My senior colleague expects me to help with his work after previously bullying me, but my contributions get dismissed as “team effort.” How do I handle this?
I'm looking for honest advice from people who've dealt with difficult coworkers and office politics.
I work in IT. I had a really unpleasant experience with a senior colleague and another coworker. I felt they were making things difficult enough that I would eventually resign. It affected how I see and trust this senior colleague.
Now we're working together again, and I'm facing a different problem.
He has around five years of experience and owns certain development tasks. I've noticed issues in his implementation and have explained where I think he's going wrong, but he doesn't seem willing to accept my technical feedback. The work then involves repeated testing sessions, debugging discussions, and hours of my time.
The frustrating part is that I feel there's an expectation that I'll help carry the technical workload, even when the task isn't mine. If I contribute heavily and things get delivered, it becomes “team effort,” and my individual contribution isn't necessarily recognised.
My manager also expects me to participate in testing sessions that can go on for hours. Sometimes I feel I'm being relied on to help get someone else's work across the finish line, but I don't have the corresponding ownership or recognition.
I'm particularly frustrated because I already expect my next appraisal to bring only a minimal hike. I don't want to keep giving extra effort, sharing all my technical knowledge, and taking on additional responsibilities if it doesn't help my own career progression.
At this point, I'm tempted to stop helping this colleague altogether. If he rejects my technical suggestions, I want him to own the consequences of his decisions rather than coming back to me whenever something goes wrong.
However, I'm worried that if I set boundaries, he'll complain to my manager and I'll be labelled uncooperative. I also don't want to damage my own reputation or give management a reason to question my attitude.
How do you stop becoming the unofficial person who fixes everyone else's work without appearing uncooperative?
If a senior colleague rejects your technical advice and the issue later resurfaces, how much responsibility should you take?
How do you make individual contributions visible when management keeps describing everything as “team effort”?
Should I continue helping this person when asked, despite the history between us, or strictly limit my involvement to formally assigned responsibilities?
How would you handle this situation if you knew your next appraisal was likely to be mediocre regardless of how much extra effort you put in?
I'm not looking to sabotage anyone or create workplace drama. I'm tired of feeling that being capable means being expected to do more, while recognition and compensation don't necessarily follow.
I'd appreciate honest perspectives, especially from people who've navigated this kind of situation in corporate IT or consulting.
Jobadvisor
Your frustration makes sense. Being the person who keeps things working, while someone else gets the visible credit, wears people down. Most of your questions come back to two things: making ownership explicit, and making your work visible in writing.
Stopping the role of unofficial fixer without seeming uncooperative: Shift from doing the work to reviewing it, and put that in writing. When you give technical feedback, do it in the ticket, pull request, or a short email rather than only in hallway conversations. Then ask him to confirm who owns the fix. Testing sessions can be scheduled and time-boxed: "I can do 90 minutes Thursday for the integration checks, and I'll send a list of what I'm testing beforehand." Being specific and predictable reads as professional. Being vaguely available reads as a resource that can be drawn on indefinitely.
How much responsibility to take when your advice was rejected: Your responsibility is for the quality and clarity of your input, not for his choices. If you flagged a problem, he overrode it, and it resurfaces, you can help diagnose it, but say something like "This matches the concern I raised in the ticket on the 12th. Happy to help look into it, but the fix belongs with the owner of that module." That keeps the record accurate without gloating. Keep a simple log of dates, feedback, and decisions. You don't need it for drama; you need it so the story is factual if anyone asks.
Making your contributions visible: Make your work legible to your manager. Send brief written updates after you finish something: what you did, what it unblocked, how long it took. Ask your manager directly, in a one-to-one, "When a project is delivered, how do you want individual contributions recognised? I'd like to make sure my part is clear." Most managers who say "team effort" are describing the outcome, not deliberately erasing you. Making your part concrete gives them something to repeat.
Whether to keep helping him: Help when the request is inside an agreed scope or clearly serves the team, and decline when it's a rescue of someone else's work with no ownership attached. You don't have to choose between full cooperation and total withdrawal. Something like "I can review the approach once, but the implementation needs to go back to you and [manager] to confirm the plan" is firm and reasonable. Ideally, bring your manager in before the next round so the scope is agreed on, rather than setting boundaries after you've already been pulled in.
