Is there negativity in every company?

[Pentoman]

I'm fairly young (28) and have only worked in 3 proper places for any length of time.
First was a council which was pretty good. Bit of moaning but nice atmosphere - however was only there for a few months. Then a private sector IT place which was great but had some major negative behaviours and there was a lot of moaning from absolutely everybody, although in reality since leaving I think they didn't have it too bad,
Now back in the public sector again and do find it frustrating; perks are great although pay only average. However quite a lot of moaning and negativity there which really brings you down. Clever and nice people, but not working well together and preferring to moan about things instead. Many have been there so long you are worried about becoming one of them. So I'm considering leaving and have seen better offers but the careful part of me is saying that wherever I go to, no matter how good its website looks, it will be broadly the same as my past 2 experiences. Thoughts? Has anyone moved from a moaning workplace to a happy one like one of those cheesy recruitment adverts, or how you are meant to imagine Google is to like work for? Also-Anyone worked for VISA europe!??

[The Ben]

My store is really moany... I dont know whether it is the company I work for or just our manager inability to kerb it or both... but its a sales environment and it affects me... time to move on I think.... too much negativity!

[grumbledoak]

A happy workplace is a rare thing. Why do you think they pay you?

[scirocco265]

Normally, happy content workers here.

This year, doom and gloom. Everyone is leaving, no-one can earn any money, 2010 is a rough year for us all.

[GSP]

I have only had one 'proper job' so to speak and it started off great. Everyone got on, everyone was nice. Then the reccession hit and it turned into a bh fest.

Every part time place before that was a brilliant atmosphere.

I'm hoping my new one is equally good, as the atmosphere I work in currently is terrible.

[Bullett]

Public sector is worse than private certainly.

Most of the companies I have worked for have been good places to work, happy bright people doing jobs they are good at and working in a team. Yes everyone has a moan from time to time but good places deal with it. My current place was a start-up then nearly 4 years ago we were taken over by a big corporate entity. Before the takeover everyone would help everyone else out, work the hours required answer call out of hours and you often sent out a last minute email on a SAt evening and had a solution and replies before Monday morning. Our unit still works well but it's getting more and more corporate and horrible. Many more restrictions and regulations which piss people off. Time to get out.

My job is consulting into other businesses and as such I see both public and private sector. As we are chaning how people work you do get moaning but the experience is anything pub sector is harder and takes longer with more negativity than private.

[Dupont666]

have worked in 3 different departments in one bank and moved to another bank....

Company 1)
Dept 1) Fantastic to start with as we were all grads and we were the technological equivilent of god as 10 of us under the guidance of good manager were tasked with getting the banks infrastructure off OS/2 and onto JAVA systems and none of the current staff could do it (COBOL,C,C++, very little JAVA)

so we had fun for 3-4 years and the managers came and went and then we got dumped with a real st of a manager who brought his own team in, they all got promoted before us even though they were crap at their jobs and we had to carry them... in the final 2 years all 10 of us got a transfer or quit (this was Dec 2005) last heard he got the chop shortly afterwards as he was given the number 1 team in the tech we used and destroyed it in a year.

Dept 2) was here for 10 months and it was you work hard, take the piss out of each other (8 man team) and socialised as a team, we ran support for 500+ applications and worked very hard and had fun, but something wasnt right about it and I left in the restructure.

Dept 3) was here for just over 2 years and it was a great team of work hard and have a good core group of people (10 in the team) then the rot happened and another Proj manager came in with his mates and slowly removed the old team one by one until I was the last and I left. However the team itself still keep in touch and we meet regulaly for drinks even though we dont work in the same company anymore.

Company 2) So this is what company heaven is like??? Its so laid back its unbelievable, there is only the pressure of the deadlines and they are easy to keep to as the team of us in London will all bend over backwards to help each other... compared to my last company this is like night and day and so much better!! I never want to leave, however that day will soon come as we are all contractors and not sure if they can justify the exspense even tho our product made over £40million last year at a cost to the company of £1.8 million...

So not always negativity but then I have only experienced private sector.

[ewenm]

IME people will always moan about where they work. In most places this is just getting minor frustrations off their chest but in some cases it can be very irritating. If they dislike it that much why not quit and get another job? If they aren't prepared to do that then quit the incessant moaning!

Expecting anywhere to be positive the whole time is unrealistic - after all, if today is better than yesterday (positivity) then any comments about yesterday must surely be negative.

[spikeyhead]

There's a huge difference between people having the occaisonal moan and a genuine feeling of negativity about the place.

The feeling is one that can only be improved from the very top but can be made much worse on the way down but fkwittery from intermediate managers.

