what does "unprofessional" mean?

"immature"? "dense"? "lazy"? "unproductive"? "undisciplined"? "un-confident"? "servile"? "born poor"? "prone to asking stupid questions"? what?

below or contrary to the standards expected in a particular profession.

I think it generally means either "unfamiliar with the expected entry-level requirements of a job" or "unwilling to follow through on knowing the expected" etc. An example: a million years ago, when I worked in hospitals but wasn't licensed yet, I had the misfortune of reporting to my charge nurse that a normally pretty with-it patient was complaining of auditory hallucinations. I felt bad for the patient, who was a swell person, so I thought, I'll ask the charge nurse, an experienced nurse, how to help. "Watch this," she said to me, and she called the patient into the nurses' station. She proceeded to explain to this patient that it's important to call on Jesus in times like these, whereupon the patient perseverated on blblical verses for a while and then returned to the unit.

I was young in the biz, but I was disgusted, because I thought, you know, even if you think Jesus is the answer, it's supremely unprofessional to pull that shit. As it happened, it wasn't the last time I saw something like this, there are a lot of deeply unprofessional people working mental health.

in my work experience it means 'immature'. for instance, I manage something like 25 web developers. I've had a few who mouth off to other devs and QA, are unwilling to do what is asked of them, etc. They are 'unprofessional' and get fired.

(You ask the question in a way that makes me wonder if you think it has classist connotations. I don't think it does, unlike the idea of professional standards is itself classist, which I don't think it is.)

there seem to be a lot of deeply immature people working everywhere, operating way below, even contrary, to what one would expect to be minimum job standards. maybe "professional" is just a magic power word euphemism for "cold-blooded" / "'good' interviewee"

agree with JCLC tbh, in my line of work failing to observe proper boundaries is a key indicator of unprofessionalism, alongside being emotionally manipulative, being rude or aggressive and not maintaining customer focus. if you can't do that shit in the job you're in, get out of the job.

there seem to be a lot of deeply immature people working everywhere, operating way below, even contrary, to what one would expect to be minimum job standards. maybe "professional" is just a magic power word euphemism for "cold-blooded" / "'good' interviewee"

I'd agree that 1) valuing professionalism is a luxury in practically every field; if you have no professional applicants, you tend to take whoever you hope might pick up the habit, and 2) that in the whole world, probably since time immemorial, professionalism has been the exception rather than the rule. but I don't think it tracks with much of what you've put in quotation marks above. I don't think it just means "bad at one's work," though; there are people who're pretty unprofessional who're riotously successful in my own current line of work, because they're good enough at the basics of what they do (making music sound good) for people to overlook some basic standards of professionalism (at least showing awareness of deadlines if one isn't going to bother to meet them, responding to the needs of an artist instead of just nodding and doing whatever you were gonna already do, etc).

...makes me wonder if you think it has classist connotations

It can have a bit...For example, when punk came along, some established musicians described it as 'unprofessional' . "They can't play, and why do they smarten themselves up a bit...It's disrespecting the audience" etc. And abominable groups like Showaddywaddy were defended on the grounds that "at least they're professional".

In a lot of areas, including jobs and the arts, overtime the culture can become too rigid, too settled, too much of a 'closed shop' - and those trying new approaches can be accused of being "unprofessional".

In the private sector it means whatever powerful people in the company want it to mean

Like 'professionalism' can mean 'talk more' or 'talk less', it can mean be yourself more or be yourself less

http://apps.columbiaassociation.com/aquatics/Images/UniformProfessional.jpg

According to Google images

lots of (all?) professions seem to be closed shops, a reasonable impression leading up to and during a moment of historic class inequality. maybe "professionalism" just means "inherited guild-consciousness" for a given set of "opportunities" / sinecures

Either not working towards or working contrary to the defined goal

there's a secondary meaning--used more and more prevalently, i think-- which is something like "introducing personal elements into what is supposed to be an impersonal relationship." to be unprofessional is to make things personal, hold grudges, to make any kind of value judgment not in accordance with professional standards (ie, profit, etc).

Yep thats big

^^^

you don't have to like the fuckers, just be civil to them for the duration

(a more precise description might be "anything that introduces a personalizing element into the impersonal nature of bureaucracy")

i believe that partly comes from a collective mindset of "it's bad enough that we've all got to be here, lets not make it actively unpleasant eh?"

Or if you can't be civil to the fuckers, at least make sure it's a 'professional foul'.

