I’ve always valued hard work and usually resented lazy workers.
There. I said it. I have a bias against laziness.
I started working when I was 12 years old in a grocery store. I worked hard, gained the recognition of my managers and was rewarded with all the hours I wanted to work. The store was a revolving door of workers, it seemed. I worked with some much older than me who didn’t last long because they really didn’t want to work. They wanted to sneak into the break room and have a coke or take an extraordinary amount of time taking the trash out each night.
Please understand, I’m not talking about people who protect their family time (I do that) or people who work smart so they can enjoy life (I try to do that too). I’m also not talking about people who honestly want to work, but can’t for legitimate health reasons.
I’m talking about people who are lazy. People who don’t want to work. They often have a job, but give far less than their best to it. They want a paycheck, they want to eat well, but they don’t really want to earn their pay.
(I told you I’ve usually resented people like this. Can you tell?!)
Something even more frustrating—if you are in a equal position to a lazy person, and you are not their leader and no one seems to do anything about it. You feel taken advantage of because of your hard work.
Not long ago I was stopped at a conference and asked if I saw laziness as a problem on church staffs. The questioner is in a large church where most of the staff work extremely hard, but a few barely get their work done. They are, in his opinion, lazy—and seem to get by with it. He wanted to know if this was unusual.
Of course, I assured this frustrated person, lazy people exist in every field. Wherever you find people, you’ll encounter problems with people. Churches are places where people work, so some of the same problems that exist outside the church exist inside the church.
His real question, however, was, “What should he do?” I shared a few thoughts and told him to read for a post to follow.
Here are seven ways to treat lazy people:
Make sure it’s not a perception problem.
Make sure you aren’t confusing a different work style with laziness. Make sure you aren’t lumping your overachiever mindset on them. People approach work differently. This is not always laziness. It could be they’ve found a way to work smarter and more efficiently. Look at the person’s performance based on results, not based on style.
