Every day I get up and go to a job that is difficult to deal with. I love what I do, but I can't stand the people I report to, especially the Dean who is the absolute most inept and irresponsible boss I have ever had, and yet he is the bee's knees to his superiors. All of us minions and cogs know better, but it is never addressed. Our opinions don't count because we are lower in the ranks, and thus are not actually heard. He makes a great presentation every day --well dressed and professional, and he has the credentials and the educational pedigree that the Administrators and Academics where I work value above all else. Yet he doesn't really produce anything and inserts himself into things so much that it ultimately slows down the works. He forgets decisions he has made; he forgets to tell you to proceed with things you are holding; he forgets to get back to you about the 9 million things you have given him, and reminded him of oh...about 10 million times. Then all of a sudden his brain cells work again and he starts a flurry of activity..100's of questions, demands for immediate answers, new reports to do and submit...then he forgets about them too, right after you have killed yourself to get these things done. When his lightbulb goes on, ohhhh about 4 months after you have done something for him, he decides to change them, but guess what? He doesn't give you the changes at all. He says he is working on them and we will have a meeting on the topic. The meeting comes and he asks if you have made the changes to the document, when in fact he never gave it to you.

This is a merry go round kids. This is my work life, every damn day.   

No one says a word about his negligence and irresponsibility. His bosses think he is a darling. He is the kind who could be standing by a dead body with a loaded gun in his hand, but he won't be arrested. YOU are. You are the bad one. You didn't manage him. You didn't do your job. Thus, those of us who work with him are caught in the middle and  have to deal with his negligence and the negative commentary from the big boss. He gets away scot free.  The big boss tells us it is our job to manage our bosses, so attempts to manage him on my part go no where. He gets annoyed if you push him, so I have learned to let him be and let the chips fall where they may. What concerns me is that letting him work the way he works (at a snail's pace) will backfire onto me, and I will be held responsible for his failure to complete his tasks. This is what I think about every day. This is a guy who takes  3 hour lunches, comes in late and never responds to things in a timely manner, but no one says anything...no one sets boundaries and limits with him, but heaven forbid we do the same....all hell breaks loose.

When I was younger I strived for success and pushed myself to achieve my visions within my job. What I do was not what I initially set out to do (art career), but I have done well for myself and achieved success and recognition from the people I have dealt with over the years. Most of my former bosses recognized this and recognized the fact that I am a "doer" , a "go to" person, someone who actually cares about what she does, and they rewarded me for my efforts. Now I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't.

Younger people have high hopes that their plans and dreams and their efforts will come to fruition and will be recognized. The truth I have ultimately learned --especially in my place of employement-is that this is not the case actually, and no matter what you do, how you do it, how you resolve issues, manifest change, etc., it  may never be recognized by the people one works with. Somehow their vision of you goes black and they can't see the forest through the trees. Well, this happens to me a lot and I hope it doesn't happen to others. Most times at work I feel like I live in two different worlds, two totally different Universes and I feel totally confused half the time. One world is the world of the faculty, staff, students and external users I deal with who continually applaud my efforts and send letters towards that end, thanking me for being the way I am. I have been told by friends on campus that I am viewed as THE "go to" person, and I smile at that because it makes me feel good.

And yet, the "other" Universe I deal with is the polar opposite most of the time. I work very very hard to make sure the services I have to provide are appropriately and timely performed. I respond diligently to others regularly, especially when they have issues because it is my job to ensure their needs are met. Then I am told I am creating too high expectations of customer service with these people and I shouldn't do this. Why? I should be a drone, in other words? (Yes I wrote about this before)  I do this for my own sanity, I say; I do this because it is easy to forget things when the phone is ringing every second and you have to drop what you are doing to respond. I dutifully go to meetings and then am told I am in too many meetings (see previous post). Ok, I get it. I understand that we have other important things to do and my time is (yes it is) wasted on meetings for events we do every year. But then deal with it I want to say...set limits with the people who are coordinating this and stop lecturing ME about it.

The upshot of this is I feel I never can win. Never. There is always some comment or inference made that I am not doing something right, but I don't know what it is.Things are commented upon in these vague ways, but there is no clarity even though I ask questions about these issues. I feel confused half of the time...yes I mentioned it before...because I am not sure what their expectations are for me on a daily basis. I am getting evaluated this coming Wednesday and I wrote in my own self-evaluation (that they review and alter based on their opinions of job performance) that I need THEM to define THEIR expectations,rather than expecting me to understand them through osmosis.