On the history with him: it's fair to be guarded. If the bullying or pressure continues, document it and raise it with HR or your manager. Don't absorb it silently, and don't let it turn into resentment that shows in your work.
If your appraisal will likely be mediocre regardless: Be honest with yourself about what you actually want from this role. If the answer is progression and pay, ask your manager now what a stronger rating would require, and get specifics. If the answer is "nothing here is going to reward this," then it's reasonable to adjust your effort to match, and to start looking externally. Your skills in IT are portable, and a few concrete accomplishments written down now will help whichever way you go. Doing excellent work doesn't obligate you to keep doing unrecognised work.
The short version: define what's yours, make your contributions visible in writing, and let your manager decide the trade-offs instead of quietly absorbing them. That protects both your reputation and your energy.
Why do I struggle so much with working? And how does one find what they can handle and deal with?
I(28F) am in a struggle. I need genuine advice from others to inform me what my problem is with working and finding a career that would fit me. I can't tell if it's my mental illness, if I'm lazy, or I'm too picky but I struggle so much with work and I'm so tired of myself for it.
So, my current position is a full time night shift janitorial job. I have worked here for 8 years. I have also worked retail, fast food service, and at a doggy daycare alongside the nightshift janitor job. Since I started working I noticed a common theme: I can't withstand loud noises, crowds, rushes, and disgusting things. I do it and will get it done, but it hurts me mentally and physically. I have mental breakdowns or I vomit and gag depending on what I am dealing with.
I really thought I'd like the doggy daycare and thought I would be great at it, but I ended up failing miserably. I couldn't hear anything besides dogs barking. I couldn't hear over them. I was so overwhelmed and often after those shifts I would go to my car and hold my hands over my ears for a long time before driving home in silence. It ended after I did something wrong, but I couldn't even hear what the manager was yelling at me about. I couldn't hear her over the dogs despite her being right beside me and I ended up feeling so overwhelmed that I broke down crying. That was my last day.
I struggle with fast food service and retail because of crowds, rushes, loudness, and customers. Basic things, things that are so easy for my other coworkers, I struggle with. When a customer asks me a question about a product, even when I know the answer, I freeze and struggle to answer them or find the right words. I also struggle with loudness from everything. From the background music to the chatter of customers. The rushes are a blur to me. I feel like the room is spinning and every once in a while I'd make a mistake. I can't handle confrontation with customers either, especially when they yell or get in my face. And another coworker would come help me out. I was good at organizing, preparing food, or during slow days, etc.
Even though I've been a janitor for the past 8 years I still can't stomach a lot of things. I've thrown up nearly everyday since being on this job. Even in my personal life I struggle with that. I think the only reason I've been able to stick with this job is because I don't really talk to anyone during my shift, I can listen to music as I work, and I can go at my own pace and routine. Another big thing about this job is that it has great insurance. But the under stimulation of this job gets to me, I find the night shift difficult to work, and I just want to sleep at night and make more money.
I have things I want to accomplish that I can't with what I am making. I feel unfulfilled and want to do something else but I feel trapped where I am at because I keep sucking at dealing with normal things. Things that everyone else can deal with. My boyfriend says I should try going back to school for healthcare but I genuinely do not think that I will be good at that at all. I was thinking potentially going to a cosmetology school since I thought I might be good at dealing with one on one interactions, I'm creative, and have a knack at beauty things. But I'm also scared to try because I keep failing and scared of financial debt.
I would really like to hear whatever insight you can give in regards to this.
Jobadvisor
I want to start by pushing back on the word "lazy." You've worked full-time nights for eight years while vomiting most days and sometimes breaking down over sound and crowds. That's not laziness. You've been enduring something hard, and you've kept showing up. Whatever is going on, it isn't a character flaw.
The pattern you describe is consistent. You do well when the environment is predictable, quiet enough to think, self-paced, and free of unexpected social demands. You struggle when there's noise you can't filter out, rapid pace, people pressing in on you, and sensory input you can't escape. Your doggy daycare experience makes this especially clear: you couldn't hear over the barking, and the overload made it hard to function even when you were trying. That tells you something real about how your nervous system handles stimulation. It doesn't tell you that you're bad at work.
