Everyone has had a nightmare about being late to a job, sleeping through an important meeting, or arriving late to a final exam for a class. It’s one of those nightmares you’ll have repeatedly throughout your life. In the dream, you burst in flustered, everyone in the lecture hall turning to face you as you begin to realize that you studied for the wrong subject. Then you wake up in a cold sweat, and as you wipe your hand across your weary face, you begin to remember that it’s 2026 and you haven’t been in school for 15+ years.
The workplace environment is great for creating these types of situations, especially in jobs like retail and food service, where schedules change, and managers forget to inform staff, still holding them at fault for not keeping up with changes that they didn’t know had happened. Amplified by the fact that job performance is essentially evaluated based on your ability to show up on time.
The uncertainty created by the mismanagement in these roles multiples the stress and feeling of insecurity of coming off unemployment and looking for a job, any job, in a hard job market. While these misunderstandings often stem from poor communication and unclear expectations, they can escalate quickly into stressful conflicts, pushed to a head by the high emotions of workplaces that are chronically understaffed.
Author: Kayitsi.com
