OVERWORKED: WHEN PEOPLE DON'T GIVE YOU CREDIT FOR YOUR HARD WORK

     I had to learn my lesson the old fashioned, I'm-humiliated-and-crying-where-no-one-can-see-it hard way. 

      I was only 20 years old when my direct supervisor took a 3 month leave of absence to care for her husband's terminal illness. I was left with it all - funding and billing for 8 figure accounts, managing faculty complaints, setting and printing the agendas for 6 different committee meetings and 10 staff meetings from different departments, 2 meetings between divisions, and the big executive meeting that took place once a week. 

     Nobody asked if I needed help. But I did my work, and did it well. Three of some of the most hectic months of my life passed and culminated in the campus-wide faculty luncheon. I managed the menu, the decorations, the caterers, the merchants, invoices, billing, and invitations. Boy, was I proud.

     As I stood at the entrance to the event greeting the guests, an older woman, Elvira* (who had done nothing but give me the template for last year's invitations) stood next to me. 

     Well, everyone for some reason thought that she had organized the event. "Thank you SOOOO much for putting all of this on." People would gush to her as they shook her hand, while only offering a generic "thanks," to me. 

     I felt put out, but I was determined to make everything go smoothly. While everyone sat and ate, listening to speeches, I ran behind the scenes. I double checked and problem solved for all of the weird things that come up at events at the last minute - one caterer had the food but had no lighter to for the Sterno burners; another had brought the wrong sized tablecloths; still another had the dessert delivery coming but needed me to give directions because the driver was lost. 

     "It's fine." I told myself. "My boss knows all of the hard work I put into this." After all, I had confirmed all my plans with the Vice President in our meetings, over emails and during phone calls.

     But when the Vice President stood on stage and thanked all of the staff who had contributed to the event, she conveniently left my name off. People clapped and cheered for people who had done 5% of the work I had done. I was humiliated. I was hurt. But mostly, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. 

     I took a promotion into another division and resigned. I told everyone it was a money thing. But really, I was so hurt by not receiving credit that I couldn't stay anymore. I mean, why stick around after that? If I had been older and less green, I would have recognized it for what it was: Stealing! 

Elvira* (Yes, I DID pick this pseudonym for a reason) had stolen credit for my work.

     She did not deny putting on the event when people told her "Thank You." And the Vice President did not even remember me. They were just following a well-known rule:

You can't wait for people to give you credit. You have to take the credit for yourself.

     I, like most of us in generation Y, (young people between 18 and 35 years old) are often at the bottom of the work totem pole. We learn to follow directions. Be unobtrusive. Hold our tongues. We don't offer our opinions unless it is clear they are wanted. 

     We think that if we just work hard, I mean REALLY hard, that someone above us will look down from their ivory tower and say, "Hey, that ant isn't just scrounging for crumbs. It's a hard worker!"

     But it's not like that folks. Sorry to burst your bubble. If you haven't heard it before, you have to hear it now.

     Peggy Claus, author of BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Horn Without Blowing It points out that this is one of the top myths about bragging. Listen up!!!

     Myth #1: A Job Well Done Speaks for Itself: 

"... many of us fail to recognize the value of self promotion in maneuvering today's volatile and unpredictable workplace. Given the constant changes - mergers, management shifts, downsizing - you simply must let people in your organization know who you are and what you are accomplishing." 

Peggy Claus goes on to explain how our accomplishments get lost:

    "People are overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of emails, voicemails, faxes, phone calls, and meetings upon meetings. They have little-to-no time or any real need to pay special attention to you....it's not going to happen unless you make it happen, and the crème de la crème opportunities to self promote are going to come your way when you least expect them."

     I had lost precious chances to remind her of how much work I was doing. Come to think of it, most of the time I ran by plans by the Vice President over email or over the phone when she was hurrying from one meeting to another. We would only meet face-to-face at 8 am, and then we only talked about logistics and she signed her signature. When I ran around getting things done in the many offices and departments, I should have introduced myself. "Hi, I'm MJ, and I'm taking care of things for the Vice President's." Or "Hi. I'm organizing the faculty luncheon this year." But instead I stayed humble and kept my nose to the grindstone. I was following yet another myth.

     Peggy Claus explains this in Myth #3: Humility Gets You Noticed

     You don't have to be obnoxious. The trick to bragging is being sincere.

     "Very few of us even learn how to reconcile the virtue of humility with the need to promote ourselves in the workplace....somehow we think if we personalize our message or get too excited, we are not being professional, when in fact this is exactly what makes us effective self-promotors."

