How to deal with type of coworker - Office Martyr

[soskiomo]

Is anyone familiar with this type of employee? They are called the Office Martyr. I am essentially working for one, and it drives me nuts. It is hard to work for someone like this. If you don't know what I mean by office martyr here is the definition taken from various sources:

- We’ve all known her(or him). She’s the last one in the office at night (every night). She’s the one emailing us all her epiphanies at 3am. She’s the one who won’t stop mentioning that she has no life outside of work (as if it’s a badge of honor). Yes, the office Martyr is easy to spot.

- If I Don’t Complain No One Will Know How Much I’m Doing! (constantly complains about work load day in and day out, yet never wants to give up her work or delegate to subordinates)

- But if you find yourself seething, convinced that no one works as hard as you do, or you’re sure everything would fall apart if you ever called in sick – then it’s time for a reality check. Truth is, other people ARE working just as hard as you are, and the world will not stop spinning if you take a step back occasionally to re-energize.

I find it really hard to work with someone like this, because I feel like I get a lot done in 8 or 9 hours working efficiently...as opposed to 14 hours of trying to get everything done really fast with no pacing, leaving room for major errors. This person NEVEr walks out the door before 8pm, and makes you feel weird/guilty if you have to leave at 6pm.

[soskiomo]

Office Martyr

The person in the office who perceives their work ethic and productivity to be vastly greater than the other workers. This person often adopts the attitude that doing the work alone is better than cleaning up the mess made by others. This person may be prone to neurotic diplays in temperment. The neurotic office martyr is the worst personality for any type of management position as they will suffer from extreme stress and live in fear of being undermined or undervalued.

Betty: How am I supposed to get all of this work done when I've got people who can't even read a memo!

Alice: Have you tried working with them?

Betty: How can I work with them? I have a huge pile of papers here and no one knows how to do this but me!

Alice: Can't someone else be taught to do it?

Betty: Never mind! I don't know why I come to you. You never support me. I can't even go to the bathroom in this place, I have so much to do!!! I don't know how much longer I should be expected to put up with this!

Alice: Wow, you really are the office martyr.

[sheilaincali]

Do you work with my husband too? He works with someone exactly like you described. This guy's kids will wake him up at 4am so he will just go to work. He routinely works 70 hour weeks (including weekend days). He spends the great majority of his day complaining to others that he is "simply too busy to deal with that now" DH just shakes his head and goes about his day.

Although DH's co-worker is all about the delegation, he pawns everything that he doesn't want to do off on someone else. But then will micro-manage it anyway.

Of course hearing the stories that he has about his wife, I would work 70 hours a week to get away from her too!

[Deleted]

My office martyr is the owner of the company. *sigh....*

[pig]

It's just some peoples personality........nothing that should bother you.

[doxieluvr]

At my job the martyr is easier and nicer than the know it all backstabbing maniulaptive bitch

[skubikky]

Office martyr are like any other martyr....BORING....and epically inefficient to boot....that's why they need to be at the office 16 hours a day...

[Tiny]

I worked with an Office Martyr once. They are a pain in the @$$ if they are a project member... they 'work' tons of hours, complain, and produce nothing useful. The Office Martyr I was shackled to would hyper focus on the lowest priority things associated with the project and then go into her Martyr Act when she couldn't/wouldn't fit in the more important priority things associated with the project.

Me: , Merry Martyr, how's that code for the XYZ process coming? I need the output from the processing next week to complete my part of the project so the Testing Team can start their peice the week after that.
Merry Martyr: OH! NO! I don't have time to work on the XYZ processing! I've got to get documentation written, printed in Triplicate, and put into 3 ring binders. All three copies need to put into storage boxes and then sent to off site storage!! I'm still trying to get the correct shade of green 3 ring Binders from the vendor!
Me: Uh, the documentation isn't all that important... we really need the process coded. And why do binders that are going to storage need to be the correct shade of green??
Merry: ::rolling her eye:: Documentation is ALWAYS in puke green binders! How will we know it's documentation if it's not in Puke Green Binders!!! How can I do my job if the documentation isn't in a Puke green binder?? The code won't get done until the documentation is done.
Me: backing away slowly and not making eye contact.

I have no idea why someone would trade their life (by working 14 hours or more a day) on next to pointless stuff.

[Tiny]

I have a friend who I suspect was an Office Martyr. She eventually got laid off.

