Slitting one's own throat

False consciousness:  In Marxist theory, a failure to recognize the instruments of one's oppression or exploitation as one's own creation, as when members of an oppressed class unwittingly adopt views of the oppressor class. (definition from http://www.answers.com/)

It's also known as an inability to see the world the way it really is, i.e., being more than a tad out of touch with reality.

On a macro scale, we're seeing it demonstrated everyday by people who oppose things that would directly benefit them, like a single-payer healthcare system in this country.  On a micro scale, I'm seeing it evidenced daily at work by co-workers who just don't get that behavior that they view as demonstrating their commitment to the job or their loyalty to the agency is actually an active exercise in slitting their own throats.

Over the years I've worked with a number of people who would take work home to do outside their normal duty hours.  When you're getting paid by the hour, that's always struck me as a truly dumb thing to do because you're giving away about the only thing you've got to sell, your time.  There are a bunch of other issues involved, too, including things like the people who do this tend to build up a nice stock of resentment ("Here I am working my butt off on my own time and no one is recognizing me for it!"), but two things strike me every time, both from a management perspective:

1.  If people routinely put in unpaid overtime because the workload has exceeded the capacity of the staff to deal with it, the only way management has of knowing that is when deadlines start getting missed, production quotas aren't met, or something else goes wrong.  If staff keep scrambling and managing to keep up, there is no incentive to management to make any changes (reduce the workload, hire more staff, look for other efficiencies like upgrading equipment).  Problems only get recognized when someone shines a light on them -- and working unpaid overtime is doing the opposite.  It's covering stuff up.  It is a heck of a lot easier to fix a problem if it's pointed out when it's first starting instead of waiting until the proverbial last straw and experiencing a total melt-down.

2.  If a single worker makes a point of putting in hours outside his or her tour of duty, as a manager I'm not going to respond with, "Way to go, what a team player."  I'm more likely to wonder "Why?"  You know, if there are 6 people all doing similar work and 5 of those people get it done in their usual 8 hour shifts but one has to bring work* home to meet deadlines, what does that say about Number 6?  Easy answer:  he or she is incompetent.  Telling me you've worked on Saturdays or while supposedly on annual leave doesn't tell me you're a team player; it tells me you're not nearly as good as your co-workers who have the same workload but manage to get it done within the standard 40-hour week.  You may see your "sacrifice" as a reason to give you an "exceptional" on the performance review; from a managerial perspective it's more likely to yield a "less than successful" and trigger an improvement plan. 

Update: The S.O. helpfully pointed out a third management perspective, one I'm quite familiar with but chose not to mention on this go-round:  management knows perfectly well that there's more work needing to be done than can be accomplished in the time allotted, but isn't going to do a damn thing about it as long as people are stupid enough to be willing to work for free.   
*I am, of course, talking about ordinary work, the regularly scheduled duties that don't vary a whole lot from day to day, week to week, or month to month. 

My co-workers are idiots

And that's putting it kindly.  In the past year the workload has increased approximately 25% -- the journal went from averaging 40 articles per issue to averaging 50 -- without a commensurate increase in staff.  If anything, staff has gone in the other direction, from 6 fulltime copy editors to 5.5 (5 permanent fulltime regular employees and one half time contractor).  So how have my co-workers responded to this work load?

By doing the absolute, dumbest thing any worker who gets paid an hourly wage can do:  taking work home to complete it in the evening or on the weekends.  They are, in short, donating their own time.  Unbelievable. If you only have one thing to sell, you don't give it away.  A colleague mentioned at our most recent editors' meeting that she has been routinely spending her lieu day (she's on a 5/4 schedule) working from home.  Another logs in to the system in the evening to work on his own time.  When I asked how on earth management would ever realize we had a problem if they kept hiding it, I got blank looks.  They won't even ask for credit hours or comp time because, and I quote, "[the managing editor] doesn't like people asking for credit hours."

People are becoming increasingly stressed out and it shows.  A colleague has a cold she cannot shake and is becoming more and more accident prone, one has become so hypercritical when she does 2nd and 4th edits that she's driving the rest of us crazy, and another fellow who used to be notable for his jokes and truly horrible puns now looks distracted all the time and has begun snapping at people (and shouting obscenities at his computer; he's next door to me so I can hear the frustrated "what the fucks?!" pretty clearly) . . .

You know, I don't get it.  I can understand this type of behavior in work environments where people are terrified of losing their jobs, like out in the private sector, but we're federal employees!  Job insecurity is not one of our fears, especially if everyone on the editorial staff stuck together. (It's easy to berate one person for failure to meet deadlines, but when the entire staff is late?)  But, as usual, there are a couple people who are still naive enough to believe that someone will notice their self-sacrifice and reward them for it.  Given that they're already at the maximum promotion potential for their current job and have absolutely no desire to go elsewhere in the agency (a couple have had chances to do so), just what do they think that reward will be?

And how am I coping, you may ask?  By looking at the calendar, thinking about the retirement bunker in the U.P., and telling myself I'm now so short I can walk under doors.  I hope the arbutus are still blooming when I get to the farm in May. . .