I hate collaborating!! These people are driving me crazy!! 
Our curriculum had an assignment that was supposed to be a group project (I read it over and, of course, it would not have worked as anything but an individual project).
So I announced “Not A Group Project” in class, to a resounding golf clap, and put this up:
Three customers in my first half hour yesterday:
Middle-aged White man (it is ALWAYS a middle-aged White man) comes to register, sort of bouncing excitedly on heels. Says “Let’s Go Brandon!” with excited expectation. Then gets pissy when I don’t respond in kind.
We are not 8. If you don’t like the current guy in the White House just say so. You don’t need “secret” code phrases everyone knows already. You’re even free to say “Fuck Joe Biden” openly and in public if you are so moved and I won’t say a thing about it. It’s not like you’d be the first person to swear in the store.
Don’t get pissy when the target of your secret code phrase is not equally excited about it.
Don’t presume that because I appear to be of your ethnic group/demographic I have the same opinions you do.
When I don’t get all wiggly excited like you over your secret code phrase do NOT raise your voice in anger accusing me of supporting Joe Biden, or grilling me about how I voted. It’s none of your fucking business what I think or who I voted for.
One more time, THIS is my job:
- Ring up your groceries
- Pack your groceries
- Wish you a good day as you leave.
That is IT. I am not obligated to stroke your ego or feed your bigotry or salve your insecurities. Take your fucking politics and shove them up your ass because I am SICK of this shit.
Begged the district for support when we needed to develop a curriculum for a new topic, and not just for me but for all of the teachers of the new class. “Can we get together and plan?” I said. “No. there’s not enough money for that.” was the reply.
A little context: I’m in a large rich district. There are district-wide planning days built in so the district would not have to pay for subs, lunch, extra-duty pay, etc. It would literally be instead of us as a group meeting here, we would meet there. The instructional coaches that were supposed to help us did the bare minimum to look busy. The (horrible) textbook was given to us without even a curriculum map and I would listen to my coach complain that teachers were not even teaching the right material - think if you are teaching high school Civics and your curriculum is having students trace maps.
So I, on my own with no support from the district, have spent the last 5 years developing, modifying, and honing a curriculum. It takes me hundreds of extra hours to do every year (OK. part of it is I’m a perfectionist). And when I say no support, I beg and can’t even get district people in to observe my class, read my lesson plans, or look at student work to offer feedback. It has literally only happened once in the 5 years I’ve been working on developing my curriculum that “the man” observed me and offered feedback. I’m not going to go all r/maliciouscompliance and discuss how I’m the greatest worker ever and the company will fail without me and every other company wants me so badly, but it is clear that my curriculum far surpasses most (maybe all the other) of the teachers in my district and I attribute that to a lot of time, effort and trial and error. After 5 years I feel my curriculum is now at the point that I am satisfied it is 95% complete (no curriculum is ever 100%).
So the other day, the coach came in and asked if I’d be willing to give them my curriculum “because you are so far ahead of everyone else.” I was very polite in how I phrased, “Fuck that.”
At the first iteration of my current job (from which I am retiring in 55 days), management got a bonus if they kept their department spending under a certain amount.
Hang in there… the more frustrating the job, the sweeter the leaving.
Not so much of a rant, but my boss is retiring after 37 years with the company. He knows his shit. I’ve been there for 30 years. Yeah, it’s a good place to work.
I sure as shit don’t want the job because I hope to retire in a few years, and the last damn thing I want to do is go to meetings. The person under me already has her hands full and is great, but, I think she wants to work too. Not go to pointless meetings. The next one down might be a fit, but I think she is the same way. Besides, we need to actually do shit.
So maybe a re-org? Donno. Maybe someone from outside that doesn’t know jack shit about what we do. We are a dedicated team.
Everything is up in the air. And two weeks after my boss leaves, I go on vacation for 3 weeks. My two other coworkers can handle it, provided nothing breaks.
I sort of feel what a fireman must feel. Maintain equipment, but be around when something catches fire. Should be fine though.