[tiredturkey]

There's an old saying about those who can, do and those who can't, talk about it. That's an Office Martyr-they talk about how much they are working while everyone else is actually doing the work

[formerexpat]

Maybe my company is different. The 6-8 people in my department that work extraordinary hours are the ones that are irreplaceable, or rather key people that it would be very tough to operate without. The others are just the cogs in the wheel that can easily be replaced with a snap of the finger.

Although, most of those 6-8 people don't bitch and moan about everything they do; except one...but I feel bad for her because her co workers in her department are quite lack luster and f*** things up when they are delegated to them.

[Deleted]

Jul 1, 2011 11:48:40 GMT -5 skubikky said:

Office martyr are like any other martyr....BORING....and epically inefficient to boot....that's why they need to be at the office 16 hours a day...

[Cass]

Jul 1, 2011 10:47:17 GMT -5 soskiomo said:

Office Martyr

The person in the office who perceives their work ethic and productivity to be vastly greater than the other workers. This person often adopts the attitude that doing the work alone is better than cleaning up the mess made by others. This person may be prone to neurotic diplays in temperment. The neurotic office martyr is the worst personality for any type of management position as they will suffer from extreme stress and live in fear of being undermined or undervalued.

Are you working my former job? Wow, that is my old boss. She wasn't happy if things weren't done "her way", but she was too busy to explain her way and everyone was supposed to read her mind. Eventually people stopped doing things because they were never right, and she had twice as much on her plate so she started dropping things. It was never her fault though, it was her staff. She started throwing people under the bus to save her own butt, and is up to over a dozen firings/ quits in about two years (she only has a staff of about 20).

[Deleted]

Can't change her... change you... stop feeling guilty... you do your job... when she talks just, uh huh, wow, that's tough... and move on...

[jitterbug]

My sister is a teacher, but she's the school martyr, I'm sure. She goes to work at 7 (school starts at 8 or after) and makes sure you know that she's ALWAYS the last one to leave at 6. And goes in every Sunday to get a start on the week. She will complain that she's the only one who ever takes on projects...yet after dealing with her with my mom's recent illness, I realize that she's always the one because she won't LET anyone help with anything so I'm sure they are like me and have just given up volunteering. I live 2 hours away, so can't handle every little thing with my mom - but when I volunteer to handle the things that I can do from long distance, she NEVER lets me. Yet she lets me know in every conversation how hectic her life is.

I have finally realized that this is not MY problem.

[trimatty471]

Oh yeah. My boss and boss's boss is the Office Martyr.
It is hard to work for one because they have a tendency to clean up everyone else's messes and then try to the load on their employees. So we wear many hats.

[trimatty471]

Jul 1, 2011 10:48:25 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

Do you work with my husband too? He works with someone exactly like you described. This guy's kids will wake him up at 4am so he will just go to work. He routinely works 70 hour weeks (including weekend days). He spends the great majority of his day complaining to others that he is "simply too busy to deal with that now" DH just shakes his head and goes about his day.

Although DH's co-worker is all about the delegation, he pawns everything that he doesn't want to do off on someone else. But then will micro-manage it anyway.

Of course hearing the stories that he has about his wife, I would work 70 hours a week to get away from her too!

Your husband must work with my boss!

[robbase]

I don't see an issue

sounds like a hard and dedicated worker- the world could use more of them instead of the standard riff-raff; also sounds like you are jealous

why are you so worried what others are doing? Conscious bothering you?

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

The only office type harder to work with is someone who acts like an old lady. I work with a few of these types.

[Deleted]

SF, the only thing worse is working with an actual old lady - highly resistant to change/learning new things, needs constant hand-holding, yet complains that she's always out of the loop. Gee, I wonder why!

*this is not meant to refer to the old ladies on here that work and do a good job.

[daylight]

Stop thinking about the office martyr. Yes, they exist, and yes, they are annoying. But there are also many subtypes, and many of them actually get the most work done. The bottom line is that you should feel good about your tasks, your work and your work environment. Of course, since it's your boss, you can completely ignore her/him, but you will not be in a position to offer her advice about her working methods.

Also, many people are just very insecure still, however old they are, and choose to micromanage in order to prove a point to themselves. This is their problem. Sooner or later people will quit working for them, or they will stop some of the micromanaging. In the end, I just feel sorry for them, since I have a private life to go home to, and they obviously don't. Change your mindset and you'll be much happier.

