Fraudulent in New Beginnings

I’m familiar with the saying “Fake it until you make it.” I don’t know where that saying originated from or for what reason, but I understand that it’s contemporary application is that new employees, especially recent college graduates, won’t understand there new jobs immediately, so they must pretend like they do until they actually know what they’re doing or their BS artistry has become so proficient that they even fool themselves. Peculiarly, I’ve yet to earnestly feel like I’ve “made it.”

I’ve been in my position with my current company for almost four years, and I’ve definitely established some proficiency with some of my responsibilities, but not with others. Specifically, every quarter, I have to prepare our financial reporting packages, a process I’ve been learning since 2013. I’ve yet to ever fully complete a package. At best, I’ve been able to do maybe 95% of it, then I’d have to hand it off to my manager for the last little bit. Without describing the process in too much detail, I export the account balances into an Excel sheet, then put those balances in the electronic reports. Upon doing so, the system of the electronic reports will check the balances for errors, and I have to resolve those issues. If being able to fix 95% of the errors sounds commendnable, it’s the final 5% that’s the hardest, and it’s the same errors every single time that I can’t figure out, and anyone would expect that after dealing with this problem for three years, I would have figured it out.

Another aggravating example of my ineptitude is pulling the data out of the reports. We have a tool that will automatically export the data from the financial reporting package into Excel sheets that allow us to filter by periods, company, etc. I understood the previous tool just fine, but they decided to buy a new tool because…oh, hell…I don’t know…reasons. The new tool would require us to build the new spread sheets from scratch, so we had a training session to teach everyone how to do so. I’ve never been the type who learns from sitting in a class room; I’ve always performed better by having a text I could study on my own before hand, then ask questions. Unfortunately, I must be the only one who learns like that because my company’s training sessions specifically cater to the class room type of learner. Any text I could study is given to me during the training, and is spartan at best, bullet pointing the trainer’s presentation instead of providing any sort of meaningful explanation. It doesn’t help that I’m not exactly a luck person. During the training session in question, my network access died, and I couldn’t even attempt the examples. Seriously, of course my network access is going to become problematic at the most inopportune time. It wouldn’t happen the day before or the day after training. Nope, it occurs the day of during what would potentially allow me to figure the process out eventually.

I write all this because I wonder if my manager is starting to figure out how less-than-ideal an employee I actually am. He’s been rather short with me recently. His infractions have been small, but noticable. One particular instance that comes to mind was with a CER form. I the first approver on a process by which plant employees get permission to spend money. I glance over the form, and if everything I see looks fine, I approve the form, and it goes to the subsequent approvers, one of whom is my manager. One specific form came was sent to my manager with an error notification regarding the exchange rate. His immediate reaction was to to call my attention to it and say, “this is the kind of thing that needs to be checked before you approve it.” I don’t know how well his tone is conveyed in the comment, but it was definitely one of “why can’t you at least do your basic responsibilties compentently?” Nevermind that if that error was present when I initially approved the CER, my approval would have been blocked and I would have been prompted to correct it.

Another example that was my partial fault was a late charge on my corporate credit card. Mastercard didn’t send me my bill one month, so I was late on a payment, which resulted in a $17 late charge. I had to submit that charge on an expense report to reactivate my card. Even after I explained what happened and promised to be more mindful in the future, my manager’s reaction was, “I don’t want to have to do this again.”

I realize in writing, those examples might not sound very meaningful, but his curtness has been somewhat frequent. Provided, he could be having problems in other areas of his life, and that crap is flowing downhill to me, but I’m the only one he’s been abrubt with.

In a weird way, I don’t really feel bad about it. I mean, it is what it is, and if I’m a lousy employee, then that’s what I am. After all, if they fire me, I at least won’t have to stick with a job I’m not particularly fond of or good at. I suppose some people are cut out for the corporate grind. I decidedly am not. I’m also solvent on my debt, so I could even support myself with menial job if I had to (note: one of the benefits of being completely romantically and socially inept is that you save money in an unbelievable manner). Though, I doubt that’s going to happen soon. If nothing else, I’m good enough at what I am good at to make training someone else an ordeal. Still, eventually my company will cut some employees, and I really wouldn’t be bothered if I were let go.