I've Been Thinking About The Future, But I'm Too Young To Pretend

Before you read this, I should tell you it's long and rambling. It's about my anger at my work situation, but because I don't want to say what I do, parts of it probably don't make sense.

Also, I forgot to mention my 100th post was a few posts ago. Whoops.

On with the rant:


I'm not someone to dwell on things. Honestly. I tend to have a "shit happens" mentality. I move on quickly.

But I'm so sick and tired of my job. I don't want to say what I do, because I don't want to get fired (I'm not going to call it the D word, because I know she makes people angry. Besides, she's not the only one to get fired because of blogging about her job. We could call it getting Fabbed instead.)

Anyways. I've worked for the same company for four years. When I was hired, my company was owned by a small(ish) company and I had a certain job. About 18 months later my company was purchased by a very large company that is now the largest company in our industry. My job changed. A Lot. And even that was cool. I'm good at adapting.

However, when the changes started happening, a coworker's position was eliminated. He was given the same job as me, which was great. He had tons of experience in the field, even if it wasn't for our specific job. I helped to train him.

Two years later, he still can't do the fucking job right. He's 52 years old, and he can't grasp this simple job. Trust me, my job is not that hard. Really. There's a lot of technical aspects to it, but he already knew all of that. It's the day to day aspects he can't handle. He can't multi-task AT ALL. This includes answering the phone while reading something. If he's in one room doing something, he won't walk to the other room to handle anything else. We work in a customer-heavy field, so his blatant ignoring of customers is pretty unprofessional. He takes three times as long to do his job than any of the rest of us. He leaves things unfinished all around the office. When he actually files, all his files are way out of alphabetical order.

My manager seems to see no problem with this arrangement. (My manager, I should point out, is supposed to be out on the floor with us, but spends 90% of the time in her office working on "paperwork" but mostly she talks on the phone to her husband. I don't really mind because she's not all over us and doesn't really watch what we do. I usually like the freedom.)

I've gotten to the point where I just ignore him, unless I have to ask him to help me when there are multiple customers in the office. If he leaves things around, unfinished, I refuse to finish them for him. So I'll show it to him and say "Are you done with this?" or something to that effect. But it's not my job to clean up after him.

But still, I've dealt with the incompetence okay. I'm probably not as patient as I always should be, but honestly, after two years doing a job, you really should be able to do it.

When we got our reviews last week, my manager marked me down for not being a team player, because I'm not willing to pitch in and help out. Apparently, I'm detracting from the family atmosphere we've always had with my selfishness and inability to be a team player.

Fuck this. It was one thing having to deal with the bullshit and incompetence, it's another when I'm chastised for not being willing to do my job and someone else's.

I've started applying for all sorts of other jobs, so let the job search begin. It's about time I move into something related to the field I'm majoring anyway. People always ask if I'm in school for (what my job is) and I'm always like "No, Art." and people look at me like I'm crazy.

So it's time to move on.

2 comments:

The Ferryman said...

Have you considered taking a gun into work and blowing people away? It seems to be all the rage.

Ha! "All the rage!"

How do I do it? How DO I do it?

Avitable said...

Do you have a chain of command, so that you can complain to someone above you?

Did your co-worker get rated higher than you?

Those would be things to consider, too.