I just received maybe the best spam email ever. The subject line said “***SPAM*** Please respond.”
I didn’t bite.
My ISP doesn’t actually flag stuff as spam in the subject line, it just puts it into the junk folder which is where I found this email. Maybe this is a spammer who admits what they are and just wants to be honest about it.
I still receive some Nigerian scam emails and I know that some people still fall for them unfortunately. I also recently received a spam email that appears to suggest that the person sending the email is a troop serving in Iraq which is interesting considering that it was sent by an email address in China.
It goes to show you that some people are unethical. Lazy, too.
During your career, you’ll run into unethical and lazy people that you’ll have to deal with. Recruiters, HR staff, managers, subordinates, colleagues, company owners. Maybe the entire company.
My first experience dealing with lazy people (when it became really noticeable anyways) was in university during several group projects where I was working alongside 4-5 other people. Typically, I found that 2-3 people in the group were motivated and 1-2 other people in the group were less motivated but were good people otherwise. Finally, there was the inevitable lazy SOB who just didn’t care and whose goal was to do as little work as possible but still get credit.
At this point, I figured lazy people would have been weeded out and that they wouldn’t bother paying money out of their own pocket to attend school if they didn’t really want to be there.
Clearly I was wrong. Once I got to university, I experienced a different kind of lazy people, that’s all.
At work, you’ll inevitably face it from time to time, too. The question is, how to deal with it?
The best way to remain employed is to show value. Make it obvious how you add revenue to the company, save the company money or ideally do both.
Similarly, subtly make it obvious to others in your company about the things you’ve done and the things you’ve accomplished. Sooner or later the lazy one will get noticed by others and not for the right reasons. As soon as people you work with know the things you’ve accomplished, you’ll get noticed for the right reasons.