     Humility is not your friend. Yes, it worked in Sunday school and when you were a kid waiting for permission to eat dessert. But don't ever sell yourself short or wait for someone to recognize your work. 

     I wish I could say that I went back and told them what time it was. That I had stayed up late at night running over what I would say, and then I went to their offices, lost my cool, and made some amazing speech. I wish I had even just written an unobstrusive email saying "Hey, you forgot about me!"

Something. Anything.

     But I never did. By the time I got over being hurt, I was angry. And by the time I was angry enough to say something, well, the time had past. There were other events, other meetings, other things to worry about. But this one stuck with me. 

     Our generation is already Overqualified, Overworked and Underpaid. Don't let one of those overpaid seat warmers take the credit that is due to YOU. And if you have to look a little shameless while you're at it, do it. Even if you have to stick one finger in the air or feel the need to wiggle your neck with attitude, do it. Because if you don't, best believe somebody else will - at your expense.

OVERQUALIFIED: "WAIT...SO I'M ENTRY LEVEL?" WHEN SENIOR STAFF KNOW LESS THAN YOU BUT THEY'RE PAID A LOT MORE

A few weeks ago I was sitting at the desk, typing away on case notes and looking as chipper and enthusiastic as possible (you know, because even though they're paying you crap wages you still have to look excited about it) when one of the directors calls me in her office.

"Do you know how to do this?" She asked, pointing to a Microsoft Excel Sheet. 

"Well, what are trying to do?"

"How do I make this one look like the others?"

I had to do a double take because I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. She was asking me how to bold and underline a word.

And I bet she gets paid $70,000+ a year.

This is the kind of stuff that pisses me off. I'm sure you've had these moments too. At some point (or many points) in your young career you have come across senior staff who don't know how to use search engines, scan hard copies into pdf, or god forbid, use common office software like Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint or Word. Forget Publisher. Adobe Acrobat? Is that new a circus???

The biggest difference between us and senior level staff are two things: they can be assholes to almost anyone without fear of retribution, (when almost everyone in the company is lower on the totem pole than you, only a few people can fire you) and experience. 

It is this experience that justifies how much they get paid, and how little you do. But let's break this word down. Experience literally means they've been around longer -- which, by the way, isn't hard to do when you're old.

Ok, ok, I understand the counter arguments. Well, when you're older it's assumed you have more expenses: children, a mortgage, your kid's college expenses. And, just by virtue of being older, people automatically assume that you're trustworthy and a hard worker. I mean, if stuff begins to go missing in the office, how many would point to the graying older staff member in a suit and eyeglasses? So shouldn't they be paid more, even with less skills and or education?

But retaining an older workforce in high positions costs the company more money than they may realize.

Because they haven't caught up on how to use programs or technology (read: computers) they can take days to do what someone in our generation can do in minutes or hours. For example, this Director of Communications had to mail out hundreds of invitations for a big fundraiser. Big names were on the invite list. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be raised for our organization. She had the contact list in Excel (presumably assembled by someone else) and had the invitation and envelope already open in Word. All she had to do was the next step....

"Ok," I said, nodding approvingly. "So now all you have to do is mail merge."

"No, I'll just copy and paste."I couldn't have heard right. "ALL of them?"

"Yea." 

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. She clearly did not understand that the 300+ invite list would take days to copy and paste, where a simple mail merge would have it done in a matter of seconds. Every hour she spent laboring unnecessarily (on a big salary, no less) was costing money and delaying the invitations. Plus, she could have used that free time to work on other things. 

I remember at my old job, so many documents had to be made that we had our own private copy/publishing center in the building. I had updated and edited a new handbook. All we needed to do was copy, bind them, and distribute them. But a big kink in the plans happened when I contacted the copy center. 

"So, can you give me your email address? I'll send you the file and you can print it in color."

"I don't use email. Bring down the hard copy. And we only print in black and white."

"I thought your copy machines do color?"

"Yes, but no one asks for it and it's broken."

When I went down there in person, I met a woman clearly waiting for retirement. She looked about 65 but could have been mistaken for 70. She had too much weight and it made her feet hurt. She told me about all her ailments (as old people love to do): high blood pressure, insomnia, tired all the time. As I listened, I watched her and I learned something else.

The copy machine worked fine. She just didn't know how to use it. Maybe it was the touch screen that threw her off.

