Tattled

Want some more work advice? I know you do.

If you’re ever in a work situation where your coworkers tattle on each other, it’s time to go. Every workplace is a carrier of this disease, but once it’s full blown, there’s no stopping it. That’s when it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

Workplace tattling goes something like this:

A major corporation hits the financial skids, so they hire upper and middle management “puppets” at bargain rates. These people are massively unqualified for their jobs, but somebody needs to fill these seats and perform at least some rudimentary work. This results in multiple people ending up with jobs they otherwise wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of landing.

They’re there because they’re the most qualified people to be found for the money—which, because the company is an industrywide joke, is about a fifth of what the same position would pay elsewhere. The puppets know they’re expendable. They’re fully aware that they’re not there on merit, so they’re insecure, they trust nobody, and they intentionally create a culture within their departments where people are encouraged to tattle.

Look at it this way: If you’re totally unqualified for your job, and people on your staff can see through you to the extent that they actually find your incompetence funny, you wouldn’t like it. You’d be angry and fearful—and the people laughing at you would bring out every insecurity you’ve ever had regarding your own lack of talent and ability.

And you’d want to keep an eye on those motherfuckers, because you know they’re better than you, they know they’re better than you, and they know you know they’re better than you.

So you reward your underlings for informing—people naïve enough to think you can do something for them despite the toothless nature of your position—and you call the tattled-on into your office and disingenuously commiserate with them about how “real men don’t tattle.” That’s how you play both sides. Meanwhile, however, you’re keeping a file, because you’re a miserable little no-talent who’s barely managing to hang on by your fingernails to a job you didn’t deserve in the first place.

And we saw how that turned out, didn’t we?

If this ever happens at your job, bail out fast—if you can. I did, and unlike some people I know, I can still afford the internet service to complain about it publicly.