Last week, our boss took a week off. Not a big deal, right? Everyone takes vacation.
This was the first time our boss took a vacation since I have been there, since last July. She takes days off here or there, but she had capped her vacation accrual and needed to take some before one lady takes off on maternity leave.
Being that more or less, I was hired to take her job when she retires (we'll see if that is really the case in two years), it was my job to play 'be the boss'.
I was very excited and anxious at the same time. The last time she took time off was Thanksgiving, and it was nothing. I could have watched movies while I was working for the three days at work.
This time, it was a little different and although I had hoped it would be easy, I knew there would be challenges.
Most of the time, when my boss is around, I keep busy by doing research online, to keep up with employment law, new regulations, and timing of passing of regulations.
I didn't have much time for any of that, which was good for me.
I learned that the way I had structured my job and assignments, didn't quite work this time. I keep a work journal, writing everything I do, everything I have to go, and the time line of my day. I learned that I had to start doing this because of false accusations about my work and had learned to do this when I was a corporate recruiter.
Every day, a pile of new 'needs' for employees showed up. I was proud that by Wednesday, I had completed everything on my list for the day and week up until that time.
Each day had it's own assigned due dates. People were leaving, people were being hired.
I don't know if that is a good thing. It's too revolving at this time.
I was very grateful for our team and the department for their help in critical situations that happened here and there. I had to ask a lot of questions to understand what really goes on behind the scenes, but I learn a ton of things in one week that I would not have ever learned if my boss was there.
Speaking of which, I noticed something. My department cannot make decisions without the boss around, and they don't want to, without her say.
That's not a good thing. What happens if she is unable to come back from vacation? We have a project that we had to postpone because no one knew what the boss wanted to have done.
Also, we have a new temp coming in this week and none of us knew what was going on with him.
Lastly, I let the department know of a new procedure that was not told to the rest of the group, which was VERY important for our job. It was something I had just found out; not announced or told.
Communication, people!
I learned that while I have been training, I have been following those bad habits, like doing everything because if I feel like if I am not doing something, I am doing nothing. I need to get over that. This has caused a little problem in that the big bosses have expected me to learn things that only happen every year or twice a year. Well, that hasn't happened. I let my boss know even though I haven't been trained in a few of the company procedures in typical HR things, I have experience in
doing some of the same things, in different ways, for other companies.
There's an attitude problem involved, too. My boss, haphazardly mentioned that it doesn't take 'rocket science' to do the job. My response? Only rocket science is rocket science, and even that is only statistics, math, and analysis...ok, maybe more, but still.
But it does take skills and knowledge to do the job we do, and the desire to do the job. Both can be learned, but so can rocket science.
So, my goal is to make subtle changes that will help the team work efficiently and showing more appreciation to those who help me figure out things.
I looked forward having good and positive attitude about work.
