I tried to communicate some of this to this colleague of mine and express my appreciation for the autonomy and growth opportunities he has given and for the advocacy he has done for me, even when it wasn't in his best personal interests.
He told me that I have given far more to this office than I have received and that I owed nothing more. In the moment, I tried to push back against that. It's like I put more weight on the value I receive than the value I offer.
A big strength of mine is my work ethic. I care deeply about the quality and timeliness of my work. I care about how it fits into the bigger picture. It contributes to the meaning I strive to find in my life. It also means I give a lot to my employer in every job I hold.
That has benefited me in countless ways as I leave almost every job with colleagues who deeply respect me, advocate for me, and provide glowing references. I suspect it has opened doors it might not otherwise have opened.
But so often it has created imbalanced employer/employee relationships. My most extreme example is the private law firm I worked for about a decade ago. When my overtime hours got too great, they switched me to salaried and gave me a quasi manager role so they didn't have the pay the extra hours. When I put in a leave request to take a week vacation, they sat on it and sat on it because they had leaned on me so much the office couldn't function in my absence. I suspect they would have ultimately denied the leave request had I stayed long enough to find out. I gave and gave and received very little.
When I left that job for the government, I told myself that I was going to be a mediocre employee so that I couldn't be taken advantage of like that again. Not surprisingly, I didn't succeed at that, although I did learn to set the boundary of not giving more hours than I was being paid for.
In my current job, I have been doing the work of two positions, for the pay of the lower of the two, for almost three and a half years. They posted the other position two years ago and I even interviewed for it but they made some excuse that didn't make sense about why they couldn't fill it.
When I talk to colleagues across the country in that higher level position, I have discovered my unique skillset goes above and beyond the typical responsibilities. I'm not saying there aren't more like me out there but we are rare in the specific value we bring to our offices. It's left me feeling very alone in some of the work I do because when I get stuck, I haven't yet found anyone to turn to that has those particular skills to talk me through something, like I do for others from time to time.
My current boss doesn't know that though. As we sat down this week, he didn't even know what I did to know what he would have to distribute when I left. I guess it is hard to value something you have never taken the time to understand.
As I start to wrap things up at work, I recognize that I don't have it in me to do less so I just hope my next office does a better job at seeing the value I offer.
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