Oh so confused
I feel insane right now.
So God has been doing some amazing things in my life and I really am feeling...almost hammered by life and stress in a rebuttle. I also feel like I'm making a mess out of some of my current relationships.
The other night someone told me I was picky. It wasn't a criticism, just an observation made by a guy who's kind of awkward. He admitted he wasn't trying to be rude, just that he was making an observation based on our evening of hanging around each other.
I didn't know what to make of this. I suppose I am picky. Mostly because I haven't been picky in the past and a lot of that had to do with self-image and insecurity. I didn't think I deserved to be picky or that I was pretty enough, smart enough, friendly enough, to be picky with who/what/how i wanted things in my life. Well, now I have been learning to embrace some of the pickiness because some of that pickiness is good to have. But it also nagged at me. I don't want to be picky to the point of being irritating to people. Not at all.
Anyway, the ultimate frustration right now is work related. I'm just heavily aware of the previously mentioned things on TOP of tonight's events.
as always, I give you history:
A woman I work with was rightfully fired today. She works day shift during the weekend. Eight hour shifts, four days a week.
My current boss (home manager) is a week or so away from not being our home manager anymore due to her moving on in her life and going to nursing school full time. It's a big decision and she's been dutifully training the new home-manager-to-be for the past month.
About a week or two ago I sat down with the home-manager-to-be and my current home manager and I told them I felt like I wasn't getting respect from my coworkers as a manager. I felt like no one took me seriously and that I was getting frustrated with tasks I was assigning not getting accomplished. This was a couple weeks after I'd been informed that one of my employees had complained about me being disrespectful towards her when I had tried to exert any sort of managerial authority.
So I take people's complaints and comments about me to heart. I really want to be the best manager that I can be. And yes, this is my first job as a manager, and I am learning how to handle the power given to me. It's a scary process because It seems like if I screw up my job is on the line. The company I work for has no problems cleaning house - it's been done before and I am very aware that I am quite replaceable. So to avoid conflict, I'd been walking on eggshells around all of the employees since I found out I had offended someone.
But as I was sitting and talking to the two women, my manager-to-be assured me that I was a manager and needed to be treated with respect. I was in fact acting manager when my current home manager was on her days off. My current home manager agreed. Therefore, the issue was going to be addressed in a staff meeting by clarifying that if the home manager or I give out tasks to do, they are to be completed within a week or disciplinary action would be taken. In the little three-manager's pow-wow they also told me that anything I told staff should be communicated to them so if staff came to them to complain they could back me up.
On top of that, not a week later, I was working while my boss was not. Someone asked me a question. My go-to answer was that I wasn't sure I had the authority to make the decision, so they should contact my home-manager or her boss - the program manager who works on one of the HM's days off. Well, for whatever reason they ended up calling the program manager. She okayed whatever it was and then asked why they hadn't just asked me. They said they had but I had told them to call her because it wasn't my decision to make. My program manger then told the staff that as I was acting manager the decision was up to me,. I just had to make sure I contacted the Home Manager to tell her what I had done/okayed (or something to that extent.)
So this gave me a sense that I could step further into becoming a good manager. I could take a little more responsibility and exert a little bit more of a managerial authority. I don't want to be authoritarian as a manager. I want my employees to feel appreciated and free to make decisions and offer ideas to improve the house and how it functions. I want people to respect me, but not because I'm a bitch or because I reign hell on them if they make mistakes. I don't want to demean when mistakes are made, I want to enable employees to make the right choices next time.
So, back to tonight. Remember the woman who got fired I mentioned earlier? Well, over the past three days my current manager has been keeping me apprised of the situation. Yesterday (her Friday) she told me that the woman was to have her meeting up at the office today. She told me that she was going to move a specific employee from swing shift (2-10) to day shift (7-3)and then that we'd have to hire a new swing shift. I asked if we could make the person switching shifts a mid-shift employee (11-7). My boss clarified if I meant permanently or until we got a new swing shift person. Now...I had meant permanently, but I caught her hesitancy to assign someone to that shift so I told her for the time being. She agreed that this was a good idea.
So today my boss called in to tell me something unrelated to the previous stuff and while on the phone I asked her if I needed to call anyone to cover the day shift for tomorrow. She told me probably, but that I shouldn't say anything until it was official.
