You will never be promoted at work

Dear Employee,

Re: your promotion at work

Let me be clear from the onset of this letter; you will never be promoted at our organization in your current role or to another role elsewhere.

The reasons why are plentiful.

Reasons why you won't be promoted at work

First, let me start with your attitude. In a nutshell, it's crude. You complain a lot about your peers, your workload, your parking spot and your desk location. You sit beside Jimmy who owns a cat. How can you hate someone with a cat? You’ve even complained about changes to the toilet paper in the bathrooms. Might I suggest you start bringing your own? (Please don’t share) You openly criticize organizational direction, not in a constructive manner but in a malicious and condescending way. In the kitchen I once overheard you say “I’ll likely see a new microwave here before my promotion.”

Second, your work ethic is impoverished if not stunted. Arriving at 10:00am, taking 90 minutes for lunch and leaving the office at 3pm seems rather selfish and foolish. Writing emails is a part of the job so stating they are a “time-waster” is nonsensical. Your colleagues complain about your missed deadlines and a lackadaisical attitude whilst in meetings. Your ambivalence and lack of drive is causing others to stress out by virtue of the fact they are carrying your load on top of theirs. This, I must state, is inexcusable. Even tennis players carry their own bags onto the tennis court.

Third, although you seem to be disengaged, you also refuse to participate in our efforts as an organization to become more collaborative. Your online employee profile contains a picture of Bart Simpson (versus your own) and it is the only item you’ve managed to edit. In any of our collaborative technologies — backed by our open leadership framework — you refuse to participate. Could it hurt to mark ‘like’ — even once — on a post or comment anywhere? Even the octogenarian Marnie has over 1000 micro-blog posts not to mention over 30 self-made videos.

And lastly, insubordination is not only a fancy word, it’s a hallmark of hierarchy. We are urging the organization to share, to openly communicate and to work together to achieve our collective goal of beating the enemy; our competitors … not each other. By going around our teammates, hiding information and purposely setting up roadblocks so others may stumble, you become locked into a path of mediocrity and — quite frankly — will remain magnetized to the metal chair you currently occupy.

You will never land a promotion at work.

For the record, I placed an order at Costco and a new microwave arrives on Friday.

Sincerely,

Dad