I'd say the worst advice in the article was doing the other person's job for them and praying that will be rewarded, it won't. If anything, your manager will do nothing at all because the work is getting done. S/he needs to feel the pain before they take action. Kinda like the double-edged sword of being irreplaceable. If you're really irreplaceable you may not be fired, but you'll never be able to take a vacation and you'll never be promoted. Much depends on your industry or workplace but it's true that actual performance matters little. Hell, we elected Dubya cuz folks want to have a beer with him. Well, that's how it works in the workplace as well. It's about who, not what you know.

As for younger workers, as one, I'll tell you that I saw the previous go-getter Baby Boomer generation work themselves to death. Long days, weekends, whatever it took, give 110% and all that nonsense. Know what it got them? Divorced or in strained marriages, kids who barely know them, stressed out, physically ill because of work. And now they're all getting screwed out of their pensions and savings thanks to the lack of regulation in the finance industry. No thank you. I'll work, I'll do my job - to a point. But I will have work/life balance and I'm not going to wait until I'm in my sixties to enjoy life and take some time off once in a while.

Ideally good workers would be able to easily find new employment at better companies, and the companies with bad management would perish because they would be left with only slackers and incompetents. But the American employer-based health insurance system provides a strong incentive for workers, especially middle aged and older workers, to put up with a lot of malarkey rather than change jobs. If a person has a pre-existing condition, he or she might not be able to get health insurance coverage at a new job, or there might be a costly waiting period before certain services are covered.

Might take a look at the other side of the coin - over worked and under paid. Why SHOULD I bust my butt for the company? What's in it for me? Self esteem from a job well done? It sure ain't reflected in my paycheck.

And Kroger don't accept "self esteem" to pay for the groceries.

I think the article is a bit slanted, always ragging on employees, rather than managerial positions, even CEO's. Sure, there are workers everywhere who slack off alot, don't always pull their weight, underperforming, whatever. But I am willing to stake my retirement on this fact, the % of managerial types doing that, compared to entry level workers doing that, is probably 200% or higher. I should know, I spent an entire life, in the military, private sector and civilian working for the DoD. I've seen the same crap management everywhere I've worked. And if there's 1 surefire way to ensure you have lots of underperforming, uninspired, "going through the motions" workers, it is to have bosses that are crap. Most bosses don't even know how to do their job, lol, let alone be effective managers of anything. And how in the hell can they honestly say they know what they are doing, and what's best for the workers, if they've never done the job?? It's pure insanity.

Most of my management preferred to stay in their plush air conditioned offices, while the workers were out in the heat. The only time you'd see them, if the team was underperforming and they'd come out to crack the whip, lol. Threaten the overworked workforce with more work. Brilliant idea, while we're already doing managements 24 layers of managerial jobs for them, why don't they just sign us over their paychecks as well??

The strategies in this post are a bit puzzling to me. If a co-worker wasn't pulling their weight, I'd speak to them face to face because if I had time to find them on gchat, blackberry and e-mail, I'd be just as guilty as they were of not doing their job. I never use e-mail for a problem like this because e-mail can be misconstrued... or worse, ignored.

When I worked in an office environment and this happened, I would go to the person and ask nicely what the hold up was... explain my own timelines and, once we'd talked about it, I would reinforce the message with a confirmation mail. If the work didn't come in on time, I just got their supervisor involved. After a few times, I noticed that although everyone else was complaining about the couple of people who acted that way, I didn't ever have that problem from them.

The problem is often that there's a lack of follow through on issues like this. Person A complains to co-workers but seldom to the supervisors involved and it's their job to deal with a problem like this one...