So, five hours later I was to the end of my shift. I hadn't heard anything about the woman for sure being let go or not. So I called the program manager up at the main office to verify that the woman was not coming back to work and that I again see if I needed to find someone to work her shift the following day. My program manger actually told me, "Oh, well, yeah. You could just get someone to work like 11-7 to help with day and swing tomorrow to help out." (or something very close to that.) I took that as having gotten the official word so I went to talk to the specific woman my boss had told me about yesterday to ask if she could cover the shift tomorrow. She said yes.
As I was making the schedule change I noticed that she worked the exact SAME schedule as the woman who got fired did. And so it would work nicely to just adjust her schedule for the next week and a half (which is how far out the schedule went and exactly what my boss and I had talked about yesterday.) I didn't add or take away any hours from her schedule, I just shifted her eight hour shifts to be part day shift and part swing shift as my boss and I had discussed. I also made a mental AND physical note to send my boss a message on the company email system to let her know what I had done and that I had told the woman it wasn't set in stone and her schedule was subject to change upon the boss's review.
So adjustments made I went home.
Well, as I'm mid birthday celebration with my good friend Autumn I get a phone call. It's my boss and she is PISSED at me for changing the schedule and talking to the specific staff person about changing shifts and saying anything about what had occurred.
And I mean...she was REALLY upset and accusing me of not communicating with her about any of what happened. She started going off in my ear and all I can think is "What on EARTH is going on?"
I told her, "Well, you and I just talked about this and you had said that I would need to call someone to cover the day shift for tomorrow once it was official ____ wasn't coming back."
"Well I was going to talk to her, not you. Scheduling is my thing not yours. And when we talked about stuff none of that was official!"
"Oh, well the end of my shift was coming and I hadn't heard anything, so I called the program manger to make sure the shift needed to be filled like you and I had talked about earlier and she said to go ahead and fill it. I had gotten the official word as you had said I needed to wait for."
"Well why didn't you call me?!?!"
"It's your day off, and just two or so staff meetings ago the program manager told us that we could call her about managerial questions on your day off."
"But I'm on call!"
"But it's your day off, and she was already working today and she just told us we could call her on your day off."
"No, I'm on call, that is my job. You call me, not her. You don't go out of the chain of command!"
"Okay, but we had talked about the schedule change just yesterday and this morning. And so I did what I thought we had talked about."
"No, Katrina. None of that was official." (in my head I am just getting more and more confused.)
"We specifically talked about getting ____ to move from swing shift to mid shift for the time being until a new swing shift was hired."
"Right. But none of that was official! Staffing is MY thing. And you can't just make changes and then not tell me. And you can't just ignore the chain of command and call _____. She doesn't know my staffing. I am on call. That's my job and you need to call me when any changes are being made. Changes keep happening and people tell me, "Well Katrina said it was okay. And when I go to do pay-role and the schedule is all messed up and I don't know why that is not okay." (which, okay, I knew of ONE other time that I had told someone something about staffing and had forgotten to send my boss a message about what happened but she was making it sound like it had been happening over and over again.)
At this point I just didn't know what to say. So I must have said something like "Um.Okay." and tried to say something, to which my boss just kept talking over me, telling me over and over again how I wasn't communicating or using the chain of command properly and how she was very irritated at me about this whole situation.
I finally broke in and said, "You know, I hear what you're saying but I'm trying to explain to you what happened and you aren't letting me talk."
To which she told me, "You don't need to tell me what you did, ______ (the staff who's schedule I had moved) already told me!"
I think at that point I tried to convey that I really hadn't meant to go around her or do the wrong thing. I thought I had done exactly what we talked about (which she again insisted that what we had discussed wasn't at all official and I was very wrong.)
So then I asked if she wanted me to go back and fix the schedule to what it was before i had touched it. She told me no, not to do anything and that she was just really irritated.
When I tried to talk again she repeated that she was irritated and I had messed up and then said, "You know what, no, I have things I have to do right now. I don't have time for this."
And she hung up.
So okay, now I'm left sitting in a dark room totally confused about what the hell just happened. Hell, totally confused about my role as an assistant manager. And totally confused about how to handle that I just got my ass chewed out by my boss like a little kid. How am I to know what is and isn't official if we are talking about something official and making what seems like a plan of action?
I see what I did as completely attempting to help out and acting on the plan we had made. She sees it as...I don't know. Not good at all, and obviously not helpful and completely overstepping my boundaries as her assistant manager.
I feel so small and useless and completely out of place. It's like she called to yell at me and then to hang up (which is essentially what happened.)
