My only salvation has been to put everything in my writing.
I write everything down with a date. So when he tries to pull some shit about how I failed to do something he didn’t tell me to do, I pull out my notebook, flip through a couple 'a pages, and say "Well, on the 23rd you said that the project was on hold… ".
On a related note, I erroneously decided to be neutral in my dealings with him, and in response he did not fire me along with the others.
Dammit!! :smack:
[QUOTE=niblet_head]
My only salvation has been to put everything in my writing.
I write everything down with a date. So when he tries to pull some shit about how I failed to do something he didn’t tell me to do, I pull out my notebook, flip through a couple 'a pages, and say "Well, on the 23rd you said that the project was on hold… ".
QUOTE]
Ha! I tried that once. My boss was one of those who would tell me to put something on hold until he brought me further information. Then, a couple days later, he would want to know why I hadn’t finished the project. Once, in his presence, I wrote a note on top of the latest on-hold project that said something like “4/5/02 Per S., this project on hold until given notification to proceed.” I showed him what I had written and told him that I was putting the note on top of the project. A few days later, he comes raging in, wanting the completed project immediately. I showed him the note and he acted like he had no recollection of the directive or me writing the note. He seemed to think I just made it up and put random notes on stuff I didn’t feel like doing.
He was a nutcase, though. So was his boss. They played this game where they would have screaming fights in the hall and my boss would get fired. He’d storm out, slamming doors. A couple days later, he’d be rehired. Lather, rinse, repeat several times over the course of a year. I’m so glad I got the hell out of there. Apparently, a lot of other people felt the same way. Out of about 80 people in the company who were there when I started, about 60 of them quit and had to be replaced by the time I quit 2 years later. For awhile there, we were the only company in town that was hiring. Wonder why?
A fair number of people around my workplace are using white boards for keeping abreast of what is on the boil and the relevant time lines. Is there a place in between your offices (so you can keep an eye on it) where you can record things your boss says, making the order quite public in the process. Making things public makes for greater accountability.
A trick that’s worked for me in the past with a guy who was nice enough but notoriously prone to change his mind after we’d agreed on something.
Take really good notes of what is said, then immediately put them into an email and send them to the person in question with a note, “I’m just clarifying that I understand what you wanted, could you confirm that these notes are accurate so that I can get on with Project X.”
You may, or may not get a response, but if you don’t, you have a record, and your boss has an email which you can point to and say, “but I asked you in an email dated x, if I was clear about what you wanted, and since you didn’t respond I assumed I had it right”.