Keep repeating that. They’ll try to drag you in, but you need to resist!
“Do you want me in meetings, or do you want me actually working and making deadlines?” (Always worked for me… I fought like hell to keep from being “Middle Management”)
I sort of have a trump card (no not him). I’m going deaf and meetings are sort of pointless for me. I can do them on Zoom no problem with headphones on and hearing aids in. Never thought that that would be a bonus for me.
Using specific or general channels on Slack is great. The team and I connect just fine with the written word. The person that I work the most closely with is a mumbler. But she knows her shit.
I do get dragged into ‘get together meetings’ once in a while. And there might be 20 or so of us there. I smile and nod a lot. With that many people, I can’t hear a thing anyone is saying. I hate those work parties.
That’s another point to make: with a written “meeting” you have a record of exactly what was said, and more importantly, what was agreed to or promised.
(There are certain people I used to text or message afterwards, saying “Thanks for agreeing to front-load the Stratego Syndicate strategem. Will you be able to do that by 3/31?” Otherwise, there’d be a lot of shrugging on 3/30…)
100% And it’s good for me to refer back to. As happens in any organization, priorities can change and then you have to loop back around to what you started a month ago. Having the previous discussion at your fingertips is REALLY helpful.
You should have worked smarter, not harder; thought outside the box; had a paradigm shift and pivoted to create a new synergy by looking at the low hanging fruit.
So while you’re gone you’ll be nominated and seconded for the position. Then confirmed by upper management. Sucker.
Congratulations on your promotion.
I am not a manager. But over the last year I have been doing a number of tasks that are associated with management.
-Proactively finding replacement staff for a coworker who can’t travel due to pregnancy issues
-Finding replacement staff for when said coworker goes on maternity leave
-Heading up a workgroup on a project where every other workgroup leader is a manager
Finally realized it (and why I was pissed off at work) and went to my boss. I explained all these things and said “If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, you should pay it like a duck.”
He said he appreciated the point of pay vs responsibilities and he’d talk with the higher ups. We’ll see.
Many years ago our company started using what we referred to as “SPM Lites” (SPM = software project manager). Which were basically mid to upper level software engineers that got roped into doing project management, but didn’t get the pay and other perks of management (like an office). On the plus side, it did give me a taste of “management”, enough to realize that I never wanted to do that again.
Luckily, we don’t operate that way.
On the one hand, the company is asking for nominations for “outstanding Hispanic leaders” within the company, in order to give some awards and other recognition to great employees who might otherwise be under-represented.
And on the other hand, although the company tracks race, ethnicity, and such to ensure compliance with various laws, individual employees aren’t allowed to have that information. Because we don’t need it.
When asked about the dilemma of who is eligible to be nominated, HR says nominate anyone and they’ll weed out anyone who’s not Hispanic. Which puts an awkward spin on the whole process.
Not yet.
I’ll say.
Interestingly at where I work the HR department has the very highest turn over.
At my company HR has historically had a very low turnover rate, but this last year and especially these last few months we’re hemorrhaging people. We lost so many recruiters these past few months that it’s impossible for the company to meet our current staffing needs. i.e. It’s detrimental to the business as a whole.
And it just continues to get worse. We lost two people from benefits to other companies losing a combined 36 years of experience, my boss was fired for reasons I was never told so my department is leaderless, we lost two employees to other companies from my area of administration and compliance, and there’s been turnover in our HRIS area.
Part of this is because the job market is more competitive and employees can jump to other companies for higher pay. But part of it is because we’re overworked. One of the HR professionals from my area when to another company for an increase in salary and less work. Instead of supporting 600+ employees they’re now supporting around 250. And everything we fucking do is just so complicated. There is no easy process for anything and it’s a monumental effort to complete simple tasks because of the way we’ve set things up.
I’m not surprised there’s a high turnover in HR. It’s a stressful, often thankless job which we’re often cast as the villains for doing. Weirdly enough I actually like it though.