Privacy Policy and Affiliate Disclosures. Thanks for your comment I was picturing a situation where the boss has been diverting incomplete, extra, or tougher tasks to you, but it sounds more like the boss has been telling them theyre doing a great job with [the report] and then quietly passing it off to you to clean up? Copyright 2007 - 2023 Ask A Manager. Hmmm.. who could that be? Theres also something bothering me abour the phrasing I would be more sympathetic to the LW if it were, we simply cannot afford a 40% increase compared to what we paid previously. But we cannot justify a 40% increase for a secretary Theres something that comes across rather unsavory, including an implicit denigration of the value of a secretarys role. In fact, OP themselves is making a business decision on the salary, right there in the letter itself! Yeah, I was searching high and low for that chutzpah. Thats the stage you should move to IF your managers managers dont act again, thats making not doing something harder than doing something. Weve been providing the same negative feedback for the past 10 years and so far nothing has changed but then as they have a captive market, why would it? At most organizations, compensation information isnt made public. Also, stop trying to police what processes they are/are not following. Its four answers to four questions. Ive also worked in a government environment like that (as a temp consultant, thankfully), and I dont even see much point in LW1 going to their manager and asking that the co-workers get retrained. I just posted in another thread I worked with two slackers on shift work and I was away for a week and well, the work didnt get done. If you are doing higher level work there is a chance that the position might be able to be reclassified as a higher level position. We had those same rules with mandatory over time. Yes yes yes, this exactly. If no one else picks it up, just let it sit there. If there are its 4 hours a week thats 10% of your work hours, which is insane. You shouldnt hold it against her because it was for another job. This exactly. Im hopeful that better things await as evidenced by others experience here! I promise this isnt normal for IT. Oh yes, the training videos that take four times as long as needed, when youre the sort of person who takes in information far more easily by text. He says the experience taught him to better prepare for salary negotiations in the future. (Some of them are internally-made videos without captions, which are even worse, but most are from an outside company that also doesnt bother to meaningfully localize to our state, instead saying things like your specific obligations will depend on state law. But if you decide you want to keep this job and make it work I would definitely keep that line in mind as a strong stance to take if you ever need to. Read guide, if that doesnt resolve the problem, raise support request. Left and got a 60% raise. You SHOULD be enthusiastic if youre interviewing, whether or not you end up in the job. I am now feeling deeply validated at having refused to waste my co-workers time with that crap. She needs a certain wage to get by, youve been open that you cant offer it. She had more experience than her direct report and a masters degree; he hadabachelors. Why did they think seven dollars was enough! This is a big leap. You dont have the same job. Especially if its a large company with very siloed IT. If the materials are there for reference, refer people to them and do your own thing. whats the pettiest thing youve done at work (or seen done)? Exactly right. My boss has me run a loader and an outbound scale located at another building. He could only way I have the knowledge to complete the tasks. Questions that address only a specific company or position are of limited use to future visitors. I got 1 phone call from someone who could have learned something without me and Im mad I had to be helpful and give someone a super easy to give tip so Im going to demand that thousands of hours of productivity be lost so I dont have to waste 5 minutes being helpful again!, No ones talking about this happening from ONE questions, the point is it could be a LOT of questions. My boss is aware of all of this. Pur the onus on the old department. I think the goal is to make people pay attention if they cant just read captions they cant put the video on mute and ignore it but its beyond frustrating. update: is my job the problem or is it me? one upper case letter, and one special character. Scott Olson/Getty Images The signs that your boss likes you aren't always immediately obvious. Does Boss simply need to redistribute tasks so the Most Important are yours, but at a reasonable level? So while many realities may have been tightly budgeted, having that job didnt mean they also had to live with 4 roommates or forgo all vacations. If they cant do x right and you need to, what is Boss going to take OFF your plate to handle it? Acknowledge that, but then lay out how you have learned the position and now perform it on par (or better) than others in similar positions. Focus on the value you bring to the company. A reasonable professional with a good working relationship with others in the office will be able to tell when they cross the line into something they should really learn and remember how to do for themselves or that have documentation already provided versus asking someone to show them. I left 2 years and now make more than my old boss and my coworkers are great. As Alison has said in other posts you can make it more work for them to not address this. Never mind the fact that an office with only one point of entrance/exit is a violation of fire code. Yes, if I never use thisor dont use it until one time 18 months from nowI am not going to remember how to do it