Advice and thoughts.

[Scroll]

   Ok this just might be me venting, I don't know and need help figuring this out.

   I have been on my job for almost three years and I love it. The problem is that my boss man is in the hospital and has been for a few weeks. Not even sure if and when he is coming back. A few months ago we hire a new guy to assist my boss. My boss isn't just my supervisor but also the plant manager.

   The problem is that when my boss was around he would give me extra work to do that would come in. I respected him and he the same for me. About 98% of the time if he asked me to do something (like another job) or work over I'd do it. So he gave me more work and other things.

   But now since he's been out I don't get nearly as much work. I used to get between 200 and 300 pieces a day and now I barely get 100. I'm not sure if the orers have just slowed down or what. I don't see the tickets till they come to me.

   Now with my boss being out I'm the only one that can do my job. So the new guy wants to have someone else to come and learn my job so if and when the network goes down I'm not left haveing to do it all and try to keep up with other dpartments. Right now as it is when the network goes down they send a girl back to help me but it's more of a hinderance than anything else. Because she can't find what I need as fast as I can.

   I do understand that they are just trying to make it so that I'd have help when the network goes down and all. But I am very territorial, I hate anyone messing with my stuff or in my area. I have a place for everything and organized. i hate changes and it takes me along time to get used to changes. But I am fine if I make the changes. I just feel if they send others to help me do my job I feel that they think I can't do my job like I should. i was told that wasn't it. I don't know. that I'm not a good enough employee.

   Also there is a girl that will stand and talk for long periods of time while I am working my butt off. I can do up to 5 different jobs besides mine. Considering thats good learning and can do them other jobs and only been there for 3 years.

   There is more to the story and may come and fill you all in a little at a time. Just wanted an opinion. Heck I might just try to handle it and see what happens.

[Wolfchild]

You're perfectly entitled to feel like this. I can imagine anyone would be, and I know my mother found herself in a similar position a couple of years ago. She was second in command to a company in which the original boss had left, and a replacement manager was hired by the board of governors. This replacement, however, soon turned out to have very few skills in the areas she was required to (computing, finance, etc) and my mum found herself having to waste a great deal of her time explaining things, and doing the work said boss was too incompetent to do. In the same office was the bosses' secretary, who preferred to spend a day making personal calls rather than actually doing her job. My mum continued to feel more and more undervalued, being given work which was patronising her real capabilities, and meant the load that was supposed to be shared by the office, was put entirely on her. For my mother, this was understandably stressful, and at the end of each working day, we, her family, would listen to her talk about these things, and wonder how it could continue. It came to a climax when she was in the office at the end of one particular day, and snapped. Her boss made a comment about how a task that had been her own responsibility hadn't been done by my mother, and finally, my mother said "No" (which is a euphemism for 'massive argument'). Afterwards, she left that office, and made the decision never to return. Although there was a great deal to clean up (emails to the board of governors and so on) and some difficult moments, she got through it, and is now leading a life that makes her happy, having set up her own business that enables her to work from home.

We have since learned that the company in question has suffered enormous financial losses since she departed, because the staff that remained had not been able to do the job that my mother did in any competent way. My point is, companies don't realise how important you are until you've gone. Whether you want to stay or leave is your own decision, but I think you're rightly aware that you have your job because you are the best person possible to do it. Your problem lies with this 'new guy' who hasn't twigged that getting a backup person might make sense for the network, but it completely devalues your feeling of worth. And clearly when they do get this other girl in, she doesn't exactly help matters, so you feel like it's a loose-loose situation. The thing to remember here is that you have the skills and qualities to do the job perfectly. And you are doing, because there is nothing in what you've said that is your own fault, or a result of your own actions. If you do talk to this 'new guy' again, make him aware of why you have these feelings, in addition to the feelings themselves. It might be hard for him to accept that his good intentions have actually had the opposite result, but these are the facts he has to face. If and when he realises the consequences have outweighed the action, then I hope things are not too far gone to be put right again. I wish you all the best

[Scroll]

   Actually I do like the new guys he is cool and ok. But with him and another surpvisor in a other department being in charge, not to mention 2 fellow employees in my department all trying to tell me what to do it gets confusing.

   I di talk to one of the other employees today about a few things and I think I got part of it straightene out. But I wish now I wouldn't have said anything. Cause when I talk to this person and another I feel belittled or they critisize me. So I am rying to not say anymore than I have to around them. Don't get me wrong I do like these people, but I have found out on many occasions I do have to watch what I say.
 
   Once again I do love my job and I like being there. Don't want to leave and can't afford to leave with no other jobs out there. I just feel like I do more than my share and don't get credit for it.

