Am I being too sensitive? Re: supervisor at work

My manager is very nice and on those very few occasions on which I sought his help, was truly helpful. But I am not in touch with him daily. Daily, I am in touch with a supervisor - a young, very pretty Chinese American woman. I should be thankful to her for having this job because she was one of the interviewers and must have submitted very positive feedback - I was given the offer on the day of the interview. So I should be thankful. Instead, I feel slighted.

Say today. I raised an issue stating that "Since X=0, I did Y". She corrects me saying that X=1. There is no intuitive way to guess which is which, you have to know it, and I got my information from the instructional doc that SHE put together. So I quote to her "the doc says "X=0", should I change it?" and she responds with "DOH please change."

I have never been caught like this because I am meticulously correct in whatever I write, but if I were caught like this, I would have apologized. I would have acknowledged that my supervisee got confused due to my mistake. I would have owned up.

My question to you is: "Does "DOH" replace an apology/acknowledgement?"

If it does, I am being too sensitive. If it doesn't, I am justified in feeling slighted.

I should add that this is her first time supervising, and that I have supervised more people in the past than she does now, and was much more helpful and friendly, trying to bring out the best in everyone, and my being effective in that is evidenced by the fact that I am still on good terms with some of my former supervisees. So when I watch my current supervisor, I cannot help thinking of how I would have behaved in her situation, and usually I can think of better ways than what I am seeing. It is frustrating. It is a small thing, but still frustrating.

I'm a bit confused. Did she say "D'oh" like Homer Simpson? (which is like, "Oops," or "Oh crap.") Or did she say "D O H" as in each letter seperately?

If it was "D'oh" then I assume that it's a quirk of her's when she makes a mistake.

If she said "D O H" then I have no idea what that means....

Hamster, I think the Doh (yes like Homer Simpson) is unfortunately her form of acknowledging her error. That is most likely the end of her apology, she has to be embarrassed. Maybe at some future Christmas party or something, she will drink too much champagne and let you know how sorry and embarrassed she is about that.

But I don't know if you're being oversensitive or not. I'm so damn sensitive that it seems fine to me, to feel however you feel about it. Maybe try to let it go, remind yourself she is very young and inexperienced. Just get through the day and see how you feel about it this evening.

That above "smilicon" was supposed to be a hug! "doh!" Not sure what I typed, maybe huh instead of hug.
Here is your correct hug:
(this is a more appropriate "doh" moment, right?) lol xoxo

OK, I will wait for the effects of champagne!

lol

Dammit! I cannot get the smilies right!!! That one was supposed to be "huh", aarghh, like the yellow one above... Oh I see, it was a "doh" icon lol
Here is the correct doh smilicon, regarding waiting for alcohol to take effect, rofl:

Another trouble with her: she dislikes emails, asked to IM her instead. Fine, I will IM, but she would not respond...

Follow up with an email if she doesn't respond to IM, that should get her butt in gear since she doesn't like emails.

Oh this would bug me, too. We have people at work that you e-mail them and then they call you back.... it's like "hello... I e-mailed for a reason!"

Or one of those e-mails where several people and departments are in the discussion and people don't hit reply all... then you get an e-mail like 4+ responses away and have to go back and catch up... arhg!

I am just having a yuck day. My psychiatrist was not in. I must have missed their vm about it. I am spending the day in public transit instead of earning money on the job. They scheduled me for Oct 18!
Oh well...

I hope you get to rest at home soon.

And now the low cost intern staffed counseling clinic called that they have not been able to find a match for me and are referring me to another city which I cannot reach by public transit. And I had my hopes high. A bummer all in all.

My young supervisor really annoys me! She just wrote something which suggested that I should have been reading her mind! Talk about good communication skills!

What did she say? lol

I have a counterpart at work, F, engaged in identical duties. On Fridays we have been sending her weekly updates in the form of Excel spreadsheets with two sheets in each file. Then the company adopted Google Drive. Now the supervisor has created a spreadsheet in Google Drive. Instead of sending her Excel files we will be updating the shared spreadsheet. Well, I notice that she has many more columns (fields) than I have been tracking, and ask her whether she wants us to start tracking the additional columns starting this Friday. She says that F. has been tracking these additional fields for a long time so yes, it would be great if we are all, quoting, "on the same page", and I should track the additional columns. Whose responsibility has it been to tell me what to track, if she is the person who has been receiving my updates and thanking me for them all along?

I also had to explain to her that we cannot just "update the shared doc" as she suggested - we would have mid-air collisions that way. I had to explain to her that we need to create our own tabs in her spreadsheet to avoid conflict. I just could not believe it - Google spreadsheets are intuitive enough, they are not rocket science!

Anyway, thanks for letting me vent.

Wow, yea that's nuts! It has to be carefully planned when you have multiple ppl updating those shared docs! sorry this woman is so incompetent, and you have to report to her...

my management style, when i'm able to get out of bed or function starts with this with projects: tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. lol, your lady skips all of these steps, she seriously thinks you should read her mind. she sounds lazy and unorganized. i am unorganized, especially with the add, but i'm great at delegating, and making myself available to employees, and making sure they're clear on assignments. :P

I have no doubt that you are great at what you do!

An interesting thing about perception - she does not look that pretty to me any more! It is as if incompetence tainted her beauty.

yep, because true beauty is inside. (and you've got it - don't worry)

You are funny! Thanks!!

The carnival continues. We have had a lot of grief catching a particular problem at the end of the lifecycle of our work unit, called "ticket". It is possible to catch this problem upstream, in the beginning of the lifecycle, at the stage called QA (quality assurance). The supervisor recently introduced QA and wrote a short piece of documentation on it, without mentioning this pernicious problem.

So today I proposed that we deal with the problem upstream, saying "let me know what you think and I will update the documentation".

She quickly responded with:

"Great feedback.
You guys should already be checking for this.
...

If it is not in the documentation please add it.

Thanks so much for being on top of the QA checks."

Since I was offering to update the documentation, it should have been clear that it is NOT already there - no need to say "if it is not".

I have been copied on an email thread between her and another woman from a different department (neither her manager nor her report) and that woman bluntly suggested that my supervisor is looking at a wrong ticket. So apparently she has earned this "reputation" for being careless.

I am in luck .

She is seriously crazy. She just emailed that she wants a project done by Monday EOD, after having said earlier that the project was not a priority at all. The project is really laborious and time-consuming. And tomorrow we have an all day offsite. Well, I will try my best but I won't stay longer than usual.

The manager whom I used to have when I stopped working due to this illness was different. He was highly professional. And now I have to deal with this one... Well, it was my own doing - not getting appropriate help in a timely fashion. Live and learn.

She really is crazy, I can't believe this woman. Want me to start mailing her boxes of mixed nuts from a secret admirer?