Who are you at work?

Everyone I know works with someone who absolutely refuses to carry their own weight.  Their co-workers pick up the slack time and time again.  What I cannot understand,  is the persons lack of work ethic.  You get paid an hourly wage, you owe an hour's work.

Perhaps you are one of those people who use their job as their social outlet.  You talk all day long when you could be focusing on the day's tasks and at the end of the day you feel the crunch to finish.  Your co-workers could use some help closing your department or cleaning up after the shift, but you're too busy finishing what you could've done while you were blabbing all day long.  Your co-workers close the department and you're sitting back, catching up your own unfinished tasks.

Perhaps you're one of those people who do what few things are necessary to your position, without the ability to see that the workload as a whole is not complete.  Let's say you are hired to press pizza dough into pans.  Your dough is caught up.  The sauce makers are struggling to keep pace.  Instead of pitching in, you secretly disappear.  Is this you?  Look in the mirror.

The more people you have working on a task, the easier it becomes.  It's amazing to me, when I'm behind what little help is needed to get me in a good spot on my job.  I have, for the past year and a half, been doing the work of two.  It's a well known fact in my department.  I'm not saying I'm a super worker, have the perfect attitude, can handle it with grace under fire or any of those things.  I am frazzled, angered, frustrated and feel slighted on a near daily basis.  Without the help of a few of my co-workers who realize that there is a lot to my position, I would have walked out a long time ago.  I hang in because the job is close to home, the pay is good and I leave work knowing that I've made a difference in the lives of the people I have met on any particular day.

The moral of this story I guess is that one day your back will become very, very itchy.  Those whose backs you've scratched will remember your helpfulness and will come to your aid time and time again.  If you have never done anything to help a co-worker when they were struggling, you may find yourself in a situation you need their help getting out of.  If you have repeatedly let them drown during their work day, they will get great pleasure out of watching you squirm when your day falls apart.   The truth though, is that good employees will never let someone drown, regardless.  Even when repeatedly, they are left to dig out of a their workday hole by the same individuals over and over again.