It's Not My Job

There are few things that get me angrier than this phrase. I hear it a lot, working for the state, always from lower-ranked employees. Maybe it's because their salaries are low. Maybe it's because they don't want to do more work, or, in some cases, any work at all. Maybe they feel that what they are being asked to do is beneath them. But any good employee or boss knows that while any enterprise needs good organization, one should never start believing that organizing the organization is more important than organizing the enterprise, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett. It can only lead to bureaucracy.

With promotion comes not only money, but responsibility and accountability. If the business does not go forward, it's the boss's fault. He or she must be willing to do everything possible to facilitate the work of the employees, even if that means taking out the garbage and vaccuuming the floor. At my first job, my boss asked me to put a lot of data into a database we had built. I told him data entry wasn't my job. When I came to work the next day, he had done it. And I never, ever used that phrase again. My job now is to make sure the University runs. That's the president's job too, and the janitor's job. As Scully says, "Don't think. Just pick up the phone and make it happen"