Some time ago, I was feeling so much pressure at work that at one point I was afraid I might suffer a nervous breakdown. I had been upgraded to a new position a few months earlier. It was said that owing to the complexity of the work, compounded by frequent policy changes, two to three years of on-the-job experience was required to reach proficiency.
The work demanded meticulous attention to detail, but printed instructions for procedures and software unique to that company were incomplete and sometimes ambiguous. Employees assigned as roving trainers often gave contradictory information, resulting in cautious confusion for some of us new to the work.
One day I was politely informed that although it was clear that I was capable of the technical work, I was not mastering it quickly enough. I was given one more month to more than double the number of cases I handled or be reassigned to my lower-paid previous job.
