Monday, May 5, 2008

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

No matter what your job is or how you fit into this space we call the world there is a pretty good chance you have a story of an intellectually challenged co-worker, you know the one that feels less is more. As in less work more pay. Our little corner of the world in South Africa seems to be teeming with these people.

It just doesn’t seem to make sense to have a country with thousands, possibly millions of people who feel they should be paid for sitting on their behinds, when there are so many unemployed who are eagerly awaiting a chance to prove themselves.

Durban seems to be getting taken over by our friends from the orient who have the work ethic to back up a successful career and business – well from what I’ve noticed in the automotive industry anyway. And while I’m not saying we should send 5 year old kids to the grocery shopping with a few challenges to make them cry (Yes they actually do this), South Africans as a whole need to improve their work ethic, we spend most of our time at work anyway.

And while you may be thinking that I’m just ranting on about the lazy buggers at my place of work, I’m not. The poor ethic seems to carry forward to the children of these people and they’re off to get the passing grade at school so they can move forward with their friends to the next grade/year.

I’m a firm believer in, if you do anything do it to the best of your ability which somehow seems to be waning with the current South African population. This is quite a nuisance when you’re trying to get things done and have to cater for the lazy idiot before you who hasn’t finished his job.

2 weeks later, aforementioned lazy idiot has no clue how the system works. And his response – “Oh no it doesn’t wek” – and when that’s the explanation you get over a crackly cellphone line it takes a lot of self control not to cut him off, or worse.

And while it may be easy to just sit back and accept that South Africa is falling to pieces and blame everything on that fact – it would be better for the people here to try a bit of an attitude adjustment and do that little extra, to prevent the skilled few, who are really trying, in the country so that they can keep their jobs. Cos sometimes just switching it off and on again won’t work.

2 comments:

Pink Ice said...

i so get you on this one...

My dartboard said...

the wonderful thing is that it covers all races. i walked into one office of an incompetent, and wondered where they got those pretty framed pieces of paper from. i think some people thing getting a degree makes them suitable for a workplace. no skills, no depth, no real understanding of the world, they're just baggage.