Today

Today the Operations Manager came to my branch office to visit with me. She's my other boss besides the Branch Manager. I go to her for everything that needs to be handled on a corporate level rather than the branch level. She's also about my age and comes from a teaching background like me. I really like her and I'm glad she's my big boss. We get along great.

Generally once a week or so she likes to check in on me and see how I'm doing. There isn't anyone else in my office that does the same job that I do, so it gets to be a little lonely sometimes with no one there to talk to about the stuff that I deal with. In our corporate office there are 4 people doing the same jobs that I do on a smaller level in the branch office. Which is another reason that she comes to visit me every other month or so.

The visit was going well and we went over a lot of stuff. Some basic HR training stuff and she was watching my work load and how I multi-task. Then we got to the general talking about stuff portion of the visit. She asked about my relationships with my co-workers, and I was as honest about everything as I could be while still being nice and trying not to sound bitchy. Then she looked me in the eye and said, "do you feel respected? do you feel like what you do is appreciated?" And what do you know, I was so close to just bursting into tears... so she declared that we needed to go out to lunch so we could really talk. And off we went.

We went to Noodles & Co. (my first time there - very yummy!) and she reassured me that at my company people cry all the time and that she likes to get the issues out and on the table. She also reassured me that she is always there to vent to and if I ever need anything that I can talk to her about it. It was really nice to talk about certain issues that I have with certain people at work. She said she understands and that we'll try to figure out a way to ease the tensions and issues. And I found out that my Branch Manager really does know how much I do there and was actually talking with the OM about whether or not to hire another part-time person to help me out. Course I didn't know it, cuz he didn't talk to me about it. But honestly, I had no idea that he even noticed how much I do on a daily basis. It was really nice to know that he was thinking of how to help me rather than me feeling like I'm just not doing my job well enough.

I don't know if anything really got resolved, but damn did it feel good to vent to someone who can relate to what I deal with. She knows that it's not just me - my co-workers have very distinct personalities that require a certain way of dealing with them and it can be exhausting. She's going to talk with the Branch Manager about some of the things that she and I talked about.

Of course, I don't want to make it seem like I'm complaining about my job to anyone. I don't want them to think that for some reason they made a mistake in hiring me and that I can't handle the things that are part of my job. I know it's stupid, but I can't help it. That's what I worry about.