Getting Looped In

I would like to say that I'm very knowledgeable and skilled at my job, but that's me talking about me. You'd have to ask people who work directly with me to find out if they agree.

I am obviously going to be leaving out a lot of details for personal and professional reasons, but I think I can get the point across!

A few weeks ago, I was covering for a colleague of mine for one random day. I knew he had some stuff going on in terms of his work that was pretty difficult but knew he needed a bit of time off so I didn't hesitate to help him out. That ended up being both a great as well as a difficult decision!

I am always trying to make sure that I help out my colleagues when I can. I don't always have the ability or knowledge to do so, but if I can, I usually will. That is unless they fuck me over at one point or another. I will go a long way for the people around me, BUT that ends completely if you screw me over let me tell you! Thankfully nobody has done that in a bit, so I am in a decent spot in terms of that.

With my colleague who I was helping, shit ended up hitting the fan for one of his things and I felt bad, but just instinctively do what I normally do. I dig in and try to get to the bottom of it, so that we can then build ourselves back up from there to hopefully be back on the right track. It's something that I've done many times and have pretty good experience with how to do it in the varying situations.

I got down to the bottom and realized what was going on, with the help of those around me who were also part of it, and things have been improving ever since, to hopefully get this situation corrected in a few weeks if all goes well.

What I wasn't expecting though, was my manager asking me to help out my colleague with this situation even when he comes back, and actually take charge of it because he feels that I can handle it much better than he could! I was both flattered as well as hesitant because I knew that there were already a lot of things going on in my own sphere of the working world, but I said fuck it, let's get it done!

I think it was really nice to see that not only did I help him out because I was covering for him, but I had proven my methods were good in these situations and that my management felt that it was best for me to take control of the situation going forward so that things would get back on the right track. It's the best thing for not only the customer but for my company and my team, so that we don't get a bad review in the public sphere of the community.

There has been a lot of work that's gone into getting things back on track since I helped out that one day, but it's definitely something that's been a good learning experience as well as a fair bit of fun. I think that I find these things fun and exciting is why I am able to take a step back and think things through analytically as much as I can, so that I don't get caught up in the emotions and end up losing focus. We aren't completely done yet with getting things sorted out, but we've hit a couple of big break throughs and have some others coming soon. With any luck, another few weeks and we will be done and back on track!

What about you, have you had your manager ask you to help take care of something that was someone else's because they trust in your work abilities? Let me know in the comments!