Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Experienced people have a significant problem in today’s unemployment environment: we are very good at knowing what should not be done.

I have been working since 1980. That is a lot of years in some fields. I know a lot more than I did in 1980. One of the areas where my knowledge has increased significantly is:

Recognizing work that should not be done.

That should be a highly prized area of knowledge.  Employees who can discern useless work are able to use their time to perform only useful work.

What is wrong with that?

Well, I find myself in a small minority. People who pay the bills, a.k.a., customers, want me to do useless work. They don’t think it is useless. They think it is quite useful. Hence, they pay people to do it.

What do I do? Explain why the work is useless and not do it? That causes me to wait until the customers find useful work. Sometimes that is a long, long, long wait. Go ahead and do the useless work because that brings a paycheck?

I don’t know a good answer for these questions.