When I feel like I'm doing more things wrong than right, I know it's time for a change. I've been driving a transit bus for over a year, and I'm starting to feel like I've hit a wall.
I've had a lot of different jobs since I got my start in the working world delivering newspapers at a nickel a pop when I was eleven years old. Bus driving has definitely been the most physically and emotionally challenging job I've ever had, and I think I'm better for it. However, I'm a transit planner at heart, and the inability I see now in changing the conditions I work under is fueling a lot of frustration and rage. The operations manager, who, in contradiction to industry practice has never been a transit operator, is in over his head. Our administrative staff is woefully understaffed. Our general manager is a micro-manager who doesn't know what his job actually is. (His actual job is lobbying government. He doesn't seem to realize this.)
It pains me to put my heart into my work and feel like my input isn't valued; that my knowledge and experience in transit is not being put to use, and so many obvious and fixable problems here are being overlooked. For example, our Ops Manager has a pathological problem with communicating with employees. He makes policy changes every week (some of them quite needed and proper) but fails to put them in writing, relying instead on haphazard announcements over the radio and word-of-mouth. Another example: too many bus stops. The drivers have been complaining for years, but planning and our maintenance guy, apparently ignorant of current industry practice, have a "more stops are better" attitude. Yep, if a little is good, a lot is better! Works for vitamins, right?
I just can't take it any more. It's affecting my work, and my relationships with my coworkers and bosses. Plus, I've been less than totally charming to customers lately because I feel emotionally exhausted. I need to redirect my energy; this blog is my vehicle to vent without (hopefully) getting busted for it, while I come up with better ways of being an asset, rather than a complainer, at work.