based on watching a video last year. Like any sign that indicates you have a health problem, there are signs you have a boss problem. If you want something done, ask someone who looks busy. If they wont pay top dollar, they might not get the top candidate. Do not make any rash decisions. But either its enough of the job that there are people who have a job in order to answer questions, or its not enough and its not that much. When volunteers are solicited, I step up and I also ask to learn more things so I can understand more aspects of our job. Mention your higher-earning coworker by name during your salary review. Are you dealing with coworkers who are lazy and incompetent, or just realistic in a crappy situation? Every time, if need be. Bueller? they arent doing their job. His boss agreed to give him a 5% increase. I 100% agree that this is something that ultimately went wrong for the OP due to bad management, but Im not a fan of the recent trend of giving no responsibility to workers. if he asked for the time off without any explanation, its possible the boss didnt want to let him have that time off if it was a bad time). Either it doesnt actually have to be done, or someone, eventually, will realize they need a system for accomplishing this task other than Wait out the person who did it three years agoeventually shell cave.. And the end result is they just have no concept of how it is for the rest of us. First, I have to see if there are volunteers. So youve got to fight your IT department who has to fight the business in general who would need to make the case to the insurance company who would then have to dictate useful training. But she is doing nothing wrong, and you acting like she is just reflects poorly on you. People who cant be on their parents insurance? OP, your boss priority is taking the path of least resistance that gets the work done. So, do enough to earn a reputation as a rockstar employee and get yourself someplace better before they burn you out and replace you with a eager new Office Victim. I was wondering something similar, from an incentive perspective. Not only will that help you remember, but it will also give you something to look at the next time, and it will help the next person who does your job. I have the same issue with Excel. We dont know what Brendas living expenses are, so you are assuming a lot of things that we have no actual information on. Im working on it. If your boss is on your side you can push back and say you have other priorities and wont have time to manage it. . I work with them still in my current role and Im still stuck doing work because no one in my old department will pick up the slack? Some managers require all their employees to watch them which isnt the intent at all. If Brenda was way underpaid, the difference between 40% and 25% really isnt that steep at all. He had no reason to be embarrassed since it was quite normal for applicants to have several applications in at once, and to be (or appear to be) enthusiastic about them all during the interview process. Sometimes we do care about retaining a relationship, and believe the other person will react to a refusal on our part with more consequences than we care to experience. And so the pressing need for XYZ salaries when your starting (which.thats a whole other issue, but whenever you see other questions about what would the donors think) is so often because in addition to all the other needs of living, theres a student loan payment. If we were to switch from Outlook to Google for standard email and calendar functions, wed all have to sit through multiple trainings, Im guessing, and that would be somewhat understandable. Who is saying it should be done by the expect? This is not a solution and pretending like it is deserves any kind of takedown needed to get rid of it. When you talk toyour boss, say something like, It has come to my attention that others make much more for doing the same job, suggests Dillon. As an IT manager who runs a team that, among other things, develops training, the these types are trainings are for people who dont know how to use software. If the co-workers are realistic enough to know that theyre getting the same 2% cost-of-living raise no matter what, whats the incentive for them to volunteer extra hours or additional training? No matter how recent or fresh or obviously you must have remembered I did XYZ, Id ask to see their resume or at least be reminded of what theyd want me to talk about. Theres a lot of research out there that shows how short our attention spans actually are. And my reaction was that as a manager, I really dont care about that distinction at all. In a situation like that, I was frustrated that our mutual boss had seemingly thrown up his hands and just accepted that Adam and Nathaniel would never do X fairly modest core responsibility well, but I also thought JFC, what is so hard about doing X?. Utterly soul-crushing. #4 There are some certifications in the IT/telecom industry such as SOC2 that have a requirement to prove all staff have received training over the course of a year and that compliance to said training is being reviewed by management. Sounds like one that I have to take I used to work in an office physically located in the hospital (have been remote since March 2020), and the training is obsessed on one of the questions with getting you to say that you would break a window to escape. She may have applied for Job B three months ago, and theyre asking around now. It isnt personal. Alsois she right? I expressed a lot of enthusiasm for a job, then accepted another offer. Period. that you yourself dont know what one piece of information will be relevant 18 months from now. My favorite part is that the videos have options to do things like speed them up, but its a trap because at