The past couple weeks have been hard. I've been coming off my antidepressant (the kind I'd been on has a "discontinuation syndrome."), started taking a birth control pill (I know, it sounds counter productive, but that is part of the program), injured myself, had to stop training, and it was yearly review time at work. I've had a hard time dealing with my frustrations. My poor boss has been putting up with about as much crazy as my poor husband has. I've been absolutely hung up on the concept of having to make Goals for the upcoming year. Personally, I think that kind of thing is for management and people that want to be in management. I'm technically a skilled laborer (electronics assembler) that is pretty damn happy with her lot, so I don't fall into either category. Now, I'm perhaps smarter than the average laborer. I have a pretty damn solid work ethic because I love my job and the people I work with on a daily basis. I go out of my way to help those people out because I care about them and I hate seeing them struggle, even my boss. I also take great pride in the quality of my work.
I've worked in management before, so I recognize when somebody is probing to see how open I'd be to "developing my career." I've been on both sides of that coin before. I changed industries to get away from being automatically recruited into management training. I've as much as told my supervisor that when he starts to say how I'd make a better supervisor than him. I'd been counting on my technical inexperience and lack of knowledge to trump any perceived "leadership potential." It's worked now for the better part of six years. I think the problem is that the group I work in is small. We have field technicians, production (me and my cronies), HR, IT, Admin...ok just everybody in one building. It's not as easy to just keep your head down and go unnoticed when there are only 30 or 40 people in the building on any given day. Especially when you're on really good terms with your supervisor.
I knew within 5 min of meeting John that we were going to get along just swimmingly. Same work ethic, same age group, similar dork-isms, etc. That and he is just a great guy, somebody you could kick back with and have a beer...the older brother I never had. The man is willing to teach me whatever he knows because I soak it up like a sponge. And why wouldn't I? I love being able to do more handy things, expand my abilities as an assembler. He's just as fond of me. So he tells his boss how great I am. How I help him with the other assemblers and how quickly I adapt...and so on.
I got an awesome raise this year. I mean, it's not a lot, but it was the most they were budgeted to give me and they said I earned it. I know I did. I'm not so much the kiss-ass as much as I just like to do a good job and have people like me for it, not because I want to get ahead. Generally all I need is a pat on the head and a "good girl," and I'm set. But I took a hefty pay cut to work at this place and even a small percentage helps out as far as my man is concerned. The pay cut is another long story, but suffice it to say I hated every minute of my last year at that company and I learned that no job is worth my happiness or sanity.
The problem I had with my stellar review and pay raise is that John, bless his heart, said more than once that I've stepped into the role of an "unofficial team leader." It's true, I have a knack for putting myself in that position; when there's a need for somebody to have a backbone and nobody else will do it. I don't have the patience for standing around and listening to "I dunno, what do you think we should do?" and the response being the same question parroted back. Or the classic situation where somebody has a question but they're too shy to ask John. It makes me want to pull my hair out and scream. Then the other people that work outside our department come to me when/if John isn't in because I have a better grasp of what's going on than the other assemblers.
You may ask, what is wrong with all of that? My answer is "nothing if I wanted to be more than just a working (albeit helpful) grunt." The problem with being in management, especially in this group, is that there's always something else they want to add to your list of responsibilities. It's like they just keep it coming and wait to see what your breaking point is. I understand the need for a company to develop talent and take advantage of it, but when should the individual in question draw the line? Should it be the 70 hour work weeks for 40 hours of pay? The toll it takes on your health? How much should you let it take away from your family life? The problem is that unless you thrive under pressure, unless you have some kind of internal mechanism that separates your professional and personal life it's going to make you unhappy and you'll end up with a lot of personal regrets. Or at least that's my experience.
I'm the sort that handles one thing at a time really well...and that's it. I'm glad that I made the venture into management early in life, before I got married, before I start a family. It's given me the opportunity to really understand how I respond to stress and what my real priorities are. True, they offer help in finding that balance between your personal and professional lives, but I truly feel I've found that balance already. I can do good work, be proud of it, and still have time for my husband, the work we have to do in order to have children, and my martial arts workout/outlet. To be honest, this is the happiest I've been with my personal and professional balance. I tell John this and he still insists that he and his boss want to develop me into more than I want to be.
So, now that I've got all that explanation out of the way, back to the topic of Goals. The system they have set up is only going to work well for management. They want you to set relevant (I understand that one), acheivable (again, I get that), and measurable goals. It's the measurable part that I don't like so much. We measure cables and gaskets. Not once have I been told to keep track of how much waste I make or how often my work is rejected by quality assurance. I wouldn't know how to come up with that information. We're not privy to such things, nor do we care to be. That's what management is there for. I don't know what kind of training I might want/need outside of what they require of us. When I set a goal for myself at work, it's to get organized or to take better production notes...not really something with a metric. When you use the Goal program's "help" in order to come up with something to put down, everything they suggest is something for management. Things about quarterly reports and spearheading programs and such non-sense. When I see this, it literally makes me feel like I should twist my own head off. They never required goals before this year, and I've never been asked to have goals anywhere else. It's not that I couldn't come up with some kinda bullshit to put in there, but if we're expected to achieve our goals, they should give us something we can actually work with.
When I first told John that we shouldn't have to do them, that they were corporate bullshit, just trying to get us to write something for the sake of writing something, he tried to explain that setting these Goals are good for us. That even if I'm not thinking about advancing now, it would go a long way to help down the line, to be another feather in my cap. I told him I had no intention of advancing; been there done that and hated every soul sucking second of it. "You never know what you'll want down the road, I didn't want to either when I first started here," is about all I can get out of him whenever I try to convince him of my sincerity.
So, the Goals have become my battle ground to prove my resolve to stay put. Clearly they have only seen the genial, hard working, supportive Meredith. They have not met the Meredith that is unrelenting when she finds something worth being stubborn and difficult over. It doesn't happen often, but when it does...
At first I flatly refused to do the Goals. John, being the nice guy he is, wasn't really sure how to handle it. That and I think he was genuinely confused by the temper I was obviously trying to keep in check. He offered to sit down and help me with it. I am a lil fuzzy on this point in time because I was actually quite angry. I have a feeling I may have challenged him to "try it." He dropped it for a week. Then he brought it back up, I got angry again and shot it down again. I think he started avoiding it after that, so I started bringing it up. Not that I wanted to do them, but nobody would notice my being obstinate if I didn't engage somebody on the matter. One afternoon I sent John an email saying I wanted to see the policy that stated I had to do them. When he got it the next day, he was not at all pleased. I told him I'm not trying to take it out on him specifically, that I don't want to shoot the messenger and what not. That I was doing it on principal. I couldn't explain what the principal was because I have a hard time articulating on the spot. I'd much rather have gone to his boss over it as she is what I consider the corporate face of our production department, but I don't want to make John look bad. He started to try and find the policy. That day he was just so overwhelmed by things he had to get done I felt like liquid shit for making it harder on him. I've been in his shoes, I like the guy, I hated seeing him suffer and knowing that I had contributed to it.
So I changed tactic. I did the goals, as much as it made me want to roll naked on broken glass, I did them. I did one for John...one that would have to be done as it's regular training for my job. The other two? To take the company's online Word and Excel classes. Not that it matters as I have no intention of doing them. Yes, I went for the softer line, but ultimately they can't give me a sparkly review next year and even if the higher ups didn't get to see the other side of me, poor John did. Maybe now that I have my thoughts together now I can actually talk to him about what it is all about. I don't really care if it costs me a pay raise. There's no price for happiness.
