So tonight at work the candy bar majordomo Helen couldn't make it, so I had
my first full shift as a supervisor (sorry, "Entertainment Service Provider Level 2"). Woo hoo, I hear you say with a hint of sarcasm in your voices, but after a year being stuck at the same level in my job it was a really weird feeling. A good feeling though, at least until the night progressed and I ran into a couple of problems; I hate counting money, ergo I'm given the job which involves counting and sorting money over and over again. I made a few minor stuff ups, but nothing irreversible thankfully.
The nice thing about being a supervisor is that you can delegate. Not that I went mad with power and became fat and lazy or anything. In fact with all that money counting I worked pretty hard. The point is that if there was something that as a lowly worker I would have done automatically, thinking "it's my job to do that", now I could pause, wonder, "should I get someone else to do that?", and then decide "No, I'll do that because I want to. Because I know that if I've done it, it's done, and properly." Thus the unused opportunity to delegate makes the completion of the same tasks less annoying and fulfilling. Also, I think I was a pretty good motivator for those under me, albeit a constantly self-deprecating "don't listen to me because I'm clueless" sort. I enjoyed that, more than I expected, and maybe more than I feel comfortable with.
I know that in the grand (or even the moderately-sized) scheme of things this is a tiny amount of responsibility, but it really made a difference tonight. I've been growing increasingly despondent and irritated over work, because it seemed pointless and directionless. For the first time in, well, a year, I felt like what I was doing had a small purpose. I really could have been doing these sorts of shifts months ago, but I haven't pushed for them because I thought that getting locked into the heirachy of a business I feel no personal interest in was misguided and pointless. But I reckon I'm now going to angle for these shifts regularly, if only to make work seem less overwhemingly meaningless.