As for what's causing it, I can't diagnose you, and you may not need a single label. Heightened sensory sensitivity, anxiety, sensory processing differences, ADHD, autism, and trauma responses can all show up this way, and they often overlap. The most useful next step is a proper evaluation with a psychologist or psychiatrist, and possibly an occupational therapist, who specializes in sensory processing. A good evaluation can tell you what's happening and what kinds of support would help. Given how much you're vomiting, I'd also see a doctor to rule out physical causes, since frequent nausea and gagging can be physical, anxiety-driven, or both.
On finding work that fits, I'd focus less on what job sounds good and more on the conditions you need. Think about what you've noticed across your jobs. Your strengths seem to be organizing, preparing things, working at your own pace, and one-on-one connection when it's calm. Those are real strengths. The question is which roles give you those conditions consistently.
Your cosmetology idea deserves a serious look, but I'd be careful about assuming all beauty work is quiet. A busy salon floor can be loud with blow dryers, music, and chatter. Some paths within the field may suit you better: esthetics, skincare, nail technician work, or color-focused roles tend to be more appointment-based, more controlled, and often quieter. You could find out by shadowing a stylist or esthetician for a day, asking about the actual noise level and pace of their workday, or taking one introductory class before committing to a full program. Community colleges and some beauty schools have much lower-cost options, and you can check whether a program is state-licensed and what its graduates actually earn.
Your boyfriend's suggestion of healthcare may be a good idea for someone else, but it doesn't have to be yours. Healthcare can involve loud, fast, high-pressure environments, and you've told me that's exactly what overwhelms you. You don't have to be good at everything, and it's okay to say no to a path that doesn't fit.
About the fear of debt and failing: you don't have to make a big leap. Your current job's insurance is valuable, and you can keep it while you explore. Try small, cheap experiments first, like a single class, a shadow day, or a volunteer shift. Those will tell you more than thinking about it will. If you do enroll in a program, look into grants and federal aid before taking on loans, and check the program's completion and job placement rates.
Finally, you mentioned being tired of yourself. Please try to hold yourself with some of the patience you'd give a friend in your position. You're not failing at being a person. You've been working in environments that don't match how your brain processes the world, and you've been getting through them anyway. Once you understand what you need, you can look for work built around those needs. That might be cosmetology, something else entirely, or a current job with a few changes like a quieter station or a different shift.
If it helps, I can work through with you what a day in each option would look like, or help you put together questions to ask a school or a stylist.
Stuck is a tricky situation. How do I got about work when im already doing everything?
Hi
I recently started a new role a couple months ago which has a 6 month probation period. Initially things went well and everything was up to standard.
However over the last few weeks I feel like due to certain circumstances I am not continuing this high standard I initially had.
I feel like i am not doing anything differently, yet I am not able to turn it into success. I have also approached this with management and will receive support. Yet im still worried for the eventualities
How do I continue the work and try everything even if it doesnt turn into the results I need?
Jobadvisor
Hi. It sounds like you're doing the work but the results aren't matching the effort, and the probation period makes that feel high-stakes.
When you're already giving everything, the most useful question is often "what changed?" rather than "what am I doing wrong?" You said you're not doing anything differently, but "certain circumstances" have changed something. It might be your energy or sleep, your workload, the environment, a relationship with a coworker, or how much you're struggling to recover between shifts. Naming the change, even roughly, tells you what to adjust. It's hard to fix something you can only describe as "not working."
You also might be measuring yourself by the wrong thing for now. Strong performance in your first few months may have been partly a fresh-start effect. Dropping back a bit under stress is common and doesn't mean the early work was fake or that you can't sustain it. Your job right now is to keep the parts you control steady and get support on the parts you don't.
Some things that often help:
- Shrink the goal for each day. Instead of "perform at my best," choose two or three concrete things: finish the priority task, check in once with your manager, leave something clean for the next person. Being able to tick them off gives you evidence of progress even when the bigger picture is uncertain.
- Ask your manager for specifics. "I'm getting support" is good, but ask what a successful next month looks like, what they're watching for, and how often you'll check in. Clear expectations make the probation feel less like a verdict hanging over you.
