Today I got an email from my supervisor that she sent out to everyone in our department. She was letting us all know that we were doing an amazing job with all the accounts we need to enter by the end of the month; we started with 600 accounts on Feb. 1 (about 20% more than usual due to a lot of people getting sick last month), and as of Feb. 12 we had completed 318 of them. So good job team, and all that.
Out of curiosity, I went back and looked through my records to see how many of them had been mine. After adding them up, I counted 229 that I had personally entered. For those keeping track, that's about 72% of all the entered accounts. There are six of us. Basically I've done nearly three times as many accounts as everyone else combined. Let's put this another way: out of 9 workdays this month, I'm averaging twenty-five accounts per day. Everyone else is averaging … two?
At first I thought I had messed up my calculations somewhere, so I asked my supervisor to double check my math. She verified that my numbers were correct, and added “that's impressive, keep it up!”
Is it wrong that I felt a bit let down by that response? I mean, I'm not asking for a parade in my honor. I'm not asking for the boss to shower me in flower petals. But I was honestly hoping for something a little better than “keep it up.”
I'm not posting this in order to brag about my skills, but I have noticed a trend among all the jobs I've had in the past. Invariably, I've had supervisors and managers tell me I do an amazing job, but leave it at that. Never once have I been given a bonus, or a raise, or employee of the month, or even a mention in any kind of meeting or bulletin. Just a thumbs-up and “get back to work.” One job gave me a plastic trophy that I had to give back at the end of the week so they could give it to someone else.