Fundamental logical disconnect (work-related)

The BBQ Pit
1

I rarely post work rants on here. Hell, I rarely talk about work at all. That’s because most of the time work is just a 7.5-hour chunk of boring time that I spend shuffling paper from one bin to another, interspersed with occasional chunks of mind-killing stress when I end up working reception shifts.

But today was different.

I work for a county assistance office of the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare. We have been VERY busy the last six months. Our application workload has at least doubled. This is the framework of this Pitting, on which the rest hangs.

We had a meeting today, with the Clerical Management Coordinator. Now, I personally like the CMC. She’s got a totally unenviable position, stuck between management and labor, not really part of either side but at least somewhat distrusted by both because each side sees her as an emissary of the other. She seems to sympathize with us, but that may just be a way for her to identify with us so we don’t shut her out completely (because if we did, her job would become about 10 times more difficult).

Anyway, we currently have, on top of our core duties of entering welfare applications into the work control system, a file-purging project which is on it’s rapidly-approaching second missed deadline, coverage of reception all day, coverage of phones all day, coverage of EBT (electronic benefits transfer…the smart card we use to distribute benefits now instead of paper food stamps), mail, special applications (CHIP and Web-based applications), transcribing the group voicemail messages, and just run-of-the-mill filing. We’ve been falling behind on entering applications due to calloffs because of illness, as well as just plain previously planned vacations, and this was one of the reasons for the meeting.

We have asked what duties are supposed to be our priority, because, frankly, we have no idea anymore. The answer: They all are.

Huh?

If all of our duties are the highest priority, then NONE of them are! If they’re all highest priority, then the entire clerical department is left adrift in a sea of chaos, because we have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing first! We have no direction!

I’m not blaming my immediate supervisor. The supervisors in our office aren’t even considered management. They’re labor, just like us, and are represented by the same union. I absolutely love my supervisor, and she’s in the same boat we are…there is no direction coming down from the top on this stuff.

We can’t hire more people because we are “at full complement”. There’s no money in the budget for temps. And the CMC has told us point-blank that she was berated the last time she told the Executive Director that there simply was no time to get everything done with our current workforce, and told that she “would never come in this office and say those words to me [the Executive Director] again”.

Even with that…I don’t even want to think about how difficult this job would be under Lynn Swann…

2

What’s the matter with Lynn Swann, aside from the fact that his legacy is grossly overinflated due to his appearances in four Super Bowls?

3

He’s a Republican.

From his campaign ads attacking Rendell, I gather that his plan would start with gutting the DPW and go on from there. We already (unofficially) don’t have enough people to keep up with our workload. If Swann gets voted into the Residence and slashes budgets, we’re soaked through.

4

Then you, the entire staff, should put signature to a letter to the Executive Director exactly what the CMC “would never come in this office and say those words to me [the Executive Director] again”. He’s an asshole. I hate managers that do that. It’s flat incompetent Type A hegemony, and he should have his fat ass handed to him for it.

5

What is she supposed to do?

Find different words to communicate the same fact?

Use the same words but do it at the water cooler?

Use the same words, written on cue cards?

Take a course in mime?

6

Yeah, I have had this argument with my boss several times in the last month. I even nudged the boss’s son into having that same argument. He did just as well as I did. :rolleyes:

-Joe

7

Just as your CMC is the meat in the sandwich (being pushed from both directions), her bosses are sandwich meat, too. So I sympathise with them, to a certain extent. But this “never come in this office and say those words to me” bullshit is just that – bullshit. They are comfortable saying that to the peons, because they don’t expect the peons to fight back. They would not say stuff like that to their bosses, so thay are being dishonest. They really do need to tell you how you can cope without all doing 12-hour days, or having nervous breakdowns. And that may mean that some of your clients get worse service. Hopefully, that won’t be the clients with the most urgent needs.

8

See, I do have some sympathy for our ED, because she DOES have a Regional Director above her pushing to get this stuff done. The problem is that we DON’T have 12-hour days. We’re not allowed to have 12-hour days. We are there for 7.5 hours, and at 5:05 we need to be out of the building (union issues, liability issues, etc.). The clerical units are willing to put in overtime, but that overtime has to be approved by Harrisburg, which is where the problem begins…it’s the usual situation where the people making the decisions have no idea how the work is actually done, compounded by the fact that the people making the decisions aren’t even in our county. I half-suspect that the old “too much homework” effect is in play as well, where part of our workload is dictated by one group in Hburg and part is dictated by another group that doesn’t talk to the first group and so neither has any idea how much work there actually is.

9

Part of our meeting today was brainstorming to figure out what new procedures we can effect that will allow us to get all of this done. People in the clerical units are willing to do overtime, to bring work home (the things we can do without being on the State network), to switch around our duties (having certain people dedicated to certain duties rather than being a pool unit)…there’s further activity to come on this front, as we have more meetings in the next few weeks to discuss it. (Yes, the irony of having meetings (during which no actual work will be done) to figure out how to maximize our work effectiveness is not lost on us).

10

Lest anyone read this thread and chime in with a jab at the “public sector,” I will note that I have seen exactly the same thing in industry (including Fortune 1000 companies).
Following one heavy layoff, the IT director gathered all the outstanding projects together and worked with the users to come up with a set of priorities, from 1 to 15. (1 was breakdown, 2 was government mandated, etc.) Based on the demands of the user community, they were PERTed out (or maybe Gantted) and mapped for management to see. Management kept screaming that they had things that had to be moved higher on the list, so a Priority 0 was created that required the signature of the corporate controller to be added to the list and he required a completed IRR before he would look at the request. Within two months, we had a 15 month backlog of Priority 0 projects.
(Meanwhile, staffing remained frozen and requests for productivity software were denied as “expensive.”)