Fortunately, a lot of the places I'm worked in have had very little negativity, though it would be rare for negativity to be coming from the top when it's bringing in contractors at the same time.

[Dupont666]

spikeyhead said:

There's a huge difference between people having the occaisonal moan and a genuine feeling of negativity about the place.

The feeling is one that can only be improved from the very top but can be made much worse on the way down but fkwittery from intermediate managers.

Fortunately, a lot of the places I'm worked in have had very little negativity, though it would be rare for negativity to be coming from the top when it's bringing in contractors at the same time.

Contractors are one of the main reasons of negativity in a company the perms seem to take a dislike to them and their reasons for being there and mostly down to the wages they get.

Would say the next up is crap managers and the cliche clubs that sometimes form, plus not forgetting back stabbing and talking behind peoples back if you are working with lots of women.

[AJS-]

Everyone has a moan sometimes, and some people moan all the time. I think every office has it's moaner, sometimes moaners. In general I find that when companies are making money the atmosphere is good.

[jdbecks]

The Army was great, a few gripes and moaning but no where else have I been that had the same comradeship, loyaltaly and integrity for each other..the people I served with were real friends that would help with anything without expecting it back.

working offshore, had some good friends but everything was about how much money people made, alot of moaning but generaly some good mates.

currently, back stabbing, sloppy shoulders, moaning..apart from that the enviroment is good..im just fed up with working with some right lazy fkers!

[Ozmira]

AJS- said:

Everyone has a moan sometimes, and some people moan all the time. I think every office has it's moaner, sometimes moaners. In general I find that when companies are making money the atmosphere is good.

ive worked in the hospitality indusrty now for over 10 years, people moan when its to busy and when its to quiet. i thinks its just a way of life. if its to much just leave and find some where else to work. the old saying of 'the grass is always greener' isnt always true though.

[mph1977]

the person who mentioned 'churn' in the staff has hit the nail on the head, i'd also add inexperienced / unusually 'young in service' managers as a sign of discontent.

[Stevenj214]

I'm a bit of a moaner when I think things aren't being done properly/efficiently. I'll try to approach things in a positive/constructive way first, but if that isn't taken on board I'll happily have a moan to selected people who may have more influence or add weight to my view.

[davepoth]

I've only properly worked in one place. When I started working there the newest senior manager had been there for ten years. I've been there five years, and now the longest serving senior manager started on the same day I did. Senior management churn is over 20%, which is worryingly high, and what is of more concern is that roughly 75% of the people who have started work in the office there have left within 18 months.

[Zad]

The worst places for negativity seems to be government and local government. Almost without exception they seem to think they are hard done by and underpaid relative to the "real world". Whereas the people who really are underpaid and are struggling, are the ones who try to make the best of things.

[RV8]

I have the queen of work moaners for you. I occasionally work at a primary school, where a few full time teachers moan, however there is one teacher who will seek out anyone and berate them endlessly if she finds the opportunity. TBH I don't even think she's after sympathy, she just enjoys telling anyone (who noticeably works harder than her) how hard her job or life is. Regardless it's one of the best schools in the area, it's not an inner city school full of stabby kids, she works about 3 full days a week and her class contains thirteen well behaved kids around 7 yrs old. She even moans about her public sector pension (ffs) to the minimum wage school cleaners (who'll have a state pension to look forward to) and about the perils of having no money / being under paid, yet ironically can afford to employ a cleaner for her own home.

I've worked all over the place in all sorts of jobs and to varying degrees I have noticed colleagues moan about work or their managers, it seems to be a common occurrence, however I have never met anyone who moans as much as this teacher.
An old mate of mine was farm laborer who started at 5am and worked 14hrs a day because he had two jobs, he did this 6 days a week and one morning on a Sunday for little more than minimum wage, he never had any money and was always skint but he never moaned about work or life.
It's funny to hear silly people moan about their perceived hardships - "Work is stressful, I've got 14 papers to mark and I've only got five weeks to do it and I've had to work till 5pm 'tonight'...5PM!!!" - I'd love to tell these people to get some fking perspective. How do they think a soldier in Afgan copes with the stress of possibly being blown up by IED's or sniped (from anywhere) at work, every day.

Edited by RV8 on Thursday 15th July 02:59

[RV8]

Brilliant. No one has added anything during 'office hours' yet, perhaps, lest their boss finds out what they genuinely think of company moral or management. There's me thinking most people on PH were the directors of at least 2 companies and would not have to be concerned with a boss reading over their shoulder or checking their internet history.

[Rob13]

Police is generally full of moans and groans. Other private sector work I've done also had their fair share of gripes. I tend to find places full of women dont seem to moan as much about work as theyre too busy talking about other things! Blokes love moaning about work