You're Too Helpful

Sorry for posting a little late this time. I meant to blog last night but I was just too exhausted when I got home from work. I don't know how many of you have ever started at a new job, only to find that someone you work with feels the need to give you constant advice. It happened to me at retail and it's happening now at my office job. And I'm not talking about the person responsible for training you, I'm talking about another random employee that feels the need to divulge their 'bountiful' wisdom.

It's frustrating. It doesn't usually come from a bad place, instead from a desire to help, or in some cases a need to feel important. The hard part is being the new guy and trying to navigate the many pitfalls of turning down that help. Yesterday, for instance, the receptionist at my job kept trying to get me to start on payroll. I don't know how to do payroll (at least at the time I didn't - now I'm prostar!), and I really didn't want her training me on it. She doesn't know it very well, and I knew the way she did it wouldn't be the way my boss wanted me to do it. Not to mention, my boss is a MUCH better teacher. So, I wanted to wait for her. It was crazy hard trying to tell her to step off, especially since she's always so nice and helpful.

After payroll was done, and my boss had once again stepped out of the office, she kept inserting herself into my work, trying to correct my mistakes or make me more efficient. It was positively irritating!! A lot of the corrections she'd insisted on were, of course, wrong, and at this stage I wasn't concerned about efficiency. I was concerned about being thorough and getting it right.

In my experience, the best way to handle it is with patience (although that was difficult yesterday, I was SO grumpy). If you just smile, nod and go to your happy place, they'll usually leave you alone and you can go back and redo your work in the way you'd rather do it. But, you will come home exhausted and unwilling to do anything but sleep, eat and watch TV.