Office politics in an OT environment

[NATO]

I am applying to a few OT programs that start in Fall 2010. I still need to do OT shadowing and have that scheduled towards the end of this year. In the meantime, I just started taking pre-req classes and will be finished with getting all of them completed by Spring 2010.

I have worked in Corporate America for 7 years now and I am sick of the rat race! I want to know what the office politics of an OT environment is like. My first job out of college involved working in a female dominated work environment, which turned out to be a bad fit for me due to these women (of various ages) being catty\nasty to each other. I like to work in an harmonous work enviroment. My next career/job was in the IT industry, which is dominated by men. Long story short, the work enviroment in IT was good, but I did not (do not) enjoy the meaningless work. I want to make a DIRECT difference in people's lives. I believe OT is a great fit for me, but I am concerned about OT being a dominated female occupation.

So...please tell me what your work enviorment is like. No work environment is perfect, but I figure if I am happy 80% of the time at work, then that's good enough for me!

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[superCOTA]

NATO it might depend on the particular job... politics are everywhere, some places worse than others.

You will be working with mostly women. End of discussion.


If you are chaning fields because you want to get along with people you work with more than the work itself, you are wasting your time, and missing the point of work.

It' s great when you get along but sometimes if you wanna make an omlette, you gotta break a few eggs.


As for corporate environments, I'd like to point out that most people polishing their arse w/ a chair in an office rarely 'work' more than 50% of the day, the rest surfing the net, blabbing, whatever...(as pointed out to me by a new OT who used to work in an office in NYC and wanted to 'make a difference' - which she discovered, is markedly more intensive than she thought)
In a OT clinic, if you are done treating, the pay often stops and you go home, so be motivated or enjoy the politics while people pass the day away making fun of whatever strikes their fancy.