the end of the video it will tell you that you have to go back and do it again at regular speed before the quiz will unlock. In doesn't get much worse than amicromanaging boss who doesn't give you room to breathe. And that is the result of poor management and/or low pay/poor conditions. Way too much to fight. Tell me the rules about when to report X or do Y, and Ill happily comply. If you don't get the message "Pipe down and do what I tell you - and nothing else . If she cant figure out who to talk to, then she should talk to her own manager but someone with authority needs to step in and say no more. Your boss is supposed to lift you up, fuel your personal growth, challenge you, teach you, guide you. Signs Your Boss Likes You or Is Impressed With Your Work - Business Insider Enthusiasm is not a bad thing unless one is faking it. He liked the work,was friends with several of his colleagues, and believed he was earning good money. Right! This is certainly the club I belong to, and when I call this out among my peers as much as they know its a problem and creates gatekeeping to these sectors..it also makes people uncomfortable. It was so frustrating! OP, if youre reading through the comments I hope youll take Cat Trees comment here to heart. Being asked not only gives me the opportunity to say yes, but to confirm the best way to reach me, and gives me time to think about better things to say about them than they were great. Yes theres no reason to assume these videos are all DIY in-house productions. Confirm your subscriber information and create a password. I really liked all of the people I talked to and they were clearly really passionate about their work, so I sent a very enthusiastic thank-you email in which I also suggested a way of mitigating one of the problems they had brought up during the interview. (I understand that COVID has caused constraints on in-person training but I learned literally nothing from that video.). I believe this also holds the hiring manager responsible for equal pay.. But when it came time for his salary review, Adarsh did ask for a raise. Do not pick it up; let it sit and if someone comes to you say you need to talk to old department. If it isnt anything that you need in order to do your current role then ignore it, and if anyone specifically asks you about it / asks you to do it, have a stock response such as Oh, Im not in [old department] any more so I dont deal with that youll need to speak to Old Department as I dont know specifically who in that department has taken over that task. Think creatively about other ways to redress the gap if a big raise isnt immediately possible. I have not been offered meaningful, paid training that would allow me to grow in my actual specialty since before the Great Recession in a previous job. If people arent doing their jobs correctly, shouldnt someone let them know so they can improve their performance? We need a little more information to find your subscription. Aha! You could use that for sketch comedy. On the other hand, University of Michigan's Gretchen Spreitzer conducted a study of twenty years of research on empowerment at work and found empowered employees report stronger performance, higher job satisfaction and company loyalty, lower turnover, and increased motivation. This is a crime. And keep doing that refusing to go TOO many extra miles/hours until your workload drops down into the reasonable range. Boss keeps asking me to do things that aren't my job She recommends reaching out to your organizations HR department for context, with your bosss blessing. (That may cause some confusion with the numbering of the other letters, since it was formerly #2 of five but #3, 4, 5 are now #2, 3, 4 respectively.). I'm talking about the perpetually oily, tone deaf, morally corrupt, do whatever it takes no matter the cost types that leave you repeatedly feeling like your value system is being compromised. Hoard credit for your team's accomplishments. Employees can do the same. Were upgrading our systems so we can better serve our subscribers. I wonder if OP knew she had been listed as a reference? 13 Things Your Boss Can't Legally Do - U.S. News Its never come up. Im sure being government if you had documentation that work is causing health issues that gives you lots of leverage to advocate for yourself. Easily 2/3 of my coworkers can skate away with doing the bare minimum of their jobs and my supervisors response to that is a shrug and what can you do, because they arent empowered to take these employees aside or even address it with their managers. My company got Teams in 2020 and the only training was a hour video that was a recording of the training that the executives got on how to use Teams. I know OP said Brenda listed her as a work reference, but they might also just be calling past managers. How would you have handled this? But faking it is not going to help (so in this sense the common wisdom is wrong), and depending on the industry or even just the particular team, its possible to overdo it. Im going through this at the moment. I finally just gave up and stopped volunteering. #1 Alison is correct. My guess is that Brenda is considering multiple offers, and good for her. I have been with my company for nearly 7 years, and my supervisors response to me taking the time to learn how to do my job correctly, learning from criticisms and feedback reports, and actively seeking out guidance on doing my job correctly (compliance with government regulations is a big part of what I do), and their response is basically to frequently dump difficult problems that often take a lot of time on me saying things like we can trust you with this and we dont have anyone else right now that could do this and even when its not even technically part of my job I get pressured into doing it anyway.