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This is long. Thanks if you read it.
This happened at my job. I want to start off with this: I'm not in the wrong for what I was thinking/feeling about myself and my job or what was driving those feelings, but I am wrong for AGAIN venting inappropriately.
So I'm on a temporary project. We do collections on overdue items past a certain age but a large portion of the job, as even my boss says, is more account management/cleaning up messes. That's the majority of what I've been doing because whatever accounts happen to be assigned to me are not simply that the customer isn't paying. They are things wherein I have to write off invoices for various reasons, not collect money on them. So even though that's understood by management, I'm still feeling like I'm not doing my job right if I'm not getting enough payments.
Now, there are a few reasons for that.
One is that, if you are familiar with the concept of spoonies, you will understand how in an 8-hour day you can only get about 6 hours of work out of me. It's because I'm a chronic pain sufferer. It keeps me up at night and then I'm sleep-deprived and then I get a migraine. My boss knows about it somewhat but isn't really aware of how often/much this affects me. He's a Normal; what does he know? lol, I get it. He really can't understand. Anyway, even though I'm doing my best, I've come out of inbound calls where every single second has to be accounted for so I feel bad that I don't do more. No, 6-hour days aren't an option for my team. I have to be full-time.
Another reason is that, as we were talking about in our end-of-week meeting, corporate is really focused on numbers, so much so that they are willing to reward us with hundreds of dollars in gift cards. Only the funds we actually you know, collect, hit our bottom line. Our stock has dropped dramatically. They are even willing to let us do overtime in 4th quarter which is almost unheard of. This is where I went wrong. I got irritated at the reward system because it represents to me that all the hard work I do, all the satisfied customers, mean nothing because I don't get the big dollars. I was verbal about it when I should have kept my mouth shut. I also was resistant to keeping track of overdue dollars collected as opposed to the total open amounts on contracts. I have 70 accounts right now. Subdividing information is not welcome. I usually go in with the goal to bring the account to zero more than collecting just what corp. wants. It's kind of a minor thing but I'm already stressed. My boss shushed me and glared at me.
Also earlier I teased him that we must be having a long meeting because we did something wrong. I did follow that with the thought that while I was half joking, I really do feel like in the spring we're all going to be laid off. I've seen quite a few departments get the ax in my 2 years here. They just let go the entire team of people who chat with you on our website. I don't feel very secure, you know?
Fast forward to the end of the day. I went to ask my old boss a question about time off and we got to talking about my new position. I found out from her a couple of things that made me feel really bad for my slight attitude:
1. It's no longer considered a temporary thing. It is permanent. I don't think I need to worry unless they let us all go and make us reapply like they did another department. But in talking to our Director I think I'll be fine.
2. The managers had a meeting and were talking about how well we're doing on our project and my boss called me out specifically for "doing very well". After that I throw attitude toward him, and he's the best boss ever. I feel so bad. I felt 2 inches tall when she told me that. No wonder my new boss was shocked. I've been nothing but professional up until today.
I think I'm just so afraid my value will be reduced to numbers at some point. I spend all day cleaning up other employees' messes and customers' inability to follow directions and I'm good at it. I've picked up a lot of new information quickly. But it doesn't show in the dollar count. No one has come to me and said I'm not getting enough. I've gotten nothing but positive feedback. But I'm feeling insecure and it's coming out as negativity. One minute I feel like I could stay and the next I am looking at job ads on my phone. I'm so up and down with this company, have been since the beginning. Thing is, I LOVE resolving stuff for customers. There is a team that does that and they were just hiring and for whatever reason I didn't apply. They don't do actual collections. I'm kicking myself but I found a lot of job postings I'd be perfect for.
I'm just so all over the place. And I think I'm ungrateful.
This happened at my job. I want to start off with this: I'm not in the wrong for what I was thinking/feeling about myself and my job or what was driving those feelings, but I am wrong for AGAIN venting inappropriately.
So I'm on a temporary project. We do collections on overdue items past a certain age but a large portion of the job, as even my boss says, is more account management/cleaning up messes. That's the majority of what I've been doing because whatever accounts happen to be assigned to me are not simply that the customer isn't paying. They are things wherein I have to write off invoices for various reasons, not collect money on them. So even though that's understood by management, I'm still feeling like I'm not doing my job right if I'm not getting enough payments.
Now, there are a few reasons for that.
One is that, if you are familiar with the concept of spoonies, you will understand how in an 8-hour day you can only get about 6 hours of work out of me. It's because I'm a chronic pain sufferer. It keeps me up at night and then I'm sleep-deprived and then I get a migraine. My boss knows about it somewhat but isn't really aware of how often/much this affects me. He's a Normal; what does he know? lol, I get it. He really can't understand. Anyway, even though I'm doing my best, I've come out of inbound calls where every single second has to be accounted for so I feel bad that I don't do more. No, 6-hour days aren't an option for my team. I have to be full-time.
Another reason is that, as we were talking about in our end-of-week meeting, corporate is really focused on numbers, so much so that they are willing to reward us with hundreds of dollars in gift cards. Only the funds we actually you know, collect, hit our bottom line. Our stock has dropped dramatically. They are even willing to let us do overtime in 4th quarter which is almost unheard of. This is where I went wrong. I got irritated at the reward system because it represents to me that all the hard work I do, all the satisfied customers, mean nothing because I don't get the big dollars. I was verbal about it when I should have kept my mouth shut. I also was resistant to keeping track of overdue dollars collected as opposed to the total open amounts on contracts. I have 70 accounts right now. Subdividing information is not welcome. I usually go in with the goal to bring the account to zero more than collecting just what corp. wants. It's kind of a minor thing but I'm already stressed. My boss shushed me and glared at me.
Also earlier I teased him that we must be having a long meeting because we did something wrong. I did follow that with the thought that while I was half joking, I really do feel like in the spring we're all going to be laid off. I've seen quite a few departments get the ax in my 2 years here. They just let go the entire team of people who chat with you on our website. I don't feel very secure, you know?
Fast forward to the end of the day. I went to ask my old boss a question about time off and we got to talking about my new position. I found out from her a couple of things that made me feel really bad for my slight attitude:
1. It's no longer considered a temporary thing. It is permanent. I don't think I need to worry unless they let us all go and make us reapply like they did another department. But in talking to our Director I think I'll be fine.
2. The managers had a meeting and were talking about how well we're doing on our project and my boss called me out specifically for "doing very well". After that I throw attitude toward him, and he's the best boss ever. I feel so bad. I felt 2 inches tall when she told me that. No wonder my new boss was shocked. I've been nothing but professional up until today.
I think I'm just so afraid my value will be reduced to numbers at some point. I spend all day cleaning up other employees' messes and customers' inability to follow directions and I'm good at it. I've picked up a lot of new information quickly. But it doesn't show in the dollar count. No one has come to me and said I'm not getting enough. I've gotten nothing but positive feedback. But I'm feeling insecure and it's coming out as negativity. One minute I feel like I could stay and the next I am looking at job ads on my phone. I'm so up and down with this company, have been since the beginning. Thing is, I LOVE resolving stuff for customers. There is a team that does that and they were just hiring and for whatever reason I didn't apply. They don't do actual collections. I'm kicking myself but I found a lot of job postings I'd be perfect for.
I'm just so all over the place. And I think I'm ungrateful.
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