UNITED STATES—I know I’m not the only person who has experienced this, where you have a day or a week that you are absolutely frustrated to the core. Now, let me be crystal clear: I said frustrated, not anger. Anger and frustration are two different things. Anger is an inability to control how you feel; there is a level of rage with it. When it comes to frustration, it’s an issue of processing various stimuli in the atmosphere. You’re upset, you’re annoyed; you’re disappointed, in essence you’re irritated.

I’m feeling that more and more with one of my places of employment, where I feel like a select few work and the rest play games and I’m sick of it. I’ve seen this so much in corporate America that I cannot explain it. It seems employers are fine and dandy with paying people to do absolutely nothing, while you have a select few on staff who are giving their all, literally and physically. Nothing annoys me more than when I have to do someone else’s job. They know how to do their job, but instead of actually doing it they pass it off to someone else.

You have those in management who at times call out the behavior, but it is not enough. It makes the workers who are actually working feel unappreciated and that is never a good sign in my book. I firmly believe in that motto that you don’t know a good thing until you no longer have it. I think that greatly applies to the workforce. Employers can sometimes take advantage of the good workers, and when they finally reach that point of no return that’s it. I recall doing that vividly during my high school and early college years where I worked for a company that had multiple locations.

I got so fed up seeing so many of my ‘co-workers’ (and yes I placed that in parenthesis because I never mingled with the lazy) that I submitted a request for a transfer to another location. The company was slightly stunned, but I had just had it, I was frustrated to the point that one of two things was going to happen 1) I would move to a new location 2) I would resign/quit from the company. During that time away, it allowed me to have some perspective on things, but the company also appreciated what I did a ton more.

How so? They would call all the time, and after several months away, they asked me to return to the location that I previously started, which I did. During that time, I learned the company had cleaned house a bit getting rid of staff that wasn’t actually performing as expected. This column is to open the dialogue between employers and their employees to pinpoint when you have unhappy staff. Don’t just sit and act as if everything is ok, and there is nothing to worry about in the long run.

Doing so can become a grave mistake because those who have worked relentlessly can just one day decide they’ve had enough and are ready to move on. Where does that leave the employer? Stuck with the lazy, non-caring staff that did nothing to begin with! By that time it’s too late to sway that superstar worker who has found new employment or has come to terms that he or she should have left that positions eons ago.

Written By Zoe Mitchell