- Protect your recovery. When you're stretched, sleep, food, and small breaks are often the first things that slip, and they affect everything else. Treat them as part of the job, not something you earn after performing well.
- Plan for both outcomes. Worrying about the end of probation drains energy that you need now. Decide ahead of time what you'd do if it doesn't go well, like asking for feedback, looking at other roles, or building up your savings. Having a plan usually makes the present feel more manageable.
It would help to know what the "certain circumstances" are. If they're about the sensory overload, the nausea, or the energy drain we talked about before, the advice changes, and we can think through accommodations or strategies that fit that. If it's something else, tell me more and we can work from there.
Mid-career realisation: Is "Working harder" officially yielding negative returns?
I'm mid-career, spent 20+ years building up a reputation for execution. If something was broken, I fixed it. If hours were needed, I worked them.
Over the last 18 months, that trade feels broken. The sheer volume of manual coordination, documentation, and operational troubleshooting I used to pride myself on doesn't seem to hold value anymore. If anything, being the person who "just gets things done" has pigeonholed me into operational maintenance while newer/younger roles move around the strategic edges.
For those with 15-20+ years of experience: how are you actively shifting your work away from doing the labour to owning the outcome, especially now that tools are commoditising the processing work?
Jobadvisor
Working harder hasn't become negative in absolute terms, but its marginal return has fallen for people in your position. Effort is visible and easy to praise, while judgment is quieter and harder to attribute. After 20 years, the organization has learned that you'll absorb problems, and that knowledge becomes a reason to keep routing problems to you. Your reputation for execution has turned into a cost ceiling, and changing that is more about reframing your role than adding more hours.
The most useful shift I've seen is moving from fixing things to removing the need for the fix. When you troubleshoot something for the fifth time, treat that as a signal to change the system: write the runbook, automate the check, fix the upstream cause, or hand it to someone with a clear escalation path. Each of these turns your labor into something that persists without you. It's also the most visible way to show you understand the difference between operations and strategy, because you're now reasoning about the system rather than just operating it.
The second shift is in how you talk about your work. "I got it done" describes the task. "I cut recurring incidents by a third by fixing the dependency that caused them, and the team now spends that time on X" describes the outcome and its cost. Leaders at the strategic level think in tradeoffs, risks, and resource allocation, so your updates should show you're thinking that way too. Start including what you chose not to do and why. Deciding what not to work on is one of the clearest signals of strategic ownership.
Third, be deliberate about the operational layer you're still holding. Some of it is valuable and should stay with you. Much of it can move, but only if you hand it off properly, with training, documentation, and a clear boundary on what you'll still review. Delegating well is itself a leadership skill, and the person who gets trained becomes a reason for you to be freed up. Expect some friction here. People will keep bringing work to the person they're used to, so you may need to redirect requests in public, not quietly.
Finally, plan for a temporary dip. When you stop being the default fixer, the visible output drops before the strategic value becomes visible. That gap is where careers stall, because people revert to what they can see. Tell your manager what you're doing and why, and ask directly what problems they most want owned over the next year. Their answer tells you whether the strategic space you want exists in your organization or whether you'll need to build it elsewhere.
Tools commoditizing the processing work actually helps you here. What's left valuable is deciding what the problem is, judging which automation is worth building, and being accountable for the result. That's the work you're trying to move toward, and the 20 years of operational knowledge you have is what makes those judgments credible.
If you tell me what your role and industry look like, I can be more specific about where the strategic gaps tend to be and how to position yourself for them.
Looking for career options after working at a dead end public school job?
My wife and I are kind of at odds with each other, but its not really her fault. I make ~$120K a year with great medical, lot of liberty at my job, great work life balance. My wife makes ~$30K a year as a principles secretary at an underprivileged elementary school. Its incredibly stressful, and even dangerous at times. One of the most frustrating aspects is the absolute lack of upward mobility or promotion potential, and it is the source of a lot of friction in our relationship.
Were both in our late 30s, two kids in sports and extra curricular.
Her responsibilities include:
Supervision of all non administrative and teaching staff (paraprofessionals, custodian staff, front office staff, shes the king of the proletariat).
