It’s been a slow day today, the store manager had insomnia last night, and is in a bad mood, I’m waiting for service repair parts to arrive, in the meantime, i’ve cleaned my work area, and just now sat down at my desk
the manager made some offhand flippant remark about “you had better find something to do…” as he walked past my desk, his voice had a somewhat accusatory sound to it, like he thought I wasn’t doing anything…
(…just as DHL drops off my pile of repair parts …)
…as he walks back to his desk to PLAY A FRELLING GAME OF QUAKE 3 WITH THE SALESGUY!!!
Uhh, exqueeze me, manager, at least I’M doing something PRODUCTIVE, you’re playing a fucking video game on company time, I’m fixing machines and making the company money, you’re wasting time in a video game
wisely, I kept my mouth shut, but I did want to say something cruel and cutting to him when he made that “find something to do…” quip
“okay, let me boot up my copy of Quake then…oops, did I say that out loud”
or;
“shut up and go back to your stupid game, manager, unlike some people here, I have WORK to do…”
Back in the early 90’s I had a workaholic boss who was a serious prick. One day I’m taking a short break at my desk when he comes by and yells at me about getting busy. Ten minutes later I walk past his office and he’s in there showing his vacation pictures to another manager. I just stopped, nodded my head and went “uh-huh!”, then moved on. Boy was he pissed!
But hey, get a clue. Don’t ever yell at your subordinates to get to work, then go slack off yourself. You set a bad example and lose the respect of your subordinates.
Oh wait, maybe it’s Bruce, fresh off my last job where he was my Security Supervisor.
Busy night, I’m working alone (because the work is beneath him) and I’ve got the entire campus to close singlehandedly. Then I get called in to take a crime report. I tell him how busy I am and ask if he can do it. No. So I come in and do it. The whole time, he’s in the office shooting the breeze with an off-duty city cop.
When I complained about that, he told me it was “public relations” and that it was far more important for HIM to get acquainted with the local police than to do the crime report, because he might have to interact with those officers in the future and he wants to know them.
Meanwhile, I had to stay late to complete my work, and went home dripping with sweat. Because it was “far more important” for him to sit around socializing than actually DO THE FUCKING JOB.
Oh, and I liked having the student standing there, giving me her report of her crime (she was robbed), having to listen to the Supervisor say how it was “far more important” to sit within earshot of her and talk about his latest vacation than it was for him to deal with her trauma. :rolleyes:
Actually, in keeping with the Farscape-ish theme of the thread, lets call him Scorpius…
Scorpy actually isn’t a bad guy per se, he’s a fellow tech-head that’s just been given the “title” of store manager, he’s normally very easy to get along with, and our work environment IS exceptionally casual and laid-back (we’re considered the “cool store”, our other location is the “corporate” store), which is why I let his little comment slide, if I said something, it would’ve made a crappy day worse
insomnia combined with slow business would tend to make anyone grumpy
still, I saw his offhand remark as rather hypocritical, and somewhat amusing given his propensity to walk up to the salesguy when it’s slow and ask “Can I frag you now?”
yes, they play Quake whenever it’s slow, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t annoy me, surely there are other, more productive uses for that time, right?
9 times out of 10, while they’re out front gaming (they do stop whenever a customer approaches the storefront), I’m quietly in the background, fixing stuff…
Actually I could call him George, and thank him for it.
George was my father. My first job out of high school was as a laborer on his construction job (he was the superintendent) the first day he brought me and the labor foreman (Johnny) into the office and told him (Johnny) that if he (Johnny) ever saw me goofing off that he was to fire me on the spot. Furthermore if he (George) ever saw Johnny cutting me some slack, he would fire us both. :eek:
I had to work twice as hard to be thought of as being close to as good as the other guys.
Example, my father commented once that a bad laborer would carry only 2 2X4 on his shoulder at a time, a OK one would carry 3 or 4, and a really good one would carry 6.
I swear the next day, I was carrying 4 22 foot long 2X4s on my shoulder up a ladder, when my father asked why I didn’t have 6 on board. I pointed out that I have short arms, and my finger tips just barely were reaching the top of the fourth one. His response?
I don’t know if he goofed off when he wasn’t watching me like a hawk, but I do know I learned a lot that summer, lessons that have lasted a lifetime.
This probably doesn’t apply to the above (he is probably a jerk)…but I did have to fire a subordinate that displayed the type of behavior above. He liked to dawdle and that was fine so long as the work got done…but when it started to slip I would get on his case.
He then started to question my activities and seemed conteptuous of some of my tasks particularly talking on the phone with clients…many of which would involve a portion of ‘small talk’ - which really was important but probably didn’t seem so to him. When he started to bad mouth me to my boss, I met with my boss about it then, with his blessing, turned around and canned the employee.
It was one of my few ‘pleasureable’ firings.
I’m sure to this day he thought he did fine but I fired him for catching me on my hypocracy and laziness.
Hmm…you’re the right city, but the wrong age and field.
Nah, this guy just thought that being a Supervisor meant that he got to sit in the office all day, surf the web, deal with personal matters and socialize with whoever walked through the door. You know, “supervision” by dint of merely being on the premises.
And he was a massive unprofessional jerk. Told me to do things contrary to policy and procedure, then accused me of Insubordination when I pointed out the correct policy or procedure (in private, not in front of people). ((And hey, I’m smarter than that. I do it contrary to procedure, something bad happens, you deny telling me to do it that way, I get fired. No Thanks.))
Told me that it was insubordination and a violation of the chain of command to speak to HR without first recieving approval from my VP. Because you know, the Org Chart shows them on the same level. Lied to HR and the VP when I reported that. So despite me having an audio recording of that meeting, of him telling me like 8-10 times that it was not allowed; one of the things I was fired for was “unprofessional, false and misleading statements” to my co-workers in regards to what he was telling me. :rolleyes:
I could go on, but this wasn’t my thread. Sorry MacTech, but that whole issue of yelling at subordinates and then going off to screw around just grinds me.
…)