Yeah. Not just civil, not necessarily friendly. Relevant.

xp all otm

most forms of unprofessional behavior involve interfering with the efforts of others to get work done

iirc this can include persistently expressing personal ideas and opinions in situations where those are irrelevant, distracting, time-wasting, disruptive, etc.

ya what ryan said is pretty much standard in my workplace

it doesn't matter what you wear or who you are

people equate professionalism with actions and discussions based on data, analysis, calculation etc

and of course risk is always there but then you start talking about accuracy

lack of transparency is a bigger issue i think

i think i deliberately try to adopt this mentality in the interests of negating a lot of my usual instincts and actually getting anything done/holding down the job

It can mean not wearing a tie:

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/may/28/secret-teacher-naughty-pupil-wearing-tie-workwear

But the head finally told me, in no uncertain terms, that a tie was not optional. Her ruling was accompanied by a thinly veiled threat about being valued and how it would be a great shame if I rocked the boat over something as insignificant as a tie

whereas i would argue getting het up about that shit is pretty unprofessional most of the time

Wait till you're told to wear high heels, you might change your mind
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/11/receptionist-sent-home-pwc-not-wearing-high-heels-pwc-nicola-thorp

"undisciplined" probably covers the most ground, imo. most aspects of professionalism require self-discipline to attain consistently.

e.g. it's easy to be civil to co-workers you like, but you must also be civil to those you despise and that requires discipline. keeping the boss informed when everything is going well is easy, but revealing when things are not progressing well takes self-discipline. etc.

xp - no, i meant the head being a dick about enforcing it

ok - soz about that.

I take "professional" to mean completely inhabiting the role associated with one's job, so "unprofessional" implies an expectation that one do that and a simultaneous failure to do so.

I assume it originates in the idea of "professions" such as being a lawyer, doctor, accountant, etc. -- everything the doctor does and says in front of patients, and perhaps in front of colleagues as well, is doctorly. He speaks in a doctorly tone, he makes doctorly gestures and examines x-rays with doctorly seriousness. He does not give any impression of also being a father, or a lover, though he may mention his children or spouse in a minimal, somewhat impersonal way appropriate for small talk. There is certainly no hint that the doctor might enjoy cocaine and orgies, or go to nordic metal shows.

I also think of it as an idea very much intertwined with capitalism and with the kind of semi-anonymous life - if the village has 150 people and everyone knows the doctor and his wife and children, then it would be almost clownish to put on airs.

In a service economy, the expectation of "professionalism" creeps into jobs that are not "professions." Speaking of an "unprofessional" longshoreman seems ridiculous, but someone in a far less skilled job such as a walmart cashier might (absurdly) be called "unprofessional" if he excessively discussed his personal life with customers.

I do think the term "professionalism" also implies competence, high productivity, etc., but this all flows from the idea that the professional fully takes on the role and is not merely a wage laborer punching a clock.

*the kind of semi-anonymous life one lives in large metropolitan areas

i agree with ryan and man alive. i feel like there's a sort of oneness it's desirable to achieve in the new economy with your professional identity where you take on the full elan of whatever it is you're doing as defined by its social/conceptual world and of-the-moment practitioners with the "best" or "slickest" or "truest" performance of that identity. so that "unprofessional" becomes not just failing to fall in line and keep the personal out of business to the right degree, but also of failing to sufficiently believe in one's professional mission as something beneficial to society.

and beneficial to oneself.

there are definitely skill set and networking levels involved in determining degrees of professionalism too.

I don't think it's a peculiarly new economy thing I'm describing though, except the part about the move toward a service economy. If anything, I'd say that there's this new kind of anti-professionalism or post-professionalism or maybe professionalism on steroids in the tech world where it's not just about inhabiting an expected and understood role during work hours, but rather there is pressure to give a sense that *this is who you are*.

in entertainment too. you have to live for what you do all the time, it ought to be the truest manifestation of you, it should completely envelop who you are as a person. people who aren't successful in entertainment fields are failing at this somehow, they aren't committed or all-in enough.

this is kind of true in librarianship, my quaint "profession" which has a funny, historically queer female characterization to it imo. you need to be both caring and "smart" and the most professional professionals i see are good at being in that pocket on social media, at conferences, in relationships, etc. i struggle with being caring and smart! i'm way dumber than i should be with computers and i'm not exactly other-focused most of the time.

I'm very unprofessional, as a freelancer. I just prematurely signed off on a job because I'd already worked far beyond the hours they thought they had paid me for and wouldn't go past it. It means I don't have creative control or a final say but they were taking the piss. I'm also a cunt tho.

But apparently it means that I will be able to have a slip inserted in the programme which states that C---- O'h---- has withdrawn his involvement with this production, which seems even better than a removal of credit.

