” or “No, that isn’t okay”. Lost a lot of free time and potential earnings and got nothing in return.
2 and 3 are true.
It happened to me this week.
Next week, from now on, I decided not to talk to the coworkers anymore.
It’s true that coworkers are not friends and be careful when you talk about work to them.
Or it will be used against you.
Some of these apply to life in general – not just work.
It is somewhat negative though. For example, even with number 1.
Could it not have been prefaced with, “**Some** people will….”.
my mother told me most of this before I started my 1st fulltime job
15. Treat wage enslavers like mushrooms: feed them shit and leave them in the dark.