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I am in
total turmoil over a job I have tried my best to learn for almost a year now. I
work in an optical lab, the kind where glasses are made in an hour. I was
SUPPOSED to have training, but that turned out to be a joke.
My boss expects me to just know, or just "catch" the needed skills. When I have been shown something, it's only one time, and very haphazard. The boss has generally not been very nice to me from the first day I walked in the lab. He throws temper tantrums if I make a mistake, and refuses any communication. When I do something wrong, for lack of being shown, he cusses and has major attitude, and tells me to get out of lab and go to break. I need to have explained to me what I am doing wrong. I can't learn from temper tantrums. When I explained this to him, he said, "I don't have the patience to train anyone." The assistant manager is no better. It's almost like they don't want me to succeed.
I now sit outside in my car before going in to work and hyperventilate, and have constant nausea, and on a few occasions vomited. I am having trouble getting hired anywhere else for lack of job history. It's also done something to my inner spirit, and now I feel like I can't do anything. In fact I become so flabbergasted at work that I can't grasp the smallest thing, and do really stupid things that I just can't believe I've done. Being totally upset is stopping me from absorbing anything. My fellow workers feel sorry for me and try to help me behind the bosses' backs, and that has come to a stop also because one confided in me that they were told not to help me.
Basically I am being pushed out. The company handbook says I should have the right to training without intimidation. Add to this, marriage to an abusive husband (when I had helped with his business) that resulted in a divorce. Consequently, I need this job so desperately and feel very angry that two terrible people could intrude in my life. The stress of this job and my divorce has just about destroyed me. I am 40 so am not young.
I will admit I am a slow learner, but the training is impractical. I am suppose to learn while they are running actual jobs, within the one-hour timeframe. I have a tendency to back off because I am penalized for breakage, and I don't want some poor person walking around with inferior eye glasses because of me.
Signed,
Vision of Disorder
Dear VOD:
You are stressed--so stressed that your health is upset. Even though your lack of a job history works against you, I think finding another place to work is something you should begin yesterday. Don't overlook the fact that your helping with your husband's businesses provides a job history. In your resume, list the tasks and skills you used in working in those jobs.
You are not in a mental or physical condition to fight the hostility of your workplace. Someone should, but probably not you. However, it would be best if you could hunt for a new position while still employed. Since you sense that your superiors want to get rid of you, they likely will assist you in this hunt, possibly with a recommendation, not for competence, but for willingness to work and desire for training. You could help them see that they could at least trade-off a letter of recommendation for not having to fire you. What I will recommend in the next paragraphs should make them hesitate before firing you.
Before you ask for your manager's support in hunting a different job, here is something to try. Remember that age discrimination is a charge that a smart manager does not want to risk. So don't cave in and give him a cause to fire you. Again request training--this time in writing. Include the description you have sent us, stating the failure of the organization to live up to its avowed handbook policy to provide adequate training without intimidation..
No one learns to dance by simply catching on. The steps are too complex to learn by observation. In this repeated written request for training, specify that instruction should NOT simply be on-the-spot observation and not from the manager or assistant, who apparently need anger management training themselves. Rather, request a series of one hour sessions by one of the most skilled employees and request that the instruction be given in off-work hours. The person who trains you should benefit from this by being paid for overtime, and so should you. But I wouldn't insist on that.
The fact that this request is put into writing, possibly with a copy sent to the organization's Human Resource Manager, should cause your impatient boss to change his tune. If he can not see your point, ask him to have a pair of spectacles ground which would improve his vision.
Let us know what you decide to do.
WEGO is your distant support group.
Bill Gorden