Scheduling substitute teachers
Submitting and managing facility maintenance work orders
Payroll for the staff mentioned
Managing accounts for title funds, activity funds, state and local funds
Purchase orders
Calendars and secretarial work for the principal and vice principal
And on top of that she has elementary age kids trying to stab each other with home made prison shanks (which I guess is kind of an oxymoron).
I guess one of the biggest things holding her back is the lack of formal education. She had about 30 credits from WGU but we werent really sure what program to pursue and she decided to switch to a more respected school but that really just turned into no longer going to school. She might go to Tarleton State for marketing or back to WGU for something, who knows.
But, one of the biggest sources of conflict is it seems like *every* wife in our friends group has a fake, work from home job, that pays like $70-90K a year, without a degree. Shes always stressed, overworked and everyday it seems like our combined pay is barely enough to make it to the next week.
She looks for new jobs in the realm of administration but everything pays less than what she makes now, theres a few companies around that shes applied to for titles like "workflow specialist" but shes never gotten a response back. We live near a lot of military bases, and shes applied to a bunch of government and contracting jobs, and received "referred" notifications, but never gotten an interview.
Just looking for any ideas or avenues we may not be aware of. Thanks for any responses.
Jobadvisor
Her current job is more substantial than the $30K salary suggests. She manages staff, payroll, purchasing, restricted funds, facilities, and scheduling for a whole school, often with little support. Those are the core duties of a school business office, and that's probably her strongest path.
School business and district operations. This is the most direct route, and it may be the one she hasn't considered. Districts hire business managers, assistant business managers, and campus or district operations managers, and many of these roles pay $70K to $100K or more with benefits. Some ask for a bachelor's degree, but many weigh experience heavily, especially for assistant or campus-level roles. Her experience with title funds, activity funds, and payroll is what those hiring managers look for. Texas has an association for school business officials that offers training and certification, and a district HR office can tell her which roles require what.
Federal and base-adjacent jobs. Her applications are getting "referred" status on USAJOBS, which means HR screened her in, but a hiring manager hasn't picked her. That usually points to the résumé. Federal résumés need to mirror the job announcement's language and address each listed qualification explicitly, often in a longer format than a private-sector résumé. Roles to target include administrative officer, budget or program assistant, and contract or procurement assistant, often in the GS-6 to GS-8 range. Those can reach $55K to $75K with strong benefits. DoDEA schools near the bases also hire administrative and business staff. Her purchasing and payroll background transfers well to the contracting side.
Remote operations roles. Those $70K to $90K work-from-home jobs your friends have are often customer operations, implementation or onboarding coordinator, billing specialist, or revenue operations roles at software and service companies. Many of them want comfort with Salesforce, HubSpot, or similar tools. She can learn those for free or cheaply through vendor training, and some of them have short certificates. A staffing agency that places administrative and accounting temps can also get her into office roles quickly, and temp-to-hire is a common way to get past the no-degree barrier.
Credentials that move quickly. Payroll certification through the American Payroll Association, a QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification, and Salesforce Administrator certification all take months rather than years, and each lines up with duties she already performs. Look up what your state requires before paying for any certificate, since some are only worth it if a specific employer asks for them.
The degree question. Her WGU credits are an asset. A degree completion in business administration or accounting would open school business and finance roles, and WGU's self-paced model fits someone with two kids in sports. Tarleton's marketing program makes less sense unless she wants to move into marketing, since it doesn't connect as directly to what she already does. Whatever she picks, choosing the target job first and the degree second will save her time and money.
Before she leaves. If she works for a Texas school district, she's probably in the Teacher Retirement System, and her pension vesting and health benefits are worth a lot. Find out where she is in vesting before she quits. In some cases the right move is to stay a few more years while she builds credentials, then leave with the pension intact.
On the relationship side, the comparison to friends' work-from-home wives is a hard frame to live with. Some of those jobs are real, and some of the people in them are overstating things. The more useful question for the two of you is which path she wants and what support she needs to get there: résumé help, childcare during coursework, a budget that gives her room to take a lower-paying bridge job, or a specific timeline for a degree. Concrete support tends to reduce friction more than debating whether her job is good enough.
If you tell me what state you're in and whether she's interested in staying in education, I can get more specific about which of these looks most realistic.