learn the steps of the office shuffle

Daphne, 18, started her first job full of youthful energy and brimming with plans for all the things she wants to do with the rest of her life, but doing the office shuffle four times in six months seriously destabilized her.

"I took quite a while to adjust to being at work rather than at school," says Daphne, "but as soon as I had settled down my world went into a spin with the first of many office reshuffles."

Daphne maintains that an office reshuffle always seems to happen when you have settled down and are most comfortable exactly where you are. Sometimes a shuffle comes about because of companies restructuring, merging or expanding, but Daphne is adamant that it is mostly caused by someone in management wanting to justify his or her existence.

"Doing the office shuffle - moving desks, rooms, offices or even buildings - is such a common experience in my workplace," laughs Daphne, "that you may as well learn the steps so you can dance with ease when the music plays."

Daphne works in a team that did the office shuffle four times in six months. They were not even given time to settle down in any one of their new locations.

"No, the office shuffle is not a 'moving' experience," laughs Daphne. "On the contrary, it is destabilizing. I enjoy excitement, but like any normal human being I am a fairly territorial animal and a large part of setting down into a job is feeling comfortable, at home, with what has been marked out as being your ‘territory’."

Daphne made her first job experience easier by making her working space 'homely'.

"I brought in pictures and funny messages and stuck them up on the wall in front of me to remind me of home," explains Daphne. "I. also brought in plants and tended them lovingly. They made me feel human in this alien environment of work."

"I also filled the drawers in my desk with personal items," adds Daphne, "and I set up my PC with the colors and wallpaper I use on my home PC."

"I'm taller than average so I need to adjust my chair to just the right height," explains Daphne. "So, the whole settling down period is quite an experience."

When Daphne finally trusts the inviolability of her work space, she then grows accustomed to her surroundings.

If there is a window in the office, Daphne fixes her gaze on something she can see that pleases her. She knows exactly where everyone sits. She knows exactly where to lay her hands on, or fix her eye upon, some vital document.

Daphne says that it usually takes at least two weeks before someone settles down to a new surrounding and feels sufficiently comfortable to be able to attribute ownership to the little space where they work and - as a result - to work to their best ability.

"To uproot an employee from a familiar territory," says Daphne, "is not good management practice."

"By emotionally destabilizing the worker with a move to a new location, the company suffers in lost production time. The ‘territorial’ claim taking has to take place all over again before the employee can settle down and produce good work once again."

"Sometimes people are relocated because of a lease expiring - and moving to a new building should be exciting," says Daphne, "but the shuffle caused by someone in management wanting to justify his or her existence is a painful experience."

"These office shuffles," says Daphne, "are often nothing more than an exercise of power. Ostensibly, shuffles are supposed to make better use of office space, but I’ve never seen a better use of office space as a result of them."

What she did see, though, was a whole lot of disgruntled employees - herself included - who were quite happy where we were and resented being moved.

The lunatic responsible for moving Daphne’s team four times in six months was definitely on a power trip.

"Nobody likes him," explains Daphne, "so moving staff around haphazardly must have been his way of wreaking revenge. Not only did he move my team four times, but shortly afterwards he also started making structural alterations to the office building."

"Imagine putting up with the noise, dust and inconvenience of openings being knocked out of walls, ceilings being re-wired and carpet being laid. What a first job experience I've had!"

Daphne’s theory is that Nature abhors a vacuum and as soon as staff is moved to make better use of office space something inevitably fills the space they vacated.

"And that something," laughs Daphne, "always seems to be empty boxes and junk."

"Welcome to the world of work."

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."