My try at shadowing someone for a day backfired badly

I set up a day last month to follow a senior project manager around at my company in Austin thinking I'd pick up some good tips. Instead I spent 8 hours watching him argue with three different contractors about bathroom tile spacing and never once saw him do any actual planning or scheduling. Has anyone else tried job shadowing and found it showed them what they did NOT want to do instead?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_angela23d ago

Eight hours of arguing about tile spacing... that sounds like a special kind of nightmare. I would've been checking my watch after the first hour and wondering where I signed up for this. Makes you realize some jobs are way more about putting out fires than the actual job description.

cora_jenkins22d ago

Had a job once where the homeowner kept changing her mind about the grout color every 15 minutes. Finally just said "look, pick one and we'll run with it, or I'm gonna start billing you for the extra time." She picked one quick after that. @the_angela, sometimes you gotta set a hard boundary or you'll be there all week.