Posted by TexasChic on October 6, 2008, at 21:06:03
Okay, so last week was my first full week at my new job. Halfway through I was given this job that was actually a whole bunch of jobs put together. The guy who gave it to me actually only intended for me to do the proofs and then split the rest up with them. I didn't realize this, and the rest of the guys got really busy anyway, so I tried to do it all. Once one of the owners realized it wasn't anywhere close to getting done on time, he asked me what he could do to help. So I said split the job up among the others. So that's what we did. I worked 12 hours straight that day and I thought we had it completed. The next day, the printer guy kept giving me every part of the job back, including the ones done by the guys, saying they were wrong. I spent that whole day correcting thing and didn't leave until 11PM (this was Friday).
Before I left, one of the owners, I'll call him Mr. M, gave me this big long talk on how it wasn't my fault everything got all screwed up, and I should have never been given the whole job to do to begin with being new and all. He said some more stuff, that I was doing a good job etc, then he ends it with, you just have to learn to be faster. This completely negated everything he had just said. Neither that job, nor any of my other jobs have run into any problems because I am too slow. Its usually because I don't have all the info I need to do the job correctly (for instance, one job I did had to be redone because I had it running off the page. This was because nobody had told me this specific material was shorter than everything else.)
So today I come in and ask about the last job I was working on Friday night, and they said it was still wrong. So I opened it up, redid it very quickly with no problem, and it was fine. I was just too exhausted when I was trying to do it that Friday night. At this point I told the guys (not the supervisor one who works in the room with us) what Mr. M had said about I just need to learn to be faster, and they said, Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean it that way. So I tried to let it drop.
When I went to lunch, I was still a bit peeved about Mr. M saying I needed to work faster, but had pretty much put it aside. So in the lunchroom I run into the other owner, Mr. L. He asks me how its going and if there are any suggestions I might have. I told him it would help if each procedure for each printer was written down. I said this, knowing that the rest of the guys and I had had a difficult time with one person telling us to things one way, and one another. His response was, well we don't write things down, that knowledge just come from experience. Then he asked me if I had any prepress background (he wasn't in on the interview). I said I hadn't in my recent jobs, but I did at a job I had several years ago. Now granted, I could have phrased that better, I guess that's one of my problems, I somehow manage to make myself sound bad. So he says, well right now is a trial period and we're looking for someone with experience who can get the work out quickly. I was just like, oh crap. What I actually said was, "Well I have no doubts that I can do the job", which he didn't really respond to. He added that they had bought the fastest computers and equipment so there should be no problems. This was after I had gone to lunch because the job I was working on had taken 20 minutes to save so far and still wasn't done. He just doesn't seem to understand that even with the fastest computers (which they aren't), big jobs take up a lot of time! This is seriously the biggest problem I have run into in my line of work. The people in charge either don't understand, or they understand a little and think they know it all (that's the way it is in this case). I was so upset I couldn't even finish my lunch.
So when I got from lunch there was just one of the guys in the office, and I told him what Mr. L had said. He was like, "Well that's not what you were talking about!!" (referring to writing things down). I was like, "I KNOW"!! I was starting to get really pissed now. So I go to the supervisor guy and ask him how that job went and he just says, "well no news is good news". I was like, "What?" Then I said, "Okay, I would like to know if I did the diecut correctly". He said, "it was pretty close, but a little off". Then he said he only knew that because he had so much experience. I then told him, "I used the cutline the customer provided, was that not correct?" (he thought I had created it myself). And he was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah".
Okay, I was about to blow my lid. I felt as if the three of them had discussed me and had already made the decision I wasn't going to work out. I didn't tell anybody what the last guy had said, I just did my work and went home.
According to my previous sessions with my T, I shouldn't have discussed it with any of the guys. She said never discuss the problems you're having with management with your coworkers, because that's just gossip and you really need to go talk to the person your having problems with instead. So I guess I messed up there.
I just don't know how to handle this. I think maybe I'll ask the supervisor guy to sit down for a talk (I call him that because he really isn't a supervisor, he just knows the most and is considered the go-to person when there is a problem). So, I think I will try to discuss the things that have been said and how I feel about it. The one advantage to talking to him is since he works along side us, he knows how things really are, and how the owners sometimes make impossible demands. He was complaining about a job one of the owners had given to him today right before I left, saying it was all screwed up and the owner said, "Oh, this should be no problem - take you just a few minutes to do". So talking to him about it is the only thing I can think of to do. The only problem is, we're so busy there's really not time to talk!
-T
P.S. Sorry this was so long. I just needed to get it out.
poster:TexasChic
thread:856116
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/work/20071028/msgs/856116.html