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Perceived to be incompetent despite performing well
Hi there, I have had many jobs since I was 16 and I am now 34. I've had this very hard to define issue at every job I've ever had and also in a few of my personal relationships. I'll do my best to explain but it isn't an easy thing to outline.
A very large portion of my interactions are based on the other person or people assuming I am ignorant about whatever it is we are talking about or incompetent and unable to perform the task correctly. At work, in a job I have had for three years in an industry I've been working in for six years, every day I have very basic tasks and ideas explained to me painfully slowly, or I am stopped from doing routine tasks associated with my job, because someone else is convinced I am going to do it incorrectly. Or if there is some sort of breakdown in communication or a process isn't fully fleshed out by upper management. The first assumption is that I've made some sort of mistake and we spend hours trying to figure out how I messed up only to find out that the outcome was always going to be that way. The "solution" is usually to remove me from whatever the project is or have everyone just ignore me while the "competent people" handle the difficult task.
If I complain about these things I am just told that my problem is I never just let things go and I am too sensitive... And if I don't say anything and just try to deal with it I am told that my problem is I never stand up for myself. This is at every job I've ever had.
Here is a list of the most frustrating issues
I've been stopped in the middle of presentations and told to sit down because someone "thought I was going to say something that wasn't correct".
I've had sales managers refuse to give me the contact information for clients I am supposed to be supporting and then reprimand me for not reaching out to them.
I've had a manager I've never worked with before yell at me in front of the entire team for not doing something she said she sent me in an email but I couldn't find it in my Inbox and she couldn't forward me another copy. Later she called me into her office and apologized before asking what I plan to do to make sure I don't make this mistake again...as if I was the one who made the mistake.
I’ve had a sales manager yell at me in front of everyone because he found a four year old version of a presentation someone who had my job before me did and thought I submitted very old information. It wasn’t even for one of his projects.
Just a few seconds ago I just had a very frustrated operations specialist reprimand me for sending confirmation information to the wrong team. After I told him I just replied to the team that sent the original email, he ignored what I said and just explained who gets what email slowly and loudly...after a few minutes he realized I sent the confirmation to the correct team and them reprimanded me for making him think I sent it to the wrong team.
My calls are scrutinized every day and my methods are constantly being confused with things I've never done that if I did do would have serious consequences. So I have to reassure everyone that I am not doing these things constantly.
My numbers are on par with the rest of my group and I am often tasked with understanding new concepts and relaying that information to the rest of the team, but everyone just assumes my information is wrong.
It's almost like no matter how well I'm doing or how hard I'm trying, I am failing at something in the eyes of the people I have to collaborate with.
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Oh you poor thing, you have to work with nincoompoops for an older word, or plain old idiots!
I am now 60. When I was your age, there was always going to be a little of the same but not as bad as jobs are becoming today. Here is my guess based on what you write and by the way, you explain yourself, well so I don't think you are the problem at all.
My guess is that society is going down hill quickly as far as intelligence is concerned and mental sharpness, which is magnified in the work place. In jobs I have worked recently, I find the managers or bosses to not have any skills as far as being able to lead a group of workers. To some extent, many of workers are going to know that they aren't as competent as they should be and more often than not it is at the levels of positions that you have had problems with, like the managers and specialists who fear hanging on to their job when someone who is far more intelligent than them, more organized, sharper minded, smarter, more intelligent, wise and creative than them. It would obviously make them look bad. I can say that some of it is intentional against you but lots of it could be subconscious reactions. Their subconscious may make them react and treat you a certain way out of fear for holding onto to their job, even though they know with their conscious mind that it isn't a professional way to act, and thus one manager apologizing to you. Those who are prideful may never apologize for their critical errors in the workplace of making assumptions, chewing out a person in public rather than private which causes embarrassment to the employee, not having a quality control department or manager to fix problems that were already existent and not the fault of employees taught to follow a bad plan. I see a lot more of mistakes they are making. ONe thing such as yelling at you in front of others, happened to me with a co worker who was the floor lead and much much younger than me. I didn't mind. I could respect good management no matter the age and treated her as a peer but she yelled at everyone, though more at me. One day I took her aside and told her that when she yells as she does, it causes a certain reaction in me. I told her my first husband was verbally abusive so I left him. Now when she yells, that brings it back and makes me nervous, prone to more mistakes or freezing up. Her expression changed and she revealed that her Dad had been verbally abusive and she didn't realize until I had said something, that she was doing the same thing. She stopped yelling at me but continued to do it to others. So she changed a little but not enough. This would fall into what I was told as a young worker, do not bring your problems from home or your private life to work and let them affect your performance on the job. I'll bet many of those you hear and see saying and doing the wrong things are doing so because they have issues away from work or from their upbringing, have never been told to keep it out of the workplace, have never gone to counseling to deal with deep seated issues, etc.
