Anyone else have a job outside of your comfort zone?

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I am an elementary school teacher. How ridiculous is that?!?!

Mind you - the kids seem to appreciate my straightforward approach and my propensity to talk to them as just another person rather than a 'child'. I also seem to have no shame when it comes to making an idiot of myself in front of an audience. Which I do daily.

However - it is the grown ups which I find difficult. I'd be fine if I didn't have to talk to the parents or participate in office / school / district politics.

It sounds like you are doing well in your profession minus the adults

I was at first blaming myself for not being good enough but the more I think about things, for being thrown into a situation with lack of communication like telling me drink prices and all sorts of other things, it wasn't so bad so I applied someplace else.....but I'm also going to look at other types of jobs. I just hate feeling like I'm limited to only certain types of jobs because I know that if given the chance and a mentor or a place where people will inform me like I thought most places usually responded towards people who are new, it'll be okay. I just need to do things repeatedly so that it feels natural.

That sounds like how I deal with kids

I'm a sales associate with Batteries Plus, and while I LOVE the products (especially the marine deep cycle batteries we offer), the customers we get sometimes are just... dumb.

"Can I use a motorcycle battery to start my '67 Impala?"

"I have Verizon/Cricket/Sprint phone. No, that IS the model number!"

"What do you mean model number for my laptop? Don't you want the serial number for the battery?"

I don't mind selling to customers, and I'm happy to push promotional sales, but I run into some real nutcases most of the day. I much rather prefer dealing with the guys who have some wacky garage project they're tweaking with, and they need me or another one of the associates to help them pick a battery pack to meet their design requirements (energy density, operating temperatures, maximum load, etc).

But our company mostly deals with "My flashlight doesn't work anymore, and it CAN'T be because I put the batteries in backwards or let the terminals rust! Make it work!"

I'm on to the second job in a row that's waaay outside my comfort zone.

I'm a public servant (have been since I was 19 when I started as a part-time filing clerk while I was at uni; at the ripe old age of 31, I'm getting long service leave ). I've always worked in policy jobs, which entail researching and writing policy proposals, ministerial briefs, publications and the like (ideal fodder for aspies provided you can tolerate an office environment).

My ability in the job meant that I rapidly rose through the ranks and three years ago, made it to the rank of senior policy officer, a middle management position. The work was great, but unfortunately, the employer promoted me to that level stiffed me on my prior service entitlements so I got out and back to a technology focused government agency I'd worked for previously. I was in a 'senior policy analyst' position that was supposed to have seen me devising education strategies and writing web content and brochures that would translate difficult IT-related concepts into material that was easily digestible for the man in the street. In short, it should've been a perfect job. However, the boss of the area chose to reorganise the team and put me in charge of managing the investigations team of the area. 'Eh?', was my reaction. And as I got more and more stressed, I made more and more mistakes.

So I applied to other areas in the organisation and landed one in my old branch. I got there a month ago and they told me I'd be managing a levy collection process. My heart sank. My new boss is far more perceptive than my old boss, however, and when we had performance planning, he said he wasn't happy with my work but noticed I was having trouble interacting with other staff. Yup, I said. I told him that I worked best handling highly technical areas where I was predominantly researching stuff, rather managing staff in non-technical areas. He said he'd speak to his boss about other opportunities within the area.

An interesting week or two lies ahead...

Prior to my job I have now working at a large warhouse, beleive it or not I was the AM manager for Mcdonnalds

Horrible, I worked their during the summers whenever I came home from collage. I was finished with collage and needed a better job so I could start my new life as an independent adult. Well at first I was put in charge of placeing people, ordering supplies, counting money, all the behind the scenes stuff. Then it was time to go up front, if I wanted advancement. Now I was lucky, the mcdonnalds I worked at was within walking distance of a collage campus, heh. But because I was the opening manager I only dealt with primarily the old folks who come daily, those up at that early, then later around 8-10 the working crowd would come, usuaully drivethru and order stuff.

I feel I was decent at my job, and could somewhat handel customers, but as they wanted me to continue my experience dealing with customers and running the store more and more myself like learning new stuff so I could continue to advance, I quickly realized i needed another job and quick, the more people Idealt with the more insane I became, hehehe, seriously tho it was causing such stress, i could not take it anymore and it was time to quit. I tryed, and ran the place well enough but customers were my downfall.

bottle eventually.