Ive been working at my job for about 5 years now. About a year ago we brought on a new employee to our very tiny department to help with running reports and QC. I trained her and have been teaching her how to do T-SQL as she wanted to be more involved with some of the work my boss and I do. i appreciate her help and she's made my life so much easier as far as meeting deadlines go. There's just one teensy problem that hurts:
I'm the youngest person in our office. When things break, the problems inevitably reach me to correct them but people always either go to my assistant whom i trained, or they go to my boss(who hates to be disturbed without notice such as meetings or even a simple email arranging to go over something.) and then they will usually delegate that to me. The chain of command should be Boss > me > assistant but it constantly feels like people go to my boss, and then if he isn't there, they go to my assistant, and last resort they go to me. Many people in the office talk to me and confide in me and I feel as though I'm very good with people. Therefore, the only conclusion I can come up with is that they perceive me as young and incapable when in reality I do a great majority of the work in my department. (Especially the parts many coworkers have questions about.)
Does this happen to anyone else?
This is mostly a rant but if anyone has any advice for a 25 year old who wants to be perceived as the capable adult i am, i would greatly appreciate that as well.