April
21, 2025
Do
you work with a self-appointed “hero”? Or are you one? A person who will never
admit that they need help, even when they’re falling farther and farther behind?
I
don’t know if people won’t ask for help because they’re afraid they’ll get in
trouble, or because they really want to prove to themselves that they can do it
all alone. (In the distant past, I was a “Do-it-myself-er”. It wasn’t good for
me or the company. I stopped doing it.)
Unfortunately,
if you’re not admitting that you need help, you’re causing trouble for
everybody.
Example:
I was volunteering at a food bank, and we had an assembly line going. When we ran
out of open supplies, we had to stop and open a new case. Eventually, someone
went around and offered to open cases so that people could work uninterrupted.
The system worked beautifully—except that one woman wouldn’t accept the help.
So, every time she had to stop packing boxes in order to open a new case, the
boxes of food stopped at her station and the line backed up. She wasn’t being
malicious; she just didn’t want to accept help.
It's
the same way at the office. If you have a legitimate observation—let’s not call
it a “gripe” or a “complaint”—about how you can make things go more smoothly
for yourself and, by extension, the company, see who will be responsive, and
talk to them about it.* You may need more help, you may need better equipment, you
may need to figure out a different order in which to do the work…It could be
lots of things. But if you try to be a hero and never try to improve things,
you’re making more work for everybody, and possibly losing the company money.
Don’t
hold up the line.
*
(I’m not gonna lie—some supervisors are never responsive, so choose your person
wisely. I actually told one—who didn’t particularly care for me—“If you do
these things, you can cut my position, and I can be out of your hair; and as a
bonus, you can save the company money.” She still wouldn’t do them. Go figure.
I didn’t feel like looking for another job at that time, so I just stayed and
the company didn’t save any money. But that was their lookout. I hope you have
better luck.)