My project “manager” is such a fuckwit. I could start an entire Pit thread about her, but she’s just not worth it.
Last week I got a request from an end user. She needed to report some data to the state. I made a couple of adjustments to a query and sent the results to her.
In steps Fuckwit. “Why wasn’t I told about this project? Why didn’t you keep me in the loop? We need to figure out how many people will need to access this data.” (Hint, Fuckwit: One.) “Where is the spec? I need you to install various widgets and make the data robust and make it so that it fulfills my false sense of importance.”
How to mismanage a project in ten difficult steps:
Butt your nose in where it doesn’t belong.
Forge a complete misunderstanding of the required actions.
Panic about the deadline.
Make false assumptions and give them undue importance.
Be a complete fuckwit.
Complicate the problem so much that making the deadline is impossible, making us lose accredidation and funding.
Fail to listen.
When you do listen, misinterpret.
When you need to make a decision, put it last on your priority list.
Completely disregard the end user.
So this morning I took the bold and unprecedented move of actually talking to the end user and gasp clarifying what she needs. She was a little confused as to why I was still working on this. She submitted the data a week ago, and everyone but Fuckwit is happy.
You forgot the part where fuckwit schedules daily “touchpoint” meetings to discuss progress (or lack thereof) on your small deliverable.
Because nothing gets results like meeting… after meeting… after meeting… after meeting… after meeting… after meeting. Especially when they’re scheduled so close to each other than no one actually gets any work done besides sending out the minutes and action item logs from the last meeting.
(Not that I’ve ever experience that kind of project management hell… nooooooo)
Has scheduled 2 8:30 am meetings and 1 12:30 pm meeting this week. Not that big a deal, but certainly bad form.
Unquestioningly defers all technical queries to me, instead of instructing people to open a (fucking) ticket.
Got in a very loud shouting match with my grand-boss the other day (very unprofessional)
Stirred up some shit the other day because a user was getting an error message when trying to install certain software on his machine. It didn’t install because it was already installed!! (That one got by the end-user himself, the PM, and one abso-fucking-lutely useless desktop support guy before it made it’s way to me)
She’s taken to emailing me after business hours requesting status updates
She also started bringing her laptop to meetings a couple weeks ago, and of course my boss and grand-boss (not to be out-done) started doing it too. Not I have to bring my laptop to meetings all the time, too. I bring it and play solitaire during the meetings.
I could go on, but I’m not going to. I’m getting angry now just thinking about her and need to calm myself with a few dozen games of Freecell. Then lunch.
Yep, I can relate. Our PM likes to send instant messages with oh-so urgent requests only during lunch hour and no other time. I swear he’s just trying to catch us taking an extendo-break.