? Our boss doesn't fight our corner
? Will not having a degree limit my job options?
At the start of each week, we publish the problems that will feature in this Saturday's Dear Jeremy advice column in the Guardian Work supplement, so readers can offer their own advice and suggestions. We then print the best of your comments alongside Jeremy's own insights. Here are this week's dilemmas ? what are your thoughts?
Problem one: Our boss doesn't fight our corner
I work in a team with a very specialised area of knowledge and our manager is driving us mad with his inability to understand what we do or remember anything we tell him. Worse, he lets other departments steamroller him over our work. Our role is client-facing and interacts with a number of other client-facing departments as well as internal ones.
We don't expect him to know every detail of what we do but he has a habit of trying to get involved in our work without understanding it ? he often asks us to explain something and we're happy to try and improve his knowledge, but after a short time it becomes very obvious that he has 'switched off' and is no longer listening. He also asks the same question over and over again which is incredibly frustrating.
Not only does he not listen, he rarely remembers anything we tell him which has led to embarrassing incidents in meetings and in front of clients where he gives out wrong information or commits us to work we shouldn't be doing. When we've tried to discuss this with him he's told us we're being unhelpful to other departments and that we need to be more helpful to get them to trust us. It's not that we're being jobsworths, but when he tells other departments we're responsible for work which is actually handled by others we have to correct this and it makes us look bad. We've already got a reputation for being disorganised and useless because he has been unable to effectively manage work coming into our team as well as giving conflicting and incorrect information to other departments and clients.
If any problems arise with our work, his face just shows absolute panic and he will let other departments bully him at the same time as agreeing with them that his team is useless. He will never stand up for us and we feel totally undermined.
Last month we found that he had taken a week's holiday without telling any of us. He will also authorise holiday for us, have a handover meeting, then forget the person is away and go around the office asking everyone if they have seen them.
We don't dislike him at all and he's very approachable, but his forgetfulness and seeming inability to manage effectively is driving us to distraction.
Problem two: Will not having a degree limit my job options?
I'm 23 years old and decided university wasn't for me after a gap year in Australia. Since then, I have done bar work, and now work as an assistant bar manager. However I don't feel like this is something I want to do for the rest of my life, but feel like my options are pretty limited: I'd like to perhaps go into a corporate role within the industry but feel like I don't have the right experience (I interviewed for a business development manager trainee position earlier this year and was told I would be better suited to one of their front-of-house vacancies) and in terms of doing anything else, again I feel like I don't have the relevant experience, and that every employer is looking for a graduate.
I sometimes doubt that a graduate would be any better at the job than myself but that any application would be dismissed as soon as they see that I don't have that piece of paper.
I don't want to go back into full-time education, nor can I afford to take an unpaid position that would give me the experience I so clearly need. But I don't know what my options are and I feel lost.
What are your thoughts?
? For Jeremy's and readers' advice on a work issue, send a brief email to dear.jeremy@guardian.co.uk. Please note that he is unable to answer questions of a legal nature or reply personally
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/work-blog/2011/jul/25/dear-jeremy-work-advice
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