I’ve been working my first-ever job for about half a year now. I’m kind of new to the whole scene and feel inadequate in terms of what’s OK and what’s not OK
It’s a specialized warehouse. Basically, we get some equipment, service it, and send it back. When I came there, our wing had 3 people including me, and our boss who came by sometimes.
My responsibilities, as discussed in the interview, were just that. I also said I was good with IT and could help out with that. One thing that I noticed at first was that there was no introduction to who does what. Some of the stuff is done by our team, but some stuff (like purchases and some client communication) are only done by the boss. I was sort of plunged in there. But that’s ok, I managed.
Then, a month after I join, our manager quit. There’s just 2 of us now.
There were no talks about who would take on which responsibilities after she quit. Nothing like that at all.
I feel like helping the company out. I propose ways to improve our efficiency (by taking full advantage of our software, which nobody bothered to learn for some reason). But every time I was shut down. I supposed, I’m green, it’s only natural.
Then at some points our boss would come by and express his dissatisfaction with the way things run. There is a backlog here, that place isn’t tidy, things aren’t going as fast, some clients wait too long. He asked to fix those problems.
Idiot that I am, I, feeling like it’s my chance to shine, say that I’m sorry for that and I’ll do my best. That turned out to be impossible for me. I think that maybe I’m lacking the experience to do that, but also every time I tried to solve the problems he outlined, I was shut down again. I grew frustrated and in the end just did my immediate duties.
Every time we needed to order repairs, we would message our boss, and maybe he would look at the message. And then he would come in a week and ask, why is this thing lying around and not finished. I would say I have to check with the system. He would be annoyed, tell me that I’d need to know that by heart, and leave. A minute after I he leaves, I pull down the system, and it says there I messaged him for the parts last week.
When I told him that this structure is showing us down, he would dismiss me.
He would give me no feedback, but when I finally told him I felt like he was frustrated with me, he would finally tell me that he was disappointed in me, expecting me to step up and take up the management role of the department.
This was insulting to me. Why not tell me? If you needed a manager, why not discuss it with us openly? And what if I don’t want to be a manager? Why not hire someone fit for this position in the first place? Who gave him the right to “expect” something like this from me while doing everything in his power to put down all my attempts at actually doing something?
He said he expected me to “step up”. Well, I expected don’t employer to tell me what he needed of me. Not that much to ask.
This dragged on for some time. It took me a while to realize that I was made a fool of.
When I came in to speak about my current dissatisfactions, and to ask about my future possibilities at the company in general, I was met with the vaguest answers ever.
Well, now I’m quitting. It took me all of 2 weeks to find a job that literally pays 2x my current salary. Good luck with your last employee
This time I’ll be sure to double check explicitly what is asked of me and how that will be compensated, and to stand my ground when that boundary is breached