Sometimes it’s better to walk away.
Recently I left a job that I was at first over the moon about. I felt appreciated. I loved the volunteers I worked with. I felt like I was doing a community service. I felt like a right hand to the 80 year old Executive Director I reported to. One problem: she wasn’t elderly at all, she just was unwilling to learn and advance her know-how so that she could do her job. Turns out, she was almost exactly my age, but her mannerisms over the phone and inability on video calls made her seem much older. Elderly even. Now I no longer felt like I was helping someone, I felt used. I felt like I was being conned into doing my boss’ job.
Most of my work was remote, but I was frustrated that she didn’t seem to have hardware or software that was up to date or it was broken or slow. Twice a year I was to work on site because of a vacant positions in events that I had the qualifications to help out with. I was thrilled. I could trouble shoot her computers live.
When I arrived I went to the gift shop and asked for the iPad being used to load products into our POS — the one that was “broken” and “didn’t work”. After closing about 20 games she left open on the iPad, I opened up the POS app and took a photo, added the description and price, hit save and we’re off to the races. She opened her laptop and I watched it spin. She decided to write down the how to of using the app…
