I should feel lucky to have a job in this climate. But I'm getting depressed and demotivated the longer I stay in this job, and I don't think IABU! Basically had 2 DCs very close together, 1yr maternity, new employer when I went back to fulltime work in June 2010 (too long a commute if I'd stayed at previous employer of 6yrs due to childcare issues). But I'm sitting here on my afternoon off (checking work emails!) wondering how on earth my boss can honestly say he'd expect anyone to maintain enthusiasm!
(1) The suppliers we work with are terrible! They don't deliver to customers well (late, damaged) but we keep dealing with them - not because they're the relative best but because MD's sister owns the primary courier company we use - I've just had an email saying a lady is threatening to sue because they've broken her gate, and she's in the area I cover - I could cry because I have no power to stop this crap from happening repeatedly - I just have to deal with it. (it's a very specific product we re-sell, think of it like high-end custom-made hard glass for new builds, but not glass - only 3 companies in the UK do this, and none to our scale).
(2) A lot of the admin work I'm involved in no one bothers about unless it's not done... things I consider much more important (customer relations!) are left down the priority list compared with some very trivial crap (to me)... (example: we file bi-weekly sales reports - these take 5hrs to prep, yet no one looks at them, because they ask for status updates on stuff that's been in my reports - one time when I missed it because I was ill literally no one noticed that I was a week late in filing, but these are the considered very very important and more important than customers/sales from a management point of view, despite having emails sitting waiting to be answered which deal with customers who've been promised order delivery three times and it's not arrived yet.. that sort of scale of stuff - bad stuff from a PR point of view)
(3) I have to report to 4 different people. my mentor (really just a boss by any other name), my sales supervisor, my team lead, and the regional lead. When I'm quiet no one knows because they just see their work from me, when I'm busy they don't know my workload from the others too. It's like we have a hierarchy but none of the benefits from having it. And it's really stressful because of that setup.
I feel as though I've been set up to fail 
I work hard, try my best. But I'm just really demotivated and generally think "What's the point of trying my best?" when I go into work for a shift.
AIBU, and WWYD in my situation? I've already fed these 3 issues back before (several times informally, once at my Appraisel in January where they said I was doing an "excellent job" and had "exceptional sales mentality" 
but took my comments no further) Have you ever had an employer that seems to be setting you up to fail? But it wasn't specific people, it was the whole structure of the organisation? How did you cope? What did you do?
My only option surely can't be to leave?
My last employer was a Council and I have to say were bloody brilliant, didn't appreciate it at the time.
Dee
xxx
AIBU?
... to feel incredibly demotivated and wonder why they hired me?
dededuma · 25/07/2011 12:48
Lalalonglegs, yes I suppose that is one thing, I could jump ship and no one would question the issues here (because a year doesn't seem to set off alarm bells in private sector, phew) - I eventually had a project manager role in the council dept, related to planning permission for specialised builds, don't want to say any more because i've already said too much as it is.
But it does make me incredibly sad that my so-called "dream job" (the like of which i won't be able to get again - such a niche industry and the other two competitors are based up north) is basically less of a dream simply because of the "structure".. not the actual job, nor the customers, who are mostly brilliant
How much leverage do you have with the company?
Sadly, none - colleagues have complained about the exact same things as me and got nowhere. The man I replaced (he trained me - he left 2 months after I started last year) told me that basically reasons 1 and a bit of 3 were why he was leaving. That was informally though as we got on quite well and I really think I'd have made a new friend had he stayed here.
I might look for other opportunities and if I find anything half decent I could always outline it at my exit interview/discussions. I wouldn't want to interview/go for something else and stay here though, IYSWIM? If I'm going to jump ship, I'd just want to do it.
But then I'd probably just chicken out and say at my exit interview that I wanted to broaden my horizens! The guy who left before me - our boss still thinks the reason he left was the long commute and wanting to see more of his kids or something
Soo,...
My options are:
- Leave and say why
- leave and don't be honest
- Wait for apprisel in January 2012 and raise them formally again, and end up doing 1 or 2 if still nothing is done.
I wonder what a reasonable timeframe would be to stick with them though? Because I'm essentially saying "hey look you've got your entire office ethos and management structure/reporting structure wrong" - I fear this will go down like a lead balloon as well as being impossible to fix, if I were one of the management team.
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