This year I was lucky enough to take 10 months off and live my life. I returned to work in September, so I’ve been at my current position for just over two months. I like the job. It’s admin work, stuff I’m used to. But the subject matter is completely foreign territory and needless to say, adjusting to the work flow has been difficult.
I’ve received next to no formal training because the person in the role before me left months before I started, so I inherited a glorious pile of chaos and confusion mixed with jargon I hadn’t ever heard of or used myself before. I was told “here’s your work station, you can start with xyz” on my first day.
Well, it wasn’t the first time I was in that kind of situation. I tend to thrive in chaos at times so I was just eager to learn and grow in an exciting new place.
Fast forward to today, after ~60 days of finishing my work earlier and earlier in the morning, a few mistakes made, and a few lessons learned, I was informed by one of my managers (I have two) that I’m just not where I should be by now” and they’ve been holding back some of my expected responsibilities because I’d struggled with a few specific tasks — even though I’ve since mastered (or at least overcome) most of those struggles.
Though I was already feeling stung, what gave me the sour taste in my mouth was the fact I’ve been running out of work to do over the last couple of weeks and I’ve been avoiding asking the managers for more work in fear of being let go for not being self-driven enough or something like that — though with the right phrasing it might not backfire on me?
It’s nothing I take personally but at least give a new employee with little to no knowledge of the subject matter they’re working with. I’m pretty forgiving but it’s exhausting feeling like you’re spinning your wheels every day.
For context, it’s heavy equipment. I knew almost nothing about equipment at first except “big machine go brrrrr”.