[thyme4change]

What doesn't work when she pulls the victim card with me, is I am in the same line of work, and call her bluff.

I had a guy at work (a peer) tell me that "he can't be expected to spend the time doing" blah, blah, blah. The moron picked the most stupid thing to rant about. It takes literally 2 minutes and needs to be done once per month. He made the tradgic combination of errors of picking th wrong task and complaining to the wrong person. Had he told his grief to anyone else, they would have believed him because I was the only other person who knew how easy it was. If he had picked any number of other tasks to complain about to me, I most likely would not have known how hard the task was. But, he picked something I had done hundreds of times and it is the easiest thing on my to-do list. It was the most gratifying call-out ever. He didn't piss or moan at me about anything for several months.

[midjd]

We don't have an office martyr, we have a martyr department. Their jobs are 100x harder and 100x more stressful and 100x more underpaid than any other jobs in our office...

The funny part was that was pretty much verbatim from my boss. They're not fooling anybody!

[thyme4change]

Their jobs are 100x harder and 100x more stressful and 100x more underpaid than any other jobs in our office...

LOL - do you work here? Also, that department is the center of the company, and no one can so much as breathe without first consulting them. And, everyone is out to get them because we didn't set the system up exactly as they "need" it.

[Ava]

Half my coworkers are the martyr type.
It's funny to watch women in their 50s and 60s behaving as if the whole company depended on them being there. We are not talking brain surgery; it's making coffee, restocking silverware, and running a register.
"I'm the only one who works", "Where are all the others, taking a break?", and "This is just too much, I can't take it anymore" are their mottos.
They even seem to believe that anyone who calls out sick or has an emergency of any kind just did it as a way to annoy them and make their difficult job even more onerous.

[michelyn8]

I have aspects of the office martyr personality. I could never be a manager because I know would have a tendency to micro-manage. That comes from my experiences with handing off work in the past. I tell the person how to do it, give them written instructions with screen shots and they would still come to everytime they needed to do the task. I could do it faster than it took to help them so I usually ended up taking the task back.

I ran into a similar situation with a former co-worker on how to do an expense report. I sent her the instructions, how to set up the charge code she need, etc. Then when it came time to invoice her expenses (I do my former divisions invoicing), I saw she put down the wrong charge code. I e-mailed her a reminder of which one to use and made changes on my end. During a conversation about it, she said the code she used was the one I told her. I mentioned I had written the code on the directions and she tells me "oh, I didn't look at those." I am constantly finding/fixing mistakes made by those who took over some part of my old job. And they're made because someone didn't bother to read the instructions left for them or assume I will just fix it for them. Most of them I just let go. Its not my responsibility to make sure they're right. I only fix them or speak up about them when they directly affect my job.

One main thing that makes me different though is that I will not work more than 40 hours a week unless I absolutely have to to finish something. I'm of the opinion that if I can't complete the tasks I'm responsible for in a 40 hour week its from one of two causes. 1) I have to much assigned to me and something needs to go elsewhere; or 2) I'm not working as efficiently as I could (ie: goofing off on NMSNB) and someone needs to address that with me.

[Waffle]

I work for a guy who used to be the office martyr type. I am at a crazy made up level called "key supervisor" Boss complained everyone at my level and above should be working more hours - he even complained about the COO not putting in enough hours. I told him I looked at it differently. If there was somethat that absolutely had to be done I would stay late or come in on a weekend, but generally I felt if I had to come in on a weekend that meant I had failed. He said "Oh, I guess I've failed every week since I've been here.". I wanted to say yes you have. ;D, but I just said no, because you don't see it that way.

[dcmetrocrab]

The only person remotely similar to this I've come across, was a guy who eventually had to take a personal leave of absence to get his health back in shape. I've known mostly workaholics or micro managers. Both got a lot of stuff done at the detriment of their personal life and mental health, the latter of course also affecting their micro managees.

Those commenting about adhering to a 40 hour week equating to a sign of efficiency, please don't work at a tech startup. I've worked at several, and that never flies. Our CEO recently had an all hands making it very clear that he expects everyone to work within the 45-50/week range, and anything below would be of "great concern". We are all salaried. I wish I had my SO's problem where they have a mandate to not work over 37 hours a week.