Sneaky work post

[eveglass]

How is it that every day I walk in to work, I feel like an idiot? I generally think of myself as smart. I mean, I got an M.A., didn't I? One of my papers was so good that the professor said I should consider publishing it. And yet... every time I walk into work, there's something else I've done wrong. Something else I've messed up. And I feel like an idiot. I feel like any intelligence I might have had stayed behind when I left the classroom. Did I just get dumber, or what?

23 work-days left. I'm not sure I can last that long. At this point, I'm not sure I can last the rest of today.

Comments

[kittyfantastico.livejournal.com]

ah, that's how my 'office' job made me feel. I even had calls waiting for me at home to tell me I'd done something wrong. I actually had had enough when they gave me less than two weeks notice - and told them that I wasn't coming in for the rest of the week.

I've been given this advice for this situations: Some people are intimidated by intelligent women, but these people are clever enough to know how to manipulate said women. Intelligent women have a stronger moral and ethical code, and clever (intimidated) people take advantage of that to suit their own selfish pride. They get something out of making you feel like crap about yourself and your own abilities. In my view, this is mean. Not in a jokey, 'meanie, meanie' way, but in a 'mean, hits their kids to feel good way.'

It never feels good, but what I do is simply swallow it whole, and hope that I can retain my self-confidence elsewhere. This is difficult, since much of my confidence is based on external recognition for my abilities.

You're an awesome storyteller, Julie. I wish I could tell a story like you can.

Going Postal As An Office Remedy

[10nameslater.livejournal.com]

... That got your attention, didn't it? ;)

Seriously, the part you are missing is that there is a significant difference between intelligence, and education. Yes, you're a wonderfully smart woman. Your education had NOTHING to do with your current job. Oddly enough, so while you learn the lessons of your mistakes as soon as they are explained to you, you keep having to make mistakes to learn, because your "Boss" neglected to do HIS job by EDUCATING you on your job.

OTJT, or On The Job Training, is the most over-looked part of the new-hire process. It takes, for a simple office environment, a minimum of two weeks of "job shadow" style training to get someone a base competence for a new work place. What I would recommend to you, Eveglass, is to take some of your job-time-reading-time and start reading up on your office SOPs so you get educated about your job. It won't take you long to learn, because you are, as I said, an intelligent woman.

It will also save you a lot of heartache.

Re: Going Postal As An Office Remedy

[eveglass.livejournal.com]

Though I do agree with you, the problem here is that I've been working in this department for about 2 months, and there aren't any SOPs. In fact, I started making some in order to train the summer intern (who has since left). All the mistakes I'm making (or at least most of them) are things that were never explained to me, or the result of extremely different styles of space organization between myself and my office-mate.

Case in point: I absolutely hate having piles of paper on my desk. It makes me feel almost claustrophobic, and I can't work properly. She, on the other hand, needs to have things visible, and will often leave things on the desk even after she's done using them (even things like candy wrappers and obsolete post-its). I had set up a file-folder system in a drawer next to the desk, to deal with the various incoming pieces of paper. She's put papers in, so I assumed that she checked it occasionally. It turns out she doesn't. So some files in there, which I flagged for her with post-its, have been sitting for several weeks. This is a Bad Thing, as the original problems (the reasons I flagged the files in the first place) have been compounded by the intervening time in which they have not been resolved. Her discovery of the various unresolved files (including ones she put in there herself!) led to tempers flaring high today.

Anyway. I'm not going to think about it right now. I was *this* close to quitting today, and I'm still not entirey certain how I'm going to deal with things tomorrow.