   I don't spread rumors or talk about anyone there. I do what I am asked without grumbling and I work over or go in early when needed. I tink this makes a very good employee. It gives a good employee like that a better chance of moving up in the company faster or get more and better raises too.

[Beren One-Hand]

My point is, companies don't realise how important you are until you've gone. 

You're very right Wolfie.  Companies don't realize what they've got until it's gone.  I had a similar situation at my previous job.  They knew I was good, experienced and one of the best in the department, but they simply wouldn't listen to my concerns.  Eventually I had enough and quit. 

But Scroll you definitely have a point.  Sometimes getting the extra help is not help at all.  Like you've said, if you are that good at your position then the extra "help" just ends up getting in the way.  I've been there before too.  At my old job they used to hire temps to help out, basically every shift.  Often times you'd get a different guy every time, and the quality of worker was always very low.  Sometimes they would get in the way, and often slowed things down so much, and would create "new" problems from simply being incompetent.  I have a plethora of these kinds of work stories myself.  Some are hilarious  , and some are down right infuriating .

You're also right, Scroll in the fact that sometimes you can "say too much."  Sometimes I have this problem, where I can be too open with people.  Often times I find myself having to shut myself up.  Sometimes too much information, or enough of the wrong information, can get you into trouble.  Sometimes it is good to say as little as possible.

[Scroll]

   Yeah often I go the opposite of what my little voice inside tells me to say or not say, to do or not do. To many times I don't listen and go the other way and more times than I can count it leads me into trouble.

   My hubby tells me so many times that I would think before I say or do then it would help me in the long run, or one of thes days it will get me into trouble.

   But about the getting in the way thing? I learned my lesson (or you would think I did) when my oldest daughter was born. When she got into toddler ages she would ask if she could help clean, cook, or what have you. I would most of the time tell her I have it and shun her out of what I was doing. Then when she got older I regreted it, she didn't want to help when I'd ask for it. So when my youngest daughter was born and gotten into the toddler ages I'd give her every chance to help. So now she is 11 and she loves to help me cook and clean. Where as my 16 year old she does help but I have to pull teeth with her to get it.

   Don't get me wrong my 16 year old is a good kid. She doesn't go out and party, smoke, do drugs, drink, get into fights, and is an A-B honor roll in an early college program at the local college where she does her high schooling at too. She doesn't talk back, sass, throw herself with us (her parents) she just doesn't do house work or cook, unless we get onto her about it.

   Anyway I would just prefer to do it myself and get it done without taking time away to help someone learn it.Most of the time I have a set place for everything and everything in its place. if someone comes in and messes it up it annoys me. Also if someone can do it but its not the way I do it, it annoys me. Like if my girls stack the dishwasher for dishes to be washed and its not stacked the way I do it I get frustrated. Or stack the dishes in the cabinets different than I do then it frustrates me. Just couple of examples.

   I'm not saying I'm perfect cause I'm not, nobody is. I think its OCD or something. I say that cause of other things with myself.

[Wolfchild]

My mind seems to be the opposite way- I think extensively about what to say, and how to say it, because although I can manage in social situations, I have a fear of looking foolish. It's very much like having to mentally plan a script each time you want to say something, otherwise you're ad-libbing, and in the danger zone.

I get very territorial about certain things, also. If I'm helping my mother put shopping away, I feel like that's a task that should only be done by the two of us, because we know where everything is, and where it should be. I sort of think that if anyone else were to do it, they'd only be asking where everything goes, and slow us down. I also find myself becoming especially frustrated when my sister's boyfriend sets his computer up on the one chair that means everyone has to clamber around the wires, or when he  goes out to do something else, and leaves the entire thing for us to trip over and tidy up. You feel as if other people are missing the little piece of you that sees the hazards, and wonder how they cope. I remember being a child and thinking that if I didn't go and check on whatever was worrying me, bad things would happen. Now I'm an adult I feel like the human version of risk assessment.

Similarly at that young age, my parents worked long hours, and rather than have those moments where you learn how to cook, and clean, and so on, these were lost to our school's version of babysitting. I picked it all up through my teens, but I think it must have been in late high school or early college that I began to realise how important helping other people was. We've all been sixteen once, and not wanted to do something because the tone in which it was asked wasn't to our liking, or some such excuse. I remain shocked now that even I went through "the backchat years" having arguments with my mum, who is now very much my best friend. These days, I've grown up, and learn the biggest sense of reward comes from when you do something useful spontaneously and without being asked at all. But when I am, I'm perfectly happy to oblige. So in my experience, maturing can be slow, but it will happen eventually.

