How to stop being a bad employee?
I have a question for you guys. So I've been pretty lucky to have had numerous relevant work experiences throughout my time at college so far. I love all the work I do but there is one overarching problem that I seem to continuously have throughout all my internships/jobs: I'm a pretty shit employee. I'm late often, and not the most committed due to being committed to other things such as other jobs/Interviews/school/etc. Although I'm competent with the work, I feel like a liability at times due to my seeming lack of discipline. I've honestly only gotten by due to none of my experiences asking for references, as I'm not sure anyone will have much nice to say about me.
I'm not using these as excuses but rather descriptions and at the end of the day it's on me to fix everything wrong with me. But I'm here to see what some of all of you have done to "whip yourself in shape". I got an offer for next summer with possible return and I really don't want to screw this up again. Everytime I try to fix something I feel like I find a new problem.
Your options:
Do something you want to do and the interest will come naturally (or work towards something you want to achieve)
Work for yourself and the responsibility will force you to be engaged
Discipline yourself into doing things you don't want to do for a majority of your time like most people
The choice is yours
This is luckily a lot easier than I thought it would be.
I came into this thread thinking you were a bad employee like I'm a bad employee - I sometimes have problems with authority, can get distracted if I don't care about what I'm working on, have no time for corporate bullshit, tend to disengage if I can't have a tangible impact on the outcome, etc. - but the things you mentioned are easy.
Show up 15 minutes early to everything you do. If you have to be at work at 9, you're not on time if you get there at 9. You're late if you get there at 8:46. There is nothing more annoying than someone who is consistently late to things. Everyone is late from time to time, but someone who is always late is just disrespectful to those around them. When you're always late, you're saying "fuck you, I don't care about your time" to everyone you're late for. Stop it. Just leave earlier.
The commitment thing is harder, but as @Malta Monkey" said and I mentioned above, do something you are interested in and the commitment will come naturally. Or, if nothing else, realize that if you get fired you're going to homeless or living at home with your parents and use that as a bit of motivation. Being an adult sometimes means doing shit you don't want to do. I sure as hell didn't get that in college either, but it's very much the truth.
Ironically that also used to be a huge problem with me: not being motivated if the work didn't have a tangible impact. I got the discipline for that over time, but I always felt like I put too much on my plate at a time and that made me crack a lot when it came to being disciplined outside the work itself. Thank you for the advice.
Non qui non rerum modi. Quia quo sunt ex qui perferendis cupiditate architecto. Ea facilis enim ullam ea aut.
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