I work in sales as a customer service agent, and have, of course, a document with my job description, the kind of work I'm supposed to do.
However, this is pretty much the only resource I have for my position. All of my training was verbal and consisted of just learning how to process a basic customer order on our software, and I was told that I would just have to ask questions as they arise to learn more. I get this line of thinking, there are just too many scenarios I will run into and I have no problem asking for help, but a lot of times the answers I get are very vague, contradict what others have told me, or are even wrong.
I also don't know what I don't know, so a lot of times I won't even realize I've done something wrong until someone from another department reaches out to my supervisor to “report” me. I don't get in trouble usually because they realize I was never told, but it's extremely frustrating for me and creates a lot of extra work for myself and my co-workers to fix the mistake. Plus, I have to deal with angry customers, too, and I don't like coming off as incompetent for something out of my control.
I worked as a department head for a retail store and was given a guidebook for each department. It had information about how to place bulk orders, the terminology the customers in this dept would probably use, when x was eligible for refund and when it wasnt.. I thought this was normal, but now I'm wondering if just having me learn by getting thrown under the bus is the usual.