I get that her life is all over the place right now. But I also know that I take responsibility for mistakes I make. And I don't know...I just...I guess I'm confused because it's like I'm getting mixed signals. I'm supposed to be the assistant/acting manager. But I'm not supposed to do anything without getting permission first? And hello, I thought I *had* gotten permission on this issue!
Not only that but I even wrote a note on my hand to remind myself to send my boss and the new boss to be a message that i had changed the schedule. So I made a decision as a manager, based on information I had specifically brought up previously, and then was going to let my superior know so she wasn't totally blindsided upon arriving at work Sunday.
And you know what KILLS ME!?
Right after I was done changing the schedule at work I got onto the work computer. As I was trying to write my email, the computer started FREAKING out and had to be restarted and the computer Help guys needed to be called. So I left work and decided to write the message from home (our work website can be accessed anywhere.) But time moved quickly and I didn't have a chance to write the message until after birthday dinner while I was at Maria and Autumns.
And as I'm going to push SEND on the message I'd written to my boss, Maria's laptop computer dies. When I get it plugged in and back online, the website wouldn't load. So I decided "Gah. I will just send it tomorrow at work. My boss doesn't check her messages over the weekend anyway." Ha.
And what should happen? But a half hour later was when my boss called to chew me out.
I have no solution and this REALLY bugs me.
*sigh* Thankfully my dear friends kindly listened to me freak out and then distracted me. And reassured me that I should NOT do anything immediately but I should wait 24 hours to contact anyone about what happened. Which actually we decided to wait until Monday. But just...part of me is terrified I just became very assuming and expendable. Too much stress, not enough communication. Busy doing my own thing and ignoring the chain of command. Of course my brain zooms to the worse case scenario of me out of a job.
And this all ties back to what God has been doing with me because one of the things He has recently exposed to me are the lies I have been believing for years about me being unwanted and useless.
But this whole situation has left the bitter taste of feeling unwanted and useless. And all I can hear in my head is that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' So my trying to help and having it blow up in my face means nothing. Because my trying means nothing when my boss is pissed that I totally screwed up - good intentions or no.
So I'm freaking out. Prayer is very much welcome because I am so uncertain right now. And just emotional and feeling like I am making a mess of life, relationships, and work.
So God has been doing some amazing things in my life and I really am feeling...almost hammered by life and stress in a rebuttle. I also feel like I'm making a mess out of some of my current relationships.
The other night someone told me I was picky. It wasn't a criticism, just an observation made by a guy who's kind of awkward. He admitted he wasn't trying to be rude, just that he was making an observation based on our evening of hanging around each other.
I didn't know what to make of this. I suppose I am picky. Mostly because I haven't been picky in the past and a lot of that had to do with self-image and insecurity. I didn't think I deserved to be picky or that I was pretty enough, smart enough, friendly enough, to be picky with who/what/how i wanted things in my life. Well, now I have been learning to embrace some of the pickiness because some of that pickiness is good to have. But it also nagged at me. I don't want to be picky to the point of being irritating to people. Not at all.
Anyway, the ultimate frustration right now is work related. I'm just heavily aware of the previously mentioned things on TOP of tonight's events.
as always, I give you history:
A woman I work with was rightfully fired today. She works day shift during the weekend. Eight hour shifts, four days a week.
My current boss (home manager) is a week or so away from not being our home manager anymore due to her moving on in her life and going to nursing school full time. It's a big decision and she's been dutifully training the new home-manager-to-be for the past month.
About a week or two ago I sat down with the home-manager-to-be and my current home manager and I told them I felt like I wasn't getting respect from my coworkers as a manager. I felt like no one took me seriously and that I was getting frustrated with tasks I was assigning not getting accomplished. This was a couple weeks after I'd been informed that one of my employees had complained about me being disrespectful towards her when I had tried to exert any sort of managerial authority.
So I take people's complaints and comments about me to heart. I really want to be the best manager that I can be. And yes, this is my first job as a manager, and I am learning how to handle the power given to me. It's a scary process because It seems like if I screw up my job is on the line. The company I work for has no problems cleaning house - it's been done before and I am very aware that I am quite replaceable. So to avoid conflict, I'd been walking on eggshells around all of the employees since I found out I had offended someone.
