Caring Too Much Isn’t Always A Good Thing!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

We are all obsessive compulsive to some degree. If we weren’t, nothing would ever get done. But being too obsessive compulsive can make your work life miserable. It can turn you into a problem employee with exaggerated anxiety about mistakes and a limitless drive to work faster and stay longer, without even being asked.

While having an employee that never misses deadlines, is exactingly organized and dots and crosses all the i’s and t’s is fabulous, being that employee is not always a walk in the park. When the obsessive compulsiveness pendulum swings too far, there can be a dark side.

The normal errors made by others around you disturb your well-developed sense of order. Real or implied criticisms of your performance keep you awake at night. Perceived lack of appreciation of your effort stick in your craw permanently. Inequities in the treatment of you as compared to other workers, whether small or large, ruin days and weeks as you mull them over. What others view as just the normal rough and tumble of the workplace are epic conflicts in your mind. Offhand comments by others that they have forgotten ten minutes later are stored and documented in your mind forever.

Eventually, without even thinking, management increases your workload. You never leave a job incomplete or late so you must have extra time on your hands.  Your efforts are so complete and reliable that eventually they are taken for granted.

When this situation gets bad enough, you end up consulting an employment lawyer for one of two possible reasons. The first is that you have recently been told that as a result of staff cutbacks, they are increasing your areas of responsibility and added on significant duties with no change to your pay. You want to know what you can do about it.  You have reached the end of your rope.

I will tell you that what you can do about it is give your head a shake and stop caring quite so much. You have been with the company for over ten years and if they want to fire you because you do not get all the work done, they can. You will, however, get a severance package. I will tell you that working normal or above normal hours diligently and not getting everything done is never going to be just cause such that you could be fired without pay in lieu of notice.

You should politely document to your boss on a regular basis what tasks are not being completed in a timely manner so that there are no surprises and indicate that you are doing the best you can with the time you have without engaging in any kind of diatribe about how unfair the workload is.

I will also tell you that instead of playing the victim and waiting for the axe to drop, you should be polishing up your resume and looking for other work. Even if you don’t find something right away, the very act of doing so will make you feel less vulnerable and more in charge of your own destiny.

I am not going to tell you not to care at all or become a 9 to 5 automaton. I am going to encourage you to find a way to pull back before you become a problem employee and somebody who is out of work or under medication.

Whether they realize it or not, it is not in the employer’s interest to have you work yourself so hard that you reach burn out and go off for six months on stress leave. You have to let go of your conviction that if you don’t complete perfectly everything on time the universe will shift and the world will become disordered.

The other reason that you may end up consulting an employment lawyer is that in reaching the end of your rope and you have started to complain. In fact, you have been voicing your complaints often and, whether you know it or not, sometimes not with the best judgment.

Management starts to see you as a negative influence in the workplace and after your ten years of service you are suddenly getting performance reviews criticizing your attitude and team work. When things reach a bit of a climax, you have been taking a week or two off at a time for stress leave. Things calm down for a while and then the cycle repeats itself as your irritation with issues in the workplace escalate and you become more anxious and vocal. You will want me to tell you that the employer’s unfair criticisms of you constitute a constructive dismissal – a termination without anyone saying the words. Almost always, I will tell you that there is no case for constructive dismissal and, again, you need to wind back.

Admittedly, this is very easy advice for me to give as I don’t walk in your shoes or live in your world. Nothing I can say can change the basic fundamentals of who you are but perhaps, just perhaps, you could learn to care just a little less. You will be happier. People who live with you will be happier and you might just keep yourself off management’s hit list.

As published in The Hamilton Spectator, February 8, 2010.

Ed Canning practices labour and employment law with Ross & McBride LLP, in Hamilton, representing both employers and employees. You can email him at ecanning@rossmcbride.com.