My manager told me to stop asking questions, that advice hurt my next review

Two years back at a warehouse in Toledo, my supervisor kept saying "figure it out yourself" whenever I asked about the inventory software, so I stopped bothering him. Turns out he meant I should learn the basics, not skip safety checks, and I missed three documentation steps that showed up in my performance review last spring. Has anyone else gotten vague advice from a boss that ended up costing them more than it helped, and how did you handle it?

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troy_gibson4323d ago

Whoa, hold on there, I gotta push back a little. Getting told to "figure it out yourself" can be a real gut punch, but I think you might be reading it wrong. Sounds like he was giving you the green light to be resourceful, not telling you to skip the important stuff like safety or documentation. The real issue is he didn't spell out the difference between "learn the basics" and "cut corners," which is on him for sure. But if you'd gone back to him with a specific problem and showed you'd already tried a couple things first, you might have gotten a totally different answer. A vague boss is a pain, but sometimes you gotta get in their head and ask better questions, not just fewer ones.