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Office Adulting: Offer solutions with any problem

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Adulting on the job: Offer solutions with any problem you bring.

Once in a while, browsing Reddit, someone will have deposited pure gold laying around for everyone to benefit from, in this case office adulting. A young woman posted that she was struggling with the hours of her job here: https://www.reddit.com/r/internetparents/comments/mb7pww/i_was_just_assigned_early_morni

Chocobean posted this amazing information (and got insane amts of rewards for it):

Can you communicate with your company? 7am – 3pm for you, and 8-4 is the most “normal” and “preferred” shifts: someone might have given it to you thinking they were doing you a big favor. Put in an application to change shifts, keep relations friendly with those who can do have an affect, and keep following up. Squeaky wheel (fun and polite ones) gets the grease. 
 
Word of caution:
 
You have to approach this from an adult angle: you must offer solutions any time you bring up a problem. It’s like, instead of saying “I’m hungry I’m hungry I’m hungry”, you have to be able to say “I’m going out to get food, anyone else want me to pick up something while on my way?”, or at the very least, “Bob can I have one of your cup noodles? I’ll buy you one back next week”.
 
Instead of “These lights are too bright!” you have to say “I’m going to use the small meeting room and open up my desk for others” or figure out a way to shade your desk with a beach umbrella or something. You cannot simply present a problem and ask others to solve it for you: what’s how you get known as a whiner and not a team player. 
 

…Oh my god that sums up office adulting perfectly! And it gets better…

When sharing problems, you might also want to spare all the details. Simply saying you are WAY more efficient working evenings, and saying you have family situation that makes regular shifts difficult, would be sufficient.
 
If you share as much as you did here, you’re basically emotionally blackmailing others to save your sanity. When people are stuck not being able to help you, they turn that helplessness into anger TOWARDS you: they will call you names like being whiny or weird.
 
They’re not your caretakers, they’re not school counsellors, they’re your coworkers. Share the minimal, state that it’s a physiological need and you’re looking into getting Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, and don’t elaborate. Elaboration is extremely close to whining. 
 
Again, offer them a solution, and ask them what can YOU do to change the situation.
 
DO: who can I talk to to change my shift?
 
DON’T: I hate this I’m dying I’m literally dying. 
 
DO: who else can I talk to to change my shift?
 
DON’T: this shift is too early I can’t deal with it I’m having migraines and I can’t sleep and my parents blah and my house blah and I’m melting down…
 
DO: Hello I hear that you can change shifts. When’s the soonest I might be able to get a different shift? What are the difficulties involved, and how can I help? What are the requirements and how can I help to meet them? Who else might I talk to? This is very important for me. 
 
DON’T: You don’t know. I guess that’s it for me then. Thanks. 
 
DO: I’ll come back next Monday with some proposals for solutions and ask you for advice. This is very important to me, and I appreciate your help. 
 
DO: keep coming back. Keep asking who else to talk to. Keep being polite. Keep offering help. Do in fact try to resolve any hurdles. Keep telling them your productivity will increase. Do keep coming up with ideas on how to fix it and do keep offering these ideas to them. 
 
It’s okay to break down and cry. If you need to book an office and just sob, do so. **Just clean up after yourself**. If others come and check on you, share the minimal: you are trying to work out a new shift with management, and that’s it. Don’t make it your listener’s problem to solve for you: again, that makes people angry with you. 
 
It’s not okay to stop there and wait for others to offer you rescue. 
 
Good luck. Sleep is one of the things separating us from insanity. But this seems like a fantastic company and learning experience 🙂 Update us when you achieve what you wanted?
 

…Then they sum it up quite nicely again…

edit: Wow thank you, generous Redditors. I wish I’d been given this advice as well. Looking back, this is what all those people who told me to “take initiative” and “take charge” and “do something” were talking about. But it took me way way way too long to realise that my managers were NOT interested in problem solving my problems for me.

If I have a problem, and I make it their problem, then I **become** their problem. Conversely, if I bring a solution, and I ask them to join me in solving a problem, then they feel like they’re being a good manager and they feel good about me. It does NOT matter if you’re at fault or if it was something else’s fault: bring solutions, don’t bring problems.