Following Directions

Hypothetically speaking let's say I am rageful at the moment. Despite having vented this story 6 times to 6 different people, I am still mad. I am mad at the situation, disappointed with the individuals involved, and angry at myself for being so rageful! Have you ever heard that saying about the only person who can control your emotions is you? At this moment, I am just not doing a very good job of controlling how upset I am. Here is the story...

We are overloaded at work. We just have too much work to do in a given week. We are all passionate about the reason we are working, so usually we just get the job done. In fact, I even like my job, I just dislike the hours and not getting to see my husband. Anyway, on most weeks I am okay with work as long as we are all working as a team, people are being respectful, and everyone is working to the best of their ability. While we stressed about the amount of work, we are a good team and somehow make it all happen. To make work less stressful, we recently hired an assistant to share. Four of us share one person. This works out really well...the sharing part that is. We each get one day of the person's time. This person has worked in our office for three weeks. If you calculate this out, that means he has worked with me three times. I actually, have gotten a little more of his time because other staff didn't need him on their days.

Wonderful, right? I get the help I need! Wonderful, except for the fact he has messed something up EVERY day he has worked with me. Now, I am okay with errors. After all, an error isn't a mistake until you refuse to correct it. I genuinely believe(d) that people try their best and no one wants to be the person causing problems or making errors. Accidents happen, God knows I have made my fair share of mistakes and will continue to be erroneous. However, I am always trying my best.

The mistakes started out small, mailing a package without the materials we needed included. I politely made him aware of his error and asked him to correct it. The same day I gave him written instructions, he didn't follow them and brought me a finished product with lots of missing information. Sternly, I pointed out which steps on the printed instructions he had missed and asked him to correct them. I asked him to cut a bunch of papers with the paper cutter. He insisted on cutting them by hand with scissors, which is less professional looking and less accurate. Even once I asked him to please stop cutting each paper by hand with scissors and to start using the paper cutter (which is much more efficient), I still came in to find him using scissors. Even after correcting him again, I walked in to see him creating a crease to cut the papers with. Now the crease would need to be a straight line for a straight cut, right? Not in his world...he made a rounded crease on a round table. At this point I quit battling the paper cutting. Last week, he sent me an e-mail saying he didn't complete the tasks assigned because someone pulled him off of my work. I was frustrated, Friday is my day for help! I asked everyone if they had needed him and everyone said they hadn't. When I asked him about it, he said I had pulled him off my own projects to have him work on other projects. This confused me because I still had three hours of his time unaccounted for, not to mention he didn't finish a single project. Rather than start one project and finish it, he started five and got half way done with all of them. Now, at this point, me being the communications scholar I am decide I must not be communicating very well.

To aid this I spend time to type up a list of projects for this past Friday. I write at the top of the paper that the projects are in priority order and should be completed AFTER helping another staff who had an event this weekend. I then broke out in priority order which tasks needed to be done, provided hard copies for printing, and step by step instructions. After I typed these all up, I verbally went through the list. Just in case he didn't learn by reading or listening, I showed him with some hands-on-learning what needed to happen. Short of acting out his task list, I tried to communicate as clearly as possible what should be done. To make sure my instructions would be understood while I was out on Friday, I also explained them to our office manager. I told them if there were any questions they could call my cell phone. I would be in town, just helping my in-laws move. I would have my phone on and be available for questions. Fairly certain I had created clear instructions, I left the office.

I had a delightful weekend helping the family move and hanging out with my awesome husband. We went to a home and garden show, we watched the Olympics, and I finished my FAFSA. Last night I realized I work every evening this week from Sunday-Thursday. Tomorrow I travel, so this afternoon I stopped by my office. My office is a 15 minute drive the opposite direction of where I am traveling to and to make life easier I grabbed all the materials I needed so I wouldn't have to get my rental car, then go in to the office, then leave town. As I grabbed my printed materials, I noticed the check list I had left the assistant. He had checked off all the projects. I looked to see if everything was in order. That's when I noticed a project that looked slightly off. At first I looked down and thought, "Crap, did I spell July wrong and have him make copies?" Then, I realized that the entire page was not my work at all. I quickly shuffled through papers to find the original paper I had left for him to make copies of. He had written on the original, scratching things out and adding information in. I needed these copies made for a meeting I have Tuesday. Traveling tomorrow means I am out of the office and do not have time or supplies to re-do this project. I was instantly furious. WHY would someone take a simple project like running copies on special paper and re-type my work, adding in random information like someones phone number (might I add, I am not sure who's number it is) and completely ruin it?!?!?!?!?! I was so mad for going to my office on a Sunday. Next I was mad at the fact I don't have the supplies left to simply re-do the project. Then, I realized that someone thought they knew better than I did and attempted to re-do my work. Let me just point out...I am a talented individual with a degree and LOTS of experience in my line of work. I was hired and have been very successful, because I know what the heck I am doing. To work for me for three weeks and think you know better than I do and redo a project, makes me furious.

Now, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that some of the people reading this may not understand why this is such a big deal. To be honest, I am not quite sure why it infuriates me so much. I know part of it is because I work very hard to use resources wisely. The resources I bring in to my office go to a greater good and I make every possible attempt to be a good steward. Having to redo projects with supplies that took special approval in the first place is not good for our resources. It's also not good for time and staff management. I just feel like I work too hard and so do our volunteers to have someone not be able to follow simple instructions. I am also upset that no matter how hard I try to communicate effectively, this individual is still making errors. I am forgiving of people who accidentally mess up my projects. If someone accidentally spills coffee, it's okay. It's okay, because I trust it was not on purpose. When someone purposely doesn't follow directions and thinks they know better than I do, that apparently makes me nuts. So, aside from being frustrated that communication with this person is obviously failing and being upset that resources were lost, why am I so rageful??

I am putting this out to the universe. Right now I am pretty sure only four people read this and those four people know me well enough to know I am not an angry person. I am frustrated that this has gotten me so riled up. I just want to be happy. I know life isn't always happy, but life is too short to be this upset over a copy job. Thoughts?

Just for some closure, I am going to have a sit down meeting with the office manager who told my assistant it was okay to not follow my directions and the assistant who apparently isn't satisfied just being an assistant. I will bring my supervisor in to handle this issue. I am also considering giving up my day with the assistant. He is the same person I wrote about a couple days ago with smoking. It's not worth the stress. Great idea in the beginning to have an assistant, but this arrangement is not working. Since today was sort of my Monday, I hope my Tuesday (really Monday) gets better. Thanks for letting me vent and for any advice you might offer. Now off to do some deep breathing, read about relaxation techniques, and drink some tea. Hypothetically of course. Since this whole story started out as a hypothetical, we'll end it that way too. :-)