Do you feel underutilized at your job yet you never inquire about it with a supervisor?

As a manager in my corporate days, I was very diligent about giving my staff members regular performance updates. When one of my own managers was overly late with my review or skipped it entirely, I naturally (at least “naturally” for me) grew paranoid and assumed no news was bad news, which of course made it very difficult for me to ask for my review.

But what I learned over the years was that usually the manager had simply forgotten, and when reminded, would immediately give me a review, and that these reviews usually turned out to be far more favorable than I had anticipated. I recall one such review, which was five months late—I was very worried about it—resulted in a promotion and big raise!

My advice: If you’re feeling undervalued and haven’t talked with your manager, bite the bullet and do so. Just be sure to ask yourself before doing so if you’re doing your job as well as you can, and whether there might be more you can do to ensure that your manager does value you.

Yes. That’s how I felt at the job I had at the hotel in Tampa. The owner was too passive aggressive to explain anything to me, and I ended up not working there. I think it’s because local owners tend to not have faith in “strangers”. That’s how it was with my other hotel boss, too.