Deliberate alienation

When the small accountancy company Vanessa had worked for was taken over by a big corporation she was separated from her former colleagues during the move to the new company and found herself working in alien territory.

"All of my life I’ve felt like I don’t quite fit in with people," explains Vanessa, "so this new situation is the worst possible thing that could happen to me. I am stuck in an open plan office with a team of people doing different work to mine."

"I discussed the problem with my husband, John, and he thinks that my old team has deliberately alienated me," says Vanessa. "His advice is for me to ask for a transfer to the team section in which I am presently situated and to cut ties completely with my former colleagues."

"John feels that if management does not grant me this reasonable request then I should at least be given my own office and secretary and I agree with him," says Vanessa. "It's all very well having more money and staff benefits but if I'm miserable, what's the use of working?"

"Actually, John doesn’t particularly want me to work," laughs Vanessa, "he’d much prefer me to stay home and devote myself to him and the kids - and that’s a great fallback should I be forced to quit this job."

"But I need to be with people," explains Vanessa. "With the kids at school I’d be very lonely being home by myself all day."

“Like most working mothers, I want to work for my own fulfillment as well as for social interaction,” says Vanessa, “and employers really should be more considerate about where they place their new employees - especially those from a take-over and most especially their female staff.”

"I think my situation would be awful for anybody," says Vanessa, "but for someone like me who has been through a lonely childhood being deliberately alienated at work is the sort of stuff from which nightmares are made."

Read more about Vanessa's situation:

A lonely only child

alien territory

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."

monday morning meetings

Penny is a team leader and quite apart from the bitchiness and prejudices that run rife in team environments, just about everyone, including Penny, is in agreement about hating team meetings.

"There are two types of team meetings at my workplace," says Penny. "One is the department team meeting which I run myself and wish I didn't have to, and the other is the management meeting which I hate with every fibre in my body."

"The management team meetings are dreaded enough," says Penny, "but holding them on the first Monday of every month at 8am makes them absolutely miserable."

"Who is at their best on a Monday?" asks Penny. "I am most certainly not - and especially not at 8am. I don't come alive until Wednesdays - and 8pm - and judging by the amount of participation in the monthly Monday management team meetings at my workplace I am not alone in my misery."

"I'm not sure whether the CEO's predilection for early morning Monday meetings is a trait that separates the wheat from the chaff, or the CEO from us."

"One of these days I am going to move a motion at the monthly management meetings to hold them on a Friday afternoon at 4pm when everyone is alive and excitedly looking forward to the weekend," says Penny, "and see what happens."

"Let's face it, even though our minds would be more on the impending weekend frivolities than whatever the CEO has to say, surely he would appreciate a more lively gathering of staff than what he gets on Mondays at 8am?"

"But then, of course," adds Penny, "our CEO is no fool. You see, I've figured out that the object of these monthly 8am Monday management team meetings is for us to be seen and not heard."

"Only one person gets to be heard, and that's the CEO. Choosing Mondays at 8am for the meetings was his way to make sure that nobody has a brighter thought than he does!"

"Our CEO is a Monday person and looking at dead early Monday morning bodies must make him feel superior."

"Okay," concedes Penny, "in the company hierarchy he is superior to us but in real life he's just a bag of skin and bones like everybody else. Actually, he has a lot more skin and bones than everyone else but that's another story!"

"Anyway, what's the point of having management team meetings at a time when very few people feel inclined to put in their two cent's worth? Is it just a head count?"

"At the department team meetings that I run, they are haphazard get togethers of team members and whoever feels like participating or opting out can do so," says Penny. "There is usually a lot of noise and bickering and sometimes agreement is reached on some change that needs to be made but mostly it's not."

"My job as a team leader is to make decisions when agreement cannot be reached," says Penny. "I try to be democratic but when things get out of hand I end the meeting and lay down the law."

"In stark contrast to my department meetings," says Penny, "the tone of the monthly CEO team meetings is stern and foreboding but the outcome is invariably the same. An awful lot of company time is wasted doing absolutely nothing constructive!"

"At these meetings the CEO praises us on targets reached and encourages us to push our teams harder and harder, and generally waxes lyrical about future growth and expansion."

"At the end of the presentation, there is a call for questions and any issues that need to be raised."

"A few brave souls try to make out they understood what the presentation was all about," says Penny, "but they always make fools of themselves by showing they have not."

"Mainly, everybody just sits there like stunned Monday mullets."

"Given half a chance I could probably run the place more efficiently than the CEO," says Penny, "but I wouldn't want the responsibility. I have a life outside of work, being a team leader is stressful enough and, as mentioned before, I am not a Monday person."

"My job as a team leader is stressful because the nature of the work my team does requires a high level of individualism and creativity," says Penny. "My guys are not subservient team players who bow and kowtow to me and I have to deal with a lot of clashing egos.

"Similarly, I'm not a subservient team player either," says Penny," so I hate it when our CEO herds us like sheep into those awful early morning monthly team meetings."

"In this respect, the guys on my team have a far easier existence than I do," sighs Penny. "I may get paid more than they do, but whenever the CEO meetings loom ahead I often ask myself whether it's worth being a team leader to have to put up with what I have to put up with."

alien territory

Vanessa is 38, married with two children, and her working life was great until the small accountancy company she had worked for since graduating was taken over by a big corporation.

"I was thrilled to pieces when I heard about the take-over," admits Vanessa. "It meant more prestige, more benefits, more money and more opportunities for advancement."

"My joy turned to dismay when the move took place and I was not assigned an office of my own as befitting my seniority," says Vanessa, "and if that wasn't bad enough I was separated from my former colleagues and seated by myself in a section of the new workplace that had no bearing at all on what I was doing."

"I felt like I was in alien territory," explains Vanessa. "The people in the section I was seated with were pleasant enough, saying good-morning and good-night, but they didn’t include me in their normal work chit-chat and I suppose they resented my presence among them."

"Also," adds Vanessa, "because I wasn’t working alongside people who were doing the same work as myself, I missed out on their normal team activities, too."

"A whole day could pass by without anyone speaking to me," says Vanessa, "and if I didn't make a point to visit the stationery room and chat to the young girl there I'd go mad.”

"I'm sure she's as embarrassed as I am about the chats we have - her being a clerk and me being an accountant - but that's about the only social life I get around here."

"Whenever I need administrative assistance or feedback," says Vanessa, "I have to walk up a floor and right to the back of the building in order to talk to my old boss and the admin team. Already they are treating me like a stranger!"

"This is turning out to be a toxic situation for me to be in," says Vanessa. "I am losing interest in my work and I feel very strange being with people, and yet not being with them."

Read more about Vanessa's situation:

A lonely only child

Deliberate alienation