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Dear Liz,

I am in a bad work situation right now. I took a job that was a step down back in January because I had no choice. I got laid off in October. The job I have now was the first offer I got and I was out of money.

There is nothing wrong with my job except one thing. I’m a Senior Account Specialist for a marketing firm. When I started the job I was excited, even though I had the same job in a different company over 10 years ago. I work for a good company. The managers are smart and compassionate, but they are clueless about their employees’ performance.

I am one of 10 Account Specialists and I’m the oldest one. Several of my co-workers are unbelievable slackers. The amount of work I do in a half-day is what they accomplish in a whole week. They just don’t care. They make one phone call and then go on Facebook. A half hour later they answer one email message. The managers here have no idea that their employees are ripping them off blind.

For the first couple of weeks after I started the job, everything was fine. Then my co-workers started to make comments. “You’re making us look bad,” my teammate said. Another co-worker told me “Slow down, man — you don’t  have to do everything in your first month on the job.” I’m not the type to judge anyone. I don’t care if my co-workers don’t do any work, but it’s not pleasant to get sideways looks and evil comments just because I do my job at a normal pace!

Of course, not everyone here is hostile to me. Several of my co-workers are great, and they work hard and they appreciate that I work hard too. Still, there is a large faction of people on my team who do almost nothing during the day. I guess they resent me getting something done and making them look bad by comparison. What should I do?

Thanks,

Riley