Indiscipline-Frustration-Who Cares?

My mother and I had a conversation last night about indiscipline in our society. She was telling me of a computer class she is currently attending which is for principals. To my dismay, not shock, the principals were displaying the behaviour of a common worker - showing up for class late if at all, not wanting to complete assignments, disregarding other members in the class who were there to participate and get the most out of the course. I responded by saying that is why society will be no better because the indiscipline and negativity is at the top and being filtered down to the bottom. We then began to try to understand why this was so.

My theory is that the order of the day for organizations is to maximize profit and resources at the lowest possible cost. So, people are expected to do more than their "job" for the same pay or less. The amount of pressure being placed on leaders and their interpretation of that pressure filters down to the most junior person on their staff, thus creating this environment of frustration. So, no one is willing to "go the extra mile" anymore for their company because they feel that they are being exploited, under-appreciated and not compensated in a meaningful way for their efforts.

There are workers though who are the laziest, want to do as little work as possible but want to be paid every month and then some. These are the same people who run down every single penny they can from the company, nit-picking about every single dollar that they feel is due to them, and never think about how significant their contribution is. I see it every day in my company and have even been the victim of exploitation because of my abilities.

I had long since taken a personal decision about my work-life balance and vowed never to put my job before myself, my health, my loved ones and family (i.e., mother, father, boyfriend, boyfriend's parents). If I have to choose between the two, I will try to ALWAYS choose loved ones. I have vowed never to carry home work and that once I step through the office door, work is pretty much behind me (even though I am an on-call employee). Companies are no longer promoting the concept of family as they believe that families come in the way of great things being done by some employees.

I wonder if companies think about the implications of treating employees in a particular way to damage their loyalty to the company, influence acts of internal fraud and diminish their level of pride and patriotism to the company that pays the bills, buys the clothes, keeps the Appleton V/X flowing. It is a known fact that if an employee is "satisfied", it improves the level of their job performance and you can count on that employee going above and beyond if necessary and in some cases will offer to do more. Those days are long gone and companies don't seem to give a shit about that. They don't seem to be concerned at the effect their displays of behaviour have on performance which ultimately affects their bottom line.

I don't know if there are better times to come as with automation, globalization and centralization the order of the day, the worker is going to become more and more frustrated ... and then what happens? I shudder at the thought.