A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I'm 26, recently out of grad school and I've got my first job. I perform every work task I get quickly and efficiently and I though I was doing great. I actually thought I was exceeding my boss' expectations! So when he said he was very unhappy with my performance, of course I thought he was joking. Turns out he wasn't. He said he was very disappointed in me because apparently I am lazy, don't work enough and I make all other hard working employees look like fools. The thing is, it is a very small company and there isn't much to do and as I said I work fast. When I finish all my assignments I have nothing else to do so I go online. He found out and he said when I have nothing else to do I should be working on improving the company. I think it is unreasonable to expect a person with no work experience who works for a ridiculously small salary to improve a company. I feel so ashamed I just want to crawl in a hole and die. I keep thinking how disappointed my parents would be if they knew. I was always a good student so everybody thinks I am a good employee. How can I feel better about this?
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female
reader, chigirl  +, writes (2 January 2012):
 Clean desks and cabinets?
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (1 January 2012): I'm the OP. Thank you all for answering. I will definitely try to do some damage control in the future, and try to come up with ideas, but it will not be easy because there really isn't much I can do on my own for the company.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (1 January 2012): As part of my job I train and mentor new employees. The work that we do is very detail-oriented, and most new hires are slow at completing tasks at first. As they get more experienced they get faster. In this environment, every one of the new employees I've trained who has whipped through daily tasks faster than the usual rate, has done so at the expense of accuracy. In other words, the new employees who are really fast also make a lot of errors. Once I get them to slow down and check their work, the quality improves.Now obviously I don't know whether this applies to you. But I do have to wonder if you're finishing your tasks so quickly that you're compromising on accuracy. Even if I'm wrong and you're just more naturally suited to do the work than your colleagues, it can't hurt to slow down some and proofread what you've done.The suggestions to find other things to do when you finish your assigned tasks are also good. Not that you should create busywork for yourself. Look for things that need doing but are not being done, and start doing them. Evaluate the workflow in your office. As a relative newcomer, you can look at the way things are done there with fresh eyes. For example, if office supplies are always running out before they are reordered (sometimes happens in small offices where ordering is a shared responsibility), come up with a system for placing orders in a more timely manner and present it to your boss. Is there a training manual for new employees that is up-to-date and helpful? If the answer is "no" then sit down and write or edit it. The point here is to use your strengths to improve everyone's experience.Finally ... be thankful that the only consequence of your slacking off was a poor performance review; you could've been fired, especially if the review was at the end of your probationary period. Take your boss' warning to heart or you may not be so lucky next time.
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A
male
reader, Sageoldguy1465 +, writes (31 December 2011):
 Two quotations from your submittal should help clarify the picture for you:
1. "I think it is unreasonable to expect a person with no work experience who works for a ridiculously small salary to improve a company.", and,
2. "How can I feel better about this?"
Start with No 2.... and reply to yourself: "You can't..."
Then, go to No 1 and ask yourself if YOU'D be happy with a person on your payroll thinking something like that....
Good luck....
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A
female
reader, chigirl +, writes (31 December 2011):
When at work you are still paid for the hours you work. You aren't paid for the tasks you do, if you were you should be able to go home once the tasks are done. You are paid to work a set amount of hours. If there is nothing to do, sure, sneak away online occasionally. But don't make a habit out of it. When I have little or nothing to do at my job at the hospital kitchen I walk around to the other departments to help out my co-workers, or I head down to the main kitchen to help out the chefs, or I do some work that was supposed to be done tomorrow, or I clean the cabins, which takes tons of time. Or I make a cake or waffles for the patients. I make myself useful. Sure, I've had days where I can't be bothered and just sit and read a book. But you're not really supposed to do that.. which is what you have to keep in mind.
Don't let it get to you. We all screw up now and then, that's how we learn. I've been busted by a boss, when I was 17, for sleeping during work hours! Needless to say he wasn't happy with me, haha! This was your first job. Don't sweat it, you'll make more mistakes, but all the mistakes you make give you work experience, which is what all employers are looking for! The more mistakes you've made, and the more you learn, and the better you become.
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A
male
reader, tobson +, writes (31 December 2011):
I actually disagree with some of the answers here, I do not think that the solution should be to pace yourself or to create "fake work".I think you need to sit down with your boss and match your expectations. If you get done with your work too quickly maybe you are not challenged enough. Do you feel bored at work?I think you should approach the subject plain and open, but dont be embarrassed or defensive. One reason why females still earn less than their male counterparts for the same work is that they underestimate themselves. You seem like you have a good judgment of yourself, dont lose that over what somebody (who might as well have a flawed judgement concerning the work been done) else says, but match it and see how you can improve the value they see in you - not by fake work, but real achievement.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (31 December 2011): You can feel better about your review by learning from it and showing your boss that your work performance is improving. You've learned a major difference between grad school and working for a living. When you're in school, it's to your advantage to do your work quickly, because then you have time to "play". In the working world, work is never finished. Even if you do finish early you are expected to continue with other tasks until your workday is over. You are expected to work for 8 hours a day, even if you can do 8 hours worth of work in 4 hrs. After all, you're being paid to work for 8 hrs. Bosses do not like paying employees to surf the net. Many/most companies have policies against employees using the company internet for personal use anyway. The fact that you've been doing this regularly makes you look bad. (Keep in mind that it is perfectly legal in the US for companies to monitor everything you do with your work-issued computer, and this includes reading your email, Facebook posts, questions to Dear Cupid, etc.)As other posters have said, you need to learn pacing; slow down and the problem will decrease. Also, check with your boss about secondary tasks you can do if you do finish early. Better yet, brainstorm about things that need doing and take the initiative to do them when you finish your assigned tasks. Finally, your comment that "I think it is unreasonable to expect a person with no work experience who works for a ridiculously small salary to improve a company" is, well, unreasonable. The way to get increases to that "ridiculously small salary" is to demonstrate to your boss that you are a valuable employee, and valuable employees are the ones who think of ways to improve things and then put them into action. Previous work experience and current salary is irrelevant here. Your boss wants to see that you have some sort of commitment to the company beyond showing up and doing the minimum necessary.