[Scroll]

I wasn't really a bad kid. Yes I talked back and threw myself, but I didn't date, party, go out, do drugs, drink, or smoke.

But now that I have kids (I'm 42) I see now what I put my mom through by being lazy and not helping, talking back, and throwing myself. Now look at me. I work 40 plus hours at my regular job and a part time job on the weekends, do all the cooking, cleaning laundry, drive to pay bills, grocey shop and still run the girls to where they need to go when my hubby can't. SO I think I'm making up for them past years and I am so tired. Mentally and physically.

[Wolfchild]

I know when I got to university a lot of the things that had frustrated me as a child were starting to take control, and I felt quite angry about it. I didn't feel wanted by my course leaders, amongst other things, and there were several occasions where my workload nearly got on top of me. But as part of the student services we have councillors, and as terrified as I was, I went and had some talks with them. It was an absolute revelation to speak to someone who wasn't family or my faculty leader, and I think I really tackled a great deal with her. And a very least, she was a neutral person, who didn't say everything with a  "it's-your-only-way-to-a-job" tone that made me so incensed with everyone else. I got rid of a lot of baggage that way, and it's made it much easier for me to focus on the here and now. Does your company have anything of the same nature?

[Scroll]

   I want to say thanks to whom have given me advice and insight and now for an update on the status at work.


   Last Friday (after having a long bad week) all came to a head. It's to long of a story to tell and can't put into words what happened. But needless to say one of the fellow employees raised their voice at me and (can't quite call it yelling) but yelled at me.

   I kept my cool, I was about into tears, but I kept it together. I didn't say anything back. I simply took what they said. I'm not the type of person to say anything to anyone. I can handle alot and this time I did. After all was said and done I kindly went to the restroom and cried. This made about th 3rd time I did that day.

   Didn't talk to this person rest of the day or the next. I heard them say that they were trying to be nice to me and they were. But I simply went on about my business, even to today. If something is said to me i give a quick straight forward answer. I don't talk to much anyone there anymore unless I have to.

   I do like it there, I like my job, and I like the people. But after getting yelled at by a fellow employee I keep things to myself now. Since this was the first and or will it be the last time they talk to me like that. So I'm not going to put myself in that kind of situation again and just stay to myself and quiet.

   It will be hard to do cause I love to talk and socialize and all. But I'll get used to it I guess.


   Now back to the main topic of thoughts. Here is a new one.
1. I have always felt like someone or something is watching me. Might be God. Always have felt this way all my life.

2. I always felt like also that we all are like in an ant farm tyoe thing. That some higher being is looking down on us and controling us. Like you do with an ant farm or something. Again might be God.

3. I also always felt like my whole life is a dream and I'm going to wake up as a child and I had dreamed my life.

4. I look down at my hands and body (more so with the hands) or look in the mirror at myself and feel like that what I see isn't me. That this is somebody elses body and all.

I hope those didn't sound corny. Some thoughs of what you think. I have more to come later.

[Wolfchild]

Sorry to hear that, Scroll. This is a very conflicting situation to be in, and having someone shout at you can't have helped. You're right not to give this employee any leeway, as I think they have terminated that right. Anyone who makes you feel this way, regardless of why, is not worth your time. If you feel like you have a hold on preventing this from happening again, then go with it. But don't let them change who you are, as I have found this to be a very slippery slope.

As to your first couple of new concerns, I'm not confident that it's my area of expertise. I did attend a Church of England school until I was ten, but that's as close as I came to some sense of a higher being. Regardless, I think if you're curious, visit churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and so on. It might help you pinpoint who feel is up there, and give you the option to explore religion.

In terms of feeling that this you isn't you, or that your life is a dream, this could be down to the sheer amount you have achieved. You've become an adult, raised a family, and have job you enjoy. These are three milestones that seem incomprehensible to any of us as children. And at every choice we have as we grow up, there are always "what if?" moments. The pace at which events happen can often make us wonder if the decision we made was the right one. It's very easy to think there's a parallel world version of you that got over the fear of getting it wrong, and actually became a vet, or archeologist, or writer (my own personal examples) and they could be happier for it. But in the here and now, you are living a life that is brimming with accomplishments, and that's nothing to be afraid of.

[Scroll]

My dear Wolfchild, I don't have a problem with my list of things I have felt all my life. I was just curious of what everyone thought and feelings on this, and I do go to church. In fact I am a Christian and I was raised Penticostal (sp). I was saved and baptized in The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost.

[Wolfchild]

Ah, I do apologise.

[Scroll]

No problem sweetie.