Don't Rock the Boat, Upset the Applecart

Um, ILX is the perfect example of the fact that I can't bite my tongue even when I know I should.

these questions are so, so apposite for my workplace right now, for a number of reasons. One is the decision last week to ban paid overtime, when many ppl rely on the time-and-a-half money they get for the extra hours they put in. Another is a run-in with IT Support which I had last week, where I expected my boss to support me and she just told me to stop being confrontational. This all comes against the backdrop of the matter I discussed on the "Why are you sad" thread, where I mentioned that I had applied for five internal positions since I started at the company and have been disappointed each time. I am wondering whether it is true that the ppl who get on in their fields of work are always those who are able to keep stumm, keep their heads down and never speak out about stuff they find unacceptable. I'm not very good at doing this, tho I'm better than I used to be.

i'm doing a lot of just shutting up and dealing with stuff this year, but it still gets me in trouble. what's the point.

I do try to stand up to both my boss and idiotic clients when I don't agree with things. Mostly I get away with it; partly because The Boss knows that there are some things where I know what I'm talking about much better than he does; and partly because he tries to keep me away from clients anyway, so if I have strong opinions about their idiotic ideas they rarely get back to the clients directly.

Disputes between me and The Boss are very rare though, so it's not really a problem. We just laugh to ourselves about how dumb our clients are being.

There is a big difference between fighting what you need at a workplace and rocking the boat.

do you mean fighting for what you need? I think it can be difficult to tell the difference sometimes between someone who is arguing for the good of their dept. or company, when they can see that something is being done badly and should be improved and when someone is just on a massive ego-trip and just wants to be say something for their own self-aggrandaisment.

I normally only say things when it's really stupid ideas, like "Let's convert all our spam promotional emails from plain text to HTML!" or "Let's make such-and-such website look really tacky!" (I paraphrase.)

(and honestly, it genuinely isn't spam: they're only sent out to people who have signed themselves up, confirmed that they want to, blah blah blah. I'd *definitely* say no if The Boss suggested spamming people)

I have a big mouth, so I'm pretty quick to speak up against anything I think is a bad idea. I think people are used to me, and I think I generally do it in reasonable tones and make my points fairly clearly, so I've had little trouble for it, at least here (it has caused real difficulties in one or two past jobs). I have been quite pushy on a couple of issues I think, but I've largely won the arguments there - I do have the sense to pick my battlegrounds. This is internal: I'm a systems analyst, and the attitude when dealing with clients (even though they are part of the same large university) is obviously a very different matter - differences of opinion to do with clients should be dealt with in-house I think, even if it leads to offering them differing options, with pros and cons noted. That's part of doing a professional job.

I'm often critical of things, but it dooesn't matter because no one can hear me anyway, as I only work with one other person and we are pretty much powerless.

Not really at work, but within conversations with people where definite views are being posed, I almost always 'rock the boat' and disagree with them even if I do really agree. People who say the Smiths are absolutely better than the Velvet Underground, or It's absolutely wrong to go to war don't know what 'absolute' means (or how to use it correctly). This is when I tend to take the other side. I am really gray when it comes to issues or quality.

I get on much better with people who 'rock the boat' in the sense of airing grievances or convictions to the proper person, through the proper channels, than with people who keep up a constant low level whinge and never actually DO anything.

I know what you mean, but:

(i) low level whinging is catharic

(ii) low level whinging allows you to find out whether your colleagues feel the same way, on a scale of "I agree that's dreadful!" --> blank stare which means they're indifferent --> (sarcastic) "dear oh dear oh dear, doesn't *that* just mean the world's gonna end tomorrow!"

(iii) ppl may not know what the proper channels are: many employers seem to keep the proper channels deliberately obscure to prevent a constant stream of ppl with grievances, however genuine, beating a path to their door

(iv) even if (iii) isn't, or isn't totally the case, many ppl live in fear of going thru the proper channels, as they feel it might A] get them branded as troublemakers, or B] give the impression that they are not taking a sufficiently company-oriented approach and so thwart any chances of promotion

(iv)B is esp. relevant for me at the present time.

cathartic.