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A
female
reader, CindyCares  +, writes (31 December 2011):
 And that came as a total shock because...?You finish your work early then you go on line- at work. Might as well taking out your knitting needles and start knitting a scarf for your boyfriend. And don't forget to make yourself cozy ,-take your shoes off and put your feet up on the desk.I suspect that you may have missed the hints. It's strange that your boss and coworkers have just remained impassible letting do your own thing just to zap you with a bad review after months. Chances are that they'll have taken the soft approach first, in account of your work inexperience ( hinting or suggesting or teasing ...) and when you did not catch the drift , they came down more forcefully.It does not matter if it is a big, small, or a two bits company- or if they don't pay you a lot. You have accepted their salary and working hours, so when you are at work your time belongs to them.Maybe they don't want you to go faster. Doing things faster often means doing them less precisely and accurately. Maybe they know by experience what's the average pace for that office and tasks, and they know that a faster pace leads eventually to worker's burnout. Maybe you are just smarter and quicker than your colleagues. Anyway,if you just HAVE to finish sooner and can't force yourself to go slower, just ask for extra work. Or go help some colleague with theirs. Tell the boss that you are ready for an upgrade and to learn a different,more demanding set of tasks.This is something that you should have brought to your boss attention to begin with, and he would have suggested you a way to handle it.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (31 December 2011): Seeing as this is your first job you may not be aware of job pacing. It's something that took me years to figure out.
I'm really good at accomplishing tasks quickly and efficiently so I went ahead and did that so I would earn a little extra time to chill. Now that may not be your goal here and you simply are left with nothing to do. But the principle is the same and I too was seen a lot to be doing nothing when all tasks assigned to me and even some that weren't were already completed.
I know it may sound counter-intuitive but you have slow down. You have to pace your workload so that you're always busy. Believe it or not it's more important that you're always seen to be doing work than how fast you complete all your duties. Do you understand? It's all about pacing.
If you're given 3 things to do in a day then they expect you to only be able to do those three things and perhaps if you have time to do a bit extra then that too.
Seriously, there is nothing worse for a boss to see a person at work, not doing work. So slow down, spread your allotted tasks for a single day to take you that full day. You see a boss will always see things that you can be doing.
Even when you are finished early then you have to look busy, as the previous poster stated, rearrange your files. Maybe do a bit of extra work looking into greater efficiency for the company as a whole, maybe look at some competitors or different practices.
If it's a small company then always be doing something related to that and researching improvements to the business model, structure things like that can give you some serious credit if you do find ways. You see that's called initiative OP. It's the people in your position that not only do their work but find time to make the company grow or be better by coming up with ideas or finding new ways of doing things that rise to the top.
So to break it down:
1. Always look busy doing work related things.
2. Pace yourself better. The work you're doing is a marathon not a sprint.
3. Prepare for your work day better. When you know your tasks, think of what else you can do to fill your day with work. That way if you're finished quickly you will always have something to work on.
4. Don't panic, performance reviews are only there so you will learn. This is not a big deal if you learn the lessons from this. In fact the ability to adapt and improve is a highly prized quality.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (31 December 2011): This is not unreasonable; you should never do personal things while you are working. One of them is going online and browsing. If you are fast just slow down to make sure your task is perfectly done. I’m working and this is my first career too, when I finish my task I go to my boss, the CFO, and ask if he has something else for me to do and most of the time he finds something. If there is nothing that I can do I start organizing the stuff like going over the old files and keep myself busy and to be honest by doing this I have made the company looks much better and also it motivate other co-workers to keep their desk clean!
Don’t feel bad, this is your first experience but do not justify what you did. If you don’t like your career just change it. If you do your best it opens more door for YOU.I started as just covering for someone for one month and needed up with a nice offer for a fulltime position. So just explain to your boss that it won’t happen again and also try to change the way you work. As he notices the changes you are all set and he will consider that issue as a lack of experience and not being lazy. Good luck
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A
female
reader, chocoholicforever +, writes (31 December 2011):
I'm so sorry to hear about this. I think it was just a big misunderstanding of what are your boss' expectations of you, and he misunderstood what you're doing.
You should make an appointment with him to talk about this. tell him you really want to be a good employee so you'd like to talk with him to clarify what the expectations are for you. Asking to talk with him about this will help to show him that you are a serious employee after all.
You should also explain to him that the reason he sees you online so much is because you already finished your tasks. Then ask him what you should do in that situation next time when you finish early? Should you go to him to ask what to do next?
In your job do you have clearly written 'performance plans' or 'performance goals' that spell out what you are responsible for accomplishing every 3-6 months? If so, then that should make it easier because you can point to those metrics and show that you have exceeded them. If your company doesn't do those, then you have to find some other way to prove to your boss that you did fulfill all your job duties.
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