It is very frustrating to be in the work force today compared to how I remember it 30 or 40 years ago. Even in the last ten years It has become noticeably worse. I have my suspicions as to why so many people lack the skills or quality to do their jobs. It starts with the brain and its ability to work well as God created it to. Unfortunately, something or several somethings are slowly dumbing down the minds of many. What you get in more distorted thinking, leading to more mental issues, lack of quality work. I see grammer mistakes in billboards, on busses, on posters, on line and in books. Proof readers are not catching as many errors as they have decades ago. I can't pick up and read a book that has only two errors or none as it used to be. I find so many I lose count now a days and it is frustrating as I think I read it wrong and will re read a paragraph 3 times before I realize they made the mistake. I do not know what the solution to this issue is. What could help at work is something the last big company I worked for did. It had to do with calling in a person who specialized in helping companies development a quality control to what they did with addition of one person, who managed quality control of the entire company and managed a team of people consisting of one representative from each department. The department leads and managers and even workers would share all their concerns of work flow hold ups were, whether in their own department or between departments. My boss chose me to represent the department. It still took time but charts were created and with the training our QC manager had, we were asked what happened at the next stage as a document or procedure was handled until completion. We discovered there were quite a few dead ends with no procedures in place. I had to interact with many people of other departments and so I discovered a problem that had never been brought up in one area because that department was small, only handled by one person who could not take time away from her positiion of 'long time storage' to attend the QC meetings, so I took up the cause for her, presented the issues to the QC manager and working with him, as I knew of the issues because I had spoken with many of the disgruntled customers (a moving company) I helped come up with solutions. I never saw them implemented because I had to leave for personal reasons. I can say it is a great thing. All I can think of is if you were to look up quality control people who talk to companies, tell them the company has issues but you don't want them to have your name, just let them know to come approach the owner of your company and show them how they can improve their work flow and thus their level of success. We also worked on employees outlook so they were happy, enjoyed working there, worked well with others and the company funded fun team building events plus just fun stuff such as a bar be que out in the parking lot for employees.
If you have never seen the movie, Idiocracy, I urge you to watch it. the movie is from 2006 and a comedy concerning people in the future being, well plain old idiots and no one having even an average IQ anymore. Two people from our time are frozen and wake up in the future to what is scary to think about, especially for many who are seeing the beginning of this start to happen every where. So while funny, it is also scary to contemplate. Thankfully, I'll be long dead before our world actually becomes this bad. Its bad enough now and it bugs the heck out of me. So sorry I can't give any other ideas. Maybe change your training to learn about quality control and get hired by a company who sends teams out to big firms to help them pin point what problems they have with getting the work done. At least, that way you can be doing something where your intelligence isn't questioned as bosses and employees look to you for help and answers. As long as you are an employee in any company where they do not care to make any procedure better or more efficiant and still want to look good thought they are stupid, you will continue to see these problems. It also might help to find a small company like a family owned business where they hire only one or two outsiders who are not family to help with the work load. That way, there are less people to deal with and so more of a chance to work with nice, fairly normal people.
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