I don't know what to do.
Anonymous
I don't know what to do.
I don't know if I should leave my job to look for another, or stay and try to endure. I'm working at a stage 2 company that runs on intern power. This was good for me when I started as an intern and I was kept on as a consultant. I'm a 55 yo Organizational Psychology PhD student about to finish my coursework and start the dissertation. I've been working part-time for this boutique firm, but it's getting hard to bear. The CEO has to approve everything, everything. So, that is a big bottleneck for work. He's also a detail person so his iterations can take hours. For example, I spent until 2 am one night on a client site visit to change the numbering of focus group questions and fonts on an internal document that the client would never see, that sort of thing. I'm supposed to be a Talent Management Consultant, but the Marketing lady left in May and I was given many of her duties and the duties of her intern. Since everyone starts as an unpaid intern and no marketing students are willing to work as unpaid interns, there have been no marketing interns for the last two hiring cycles. So, I'm looking at having to continue doing the intern and the director duties until January at least and then the director duties until May. He also put me over his operations, because I've got operations in my past work history. These aren't my fields.
I'm surrounded by 25 year-olds who have no experience managing anything, much less other people. So, one thinks I've been trained by the other, who thinks I've been trained by the one. When I figure out how to do things myself, they get upset if I miss something and tell me I should have known.
Last week, I was supposed to be off because of schoolwork commitments and I was supposed to work about 5 hours on this one large client project. I worked 19.75 of my usual 20 hours because I kept getting assigned things.
Just now, I've gotten a message from the project manager that the sub-project needs it's own project plan (which will need to be approved by the CEO and go through all the iterations from him). I was supposed to be logged off all next week for a doctoral intensive and now I've got to figure out how to write a plan in line with the company guidelines and get it approved. When I said this was the first I had heard of a sub-project having a separate plan, I was told that it was said repeatedly. When I asked when and where, there was no answer. I asked three or four more times, still no answer.
This is typical of the gaslighting I'm facing. I don't know how much more I can take. They say they said things they didn't and then treat me like I'm an idiot.
Another example is that we're a BYOD business and about half of us use Macs. They use applications that aren't available for Macs and then act like Mac users are idiots when they can't get the information they need to do the job.
It's been so nice to have the extra money for tuition, but I spend about 4-6 hours in frustrated tears over being treated this way and, now that they put me over orientation, seeing others treated this way.
It is a job in my field, at least parts of it are in my field, and it will look like my field on my resume. I'm terrified that I not get hired anywhere else.
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