I am a friendly person, a warm person, but I am a loner at heart basically. When I come to work I want to get my work done, rather than standing around bullshitting with the other cogs in the wheel as the others do. I don't like wasting my time on bullshit conversations. Sure I have done it, but invariably my work gets slowed down, so I do like to focus and concentrate on things. Apparently I am not supposed to do this. Many years ago my VP implied that I wasn't being friendly with her Executive Assistant and the Dean's former Executive Assistant, who left some years ago due to her frustrations with the Dean (who also came on to her). I remember being utterly astonished by this, and I told the VP that her impressions were completely untrue..that I ate lunch with them every day, that we shared personal issues and helped each other with them, that we laughed a lot together. She looked at me like I was crazy. And to this day I wonder why she said that, why she inferred this when she saw us hanging out with each other all the time. Another time the VP basically told me that I shouldn't be friends with one of the other Directors in the department. While this director is a bitch and the VP can't stand her, the woman HAD helped me when I was in a crisis and for that I was grateful. I said this to the VP.  I don't agree with this Director's mode of operation, or her ways of handling people, but that was and is her gig, not mine. I just accepted her as a person who helped me..I saw who she was underneath her mask and was grateful she reached out to me.  I remember feeling like a child being told by a parent that I shouldn't hang out with the bad people. I am not a kid. I don't tell people who they should be friends with or not. Why would I do that? And why would a boss tell me this? The subject hasn't come up since, but I do think about it, still.

I have issues with self esteem and self confidence. These issues were born out of my family of origin, of course, and I have worked hard to overcome them. I have issues about being recognized and appreciated (something I didn't get as a kid --I was always compared and contrasted with my siblings by my dad), so I make every effort to recognize my staff so that they get what I don't, so that they know I appreciate their hard work.  Without them I am nothing, truthfully. I had issues about making presentations in front of a room because I had severe performance anxiety as a kid, and yet I have overcome this problem. But in this environment, with bosses who have weird expectations and impressions of me, or who don't define their expectations, I feel like I am doing something wrong all the time. Consequently, I return to my deep inner feelings of insecurity and failure every day. I try not to let these things bother me, I really do, but they do and they manifest themselves in my inability to sleep through the night, my 1:30 a.m. stress eating habits (peanut butter, which I love but makes me feel sick eventually), my smoking too much, my quiet and remoteness at home. 

Staff are out periodically and small things become large crises that the bosses somehow accept and honor. The Dean's secretary burns her hand and she is out for 8 days. She is a sweet kid at the age of 31 and still lives at home with her Mother, but every little thing is a catastrophe for her. In fact she left her original job at the college to go to another school outside our system that paid her more money, but she left that job there and ran back to our school at signficantly LESS PAY so she could complete her degree. An understandable position, but meanwhile, once you break service at our school and then come back, you have to start all over again with your sick and annual leave accruals, so the 8 days she took she didn't really have. Anyway, the burn she had was merely an inch and a half long. It was severe but not severe enough to warrant all those days out, on codeine nonetheless. Do I sound mean about this? Probably. But it isn't my intention to do so. I understand that some people cannot cope with pain of any kind, and she is one of them. Yet there is a discrepancy there...a feeling that it is okay for her to be out a lot, but if I am out a day I get an attitude, or I am called at home about insipid things that COULD WAIT HONESTLY. I know, I know --I am in a higher rank obviously, and in that rank I am EXPECTED to make decisions, to be present. And when I am in I am ignored. And when I am out I get the cold shoulder, as if I was out deliberately. So I go to work sick and in pain to avoid this crap.

The VP's Executive Assistant has been in and out the last year and a half due to the serious illness and death of her dad throughout this year, and then the illness of her mother, and nothing is said. Of course it was tragic and of course it was difficult, and I understand. Everyone is concerned for her. And yet, when I have an issue, when I am out because MY husband is having surgery, not a fucking word is said...maybe an occasional "how is your husband?" comes up from the Dean, but the VP says nothing. Anyway, when the Exec Assistant was out I stepped up to the plate and assisted the VP with taking meeting minutes, but she didn't say thank you publicly. It was expected. Yes, she and the Dean thought I wrote beautifully and better than her assistant, but helllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooo, I always have written this way. This isn't something new. I appreciated the comments but I feel that they don't know me at all...don't see my capabillities. And I don't know why. 

I work hard not to let these things affect me. I try hard to be a duck and let this bullshit roll off my back, and for the most part I am successful to this end, but lately I just feel exhausted from having to prove myself over and over and over again, and I have had enough.

So the upshot of these ramblings is that IT does not get better. It really doesn't. You think you have reached a point in your life where you are established, but you aren't really established...maybe to yourself to a degree, and other colleagues. But to others you aren't in the long run. And then there you are, back to square one, wondering what you do wrong and why, but they don't tell you what it is.

I am tired of banging my head against the wall.