During the down times between looking for work, I do a lot of self-analysis of the kind of person I am and the kind of employee I think I am.
I am not going to sit here and say that I’m the ‘model employee’ because I’m not, but I think I’m a hard worker that can be applied to most situations with which I’m familiar and can manage pretty well. I don’t like to have tasks dangling over my head – if I’m assigned to do something, I like to get it done and move on.
I feel like I’ve always been a friend of the ‘common worker’ – you know, the person who comes to work, does their job and then goes home. If you ask the people I have worked with, most of them will say I fixed their (professional) problems and, if I didn’t, there was a damn good reason I didn’t (i.e. – the company didn’t want to pay for a piece or part that was needed).
I always tried to be the champion of the under-dog or the person who didn’t have the power but wanted to get something simple done. If I had any sway with upper management and the employee’s request was simple, I tried to help.
The problem is that I never felt like I got validation from upper management. I never felt like they took me seriously or (in some cases) even respected me. They would ask my opinion and then routinely dismiss it.
Mind you, I’m not talking about any of my jobs in particular; I’m talking about them all in generalities.
Years ago I was in a meeting with one of the company’s Vice-Presidents. We needed to talk about how to approach a project we were working on. I spent the better part of 15 minutes explaining how I thought it should be done because I was going to be doing the Lion’s Share of the work. She was actually listening and taking notes about what I was saying. Wait, there’s a twist.
After I finished making my case for the project (and feeling good that it was going to happen that way) she tells me “No, we’re not going to do it that way. We’re going to do it this way…” and proceeds in a whole other direction.
“Then why did you drag me in here and listen to me blather on about how the project should be done if you weren’t going to do it my way?” I asked.
Her response: “I wanted you to feel like part of the process”. I looked it up… there’s not a word in the English language to describe how mad I was.
And the kicker?
The project totally tanked, mostly because of the way it was planned – and WHO had to clean up the mess? Yes, I had to deal with the aftermath of a problem I did not create.
It’s hard-workers like me that get abused because they actually DO something as so many others sit on the sidelines and watch the parade go by. I’ve also seen some good and talented people leave companies because that company did not know how to cultivate that worker. I can be counted among employees like that.
Most days I feel like I’m looking for a job that no one understands. They think that just because I can fix computers that I know how to program them. It’s not the same thing, folks. One of these days I’m going to get up the nerve and fire off an e-mail to the company looking for a person like this.
“Since you work at the circus you must know how to tame lions”. They just don’t get it.
If it sounds like I’m angry – I am. If it sounds like I’m confused – I’m that too. It just seems to me that so much of what I thought was true for my entire life is not true anymore. I know that things change but when the anchors in your life are uprooted, you get a little disoriented.
Maybe it’s because I keep doing the same things that I keep getting the same results. The problem comes when I do the same things and get a different result. 2 + 2 is not 4 anymore and it blurs the lines between what I thought to be true and what everyone else has known to be true.
I now know what I did wrong. Again, in the empty spaces of time I thought about my life and what I could have done to throw my system out of whack. I know what that is now and I’m trying to find a way to correct it. I feel guilty about it, I know it was wrong but, no, I don’t want to share it because I’m unsure of the legalities of the offense. (don’t worry – no one died or was injured… nothing like that).
I think that once I right this issue with the world, I’ll be okay. Until then, I will muddle through somehow.
I am not going to sit here and say that I’m the ‘model employee’ because I’m not, but I think I’m a hard worker that can be applied to most situations with which I’m familiar and can manage pretty well. I don’t like to have tasks dangling over my head – if I’m assigned to do something, I like to get it done and move on.
I feel like I’ve always been a friend of the ‘common worker’ – you know, the person who comes to work, does their job and then goes home. If you ask the people I have worked with, most of them will say I fixed their (professional) problems and, if I didn’t, there was a damn good reason I didn’t (i.e. – the company didn’t want to pay for a piece or part that was needed).
I always tried to be the champion of the under-dog or the person who didn’t have the power but wanted to get something simple done. If I had any sway with upper management and the employee’s request was simple, I tried to help.
The problem is that I never felt like I got validation from upper management. I never felt like they took me seriously or (in some cases) even respected me. They would ask my opinion and then routinely dismiss it.
Mind you, I’m not talking about any of my jobs in particular; I’m talking about them all in generalities.
Years ago I was in a meeting with one of the company’s Vice-Presidents. We needed to talk about how to approach a project we were working on. I spent the better part of 15 minutes explaining how I thought it should be done because I was going to be doing the Lion’s Share of the work. She was actually listening and taking notes about what I was saying. Wait, there’s a twist.
After I finished making my case for the project (and feeling good that it was going to happen that way) she tells me “No, we’re not going to do it that way. We’re going to do it this way…” and proceeds in a whole other direction.
“Then why did you drag me in here and listen to me blather on about how the project should be done if you weren’t going to do it my way?” I asked.
Her response: “I wanted you to feel like part of the process”. I looked it up… there’s not a word in the English language to describe how mad I was.
And the kicker?
The project totally tanked, mostly because of the way it was planned – and WHO had to clean up the mess? Yes, I had to deal with the aftermath of a problem I did not create.
It’s hard-workers like me that get abused because they actually DO something as so many others sit on the sidelines and watch the parade go by. I’ve also seen some good and talented people leave companies because that company did not know how to cultivate that worker. I can be counted among employees like that.
Most days I feel like I’m looking for a job that no one understands. They think that just because I can fix computers that I know how to program them. It’s not the same thing, folks. One of these days I’m going to get up the nerve and fire off an e-mail to the company looking for a person like this.
“Since you work at the circus you must know how to tame lions”. They just don’t get it.
If it sounds like I’m angry – I am. If it sounds like I’m confused – I’m that too. It just seems to me that so much of what I thought was true for my entire life is not true anymore. I know that things change but when the anchors in your life are uprooted, you get a little disoriented.
Maybe it’s because I keep doing the same things that I keep getting the same results. The problem comes when I do the same things and get a different result. 2 + 2 is not 4 anymore and it blurs the lines between what I thought to be true and what everyone else has known to be true.
I now know what I did wrong. Again, in the empty spaces of time I thought about my life and what I could have done to throw my system out of whack. I know what that is now and I’m trying to find a way to correct it. I feel guilty about it, I know it was wrong but, no, I don’t want to share it because I’m unsure of the legalities of the offense. (don’t worry – no one died or was injured… nothing like that).
I think that once I right this issue with the world, I’ll be okay. Until then, I will muddle through somehow.