Feelings about work

WARNING- Long Post!

Amy's last day at work was last Friday, and though I knew that things would be different once she left, I dont think I realized how hard the transition would hit me.

I have been very fortunate in my past work environments; every single time I have changed jobs, someone has "taken me under their wing," looked out for me, and just been my friend. I have made many of my close friends from work, and continue to keep in touch with a lot of them to this day (Emily, Christie, Anna, Desha, Shelley, Sarah, Tory, Danielle, and now Amy). I guess I have been pretty spoiled!

The way our office is set up, everyone is broken into teams that each support an individual client. With a setup like this, it would seem that team members are naturally closer to one another, since they spend a great deal of time together. Up until now, that has been true (minus a few weeks time when a certain someone was on the team, and life went to hell in a handbag!) When I heard that Amy was going to be leaving, I immediately started to worry about who would replace her on our team. It has been a very confusing couple of weeks, wondering what was going to happen, who would take her place, and what my role was supposed to be on this new team. (Background: Before, Amy was the team leader and I was her "assistant," you might say. She was held responsible for pretty much everything, and I just helped out where necessary. Amy had been supporting our client for over 5 years, and became excellent at every aspect of this job.) So now, there are these big shoes left empty, and I do not know what is supposed to happen. Am I supposed to step up and take her job of delegating projects? Am I supposed to train someone new? Or are they going to hire someone and place them over me? It was a very confusing time.

At one point, I felt very good about everything, because our client sent out a nice email explaining to everyone that I knew enough of what happens to continue to support them without interruption, and that I would naturally "take this opportunity and run with it" (her words, not mine). But then whenever I would ask my manager at work what was going on, he ignored me and acted like everything would be fine, without answering a single one of my questions. They even pulled me into an interview with a potential new employee to get my opinion of her for our team. So, with no direction from them, and no answers to my questions, all I could do was assume that they were going to hire someone new for our team, and that they expected me to train them. In the back of my mind, I was excited, because I thought this was my turn to be the one to help someone else, "take them under my wing," and do for someone else, what others have always done for me.

Needless to say, things did not play out as I had assumed they would.

I received a phone call from Amy last Wednesday (2 days before her last day), telling me that our manager had told her that he was going to pull another employee with our company on to our team. She is nice, friendly, and has a lot of experience in tech writing, though not writing directly for our client. Amy seemed okay with it, though nervous as to what I would think. After I got off the phone with her, I received another phone call, this time from our client, who had also heard about the "new team member." (Keep in mind, that my manager has yet to say anything to me about any of this.) If I'm being honest, I was very surprised at their decision to do this, and quite intimidated, as this lady has 12 years of experience. I finally thought I might have a shot at being able to give something back to someone, and yet this lady will not need anything that I have to offer. I then sent my manager an email asking what he wanted to happen next, since he had gone ahead and pulled her to our team, despite the fact that she was still working on other projects for other teams. I never heard a response.

Amy and I spoke with her a little during those last few days, and tried to teach her a little about our client and the way things are done on our team. Amy did most of the teaching, since she knows a ton more than me, and it was her last chance to share her knowledge with us before she left. The new lady told us that she was trying to wrap up some other projects, but that she would love to start learning more Monday.

Well, Monday was two days ago, and I do not think she has "joined" the team yet. I do not feel that I should have to baby her, seeing as how she knows a lot more than me anyway! I would think that she would take some initiative to come ask questions, follow me to meetings, learn about our database tools, etc, but once again, I assumed wrong.

I genuinely feel that she will be a good team member, if she wants to be on this team, and I cannot tell yet if that is the case. I know she is a quick learner, so she probably does not need any of the hands-on training that Amy had to do with me. I guess I just do not know where that line is. My manager has not told me one single thing, and has blatantly ignored 3 emails I have sent asking questions. I give up already! No one will tell me what is going on or what should be happening here.

All of this would smooth over much easier if I could see her becoming another good friend. Friendship has a way of smoothing over the rough spots; sure there have been times I have been frustrated or irritated with work issues from every single girl I named earlier, but they never escalated into any problems, because I knew that we were friends.

I guess I was hoping that despite I was losing a friend (at work) in Amy, someone new would come along and I could be the kind of friend to them that she has been to me. When you are new to a company, you have no choice really but to cling to your teammates, and then they very often become your friend. This lady does not need me as friend- merely a teammate, and an inferior teammate at that. I like having friends at work, and I know now that it is going to be a very lonely place for awhile.

Whew- I'm sorry this is so long and so negative. I dont mean for it to be, I just needed to get it all out. I know that things will work themselves out in the end. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep doing my job to the best of my ability and trying to be nice to everyone. We can always hope for the best!

Thanks to all of you out there who have started out as "work buddies," and have grown into great friends. I miss working with all of you, and I realize that I took our friendship at work for granted. You're all the best, and I'm sure that your co-workers today have found as much a friend in you as I did. :)