job hogs

Prue’s workplace, like so many others, is largely comprised of the 21-35 age group with the emphasis being on 20-somethings and the feeling among the younger workers is that people over 40 are hogging jobs that should be given to somebody younger.

"Forty-up women workers everywhere are feeling very much out of place in organizations that are geared for youth," says Prue

"Like me, they work in constant fear that their jobs are on the line, and if it is not said so to their face then the feeling among the younger workers is that we are hogging jobs that should be given to somebody younger."

"They say to me: 'You've had your time, why don't you retire and give a young person a chance at a job?' and I'm astounded."

Hello? Retire at 45?

"If I could retire, I would," sighs Prue. "I hate how aggressive the youth culture is today."

"I don’t look or feel old," she says, "but they are making me feel ancient and it gets to me".

Prue's situation is difficult because she cannot afford to retire yet -- and she does not want to stay at home alone while her husband works.”

"As much as I regret that lots of young people are out of work," confides Prue, "I do not see their predicament as being my fault. If they want to pick on someone, they should attack the people responsible for the economy. I feel outraged that young co-workers are picking on me and making my working life difficult and unhappy."

"The traditional courtesy and respect for older women that was once shown in workplaces has flown out the window," says Prue. "I never spoke to older women workers the way the kids do to us today."

"This lack of respect for older people went to blazes sometime in the early 1990s, I think," says Prue. "I remember the bad recession we went through, much worse than the current one. There were mass sackings and fierce competition for available jobs. The competition and aggression remains. It's almost as if it has become de rigueur to be vicious at work these days."

"When a workplace is 99% comprised of people in the 21-35 age group, a woman in her 40s is regarded as ancient," says Prue. "And a woman in her 50s or 60s, according to the young-things, should be rocking in a chair in an old folks home."

"Even if you are in a position of power in the workplace," says Prue, "being 40+ is a liability. More and more positions of power are being given to 20-somethings because they are willing to work long hours and weekends too, and they are perceived as being at the cutting edge of everything new."

"It's bad enough being a senior worker in the ranks, but it's far worse to be a senior worker in management. You have far more to lose," laughs Prue.

Read more about Prue:

battle of the generations

a world ruled by kids?

tidy girl in messy job

Betty is 19 and found her first job through an agency which put her on a course in coding and guaranteed her a placement. Unfortunately the placement turned out to be a square peg in a round hole type job - it was a bad fit for her.

"I'm a tidy girl and this is a really messy job!"

"I've been in this job for three months now and I'm still technically in training," says Betty, "but there’s no designated trainer, nobody knows what they're doing - although everyone claims to know it all - and there’s nothing in manual format to standardize the work."

She has been bombarded with information from co-workers - much of which conflicts, or is totally unnecessary - and because she is prevented from doing her job properly she feels miserable and incompetent.

"My mom tells me not to despair," says Betty, "but I didn't expect a job to be anything like this. Most of my co-workers are very much older than myself but I am not experiencing reverse ageism."

"On the contrary," says Betty, "the company and staff bent over backwards to make my commencement pleasant."

"There was a week-long induction program that had me learning the detailed history of the company from its inception in 1898 right through until the present time," says Betty.

"I also got to formally meet every single person in the company from the CEO to the janitor," says Betty, "and I was shown around every nook and cranny in the building in order to familiarize myself with the various departments and what they do."

Exhausted from this exercise, Betty was eager to settle down in her job and get some work done in peace and quiet in her second week on the job.

However, peace and quiet escaped her. In stark contrast to the detailed induction program, her on-the-job training was woeful.

"There was absolutely nobody in charge of training and absolutely nothing documented in writing to give me an inkling of what was going on," explains Betty.

"The two guys on either side of me took me under their wing." laughs Betty. "They were so helpful - but one told me to do this, the other told me to do that. And when I asked a third guy what I was supposed to be doing, I was then told something completely different from what the first two guys had told me. And then all of the guys came over and put in their two cents worth!".

"Everyone was so helpful," laughs Betty, "but the place is crazy!"

Betty is sorely confused and overloaded with useless information.

She would start on something and someone would come over and say: 'No, you do it this way.' Then as soon as she had changed what she was doing, someone else would come over and say: 'No, you do it this way'.

Given this sort of on-the-job training anyone would soon go quietly, if not loudly, insane, and Betty couldn’t understand what was going on.

"The guys are not being deliberately obstructive," explains Betty. "They are all laid-back and don’t seem to care that nobody is in charge and nobody really knows what they are doing."

