Stop Holding Up the Line

 

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.)