A hard few weeks of camp

Tomorrow is the end of the hardest summer group of the summer, which means that for the past 3 weeks I have been a mess. It is a really hard and stressful camp to put together. I have been struggling, I have had tears, I have been looking at job listings and evaluating seeing if would be easier to do that instead. I failed a lot- it was too much things in a short amount of time. But the worst was hearing my new manager words in the process. 

I knew that I was behind, I knew that I was failing, and made it evident that I was trying to fix it all. But instead of him coming along aside of me and helping me. He decided that he needed to continue to point out to me that I was behind and tell me that I can never let that happen again, that I was making things terrible for our other managers. He said it nicely--but that doesn't change how things feel. He doesn't like how I do my job at all, he always want to change it for me. It's a big struggle. 

I really let this failure and these words get to me. I started to look at other jobs not only was I hurt by failing this week of camp, but I felt like I needed to pass the torch to someone new, someone who could ALWAYS handle the pressure of the job, that me staying here was hurting the minstry and success here. 

The past month has also been really really hard on my boss. What has made him a mess was completely unrelated to my mess-- he was fairly unaware of it because there was all this stuff going on with him. I knew I needed to talk to him, but he wasn't in the state of mind to hear my woes. And I should be able to handle this without having to run to my boss. 

Well yesterday, my boss came into my office, it was the last full day of the hardest week of the year and he was asking me about how I was doing. 

In our conversation, I told my boss it has actually been kinda great. Because my manager said all of these awful things to me about failing at my job, and took over this week in working with them and has been so completely frustrated by the same things that I have been dealing with them for the past 3 (actually more) weeks. 

I went on to tell him the specifics. My boss was mad! I asked him for advice on how to make it different, he told me that I needed to ask he had anyway to do it better (it a way that makes everyone shut-up tone) and I said "but he does, he is always trying to make me do my job different- and in ways that disserves our campers" he stayed mad. He wanted to know more, I didn't want to say more because people were now back in the office and could easily hear me. 

Things happened my boss left to work on something else and I started to blog about this conversation, after 3 sentences, I wrote my boss this email. 

Hey, I didn't want to say too much earlier about our conversation because I didn't want ____ to know that [manager name] and I are having conflict, but the hardest thing that has come up last week in preparing for this week is that [managers name] now feels the need to micromanage me. On Saturday he printed off all the group scheduleds for the next two weeks and went through them with me in a very critical way and keeps "checking-up" making sure that I answered the questions he had for me to ask the group leader. 

He said that he wants to do this each week to prevent this week's issues from happening again. 

All these things (this and what we talked about earlier today) are fairly little, but they add up to me that [managers name] doesn't trust me, and doesnt like how i do my job  and that I am having to constantly defend how I do everything. 

I changed my password on my computer because twice I came were [managers name] was going into my email without telling me and it seemed to be in a way to check-up on me and I just don't trust him with that. 

I really think this is something that can be fixed. I'm not giving up on it, but right now the hardest part is trying to make it so we are working with each other instead of against, without breaking the things that we have established as a value with our customer service side of things. 

Nothing has happen, since then, he came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder looked me in the eyes and said "I want you to know that what you told me stays between you and me" 

I briefly talked to his wife today who told me that she heard from my boss about what was going on and that me and her husband have similar jobs because we tell the most people what to do.

I hate being a tattle tail, I hate that I am struggling with my new manager. I hate that I don't feel open to be real with the hardships of my job with him. But I am glad that I have an amazing boss who will support me even when I am a mess and help me figure out what I need to do to make it better.