Being a tidy sort of girl who likes to have everything in order and be in total control of her work, Betty could not believe that after three months on the job she was still none the wiser because nobody really had a clue what they were doing even though they all somehow managed to fill eight hours a day doing something.

She describes the place as complete and utter bedlam and is in the process of quitting and looking for another job.

"Next time around," laughs Betty, "I am going to make sure that I have written into my contract who will be training me, how long the training will last and whether work practices are consistent and detailed in manual format."

"I'm the only one having a problem coping with lack of structure and consistency in the workplace," admits Betty, "so I guess it's a classic case of being a square peg in a round hole."

"I'm looking forward to finding a nice square hole into which I can fit," laughs Betty, "but my mom wants me to give the job at least two years."

"I told her that a job isn't like marriage," explains Betty. "I made no vow to stay with it forever and since I'm starting out in life I want to be learning and doing something constructive so that I can get ahead. At this job, I'm going backwards and feeling incompetent. That's why I've made up my mind to move on."

pay secrecy

Jessie is in her first job and while she would never refuse a good job with prospects because it was low paying, she is very upset to learn that she is being paid lower than team members doing similar work and she is especially upset because some of these people lack her educational qualifications.

"Sometimes," says Jessie, "you can be in a job for months if not years before you discover that a team member is earning more than you are and when all things are equal - which they mostly are - you wonder why management allows this unfairness to happen."

How Jessie discovered she was earning less pay than a team member is one of those grey areas that we all wonder about. She didn’t go looking for evidence. She had no idea she was receiving less pay until Fate stepped in her path.

"I accessed the other guy's personal folder on the network to get a document I needed and saw a sub-folder called 'pay slips', explains Jessie. "Okay, it was probably not the right thing to do but it was on a team network, the personal folder was not locked and it contained many documents that needed to be shared."

Jessie felt that something as personal as pay slips shouldn't be on a network shared by all, so she felt that it had fallen into her hands for a reason and sure enough it had!

The other guy was earning $5K more than she was and she was understandably furious because he had no educational qualifications and had started about the same time as she had.

Jessie is aware that when people start jobs there is sometimes a weird clause in their contract stating words to the effect that you are not to discuss your salary with team members.

This is obviously a situation where team members are going to be earning more, or less, than their colleagues doing similar work, and in Jessie’s book of ethics it is a nasty practice.

"I would not have accepted the job had this sort of thing been in my contract," says Jessie.

"I am aware, too, that at interviews some employers will sometimes ask outright: 'What are your salary expectations?' They are perfectly aware of the going rate for your skills, and so are you, and when this happened to me when I was job hunting I refused to play their game."

"I told them that I expect to be paid a salary commensurate with that paid to other members of the team," says Jessie. "In doing so, I made it plain to them that I expect no more or no less than others doing similar work. Also, I am encouraging the employer to be ethical."

To Jessie, companies that enforce 'salary secrecy' clauses in contracts are dividing and conquering the team. Such clauses drive a wedge between team members, negating the whole purpose of putting people in teams.

"I believe in equal pay for equal work, and I do not believe it is ethical for companies to pay workers more, or less, than their colleagues doing equal work depending upon how assertive they are at interviews."

"I believe that people who have spent four year at university gaining qualifications deserve more pay than people who haven't," says Jessie. "But when the work is equal - as in my case - it didn't matter. I was simply angry and humiliated that I was getting less."

At her present workplace, Jessie did not go through that "What are your salary expectations?" question at the interview. The salary for the job was included in the advertisement. It was fixed, and Jessie accepted it as a fair salary.

The guy who was earning more than she was had started on the team a few months earlier, so either he had asked for a higher salary at the interview or it was offered to him.

"No job gets downgraded $5K in three months," says Jessie. "Something very wrong was going on here."

As Jessie points out, workplaces are where you make lifelong friends. You often spend more time with your team than you do your family, and good relations with them are thus imperative.

"If you discover you are earning more than a team member doing equal work," says Jessie, "you may be pleased but you will also feel uneasy wondering whether someone else in the team gets more than you do!"

It is not a good situation to be in. And a far worse situation would be discovering, as Jessie did, that you are earning less than a team member.

Jessie has now been placed in a tricky situation.

If she complains about receiving $5K less than her team member, she will have to admit that she looked at his private file. She does not feel happy about making this admission - but by the same token she feels that she was given the opportunity to look at his personal file for a reason.

