This is 100% true.
We work in an office that provides customer service, among other things. We engage with the public in person, over the phone, through email and through text. My coworker and I are almost exclusively in charge of sending out text campaigns – like, pay your bill, sign up for this, the deadline for this is on this date. That changed when a neighboring department–marketing–looked at our texts and decided that they could be improved upon.
I said very quietly, almost mouthing the words, “I’m about to bail.”
Her eyes got really wide and she mouthed back, “I know.”
She started shaking her finger at me and tried to say several things at once until she asked, “Are you leaving now? Do you want to walk out with me?”
This was kind of shocking because since the day we started, when it was 5 o’clock, she was out the door. For months, at the end of each workday, I waited a few minutes past 5 before leaving so I could pretend like I cared and was trying to do a good job. Now I start to close up shop at about 4:56 pm so I can get the hell out of there. But her office door was always closed shut at 5. And she always walked alone to her car. The work clique walks together to their cars. But my coworker and I–I guess being the new people–walked alone. I made this observation and just kind of shrugged my shoulders and said, whatever, these are coworkers, not friends.
I spent the morning thinking about an exit strategy.
There’s a new task that the whole office is supposed to be trained on, but I hadn’t learned it yet because I was on vacation for a few weeks. When I came back from vacation… Earlier in the day, I announced to the office that I had shuffled customers into breakout rooms on Zoom so that a higher-up could join them and complete this new task. I had two customers, each in a breakout room, and I needed a higher-up or two to join them. The boss jumped into the office chat and asked me, ” .” I think she was trying to tell me that I, too, needed to process this new task. But, also, it was a sarcastic remark… A moment later, a coworker came running into my office–apparently, this is the one who had told me that only the higher-ups are supposed to complete the new task. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that all of us were supposed to be doing the new task. I thought it was just the higher-ups.” Then he said, “So-n-so says sometimes when the boss phrases it like that, she doesn’t mean you or me. What she’s really saying is them. Can you do me a favor and ask her if I’m supposed to do the new task too?”
A few months ago, a new policy was undefined and implemented by the boss. Money was tight and we had to identify the dividing line that separated the customers who would continue to receive services from the customers who would be banished. The office put a piece of printer paper on a clipboard in the lobby and anyone in the office who had a question about this new policy could write their question on this piece of paper for the boss. My coworker next door had a number of questions on the paper. But for some reason, she was intimidated by the boss because she said she “didn’t want to get yell at by the boss.” I never hear any yelling in the office. She could see on the calendar that I had a one-on-one meeting with the boss that day and “could you take the clipboard to the meeting and get all the questions answered? And can you share the answers with me?” I agreed to do this because I’m the type who never has any questions to ask. So, having this huge list of questions to ask the boss will make me look good – I’m thinking about things; I want to do good work; this new policy is verrrry important. Plus, I figured I’d type it all up and share it with the office – I’m a team player. So, yeah, I’ll do it.
One of our coworkers offered to write up the instructions on how to do this new task so that the whole office would know what to do. I responded by saying thank you and that that would be really helpful. About an hour later, this coworker send us the document of instructions. I added to the conversation that, in the future, if all of our training could include a document of instructions, it would be really efficient. I added a smiley face too so that people would know that I wasn’t being passive aggressive, which I wasn’t. We would have something to study rather than asking a coworker to repeat the training 3-5 times. About a month ago, I came up with this ingenious idea – by the fifth time of having my coworker walk me through a new task, I figured out that I could video him with my cellphone and study the video. Smart.