But as I was sitting and talking to the two women, my manager-to-be assured me that I was a manager and needed to be treated with respect. I was in fact acting manager when my current home manager was on her days off. My current home manager agreed. Therefore, the issue was going to be addressed in a staff meeting by clarifying that if the home manager or I give out tasks to do, they are to be completed within a week or disciplinary action would be taken. In the little three-manager's pow-wow they also told me that anything I told staff should be communicated to them so if staff came to them to complain they could back me up.
On top of that, not a week later, I was working while my boss was not. Someone asked me a question. My go-to answer was that I wasn't sure I had the authority to make the decision, so they should contact my home-manager or her boss - the program manager who works on one of the HM's days off. Well, for whatever reason they ended up calling the program manager. She okayed whatever it was and then asked why they hadn't just asked me. They said they had but I had told them to call her because it wasn't my decision to make. My program manger then told the staff that as I was acting manager the decision was up to me,. I just had to make sure I contacted the Home Manager to tell her what I had done/okayed (or something to that extent.)
So this gave me a sense that I could step further into becoming a good manager. I could take a little more responsibility and exert a little bit more of a managerial authority. I don't want to be authoritarian as a manager. I want my employees to feel appreciated and free to make decisions and offer ideas to improve the house and how it functions. I want people to respect me, but not because I'm a bitch or because I reign hell on them if they make mistakes. I don't want to demean when mistakes are made, I want to enable employees to make the right choices next time.
So, back to tonight. Remember the woman who got fired I mentioned earlier? Well, over the past three days my current manager has been keeping me apprised of the situation. Yesterday (her Friday) she told me that the woman was to have her meeting up at the office today. She told me that she was going to move a specific employee from swing shift (2-10) to day shift (7-3)and then that we'd have to hire a new swing shift. I asked if we could make the person switching shifts a mid-shift employee (11-7). My boss clarified if I meant permanently or until we got a new swing shift person. Now...I had meant permanently, but I caught her hesitancy to assign someone to that shift so I told her for the time being. She agreed that this was a good idea.
So today my boss called in to tell me something unrelated to the previous stuff and while on the phone I asked her if I needed to call anyone to cover the day shift for tomorrow. She told me probably, but that I shouldn't say anything until it was official.
So, five hours later I was to the end of my shift. I hadn't heard anything about the woman for sure being let go or not. So I called the program manager up at the main office to verify that the woman was not coming back to work and that I again see if I needed to find someone to work her shift the following day. My program manger actually told me, "Oh, well, yeah. You could just get someone to work like 11-7 to help with day and swing tomorrow to help out." (or something very close to that.) I took that as having gotten the official word so I went to talk to the specific woman my boss had told me about yesterday to ask if she could cover the shift tomorrow. She said yes.
As I was making the schedule change I noticed that she worked the exact SAME schedule as the woman who got fired did. And so it would work nicely to just adjust her schedule for the next week and a half (which is how far out the schedule went and exactly what my boss and I had talked about yesterday.) I didn't add or take away any hours from her schedule, I just shifted her eight hour shifts to be part day shift and part swing shift as my boss and I had discussed. I also made a mental AND physical note to send my boss a message on the company email system to let her know what I had done and that I had told the woman it wasn't set in stone and her schedule was subject to change upon the boss's review.
So adjustments made I went home.
Well, as I'm mid birthday celebration with my good friend Autumn I get a phone call. It's my boss and she is PISSED at me for changing the schedule and talking to the specific staff person about changing shifts and saying anything about what had occurred.
And I mean...she was REALLY upset and accusing me of not communicating with her about any of what happened. She started going off in my ear and all I can think is "What on EARTH is going on?"
I told her, "Well, you and I just talked about this and you had said that I would need to call someone to cover the day shift for tomorrow once it was official ____ wasn't coming back."
"Well I was going to talk to her, not you. Scheduling is my thing not yours. And when we talked about stuff none of that was official!"
"Oh, well the end of my shift was coming and I hadn't heard anything, so I called the program manger to make sure the shift needed to be filled like you and I had talked about earlier and she said to go ahead and fill it. I had gotten the official word as you had said I needed to wait for."
"Well why didn't you call me?!?!"
"It's your day off, and just two or so staff meetings ago the program manager told us that we could call her about managerial questions on your day off."
"But I'm on call!"
"But it's your day off, and she was already working today and she just told us we could call her on your day off."
"No, I'm on call, that is my job. You call me, not her. You don't go out of the chain of command!"
"Okay, but we had talked about the schedule change just yesterday and this morning. And so I did what I thought we had talked about."
