I kinda feel like someone in my life is becoming slightly "agro" and a little too "emo" for me. It is one of my male friend. I'll just chalk it up to male menstruation!! Ha Ha Ha!! Yeah, I think he is on his period!!! He is getting to be a little too "bitchy" for me and started raising his voice (to the point of almost yelling at me, what a jerk) when we discussed my work situation today.
I have straight up asked him to just be a good listener for me before in the past, but alas, to no avail, he is like a typical male who thinks he has all his ducks in a row, he continues TRYING to advise me as to what I should do to SOLVE my problem, but what he is not hearing is that I ONLY want someone to listen to me for heavens sakes! To me, he is worse than a deaf person who CAN'T listen, because he chooses not to!!!!
I sort of think of him as being like an older brother to me because he is almost a decade older than me. I think for the most part, he is a great person, however I am getting a little tired of his impatience when I try to discuss certain things with him. I think he feels that his advice is 100% right and the only correct thing I should be doing. He uses words like, "What you need to do, What your boss needs to do, or What you people need to do," without thinking about what the legal ramifications are.
Also, since we aren't doing nothing about it, he feels I am part of the problem, but in my business, there are laws that protect our clients as well as the workers. Because my profession is a rather young one, getting things to change seems to take forever because people can't decide what needs to be done.
First of all, there is no one true regulating body for us. We are in the process of becoming regulated, but that too has been a slow tedious process. We are guided by a code of ethics for proper conduct, but there are not any hardfast rules set in gold.
My friend seems to think that my boss doesn't do his/her job because they don't force us to attend meetings or make us try to improve our skills. They can't force us and say meetings are mandatory, they can only request that we attend and pay us for our time, but that is all they can legally do. He feels we should lie to the workers and make them come. I told him that we can't do that and he seems to feel that we need to "get around" the system and do whatever needs to be done to get what we want. But logically that would put us in a very precarious position.
Frustration has set in for me and I am feeling like my hands are tied. He doesn't understand and doesn't try to. He asked me today to not talk to him about my work situation anymore because I frustrate him because I won't become part of the solution. It is not my job to problem solve this situation. My job description does not include it and there is nothing I can do as a part-time adult hourly worker who is hired on as an independent contractor.
There is one thing that I think he is definitely right about and that is never again talking to him about my daily life and grind at work. He is not supportive in any way about my job situation because he thinks he know what is best for everyone.
He will NEVER understand because he is stubborn and thinks he knows how to run our business. He is definitely right about not speaking of my work to him ever again.
I will make this promise, from this day forth, I will not speak to him of my work situation any longer. I will only speak to those who will be good listeners and not my "problem solver". If I wanted a problem solver, I would go and see a shrink for gosh sakes!!
I will no longer speak to him about what I do for a living and what is happening to me from this day forth. And if he asks about my work, I will simply say it is fine, remind him that this is not a topic for discussion, and I will divulge NOTHING at all to him.
What he does not understand or take the time to understand is that we are a group of workers that didn't really start to get paid for our services until the late 60's and early 70's. And even after we were getting paid for our services, back them we were seen as helpers and not professional workers. Then we became a conduit for our job and then we were facilitators for our job and now we are finally seen as bi-cultural/bilingual mediators.
My friend seems to think that I am part of the problems of my field if I am not part of the solution. He is narrow-minded and doesn't take into consideration the FACTS. He is not willing to take the time to attempt to understand that our profession is based on skills that one has supposidly acquired over a long period of time and that one needs to develop these skills through the years and it is not just acquired in a classroom and then that is it because our profession is a process like no other and can not ever be compared to anything else because of the nature of its uniqueness.
Anyway, I am frustrated because some of my co-workers are not the most skilled people in the world although they think that they are. They are not highly skilled and it is blatantly clear when one watches them perform their job. Some of them are the kind of people who feel they do not need to improve their skills no matter what anyone says to them and my problem -solver friend thinks they need to be fired for that.
These NEWBIE co-workers seem to feel as though they have "arrived" because they finished their education in a school setting and think that they done with the learning part of this journey, but because this is a profession they do not seem to understand that this is a life-long learning process that is ever changing and that the learning never ends and neither should their education.
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