Complainers Wear Me Out

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people constantly complain about how management or some authoritative body (i.e. government official, church leader, etc.) is doing them wrong. These people, you likely know a few, usually complain about things such as management doesn’t support me, they don’t listen to my ideas, I am just a number to them, etc. And guess what, they are probably 100% correct.

But here is where the complainer goes wrong and actually becomes a bigger problem than the bad manager, in my opinion.You see, instead of sitting around complaining about how bad things are, thus spreading their cancerous like attitudes to others; these people would be much better served actually making something better. If your manager doesn’t support 5S, for example, do it anyhow. What are they going to do… yell at you for cleaning and organizing things? Not likely. And I seriously doubt anyone will be fired for increasing throughput or reducing defects.

This positive approach may not make a crappy manager any less crappier (is this even a word), but it will almost certainly make the employee happier since at the end of the day he or she will go home feeling like they have made something better – even in spite of bad management. And best of all, once this positive attitude becomes contagious – and it will if we persist – great things will happen.

Anyhow, this is my take on it.

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