A friend of mine recently posted on FB that she was feeling taken advantage of because she did something really well. That reminded me of something that happened to me when I first moved to California and got a job at a bank in Berkeley.
I was assigned a teller cage. I put my stuff down and looked through the drawers and was absolutely appalled by the messes therein. I’m not a neat freak, but I like things organized. I mean, a place for everything, etc. So, I set out to clean and organize the drawers between customers. It took a while (teller stamp ink is pretty hard to get off surfaces), but in a few days I had the cage looking splendid – good enough to be featured in a spread in Better Homes and Teller Cages magazine, if you know what I mean.
About a week later, I was assigned to another cage. I moved my things to the new, even more disgusting cage and set about cleaning and organizing. I didn’t really catch on to what was happening until I was moved for a FIFTH time in as many weeks. At first, I thought they were trying to position me where I could do the most good (I was easily the fastest and most accurate teller on the line); then I realized I was the only person cleaning and organizing my drawers because, obviously every time I moved I landed in a pig’s sty. Of course, by then, I had been moved through the entire line and cleaned and organized every cage.
From that point forward, I have spoken of the “curse of competence” – where you do something so well, the “powers that be” begin to take advantage of you. That same thing happened to me in pretty much every job I’ve ever had: same ends, different means. It got to the point where I had to act like I was only as competent as my co-workers to make sure my bosses didn’t keep piling work on my desk. I hated the deception, but I was picking up the slack for a number of my co-workers who I KNOW just said, “Eh, I’m not going to bother because I know Christopher will do it.”
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