Your Attitude Is Showing: A Primer of Human Relations, Tenth Edition

Learning Patience

Sometimes the “patience suit” that management suggests other employees wear during plateau periods becomes too tight, too confining, and too uncomfortable. When this happens, even confirmed stabilizers may consider scrambling to another firm.

Patience isn’t something one learns in school or college. Indeed, the pattern of almost automatic promotions in school is the direct opposite of the pattern found in the world of work. Through our school systems, people become accustomed to promotions according to age. They start at the first grade and move up to the twelfth and beyond like clockwork— each year a step up, until regular promotions are expected without waiting. Small wonder that some people begin to think that life is one ...