Here I am

I've decided I need to come back and write again. I was frustrated last year with my blog. I think I got tied up trying to entertain and forgot the original purpose, which was to get my frustrations and my thoughts out of my own way and to open up some room to move inside my brain. So I've changed my look here and will start fresh again. I wish there was a way to archive old posts, but I suppose they'll be moved out quickly enough.

There are probably a lot of things about which I could write, a lot of frustrations and deeply felt questions brought up over the last several months, but the last straw today, what finally brought me back here, was a work interaction. It's silly, really, but I don't have anyone I feel like I can discuss this with other than my husband, and hopefully he's busy with his own work.

I have an employee who drives me to pull my hair out with her lack of attention to detail and her ability to turn the simplest of issues into a confusing, drawn-out conversation. Just today I asked her if a file she had opened for a client had been open "for more than a week." I ask yes or no questions for a reason-- most of the time I want a short answer so that I can move on with my life. I don't necessarily always need all the details. Details bog me down. I need the big picture. She answered "I opened it on the 21st," which leaves me to look up what today is and count back. I said, "does that mean yes or no?" to force her to give me what I wanted, and I'm sure she thought "what a bitch" but I don't care. I have so many things going on in one day that when someone can't give me straight answers, even after I've had several conversations with them about what I need in my time-sensitive job, I can't help but be aggravated.

She told me I'm tougher on female employees than I am on male. I suppose that could be true, but I also have a male employee on a 60-day probation right now, and I have several objective ways in which I judge employees' work (like a report that our internal contact manager software pulls to show me mistakes created in the system). She consistently falls well behind all her coworkers in these reports. She can't seem to manage to get customer interaction entered correctly, whether that's completely forgetting to log something, leaving fields blank, or putting information under the entirely wrong person. Her inactions with customers often seem confused and circular except when it's a straight-forward known issue.

You know, the more I think about it, I actually think I'm easier on her than I am on the others. It's taken me longer to get to this point with her than it has with some others. That may have more to do with her personality in general than her being a female-- she tends to cry, and I hate to see anyone cry, not because I feel sympathy, but because it annoys me and makes me feel uncomfortable so I avoid it. And I also take her excuses more often than I would from a guy. She's one of very few women on a mostly-male technical team, so I really think I give her more slack than the others because I want some diversity.

She's an entry-level employee, so I've been trying to give time and guidance to help her find her groove, but I'm getting fed up. I asked her to fill out her personal development plan, and she told me she thinks she can be the department manager in "3 to 6 months," meaning she thinks she can out maneuver the reigning department lead who's also vying for that open manager spot and who has a full year of training on her. She obviously hasn't been listening to my criticisms and had her opinion of her work suffer for it. It's time to get tough, I think, give her one last 60-day shot at it too, and then let her go if she can't perform. I don't have the luxury of time to waste, and all she seems capable of doing correctly and consistently is wasting my time. The good news is since she was hired I have developed a new way to source people for this position, and the new hires seem to be much more suitable and capable.

Running a department like this is not something I ever thought I would be doing, and I feel like I play chess with people's lives on a regular basis, but my ultimate responsibility lies with protecting the health of the company overall because a healthy company means we all get paid. I can't let a bad apple spoil the bunch, as painful as it is sometimes to pick it and throw it away.