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."