u/2baverage

▲ 107 r/office

My coworker has the brain of a gnat and I don't know if I can keep up an office appropriate attitude anymore

Sorry, I just need to rant because OMG I feel like I'm going to lose it on a coworker!

Due to a series of unfortunate events, I'm the most senior employee for the team. For about 8 months I did everything myself while new hires came and went for a bit (to be fair, it's a very tedious job and we also had multiple instances where people would finish training, be allowed to work from home, clock-in every day and then never be heard from again) but we eventually got new hires that stuck and since I was the only one who knew how to do the job, I trained all the new hires once they were finished with onboarding/basics of the job. The first 2 were a breeze. I have experience in being a trainer at other jobs, so I updated the training workflows and adjusted my training for each person.

But this 3rd person...let's call her Mia. Mia worked as a temp for about 5 months, did really well and was offered to come on full time. She accepted and then training began for more programs and tasks that you need certain clearance for. And since then, it's been a total nightmare. At first she'd ask to reschedule her training because she had to catch up on work that was going to hit compliance...so ok, understandable, certain things have sensitive time limits. Then it became an entire month of her needing to cancel or reschedule training because of deadlines she needed to meet for previously assigned work.

Then we finally got past that, but then began the constant "quick Teams chats" because she needs something explained or needed help with a task. 80% of the time it was something that she should have already known how to do while she was a temp/things I know she was trained on, and the other 20% was her asking if some of her work could be reassigned to someone else so she could meet her deadlines for other projects. Quick calls would often be upwards of an hour and me nearly banging my head into my desk because I didn't know how else to explain things to her (she had the workflow, I had shown her how to do it multiple times, I watched her do it while I navigated her through it multiple times, and yet she still needed more hand holding through it and was making day one mistakes)

Then came the training for new systems. I was tasked with training her on a system we use to resolve tickets assigned to us. The usual training was about an hour long and usually a baptism by fire, but the tickets were often so obvious since by the time you get trained on this system you're already so familiar with the accounts that you can look and know right away what is wrong/looks off. We are currently on month 2 of training in this system for her. We sit down for about 3 hours a day, 2-3 times a week, and in still repeating things I said on the first day of training and having to bring up things that were taught within her first week on the job; things that she should have been doing daily for over a year now.

Today, I ended up doing a screen share over Teams at my desk since she was work from home, and after my 3rd explanation of the same ticket, I finally heard the desk next to me sigh loudly in what sounded like annoyance and smack her desk. On one hand it was nice to get a little reassurance that it's not just me, but also just WTF????

Her inability to keep up with the work has been brought up to our manager before but I just don't know what the hell else to do!

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u/2baverage — 3 days ago

I thought I'd have more time picking out my toddler's outfits

I'm trying to encourage independence and I love that my toddler is picking out his own clothes more and more, but I didn't think it'd be this hard for me to just let go of dressing my baby. He's 2 1/2 and what used to be maybe a once a week occurrence is now every day. I've made a point to get clothes that are the textures and colors that he likes/prefers (I remember being a kid in the 90s where my mom would constantly dress me in velvet, corduroy, and crinoline dresses so I have put a big emphasis on making his wardrobe full of his preferences that are still functional) and now usually he'll pick out a shirt and shorts (or pants) and on one hand it's cute, but on the other hand, I have definitely been that mom who gets a dopamine rush when we're coordinating or matching, or when he's dressed in adorable overalls with various teddy bear or train or dinosaur or airplane embroidery on them.

I didn't expect it to end so soon. Now instead of me picking a cute blue dinosaur shirt with matching blue dinosaur shorts and blue shoes, he's instead choosing a yellow muscle shirt, khakis, and red Spider-Man sandals with a bright blue shark hat. I love that he's being independent and picking his own clothes but man is it a struggle just letting go. Maybe when he's a little older he'll go back to letting me pick his clothes for a little bit?

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u/2baverage — 21 days ago