I’m having a bit of a problem with some of the employees at work. This is an extremely complicated situation for 1000 reasons – this is likely going to be an extremely long post. As to not give myself away, I’m going to describe my niche workplace like Ask a Manager does – as if it’s a teapot manufacturer.
I work in a store that sells tea and tea supplies, and makes teapots on-site that customers order in person and pick up. Due to the nature of our teapots, we interact with customers all day. There are two kinds of employees – teapot specialists and teapot assistants. Specialists have had significant training on the intricacies of making and using teapots, tea, and other supplies. They know ALL the answers to the questions, and they are in charge of quality control, as well as some of the more intricate aspects of manufacturing. Assistants are mostly entry-level positions. Some are in school to be specialists, but assistants mostly do the “grunt work” of making and assembling the teapots, as well as general maintenance of the area and customer pick-up. I am an assistant.
There are different job for assistants as well. There is order entry – where people take order forms and translate them into our compute system. There’s teapot assembly – taking parts off the shelf and putting them together, and completing the order in the system. Finally there’s customer pickup – where people pick up their assembled teapots from an assistant. There’s also answering phones, which everyone is supposed to do, as well as occasional odd jobs that we do if we have time and sometimes have a part-time person in to do the specific jobs. For the most part, the more senior employees take the entry roles and the newer employees take the pickup roles.
Now, on to my actual problems. I’ve mainly noticed a bit of an uneven distribution in the amount of work being done. I work primarily the assembly role, which is what I prefer for the most part. However, when I’m at that station, I seem to be the only one answering the phones, so much so that I have to ration my time between phones and assembly (1 phone call per step) or I get nothing done. It’s rare that entry will answer a phone. There is also a trend that people seem “entitled” to the entry role. That’s the first thing that they go to, even if they’re scheduled somewhere else. It often ends up with 3 people on entry, and one on assembly – with 100 teapots waiting to be assembled and only 10 order forms left to be entered. I’ve even noticed that sometimes when I’m scheduled to do entry, the senior assistants (who are on assembly that day) decide that they’re switching places with me and that’s that. It’s gotten to the point where I’m getting injured because of the repetitive motion of assembly, when I just need to take some breaks, like everyone else. There are also some other niche things: a little bit of bullying, a little bit of laziness, condescension, throwing me under the bus, passing off their jobs to me, etc.
As much as I would love to leave, I can’t for three reasons. First, the boss is the actual most amazing boss ever. If I want time off for literally anything, I get it pretty much no questions asked. He lets us do almost anything. It definitely makes a huge difference, like you don’t realize it until you have it how much it does. Second, the perks of the job are huge. We probably couldn’t afford our meds or our phone plan without the insurance and employee plan we have from the company.
Third is a bit of an unfortunate situation. I actually did leave (stayed very part time) about 8 months ago. I took a job at a place that makes teapots for restaurants instead of the general public. It was great, except for everything that wasn’t not dealing with the public. I somehow fell into a job that I desperately wanted – a China teapot manufacturer. It was like a dream come true – this is quite literally what I want to do, what I want to make into my career. Until they let me go, four days in. Nobody saw it coming. So, after a month off (actually due to surgery, unrelated), I went back to the first job. My dignity was destroyed, and for months I basically hung my head in shame. I still haven’t completely gotten over that. I managed to tell my coworkers that it was due to the surgery, but still.
Now that all that information is out, I want to go to my manager (maybe anonymously) and bring it to his attention. He is not the kind of person to retaliate – I trust him implicitly, so that part I’m not worried about. But, I want to be able to collect my thoughts in a cohesive way so he understands what’s going on. I feel like this is the only way to make real change. But my biggest problem is – HOW THE ACTUAL F do I do that? How do I keep track of everything that happens? There’s a huge spread of things that are wrong and it’s many many different people. I don’t know how to make it cohesive enough to actually make a difference. I’m also concerned about retaliation from my coworkers.
Given this situation, what do I do? I will add any more information as it becomes relevant. Thank you so much for everyone that made it through.