Tips on playing 'the game' at work

The only "game" is doing your job well, this is so rare in this country that if you do your job well you will stand out.
 
Oxy said:
Sod emails, emails are for the shy and people covering their arse. I am a man I talk direct or ring if they are off site.
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+1. My boss sits right BEHIND me and sends me emails. Although I wanna quickly add she is a fair boss and I get no aggro.
 
mrbell1984 said:
There are a few people falling ill because of this pressure.
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This happened to me last year - worked between 50 to 100 hours/week, every week in a super high pressure environment (high profile company was delivering a massive programme of work to incredibly strict deadlines). I lost 2 teeth (infections) as well due to being so run down. I still haven't recovered properly.
 
ThereIs0nly0ne said:
This happened to me last year - worked between 50 to 100 hours/week, every week in a super high pressure environment (high profile company was delivering a massive programme of work to incredibly strict deadlines). I lost 2 teeth (infections) as well due to being so run down. I still haven't recovered properly.
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One of the guys where I work had an infection too in his mouth. This lead to him been on tablets for the rest of his life now. Something to do with his immune system.
 
The Halk said:
Assuming they use a bell curve then I'd give you 3 out of 5 too if you didn't bother asking why it was 3 out of 5 and what you could do to bring it up.

You should have walked out with 5 out of 5 or a full understanding of why you didn't.
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I know why he personally gave me a 3 it's his reasoning I have issues with, but they are long winded and not really relevant to the piece.
 
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mrbell1984 said:
oh I see, so what is your day to day tasks ?
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A bit hard to explain, really. It's a lot of media/data management now, but my technical skills really lie in working with film of all types, telecine (scanning film) and VT (videotape operations -- the basis for post production facilities). I prep media for jobs (whether it's film, tape or data), ensure the equipment is ready, timelines setup for colourists so they can just sit down and do their job (and schmooze the clients). Sounds lame but obviously there's a lot more to it.

scorza said:
Sounds quite easy - do you go to meetings? Do you say anything in these meetings? Do you question what your colleagues/managers say?
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Don't really go to meetings to be honest! I am still quite a junior level 'officially' and am really there to make life easy for the colourists/operations people.

Mr^B said:
So what have you done to improve your job in the last year? Why do you have to work so much overtime just to do your job? Can't you be more efficient and work just 9-5/5:30 and not have to put in so much overtime?
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TV/film is notorious for working long hours. I've seen editors leave at 3am and be back in for 9am for another client-attended session. I've even been doing nightshift and seen an editor leave at 5am. And yes he came in the next morning! The work dictates the hours, really. That last month I was working on the rushes (overnight) for a feature film. This means everything they shoot that day gets developed at the lab, then comes to us and we transfer it to videotape to send onto the editors to start cutting with. The thing with this is they could shoot 20mins of footage that day, or 5hrs of footage that day. That literally dictates our working hours, it's all about flexibility. Going home at the end of a 9hr shift is simply not an option if there's work still to be done. That's where you end up doing silly hours.

I agree with the rest of your post though :)
 
So if overtime is expected, why should it make a difference? Surely it's the same for everyone, and that your manager feels (or you feel) that you should be socialising more with people who work the same long hours as you?

Either way, I don't think overtime is a factor, I really think it's to do with what you've changed in your job in the last year. So what have you changed? What were your goals from last year? Did you meet them? Exceed them? If not, were they realistic?
 
A bit hard to explain, really. It's a lot of media/data management now, but my technical skills really lie in working with film of all types, telecine (scanning film) and VT (videotape operations -- the basis for post production facilities). I prep media for jobs (whether it's film, tape or data), ensure the equipment is ready, timelines setup for colourists so they can just sit down and do their job (and schmooze the clients). Sounds lame but obviously there's a lot more to it.
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Why not organise some follow ups with the people who are doing the schmoozing, find out how the work went down, what can be improved, what would help them with their jobs. Check if other people want to understand more about the technical side of the job, consider whether you are a service and whether you want to offer one. I find a lot of technical jobs (in one myself) are looked on as a bit foreign and weird even in the same company, think about getting out there and suggesting to your manager how things can be improved and the profile of the area (and yours) can be improved. Instead of emailing about everything, consider whether you can set up a contact system or message log so you can get back to some people in person, follow up personally and leave the CCing to others (people who cc everyone are also the ones who keep everything you say in case they have to go to an ET or something in my view and everyone is always wondering why they are effectively escalating everything).

I don't really regard this as 'playing the game' I think you have to sometimes do more than is written down on your job description to let people know you are good value and it can also be a bit less dull on the day to day front too.
 
Oxy said:
Sod emails, emails are for the shy and people covering their arse.
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An email trail is a brilliant tool. You can use it to manage work flow, keep track of the progress of work, keep others informed who need to be and can easily see how many times you've had to remind someone to do something, to comical effect too when it gets into double figures.
 
Trifid said:
An email trail is a brilliant tool. You can use it to manage work flow, keep track of the progress of work, keep others informed who need to be and can easily see how many times you've had to remind someone to do something, to comical effect too when it gets into double figures.
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It is true there is a small moment of satisfaction when someone says 'WHY WAS I NOT TOLD!!!!!!" and you send them back the email they sent you, thanking you for telling them that thing.

But mostly I think work emails are a canker..at our place people seem to prefer emails to talking to anyone in some cases.
 
atpbx said:
I know why he personally gave me a 3 it's his reasoning I have issues with, but they are long winded and not really relevant to the piece.
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Then why did you try to mislead everybody by indicating that you didn't? You gave a list of reasons why you were perfect, said you got a 3 out of 5 and then WTF. But now you seem to be saying there were reasons for it and you know what they are.

:rolleyes:
 
walk around with a piece of paper in your hand, op. worked well for my first ever boss. he was a complete arse licker to boot and utterly useless. the fact he was useless was never questioned by senior management as he was so good at licking arse and covering stuff up.

i saw him the other week in a supermarket and we had a bit of a chat. the **** hasn't changed one bit.
 
Scam said:
Lo and behold the feedback I got was not good at all. I need to make myself 'seen' more (ironic since I've been working nights), I need to be seen as more pro-active, I need to be seen as being able to handle stuff that people throw at me.
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You have a terrible boss, the kind who stores issues up to dump them on you at PDP time rather than as and when they arise. That's pretty poor mis-management and is something I never do to my staff and would never expect my boss to do to me.
 
[FnG]magnolia;22501350 said:
You have a terrible boss, the kind who stores issues up to dump them on you at PDP time rather than as and when they arise. That's pretty poor mis-management and is something I never do to my staff and would never expect my boss to do to me.
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Lots of bosses are terrible.. but it's not enough to shrug and blame it on the boss. If the boss is bad then you need to do things in a certain way so that you still get a good rating from him.

In the past, years ago, I've shot myself in the foot by righteously and indignantly doing my job properly and taking no heed of a terrible boss. You know what all that's worth? £0. :/
 
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