So, because she hadn't been trained in using new technology I had to print out pages with color photos or diagrams for 146 different handbooks from my office printer, and bring them down so she could bind them together.

And they call us "entry level."

INTRO: OVERQUALIFIED, OVERWORKED AND UNDERPAID IN NEW YORK CITY

     This is more than a complaint, it's a gotdamn state of affairs. And if you're lucky, as I am, it is apart of your daily coffee-where the F are my keys-go-to-work-and-suffer daily grind. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a blog about (not) making it in New York.

                                                                   Welcome.

We are not alone. Anya Kamenetz in her book  Gener@tion Debt wrote: "We are...the most highly educated, technologically advanced, ethnically and racially diverse, creative group of adults on the planet." And "We are also the most debt-burdened generation ever produced."

Truer words have never been spoken. In 2003, the U.S. department of labor quoted a ridiculous statistic: Those with a high school diploma earn an average of $554 per week vs. $964 a week for college graduates.

Who are these people? No one in my humble circle of friends, who have graduated with their master degrees in the past year, makes anything near $964 a week. If I made that much I wouldn't be complaining. If I made that much I would be blogging about attractive vacation resorts in the Bahamas. For someone who is single with no children, this sounds amazingly, joyfully rich. To the tune of $51,194 annual salary kind of rich.Which, who am I kidding, is not rich but to someone who has been living on a college income for 6 years (4 years undergrad plus 2 years of grad) sounds down right orgasmic.

This is an affliction facing our generation. I can tell you my brief story, and it might differ on the details but I bet the plot line sounds pretty familiar. I attended a top tier college, UC Berkeley, for my undergraduate degree in two languages: Chinese mandarin and Spanish. I studied abroad. Tried to get a decent paying job and decided to go to graduate school because the job market in 2010 was still being resuscitated. (Some would say it still is). I applied to a bunch of graduate schools and the only one that accepted me came with a big price tag: New York University. And guess what? They gave me $20,000 scholarship!

                                              Flash forward: I am $140,000 in debt.

While $20,000 scholarship sounded great, at a school where it is $64,000 a year to attend, $20,000 was a drop in the bucket. Add that to my $23,000 worth of loans in my undergrad, and you've got a mortgage with no house, equity, credit boost, or white picket fence. In fact, there's hardly any upside at all.

So you think, "Well, I'm educated. I've got a decent list of accomplishments: I've been published four times, presented my research six times, have great references! I'll work hard and make enough."

Six months later you find that you're working harder and for longer hours than you ever have before. You have sacrificed and didn't get anywhere near your dream job. In fact, you're working two or more jobs. You're living with stifling rent in a tiny NYC apartment, with bills barely getting the minimum payments when THEY come: student loan bills. Their short 6 month hiatus is up.

"But I'm barely breaking even!" Or, if you're like me, you say more accurately, "But I'm broke!"

Broke has become a lifestyle for many of us in the age 18-to-35 category. Suze Orman in her book Young, Fabulous and Broke offers us some comfort:

"Most likely, you're young; I hope that you feel you are fabulous; and chances are, you are also broke. I've talked to thousands of young people like you over the years, and, for what it's worth you've got plenty of company."

If you're confused about whether you belong with your fellow broke compatriots, Suze Orman breaks it down. If you are broke, ONE of these things (or more) describes your situation:

"BROKE IS relying on cash advance on your credit card to pay the rent or mortgage, and praying that you have enough on your credit line to do so."

"BROKE IS having a ton of student loans that make you nauseated when you think about how long it is going to take you to pay them off."

"BROKE IS not opening your credit card bills because you're terrified to see what you owe and have no way of paying. So instead, you get hit with the late fee and finance charges."

"BROKE IS wanting to buy a home but having no clue where you can come up with the down payment. So you are stuck renting a small place."

"BROKE IS counting every coin in your change jar as well as scrounging under the sofa cushions in a desperate attempt to find the dough to cover your bounced check and the $25 fee your bank is going to slap on you."

Sure, we're not homeless. NO, we're not begging for change. There are millions of people all over the world who are suffering a much more difficult life with much, much less.

But I can't help to shake this nagging feeling. It's the same feeling I get when I pass a restaurant that has a great $16 entree that I just can't sit and enjoy because I will feel it in my pocketbook. Every time I want to actually have a weekend or an evening off, but I work the burdensome extra hours because, frankly, I need the cash. It is especially there when I push the "submit payment" button on my student loan homepage. It's the feeling of being cheated. Cheated out of the American Dream.

                                          And I'm not the only one.