This is going to be a long story so I hope you got a snack and a drink on hand. Let’s take it back to a month ago, I got invited to a performance meeting. To put it bluntly, it did not go well. My boss tore into me and told me he was uncertain about my future at the company because I was having difficulty with the material presented. He said, “maybe you need something with less critical thinking skills because you clearly cannot handle this.” I originally got a bachelor’s degree in English Language Arts and I’m here at this job working in finances. To say I feel like I’m on another planet is an understatement. I’ve been trying my hardest to understand what I’m doing and how to do it has been a very tough task as I am not only supposed to know financial language but also system performance language on top of that.
Anyways, he gave me three options. 1. I could stay where I am and do better to prove him wrong about his assessment regarding me, 2. I could switch to another team and start over with a clean slate, or 3. I could be unemployed.
He gave me some time to think about it and when I came back from vacation I scheduled a meeting with him to tell him my answer. Once he’s seated in front of me, I tell him how I feel like deadweight because I’m struggling and how I want to start over elsewhere where I will be better utilized and can do a much better job. He tells me, “well I hate to break it to you but the policy says you can’t transfer. It’s management’s job to either make their employee’s do better or ship them out. I forgot to read the updated copy from three years ago.” The meeting was basically for nothing and I was furious. Now I’m stuck in this position and can’t leave unless I want to quit.
Fast forward to yesterday and he pulled me into another meeting. Since the last one I’ve improved on my performance in almost every regard. This time he was getting on me for not responding to an email fast enough. I was having trouble with it so I had reached out to a co worker and we were in the process of working through it. “It shouldn’t take this long. I can do it in 45 minutes. This is common sense, do you think you have the critical thinking skills necessary to ascertain this?” Is the sum of what he told me. He never acknowledged my performance in anything else, just the email and said I’m doing poorly.
I’ve begun applying to other places. I’m tired of my intelligence being insulted all because I’m working in a field I am not all too familiar to begin with. I’m tired of going into work and feeling awful all because I feel like no matter what I do it’s not good enough.