I like my job, at least right now. All I do is load information onto a spreadsheet. My boss isn't breathing down my neck. I can eat when I want and poop when I want. And nothing has been asked of me.
And yet I'm scared that there are signs in the background that are slowly coming together to usher me out of this job. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I have to be as a temp. And the more I think about it, the more I believe that my boss is disappointed in my performance.
Two things that happened yesterday (Monday) makes me believe that. First is the, uh, second thing that happened during the workday, where my boss walked into my cubicle while I was sneak-reading something on the Internet. She came over because I e-mailed her a couple questions on some things. I knew that when I did that, there was a chance she would come over; she does that whenever I have something to ask her. Knowing that, I run the risk that she would catch me, but frankly, building a spreadsheet is so boring I am on the Internet a lot during my day. And yet whenever she does catch me (yesterday was not the first time), I feel stupid for getting myself in that position.
The second and more insidious sign (at least to me) that I could be a goner from this job starts with the nature of the questions I asked her. Not to tell you guys everything I do nor getting technical, but one of the questions I had concerned whether or not I needed to send a letter. When I went over to her cube and asked her, my boss reminded me of things that she told me before when I had a similar question. Worse than that, I get the feeling that she knew that I was not asking this question the first time.
It goes deeper than that. When I interviewed for this job, one of the things she stressed was critical thinking skills. And she has told me that trying to think through whether or not I should send a letter is one of the things I needed to figure out for myself. I don't think she completely ruled out me asking questions, but I don't believe asking the same question a second time is a good thing in her book. Moreover, asking her something at all may not, to her, be a good indication of critical thinking skills. And I've got to be honest; I'm just inputting information into a spreadsheet. I love it, but there is no critical thinking going on when I do that. There isn't thinking, period. It's so perfunctory that, well, I surf the Internet from time to time to escape the monotony.
Those circumstances, which may seem to be a pattern in my boss' eyes, might make her conclude that I need a lot more hand-holding than she thought I needed. Truthfully, I need more guidance on this. If she wants me to think through what needs to be done, I kind of need to have the tools to analyze the information I am laying down onto a spreadsheet. Right now, laying down info onto a spreadsheet is all I'm doing, and that's all I feel comfortable doing. But that might not be enough. Maybe she expected more from me.
Oh, one other cause for concern. There is a backlog of cases that she told me I had to tackle. And there were a lot, and they were growing in number. But starting yesterday/Monday, I noticed that I had to double back on where I last left the cases. That's when I realized that the total number of cases I needed to go through (or at least input into the spreadsheet) actually was going down. My boss didn't say anything about losing cases. And that scares me because that's my work. No more cases, no more work.
I brought this to my boss's attention. She didn't know exactly why that happened. I believe her. And yet I still feel as though I have to look elsewhere for my next job, which might need to come soon.
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