11

My husband was telling me a story about a conference he had with one of the senior executives under his supervision. Recently, he had asked for a progress report on a number of projects he had assigned. None of them were finished, most of them were “in progress”. Now, hubby knew that many of them could simply have been completed and inquired as to how these projects could all be uncompleted. His senior exec simply said he would try harder and was sorry to disappoint him.

Later that day, two items came up and hubby picked up the phone to call this exec to give him direction on how to address the issues. After the second call, hubby said he stopped for a second and reflected. He then called the exec back into his office.

He asked him, “How many active projects do you have from me?” The reply, about a dozen or so. At this point, hubby said he sighed and stated " I never prioritized these things for you have I? Each time I call you, talk to you or email you, I don’t give you a priority, thus you likely drop everything and begin working on that project. This pushes all of your other tasks and projects aside and then when I have you shift gears, those projects go unfinished. Is this an accurate description?"

The exec, being a real good man and a team player replied that he would not typify it that way and that hubby should not have to prioritize for him. However, hubby corrected him and said that his failure to achieve goals was solely his (hubby’s) fault. He told him to get all the projects together and they would have a planning meeting.

When hubby told me this, I was so proud of him. I realized that he knows what management is all about. He takes responsibility for everything that happens and realizes that not prioritizing workloads for your staff gives them anxiety and results in inefficient production.

He told me that the general feeling of anxiety this exec had was almost instantly lifted.

The failure of the Op’s bosses to prioritze work will only result in failure. A manager’s job is simply NOT to give out work to be completed and make sure it is done. They should streamline the operation and seek to reach OBTAINABLE goals. The sad part is, if these managers cannot see that, then when productivity falls, they will blame the workers and will end up reducing productivity more by having a high turnover and spending wasted time on training and orientation.

The more I see and learn, the more I realize that out of all managers that exist, maybe, just maybe, 10% really have the skills.

12

Good for your hubby, Lissa!

I have two modes of operation: “I think” and “boss thinks”. That is, in the first mode I’ve given tasks to do and I prioritize them and allot time to them and make whatever decisions need to be made (consulting with the boss and other parts when I deem it necessary); in the second mode it’s sir-yes-sir and I don’t so much as go pee without permission (I had a boss who called those of his subordinates with more schooling than himself and told us “nobody pays you to think”, others were less straightforward but equally head-in-ass). There are degrees before “state 1” of course: I will consult a new boss more often than one who already knows me and I, him.

Currently, I work for a subcontracting company. 90% of the IT department of the place where I work (let’s call it G) is either temps or people from my company (C). The boss is from G and interviewed each of us individually. She claimed once and again that she wanted “independent thinkers”, “people who don’t need to be lead by the hand”; that she wants us to not just support one of the programs used by G but sell it to the users; she complains constantly about G using 5 programs where just one would suffice (in every case I’ve seen so far, ours would do just fine).

OK, so, if anybody can explain to me how does that square with being supposed to say “NO” every time a user asks “can we do thistask with your program”, I’d appreciate it. I’d also like to know why, after being on vacation for the first month myself and three others were in the job, she complained that we’d been “doing things on our own”.

Rather than having too much work, I’m not being allowed to do the work I see that needs done :frowning: Trade?

13

This is all well and good - but surely anybody above low-low level is capable of accepting work and saying, ‘when do you want this done by?’ and, if necessary, ‘if you want it done by then what is less urgent that I already have?’. I certainly wouldn’t expect my manager to make all those decisions without my input, and I wouldn’t expect my assistant to take on work without asking those kinds of questions either.

Maybe I’m just lucky?

14

I’d say so. All those Dilbert strips in which the boss demands physically impossible acts to be delivered simultaneously are generally harvested from people in real offices sending in their experiences to Scott Adams.

I have worked in shops where the employees eventually “overcame” their desire to ask for direction or priority because each such request was met with scathing contempt that they would even consider not accomplishing everything in the previously alotted time despite dwindling resources.

If Lissa’s husband’s subordinate had previous experiences working with such bosses, he may have thought that asking for clarification of priorities was tantamount to asking for a bad fitness review.

15

Well, in my case, most of our duties are ongoing tasks, such as inputting the applications. We get more applications every day. There is no “done by” other than the 24-hour turnaround time. The few singular tasks (such as the file-purging) have deadlines, but they’re ridiculous deadlines when you factor in everything else we have to do, all of which is, as I said in the OP, of exactly the same priority as everything else. That line about “everything is highest priority” is a direct quote, not a fanciful bon mot on my part. The CMC really delivered that directive to us from on high. Thus my situation.

16

Reminds me of the time I almost gave up working in theatre.

I was playing for rehearsals for a show, and I show up the first day of rehearsal and get the score at that time. We all hack our way through some stuff, and at the end of rehearsal I ask the director what I should focus on for the next time (two days away).

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, are we maybe going to focus on some specific songs at our next rehearsal?”

“…”

“Or maybe we’ll be working on act one first… or act two? What should I start learning first so I can be ready?”

“Oh. Work on it all.”

:rolleyes: thanks so much. That whole experience was one of the most stressful of my life.

17

Suffice it to say that there are a lot of manager’s who have some of these tendencies where hubby works. Yes, he did tell his exec that he could always have asked “is this a priority or do you want me to finish A and B”. However, for some reason this person felt as if he should be able to do whatever was asked and not ask questions. He simply got overwhelmed with this mentality and a discussion like this made him feel more comfortable in asking questions and seeking guidance.

18

That and the fact that he has NO experience in public office at all, and yet thinks he can jump right in at the top. Maybe he should start a bit smaller than Governor to get his feet wet. Fundraising for charity and being a sports star are not really excellent resume fodder for the top State job.

19

I have used exactly that same argument at work. That is one reason I was fired for being a pain in the ass.