That reason, Jessie feels, is to assess whether she wants to stay in her present job knowing that her employer is guilty of treating her unfairly.

Jessie can ask for a $5K raise without mentioning her team member’s salary, or she can look for another job.

"Funny thing," sighs Jessie, "I was perfectly happy with my salary before I discovered I was being paid less than someone else."

the dreaded company merger

Heidi is 38, divorced and bringing up two children without any help from her ex-husband. She worked quite happily for a small accountancy firm until it merged with a larger organization, bringing her into contact with the co-workers from hell.

"Many of my former co-workers lost their jobs in the company merger," explains Heidi, "but two other women and myself were taken on by the new company."

Heidi's relief at keeping her job and having an income coming in was soon overshadowed when she starting working for the new company.

"We were assigned to positions within different departments," says Heidi, "meaning that the three of us had to fit in with entirely new co-workers."

Because lunch breaks were staggered, Heidi never even got a chance to speak to her old co-workers during the day. She believes that the new company deliberately separated the three women in order to force them to assimilate.

"We got around this forced separation by talking to each other after work," says Heidi, "but because the other two women were lucky enough to be assigned to really friendly departments these after-work talks didn't last long."

"I guess they felt the need to stick together had passed," sighs Heidi, "and even though they knew I was having trouble settling in to my new department they didn't want to get involved."

Heidi had the stressful experience of being assigned to a department where none of her new co-workers made an effort to befriend her.

"On the contrary," explains Heidi, "they treated me very badly from the first day and made it abundantly clear that they did not want an 'outsider' working with them."

"I suppose I don't 'fit in' with them because I'm divorced and they're married, and I have children and they don't," explains Heidi.

"I'm also a bit older than they are, too," adds Heidi. "But I guess it's more than that. They just don't want someone new breaking up their little group. Honestly, their behavior towards me is really evil."

"I was the first child in a family of four kids and had to put up with my younger sisters ganging up on me at times," explains Heidi, "but nothing my sisters did compares with what I have to put up with from the girls at work."

Heidi says that her evil co-workers smear her computer monitor with grease, cut her off from the network, delete her files, hide her chair when she's out of the room and whisper and giggle together about her.

"I brought in a photo of my kids to place on my desk," says Heidi, "and the next day I came in and found it was smeared with grease, too."

Heidi's main problem is that she doesn't have anyone at home to talk to about what's happening at work, and she refuses to speak to the management at her new place because if she does complain they will probably call her a trouble-maker and dismiss her.

"Whichever way I turn," sighs Heidi, "I'm in trouble. I can't quit this job because I need an income and it won't be easy finding another job. I guess I just have to put up with these evil women, keep my inner strength in tune and hope and pray that in time they'll leave me alone."

Company mergers often lead to staff destabilization and Heidi may find that her evil co-workers will accept her in time, but the odds are not good that they will. They're ganging up against her and seem determined to make her life miserable and force her to quit.

"What really upsets me," explains Heidi, "is that these women have secure jobs, they have husbands bringing home money and they don't have children to feed and clothe like I do. I need this job. Why can't they understand that single working mothers like me have tremendous responsibilities?"

"When they hurt me, they hurt my kids," sighs Heidi. "If they're not willing to make my life easier then they should have the decency to leave me alone to do my work in peace so that I can go home to my children with a good frame of mind."

Heidi's point about whoever hurts a single mother also hurts her children is worth repeating. Her anger and frustration about being treated badly at work is definitely going to spill over at home and adversely affect her children.

"You know," sighs Heidi, "the world talks about how evil the terrorists are but the really evil people to me are those within our community who terrorize others on a daily basis. It all boils down to hating change and hating people who are different, doesn't it?"

"I've thought about whether my childhood experiences as a first child have much bearing on what I'm experiencing now," adds Heidi. "I admit that I'm probably more tolerant of misbehavior in younger people than, say, an only child would be, but putting up with abuse from co-workers is not the same thing as putting up with bad behavior from your little sisters."

"These women are grown up and should behave accordingly," says Heidi. "I have enough trouble sorting out my private life and taking care of the kids without having to make excuses for the bad behavior of grown up women."

"Yes, it's extremely stressful, and no, I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of the hysterical reaction they want," says Heidi.

"I'll give them a couple more weeks to settle down and then reassess the situation," explains Heidi. "If it continues then I suppose I will just have to ask for a transfer. There's only so much anyone can put up with without breaking and I'm not going to allow them to do that to me and my kids."