During occupational trainings given to Polish employees, one can quite often observe complaining. The instructor can use it for problem-solving or for purification. Thus, complaining plays an instrumental or cathartic function. This has consequences for the entire training process. The aim of the article is to present the phenomenon of complaining during training courses and to discuss its correlation with different variables such as learning results, participants’ mood and the evaluation of the training course. Questions were therefore posed about which function of complaining would be more conducive to the process of learning the material and result in an improvement of the participants’ mood, as well as how the instructor would be evaluated, at the response level, depending on which function of complaining is activated during the training. In order to answer these questions, the authors designed an experiment in which complaining was induced in members of an organization, performing either an instrumental function or a cathartic function. The results show that the most effective strategy is the use of its object as a point of departure for problem solution.

Values define the directions of human activities and are related to people’s motivation to undertake specific activities and roles (Schwartz, 1994; Brown, 2002). Researchers and employers observe differences in motivation to work among representatives of different generations and genders (Twenge, Campbell, & Freeman, 2012; Gursoy & Karadag, 2013). In this research project, the authors asked what motivated contemporary employees, whether the intensity of their motives was different in different generations, what relationships there were between the dominant work motives and employees’ dominant values, and whether there were differences between women and men regarding work motives. To verify the hypotheses, they conducted a study with a sample of 307 professionally active people. They used their own Types of Work Motives Questionnaire designed for the purposes of the study and the Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ; Wilson & Murrell, 2004). The obtained results indicate that younger employees choose the kind of work that gives them comfort and adequate pay. Regardless of age, however, social security support is the most important for all groups of respondents. For women, security and social security support are important at work. Moreover, the study has shown that there is a relationship between work values and work motives. For example people who appreciate values such as friendship and stability are motivated to work by good relationships and security, those who value recreation and stability are motivated by comfort and salary, those for whom respect and education are crucial are motivated by the possibility of development etc.