Thursday, January 21, 2010

I was a bad girl.

Not a good day at work today. I got written up. Yup. An actual written warning which will now sit in my file. Damn. Kind of a long story, but the problem is this: We have a part-time supervisor in our office. She supervises two offices, so sometimes she's here and sometimes she's there. When she's not in our office, we are supposed to call or email her at the other office if there's any kind of problem. ANY KIND OF PROBLEM. Now, MY problem is that I am a problem solver by nature. And a natural leader-type personality. Someone who's been in charge of groups and organizations. The oldest girl in my family with all the attendant oldest-child characteristics. Someone who owned and ran my own business for a while. And I can't stop problem-solving and helping people. When someone in the office is having trouble with their computer, I try to help. When someone doesn't know how to work the copy machine, the fax machine, the credit card machine.....I help. And I'm not supposed to! I am supposed to turn all problems over to the supervisor. Actually, I'm not even supposed to get involved. If someone has a problem, THEY are supposed to call the supervisor. I've been verbally warned before. I understand the situation....I really, really do. I KNOW I'm not supposed to do anything that vaguely resembles something the supervisor should do. But when something happens, I react without thinking. This time, by trying to help someone with the credit card validator machine, I set off a chain-reaction that has the bank threatening to take the validator from our office. Which means we wouldn't be able to accept credit cards. That can't happen. So since someone upstairs had their butt reamed, it came down to me getting my butt reamed. The written warning wasn't even so bad as the threat that, "If you can't work in an office with no supervisor and not take on a supervisory role, we might have to transfer you to another office that has a full time supervisor." I don't want to be transferred. I would probably quit before I'd go to work permanently in another office. I'm trying my hardest not to help the other people in my office. I am trying to remember to say NO! I have to JUST SAY NO!

3 comments:

Colleen - the AmAzINg Mrs. B said...

Yikes! Sticky situation..what are you supposed to ? Just call the supervisor and wait until the calvery arrives? Guess so, huh?

Sorry. It's often hard to take a back seat - especially when you CAN fix the problem..

Best be an observer for a while and let the chips fall where they may..

And count to 20 everytime you see someone needing help..

Jules AF said...

Even if the printer is broken, you have to wait for help? That's weird.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that is SO ridiculous that you're forbidden from trying to solve problems.