Member-only story
I’ve Made Myself Invaluable at Work, How do I Reverse It?
I take pride in doing my job to the best of my abilities and delivering as much value as I can. Unfortunately, I have made a terrible mistake.
My dad tricked me into my job. I’d given my two week’s notice at a job I was miserable at and was applying for everything that looked even remotely interesting. On the phone with my dad, he asked me to come and work for him as an assistant. He told me that I just needed to follow him to meetings, take notes and manage his schedule. This was pretty similar to my previous jobs and I’d worked in the office of my parent’s company for as long as I could be trusted to reliably file papers. So I readily accepted.
I was his assistant for less than 24 hours after accepting. He promptly sent me a list of safety courses and told me that I was to be the new site safety person. Ok, I thought naively to myself, I can handle this. Shortly after receiving my Health and Safety Administrator certificate, I was tasked with putting together the paperwork for a pending bid. This lead to late-night research and taking project management courses in order to understand the terminology and requirements. Project management was interesting until we won the bid and I found myself learning how to actually manage a project. Then it was terrifying.
