Overheard at work and pissing me off: "Oh, this team of people is refusing to do *thing that has been determined they will be doing as part of their daily duties* because they feel like the decision to do it has been imposed on them."
Like... Yes? Yes, in fact, that's the trade you make by having a job. You accept that someone else can tell you want the job entails, and in return you get X amount of money. If you are unhappy with that, you have options: you can look for another job, you can quit and live on savings, you can protest (if you're part of a union, I guess - and, frankly, this is not a big thing, so good luck protesting).
But saying "I want to get paid while not accomplishing tasks that have been determined I should do because I didn't decide to do it" is just... lady. you are missing the point so hard. If you want to stay home and have money, work to be FI. Until then, you are selling your time, and you do your job. WTF.
That's a slippery slope though, and there are probably times when a protest is warranted (not making a judgment here).
Signed,
A senior female engineer who finally said "fuck you, do your own damn Fed ex".
Yeah, I can sympathize.
3 years ago I was the production manager for a magazine. I also helped a tiny bit with circulation, and I did some editing/proofreading. I also did occasional IT/help desk type stuff.
In the last three years I have been asked to add the following tasks:
All of the bookkeeping, invoicing, processing checks, paying bills etc.
Payroll & HR including dealing with health insurance
Administrative paperwork of various kinds (everything from Department of Labor audit to Worker's Comp insurance etc.)
Basically everything that involves the USPS (which is a lot, when you publish magazines)
Handling all magazine subscription renewal letters
Being the office manager (all the way down to making sure there are cups and forks available)
Assisting the sales team with all paperwork/spreadsheets they don't feel like doing
Taking over the 10-hour-a-week consultant's job doing our website
Taking over the 4x-a-week MailChimp e-mails
Writing a monthly magazine column
At some point I started refusing. At some point you can't just keep saying "Yes, boss!" You're supposed to have a job description - you have an agreement that you will take X money to do do Y job. Is it really OK to hire someone to be a print production manager and then tell them to do accounting and insurance instead?