Mini-Mum’s The Word

My jobs have always been geared towards data entry, as that’s what I am best at. I’ve always typed very fast and love finding new keyboard shortcuts to save me time and just be more efficient overall (not a brag, trust me). Because of this skill, I have always excelled in prior roles that utilized it. That is, until my current career.

I have been with this company for almost three months now. As with a lot of data entry jobs, this one has a weekly productivity that you must meet. By week two, I was meeting productivity once I grasped the role. This fueled me to try to get even faster. I learned the programs I was to be using and used simple keyboard shortcuts to toggle between programs, close them, used Excel formulas to concatenate and vlookup repetitive information that others usually type out every time, etc. You get the idea. If there is a way to save time, I will find it.

We got the team productivity email yesterday, and I see that I tripled what is expected of a single employee in an entire week. My numbers skyrocketed to levels that haven’t been reached before.

Now, here’s the really fun part.

Rather than getting any sort of praise (this company has felt anti-praise since I started) or being asked how I did it, I get an email from management stating my numbers are “concerning” and that they’re essentially opening up an investigation to see if I cheated somehow. I even received a screenshot of others’ numbers in one specific area, with management stating it’s impossible to have that much of a lead over those who have been here for years (my numbers were in the 800’s while the second highest was 300 in the week).

Today, my boss calls me and says she’s been spending the day checking my work, and so far, everything has been accurate. Mind you, this “investigation” didn’t start with her; she was just asked to check my work and was reporting what she found. But it’s all accurate. She says I can continue with what I am doing since she found no problems.

Now, I learned quickly that this isn’t the type of place to be praised. There is zero incentive for anyone to go above and beyond if it’s just going to be questioned. Now, to clarify, I fully understand that if something seems off, a company is going to want to check and ensure I am understanding the work and entering it properly, especially with a new employee.

But to email me stating it’s concerning and impossible prior to even checking my work is where I have the issue. I shouldn’t have even needed to be told it had to be looked into. They were told my numbers were accurate, and there has been radio silence since. No apology, no praise, no “how did you do it?” in hopes I can show the rest of my team so we can get caught up one day.

So, with what little knowledge of Excel I had, I made a spreadsheet that tallies my accounts as I go so I can pace myself, and I am now alerted as soon as I meet that goal so that I can stop working without going over.

I did add just a tiny bit more wiggle room to my spreadsheet so as not to accidentally go under productivity to where they would have reason to use corrective action, but just ever so slightly above the bare minimum.

If they’re going to treat me like a bare minimum employee, they’re going to get a bare minimum employee.