Before you underestimate work and office memes, it’s worth looking at a few of the cases where they ended up having real-world impacts. For example, when Jenniffer Aniston quit her job in the aptly titled “Office Space,” TGI Fridays actually modified their servers' uniforms after the scene. The same film also led to the iconic red staple becoming a real item, not just a movie prop.
One has to imagine that other work-related media has had its own impacts on the real world. For example, “World’s Best Boss” mugs have gone from a downright niche gift to a cultural artifact after appearing in “The Office.”
To those who haven’t seen the show, the cup is supremely ironic, given the character, Michal Scott’s abilities as a boss. Of course, “The Office” in general, and Michal Scott, in particular, are so embedded in our culture because they do really represent those terrible managers we have all had the misfortune to come across. The reality is that many decision-makers simply ignore good advice and research and decide to do it “their way,” with disastrous results for all.
For example, studies have shown that most leaders and managers are acutely aware that poor working conditions can and will lead to burnout, ultimately losing the company's skilled and experienced workers. The workers more immune to burnout are the ones who aren’t particularly efficient anyway, so the company suffers if they are the only ones remaining. Remember, core staff do more than just work, they help new employees, as most workplaces do not have the most robust on-the-job training.
Despite this fact, roughly half of the people who quit their jobs in the US cited bad management as a primary factor. Since a manager tends to also influence many aspects of any job, there is an argument to be made that poor management most likely also factored into the other half of people who left a workplace. Ultimately, managers make choices and bad decisions lead to poor working conditions, slowly eroding most workers' willingness and ability to work.
Once you add on the data showing that replacing workers tends to be more expensive than retaining them, it becomes a bit unclear how some bosses think it’s ok to just keep churning through worker after worker. Remember, replacing a worker has a number of costs, from the time and energy it takes to hire managers to do their job, to the downtime where a position remains unfilled. Plus, even when someone has been hired, it’s unlikely that they will have maximized their efficiency in the first few weeks.
Some might say that training an employee is the purpose of the college education many people go into debt for, unfortunately, in many more technical fields, education tends to get obsolete quickly. For example, one study found that much of the knowledge obtained while pursuing an engineering degree is already out of date or no longer relevant just two years post-graduation. This, of course, does not apply to the payment conditions of student loans.
