So remember that awesome job that back in February I was so excited to have? Yeah, well... not so much anymore.
Back when I first started, I had heard nothing but complaints from pretty much everyone that worked there. Everyone would grumble and groan whenever they were asked to do something, they would stand around and talk about how horrible our bosses were to them. And back then, I didn't see where it was coming from. Everything seemed fine. Sure, the day could get a little hectic at times, but hey, that's any office, right? I heard that there had been five people in my position in the last two years, not including the person doing it before me, who had the responsibilities of my job tacked onto her actual job. But I didn't know why. It just seemed like maybe people gave up too fast. Now looking back on that time, it seems like they were taking it easy on me, getting me sucked in to the system before they started showing their true colors. Since then, I've become just like everyone else in the office. I grumble and groan, I cry in corners, I come home drained every day, I dread going to work every day, and I've just become a zombie. And why have I become this way? I'll tell you.
My office is the kind of a place where your best is never recognized and your worst is held against you forever. I will start out by saying this; both of my bosses are nice people. But as bosses, they're unbearable. My one boss thinks I am there to be his servant, and my other boss is just too overwhelmed by her job and takes it out on me. Every department upstairs is understaffed, but things just keep being piled onto each department. And when these things don't get done, people get yelled at, not offered any help. And if someone gets fired, rather than being replaced, their duties are just passed on to someone else in the department. I was hired to be one person's Administrative Assistant. Since being hired, I've become two people's Administrative Assistant, I am in charge of marketing materials for the sales reps, I am in charge of registering and setting up for conventions and trade shows, I'm apparently the office Maintenance Manager, and, to make a long story short, the general office Cinderella. Seriously, my day is that scene from Cinderella where she's balancing the tea trays and laundry and such on her arms and head and the bells are ringing and her step sisters are screaming her name. My bosses actually do that. If they want me, they yell my name from their offices. And if I don't answer within two seconds, they yell again. And for all of this, I make two dollars an hour more than the receptionist does.
And they are both very good at pointing out other people's flaws, but can't recognize their own. One of my bosses had a meeting with all of the department managers one day, and asked me to sit in on it because she wanted to address a project that I was working on. During the meeting, she began talking to the lab directors about the fact that they couldn't keep any staff. My boss then proceeded to say that if we had been having that much trouble keeping staff, then maybe we needed to take a step back and look in the mirror and say, 'maybe it's our fault; maybe we're to blame'. She brought up the fact that we were hiring people for these positions who didn't have the background or experience to succeed in the position, but we were hiring them because we wanted to pay $12 an hour for the position, not $19 like other labs are paying, so the people who have the experience and the background won't want to work for us. If we payed more, we would get better work from the people we've hired. She also brought up the fact that we hire these people to do one job, and then because we're understaffed, we throw all of these other tasks at them, and soon they say 'What am I, the office gopher?' and they will throw up their hands and say 'Screw this, I don't need this' and leave. She ended by telling me to get in contact with several staffing agencies and tell them that we wanted them to headhunt people from other labs and we'd pay them more than what they were making there to come work for us. It took everything that I had to not tell her to look in the mirror her damn self and see that she was everything that she had just mentioned and more.
The first event that really tipped the scales for me was when we had our sales reps coming in for training. We needed to update the training manual for them, because it was several years old. I came in on a Saturday for five hours and then took everything home for another two hours to get these new manuals ready for the six sales reps that were coming in the following Monday. For the next week that they were there, every day I cleaned and set up the conference room for them, I ordered them lunch (and some nights dinner), I printed and copied things for them, in addition to my normal daily duties. I also had to stay late most nights, because my bosses were in training them and didn't get to the things that they needed me to do until five minutes before I was supposed to go home. Now, their training consisted of the managers of each department coming in for about an hour and going over what their department does and such, until my boss got in in the afternoon and sat with them for the rest of the day. At the end of the week, my boss calls me into her office and says, "The sales reps have been here pretty late every night this week, so we want to take them out to dinner." She hands me a piece of paper with the name of the restaurant on it and says, "I need you to call and make a reservation for tonight, but before you do, I want to call each of the managers and invite them too for taking time out of their day to work with the reps." She then proceeded to call each of the managers and invite them to dinner while I sat there and waited. I was never asked if I wanted to go to dinner after all of the work that I had done for the sales reps. That's apparently just my job.
Since then, it's been little things here and there; I get blamed for the fact that my boss overbooked her own schedule, or I get yelled at because there are too many people coming to her office for things and she can't get any work done. I get told that I have papers that she is looking for when they're sitting in plain view on her desk, and when she finds them, after I told her repeatedly that she has them, I don't get an apology, I just get told 'hang on to this,' or, 'file this'. I get blamed for not finishing tasks when I have been sitting there with them done waiting for everyone else to get out of her office so that I can give them to her. I got yelled at in front of other employees for sending a package to his daughter incorrectly when he didn't give me any specific instructions, he just said "ship this to her." I was apparently supposed to know that I was supposed to pay extra for Saturday delivery and have it delivered 'no signature required' because she would be going away the following week. I also got told off in front of a vendor for not refilling his Post-It dispenser, something I had never been asked to do in the seven months that I had been working there. My boss will ask me for a file and take it from me and put it in a pile on her desk, and then two days later call me into her office to ask me what it is and yell at me for leaving it on her desk, totally disregarding the email from her to me printed and paper clipped to the front of the file that says "Please print this email and bring to me with the file ASAP".
So, I am currently FERVENTLY searching for a new job. And unfortunately, everything that I am interested in doing requires going back to school, and possibly giving up the 9-5 no weekend work schedule. In the meantime, I'm just looking for ANYTHING to get me out of this place. So far nothing, but I can't imagine that God's plan is for me to stay in this office and suffer, so I'm keeping my hopes up.
This past week I've been up in Maine, and it's the most relaxed I've been in months. We still have five days left of vacation, and I'm already starting to dread going back to work. But for now, I'm just going to relax and enjoy the time I have off.
No comments:
Post a Comment