So, here's the story:
In October of 2021, we were onboarding this new program that our international had started working on. The onboarding was to be for my department with a bit of training for our parent department. The program was to be able to do all of the things we needed to better our organization. I won't go into too many details, but it required a lot of work in order for it to work for my department.
My staff was pretty new, and most weren't good with computers just yet. My new DOT hadn't been determined at this time. Once the training for the parent department was over, we walked back to my private office. My personal office was a trailer with a bathroom, file room, office, and DOT's office. It was a large trailer; the only problem was my part of the office was right at the front door. During my training on this new program, people kept coming in and out, constantly interrupting as I tried to learn.
I must admit I was distracted – both by the constant interruptions, which made me feel embarrassed and by the fact that I was fascinated with the information systems director. According to the director, I came off as being unimpressed, but in reality, I was thinking of the software and trying to process information. I knew what we needed to make it work for us, so I made it my mission to work with the director and his team to provide feedback.
However, to provide proper feedback, it would mean that my staff would need to submit the correct forms, use the correct course numbers on their sign-in sheets and generally be better at their paperwork. I took the time to update a number of policies, guidelines, employee handbooks, admin guidebooks, on-the-job training, and then some. Yet, my staff never had the time to sit with me to discuss the changes, and whenever I would ask when they would, most were being pulled into doing other things. They desperately needed computer literacy training, document training, and general email etiquette.
So, I waited and waited, but their training days never came. Instead, they were pushed to do more – with less. I had to fix every mistake they made, which took hours to correct, sometimes days. As I corrected errors, I found myself becoming more and more exhausted. I began to be irritable and short-tempered with my loved ones. I talked to my doctor about feeling stressed at work. She told me to find a job that was less stressful because, at 29, I shouldn't have this constant pressure in my chest. I explained to her that I'm not vested in my organization, so I would lose my pension if I left. I was so close to becoming vested at 4 years 3 months I would need to make it to 5 years to become vested.
On January 28, 2022, I sent my staff an email reminding them that their classes were coming up and that they needed to update their course sign-in sheets using the new programs of study. I provided the new programs of study and stated to them that we were not changing the curriculum alignment; we were updating the courses so that I could process the time accordingly. Not only had I told them to update their course sign-in sheets via email, but I also reminded them of the change during our staff meeting. They all understood and stated that they would make the correction.
On Thursday, February 17, 2022, I left my office at 4:00 PM, drove the 30 minutes home, and got right back to work. This evening I was looking over some sign-in sheets that I received from the classes that had occurred a week prior when I was out of town on a work trip to our state capitol. They were completely wrong. The course codes were incorrect, and I couldn't understand why for the life of me.
I texted the coordinator whose students the class belonged to, but he wasn't the coordinator who taught the class. He was one of our new ones, and he apologized for the error and asked if he could change it. I told him the truth – no. That's illegal to change a course after someone has signed that this is what they are taking. I was upset, but I decided not to take action. I waited until Friday, February 18, to respond.