Which is good because they are much bigger cunts than I am.

xp also we're supposed to memorize a ton of stuffy and frankly useless shit, which i hate doing. another "smart girl" part of it. which i don't mean to sound disparaging to smart girls, it's more that the profession came into existence for educated women at a time when they were entering the workforce but still seen as secondary. and now there's this hilarious split because it turns out that what librarians were doing at the most abstract level was information modeling for the humanities, so "librarianship" has become "information science" causing a lot of splintering and "who are we" questions while the gendered-male tech disciplines have basically taken over the world, and we get situations like at my institution where IT has the money, the clout, and couldn't care less about social sciences, and tech librarians are doing digital humanities pinterests at the poorly-funded academic library and writing these terrible articles full of social science and education buzzwords and abstractions about technology that have no effect other than to prove the "professional" credentials of the authors.

i'm not bitter about it, i promise.

^what a librarian would say

there's a secondary meaning--used more and more prevalently, i think-- which is something like "introducing personal elements into what is supposed to be an impersonal relationship." to be unprofessional is to make things personal, hold grudges, to make any kind of value judgment not in accordance with professional standards (ie, profit, etc).

yeah was going to just say "letting your personal shit become a problem at work"

I'd say that there's this new kind of anti-professionalism or post-professionalism or maybe professionalism on steroids in the tech world where it's not just about inhabiting an expected and understood role during work hours, but rather there is pressure to give a sense that *this is who you are*.

where i work is p techy, agile etc, tho weirdly also it's civil service, and i would say post-professionalism describes it well. it's okay to be a person, have feelings, have individuality, say what you think, etc. but i still think there are lines of professionalism. it would be unprofessional to insult someone i guess. it might be unprofessional to start wearing a suit and talking about timekeeping.

Class side of that "business never personal" view is that if you're underpaid or overworked that shouldn't impact your work performance. keep wage concerns separate from work concerns, don't talk about your work conditions with other workers : it precludes organization.

Going back to the first example, maybe that nurse didn't think Jesus is the answer, but by giving that confused patient some higher thing to cling to, maybe she was being professional?

Maybe.

I've worked in IT for 20 years and in the late 90s, professionalism wasn't a thing at all - they were cool with goths and punks and nerds as long as everyone was pro on the phone to customers. things changed after the dot com crash tho. it became all about KPIs and stats. never mind being nice to customers just get em off the phone as fast as possible. I'd say my industry warped professionalism into something bean county. not sure my point here.

I've worked in IT for well never mind years, and unprof can be everything between having every line break with the comma at the beginning of the line rather than the end, or not having f and c words in yr comments sections.

I'm a bit sketchy on historic detail but I'm aware that the idea of 'profession' was something that was consciously developed between the late 17th and mid 19th century. It had a code of conduct that helped legitimise it, it also tended to have a lingo of its own that helped keep out those who hadn't undergone the correct education process.
So unprofessional is to go against those guidelines for behaviour, dress and language that are perceived to be part of that package of being professional. Not sure how narrowly defined what being professional is these days so wonder what leeway there is before one becomes 'unprofessional'.
But as has been said it has got to do with sloppiness, ignorance and other negative attributes that mean one is falling far below expected standards.

"they were cool with goths and punks and nerds"

dont think we've endorsed any idea of professionalism itt that makes these attributes relevant tho trayce?

I mean no doubt theres a view out there that professionalism is something to do with yr personal style or appearance but id be surprised if anyone on ilx (or under 50) still thought that

On a basic level, professionalism as it applies to my job is governed by numerous rigidly defined codes of practice like an ISO quality management system, scientific convention, any number of H&S laws, EU directives &c. Beyond that, it's a relaxed enough workplace that I never really find myself thinking ito professionalism vs unprofessionalism

Also when I typed unprofessionalism just then my phone wanted to correct to "unprofessional momism"

In a service economy, the expectation of "professionalism" creeps into jobs that are not "professions." Speaking of an "unprofessional" longshoreman seems ridiculous, but someone in a far less skilled job such as a walmart cashier might (absurdly) be called "unprofessional" if he excessively discussed his personal life with customers.

Part of the bitterness of shit jobs expecting 'professionalism' lies in the way a real traditional profession (doctor, lawyer, teacher) has (perhaps imaginary these days) career progression lined up eventually resulting in a nice house and big family who surround you on your deathbed, and this is invoked every time a miserable authority figure reads out the professional standards expected of you.

That's the bitterness - the threat comes from the way certain shark-like people are able to get away with being total bullies and stay on in their position by keeping to the letter of the law (dress-code, what words to use, etc).

Another really interesting thing about professionalism is how if you turn up at a shit job suited and booted, keep your conversation strictly to work-related matters, show yourself as eager to fit in with the expected standards, etc, you will become a figure of hate/ridicule for everyone else who works there. Including the managerial caste who are pushing professionalism - so in a sense, it's not about the standards themselves exactly, so much as about having to have a super-keen sense of when and when not to fit those standards

Which personally I find nearly impossible - oh for it to be so simple as turn up looking smart and focus on the job