A little bit about my job....

I am a secretary. An Administrative Specialist. My bosses right hand. Example setter for the newer personnel. I hate it and I'm not good at it. I have 16 months maximum until I can quit. I haven't quit yet because we're getting a 5.5% raise and a raise towards market pay this summer. I also haven't quit yet because my boss is willing to work with me if I need to be out of the office for Bailey. No job has ever given me that kind of freedom. So I've stuck with it even though I don't like it and I'm not good at it.

When I took this job, I REALLY hated the last job I was in, it was truly beneath me. I answered the phone for every line in the building and transferred to the appropriate party because the boss was too cheap to have the phone lines routed to individual desks. I was bored all the time there because there were no challenges and only enough work to keep me busy for 3 of the 8 hours a day, other than answer the phone. I don't do well with boredom.

So, I interviewed for the job I have now and got it. In the interview, I kind of made some promises that I'm not keeping. Not because I don't want to, but because I'm simply not capable at the moment. I told them I was super-organized with a fine attention to detail and that was exactly what they wanted to hear, so they gave me the job. I am organized, but not in a way that most other people understand. I do have an attention to detail, but lately, it's started slipping. If you've been reading my blog, you know that I have been under a tremendous amount of stress in the last year, with failing to get pregnant and the the problems Bailey is having. It's taken a toll on my professional life. That, and I simply don't care anymore. I don't care about applying for money to give to ungrateful people who make our lives difficult and talk about us behind our back. I'm tired of doing work for people who aren't in my department anymore but still expect me to do their bidding because it's what they're used to. I'm tired of the backstabbing and the drama that comes with working in an office full of women as well. I printed out "trust no one" in French and taped it to my monitor so it would remind me to keep my mouth shut, and no one else would be able to read it.

On Friday, my boss called me into her office and chewed me out for her getting chewed out by HER boss the previous day. Over me. She wanted me there so she could yell at me in person and I was unavailable because I was taking Bailey to therapy. So she yelled at my boss instead, and in turn, my boss yelled at me. She told me my attitude stunk and that she didn't like getting chewed out because of something I did, even though she is directly responsible for her employees' behavior. Then, I talked to the big boss. She told me that it's not fair of her to do, but now was the time since it hadn't happened before, and she was putting me on notice that the bad attitude I've had FOR A YEAR is starting to affect the whole office. I'm setting a bad example for the rest of the lower level staff. I'm spending too much time talking about my personal life, therefore giving the impression that I'm bored. I also throw "temper tantrums" if I don't like something. Remind me to tell you about the green folders. And, I'm being two-faced by acting one way with coworkers and a different way in front of management. Those last three things are true.

A) I do spend a lot of time talking about my personal life. I'm stressed out. A couple of coworkers understand what it's like to have problems getting pregnant and what it's like to have a problem child. So I've sat at their desks and bent their ears for support and advice. And when other people see me doing that, apparently it goes back to the big boss as I don't have enough to do. Sometimes, I don't have enough to do and now they're going to fix that by giving me projects from different departments that no one else has time to complete. Great! I welcome that! So much so, I've outright asked other departments if there was anything I could do for them and told them to let me know if they needed help with something. No one has ever taken me up on my offer except for the big bosses secretary. I will help her do anything she needs. She hasn't asked me lately though.

B) Is it not human nature to act differently with coworkers than you do around management? I've never seen a manager slap their boss or that person's boss on the back after telling a dirty joke, but it's acceptable to do that with their employees.

C) The green folders. The administrators secretary wanted a new routing system for paperwork needing to go to upper level management, so she decided that each section should have their own color file folder to make it easier to determine who wanted signatures. The color my boss chose was too close to the color another boss chose, so I was asked to find new folders. Unfortunately, there are enough sections, that the standard color folders were all used. Folders of unique colors are not easy to find, they're generally special order and out of stock. I did manage to find a pale green, almost grey, folder that was vastly different than every other color folder in the divison. I brought them back and introduced them as "my ugly green folders". But before that, I told my boss that I was going to the office supply place to get folders because our folders were too close in color to someone elses and echoed her eyeroll with an eyeroll of my own. I let the executive secretary know that it was silly to buy all new folders because I had clearly distinguished my folders from the other green ones by plastering my sections' logo all over our folders. She said it didn't matter, she wanted a different color, so I rolled my eyes at her as well. I will own the fact that I blow off steam over irritants by having mini-meltdowns. They've been more and more frequent lately, and over stupider and stupider things. So I'm going to stop doing that. It's immature and it does set a bad example.

It really makes me angry that this problem was brought to her attention a YEAR ago and she didn't feel it important enough to tell me about until it until now. Yes, it was my responsibility reign these things in and behave like an adult. They let me get away with it for long enough that now it's become a REALLY bad habit that is going to be hard to break. One of the things I stated in my interview and at least a couple of times since then was, if you have a problem with me or something I'm doing, tell me immediately so I can make sure it stops. Don't wait for 6 months, then come down on me like a ton of bricks for continuing to act in a way that's unacceptable, but was never conveyed to me. Again, it was within my control the way I behaved, but there is some responsibility in management for it.

So now I have to decide what to do. That conversation is stuck in my craw and is not motivating me to change a thing and do better. However, I don't have a choice. I can't get fired from this job and I can't quit. At least, not now. I requested that my hours get cut back to part time in the fall so I can go to school for the next year for 6 hours a week so I don't have to do it at night. I can't lose my benefits or the freedom I have, at least not yet. Bill would KILL me if I got fired. He's also kill me if I quit for a job that paid less than what I'm doing now, and with a big raise on the horizon, I'm making quite a bit of money. On one hand, I hope that my request to go part time gets denied because I'd get to quit this August instead of next August. On the other hand, quitting this job and moving onto another job, then school full time, then into the nursing field, with the attitude and work ethic I have right now, isn't going to hep me in the long run.

So, I will again accept responsibility for my behavior recently, express my displeasure for not having it brought to me sooner so it didn't get to this point, and make every effort to not throw temper tantrums over stupid things, keep my personal life to myself, and treat everyone the same. For the time being, that's going to be with me sitting at my desk and not leaving it other than for a break, to pee or when I'm asked. I'm going to keep my mouth shut and my head down and not trust anyone to have my back, because even though I work with 15 people in my section, I'm truly alone. I will ride out the next 16 months as the model employee and set a good foundation for myself to be in nursing school. I will ask people what I can take off of their plates when I'm in a period of downtime before work can be assigned to me. I will be a model employee who will be VERY hard to replace when the time does come for me to quit.