Dealing with problems at work

I was wondering how people with AvPD deal with problems at work. I think if I didn't have AvPD I would have quit my current job, but I hang in partly because I think I could get an even WORSE job. It is also because dealing with new people and situations is very anxiety producing. I think another reason I stay is because I think someone with a sense of responsibility and integrity should stay on. Lots of people have been driven away.

I guess I will fill you in with some details about my current job. I run a small food service operation in a small state run hospital that is next to a large office complex. The office complex has it's own food service operation, but they are privately run and have higher prices. Because of the price difference a lot of people come into my place. I used to be able to raise prices to compete, but a few years ago they reorganized my department and I got a control freak boss.

This boss tells me I can't raise prices. When I complained that too many people were coming in and I could not finish work on time she told me to close 10 minutes early. That's a bad joke. I have hundreds of people coming in at lunch, not in the last 10 minutes. In a meeting with her a few months later I tried a different idea. I told her that all the overtime I was working would cost a lot of money. She told me to work overtime without pay and said it was the kind of job where a person should work overtime without pay. That is the kind of boss I am dealing with. I put myself down for every minute of overtime and I tell my staff to do the same.

Finally the workload got so bad that I had to shut down twice when I did not have any staff to help. So the boss finally let me hire a part time temp. Now the place is losing $4,000 a month because of rising food costs and the extra labor. I sent the numbers to the boss and she said I could raise the price of salads. That might raise $400 a month TOPS. Our price on salads are still much lower than at the cafeteria. My operations is run by the state, so the money we lose comes out of the hospital budget and ultimately from the taxpayers. The people who run the hospital must just go to the legislature and say they need all the money to feed patients. But they are really wasting $4,000 a month on feeding the office complex underpriced food. It is a government boondogle and I am running it against my will. It is making me so angry.

I called the agency of licensing and protection today to report that the situation may be endangering patients. The place fills up with people from the office complex. I counted 400 people coming in over the day and at least 300 of them are from outside the hospital. One patient was at my place in the morning and he had a fit and threw himself out of his wheelchair and onto the floor when the the place was full of outsiders. It's a zoo. It's supposed to be a HOSPITAL. The hospital has been decertified twice in the past few years because it is not up to code. It is still decertified.

Guess what. I got voicemail whn I called Licensing and Protection. I left a message and nobody got back to me.

This sounds like business problems rather than avp.

People with AvPD have work and business problems too.

You need to read your job description and your department goals, and compare it to whats going on. Is being profitable a goal? is it your business to call that agency?

Do you want people to tell you you are a very nice person for caring about the patients? well, you are, but my gut tells me you just want the whole thing to be FAIR. (maybe treating everyone fairly is one of your personality traits, like the INTJ, ENTF, type of tests).

But you have to understand your boss and the objective of the service first, I of course dont know it but what if:

- The objective is to provide a quality meal to patients and/or patient's visitors for a discount price.

Then the office complex people is not an issue because it could be solved by other means than rising prices, you just dont want to find them.

OR maybe you just dont know how to talk to your boss and rather vent it here as a way to wash your hands from further problems while letting her (wantingly) fall into the pit because you "told her so".

I dont mean to be rude or anything, its just sounds like you are a big VICTIM of all this, and when I put myself in that position, i dont like myself too much, so i may be projecting .. thats all.
GOod luck.

There is no job description. There is no mission statement. The place is non profit, but that doesn't mean it should waste $4,000 a month of taxpayer money on a food give-away for an entire office complex.

Talk to the boss? I've tried to and I've tried to talk to her boss. I've sent out e-mails with a plan. I told that she told me to work overtime without pay to save money. That's the kind of thing I get from the boss. The place is being sued by many former patients. It has even been found to have violated patients civil rights by the justice department. That is the kind of place it is and it's that way because the people who run it are incompetent. They found two staff having sex in a patients room a couple of years ago and did not fire either of them. One guy showed up blind stinking drunk for work and did not get fired.

Parador wrote:I was wondering how people with AvPD deal with problems at work. I think if I didn't have AvPD I would have quit my current job, but I hang in partly because I think I could get an even WORSE job. It is also because dealing with new people and situations is very anxiety producing. I think another reason I stay is because I think someone with a sense of responsibility and integrity should stay on. Lots of people have been driven away.

I think this is the relevent part of your post. I can relate in a way. I am schizoid, and although I am underpaid at present I really do not want to go out and look for a new job that may entail more interpersonal interaction or having to be tied to more of a strict schedule.

But here's the long and short of it. This work situation is NOT YOUR PROBLEM. You have informed the boss, you have gone over her head as well. You have done all you can do. Let it go. You have no power there to effect change or it would have changed. Although you claim that the bigger part of the reason for staying on is that you are anxious in new situations, it seems like you are more interested in saying because you feel obligated to effect some change in the situation. That's admirable, but there's only so much you can do there. If you can't let go of the situation, it will just keep on bothering you.

More than that though, you have two choices. Stay or leave. It is up to you to choose, but you do have a choice in the matter. You could get into a worse situation, but I think on the grand scale of worse to better, you have a much greater shot of getting into a better job situation than the one you care currently in. Unless you see yourself at this job for the rest of your life, I would say leave. You'll have to put yourself in a new job situation eventually and sooner is better than later.

Good luck.

I have not yet begun to fight!!!

There are still things I can do. I really feel that I must try them. A lot of taxpayer money is going to waste. I'm a taxpayer too. I think I'm turning into one of those libertarian types like Ron Paul who wants to eliminate almost all government programs. The amount of money the government wastes is obscene. Word just came through that the state is going to eliminate 200 state jobs over the next few years. In the last 10 years the state has increased spending by 70%.

I suggest you play 'hero' on your spare time and not against your employer. Its going to look very bad on your resume if you work against ANY organization from the inside no matter what they do. No one likes a saboteur, not even civil rights organizations or rebel groups. You will never get another job if you lose one for those reasons, no matter how righteous they are.

Get your objectives in line, be a team player. I have trouble trusting people, and creating a business because I am always paranoid that employees are going to stab me in the back eventually (but surely) so I dont bother making it, and you are not helping me change that idea.

I don't deal well with any form of confrontation. I worry needlessly and endlessly about losing my job. My perception of reality is completely different fom the way things really are. Although I am aware that it is false reality, I still let it govern me.

The people on my job praise me and consider me an example of high work performance. I still worry everyday that'll I'll somehow lose my job. I'm still my own worse enemy.

I don't know why I'm still at my job, when it would be so easy to pick up an application someplace else and actually fill it out and turn it in. I've picked up a few but I always get stuck on questions like "what's your best customer service story?" I'm ok at my job, always friendly, even chatty sometimes with the customers, even though my boss yells at me for being slow, but I never know what to say on questions like that because I've never really gone above and beyond what I'm supposed to be doing. I know I get payed almost the least out of everyone, even people who have been there for a shorter time that I have (most of the employees are part of my boss's huge El Salvadorian family, but that's another whole story). My boss said he wanted to give me a raise if I could start working faster but I guess I didn't make it.