"No, Katrina. None of that was official." (in my head I am just getting more and more confused.)
"We specifically talked about getting ____ to move from swing shift to mid shift for the time being until a new swing shift was hired."
"Right. But none of that was official! Staffing is MY thing. And you can't just make changes and then not tell me. And you can't just ignore the chain of command and call _____. She doesn't know my staffing. I am on call. That's my job and you need to call me when any changes are being made. Changes keep happening and people tell me, "Well Katrina said it was okay. And when I go to do pay-role and the schedule is all messed up and I don't know why that is not okay." (which, okay, I knew of ONE other time that I had told someone something about staffing and had forgotten to send my boss a message about what happened but she was making it sound like it had been happening over and over again.)
At this point I just didn't know what to say. So I must have said something like "Um.Okay." and tried to say something, to which my boss just kept talking over me, telling me over and over again how I wasn't communicating or using the chain of command properly and how she was very irritated at me about this whole situation.
I finally broke in and said, "You know, I hear what you're saying but I'm trying to explain to you what happened and you aren't letting me talk."
To which she told me, "You don't need to tell me what you did, ______ (the staff who's schedule I had moved) already told me!"
I think at that point I tried to convey that I really hadn't meant to go around her or do the wrong thing. I thought I had done exactly what we talked about (which she again insisted that what we had discussed wasn't at all official and I was very wrong.)
So then I asked if she wanted me to go back and fix the schedule to what it was before i had touched it. She told me no, not to do anything and that she was just really irritated.
When I tried to talk again she repeated that she was irritated and I had messed up and then said, "You know what, no, I have things I have to do right now. I don't have time for this."
And she hung up.
So okay, now I'm left sitting in a dark room totally confused about what the hell just happened. Hell, totally confused about my role as an assistant manager. And totally confused about how to handle that I just got my ass chewed out by my boss like a little kid. How am I to know what is and isn't official if we are talking about something official and making what seems like a plan of action?
I see what I did as completely attempting to help out and acting on the plan we had made. She sees it as...I don't know. Not good at all, and obviously not helpful and completely overstepping my boundaries as her assistant manager.
I feel so small and useless and completely out of place. It's like she called to yell at me and then to hang up (which is essentially what happened.)
I get that her life is all over the place right now. But I also know that I take responsibility for mistakes I make. And I don't know...I just...I guess I'm confused because it's like I'm getting mixed signals. I'm supposed to be the assistant/acting manager. But I'm not supposed to do anything without getting permission first? And hello, I thought I *had* gotten permission on this issue!
Not only that but I even wrote a note on my hand to remind myself to send my boss and the new boss to be a message that i had changed the schedule. So I made a decision as a manager, based on information I had specifically brought up previously, and then was going to let my superior know so she wasn't totally blindsided upon arriving at work Sunday.
And you know what KILLS ME!?
Right after I was done changing the schedule at work I got onto the work computer. As I was trying to write my email, the computer started FREAKING out and had to be restarted and the computer Help guys needed to be called. So I left work and decided to write the message from home (our work website can be accessed anywhere.) But time moved quickly and I didn't have a chance to write the message until after birthday dinner while I was at Maria and Autumns.
And as I'm going to push SEND on the message I'd written to my boss, Maria's laptop computer dies. When I get it plugged in and back online, the website wouldn't load. So I decided "Gah. I will just send it tomorrow at work. My boss doesn't check her messages over the weekend anyway." Ha.
And what should happen? But a half hour later was when my boss called to chew me out.
I have no solution and this REALLY bugs me.
*sigh* Thankfully my dear friends kindly listened to me freak out and then distracted me. And reassured me that I should NOT do anything immediately but I should wait 24 hours to contact anyone about what happened. Which actually we decided to wait until Monday. But just...part of me is terrified I just became very assuming and expendable. Too much stress, not enough communication. Busy doing my own thing and ignoring the chain of command. Of course my brain zooms to the worse case scenario of me out of a job.
And this all ties back to what God has been doing with me because one of the things He has recently exposed to me are the lies I have been believing for years about me being unwanted and useless.
But this whole situation has left the bitter taste of feeling unwanted and useless. And all I can hear in my head is that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' So my trying to help and having it blow up in my face means nothing. Because my trying means nothing when my boss is pissed that I totally screwed up - good intentions or no.
So I'm freaking out. Prayer is very much welcome because I am so uncertain right now. And just emotional and feeling like I am making a mess of life, relationships, and work.