I understand that Boss is a busy man and doesn’t have time to oversee every project, but why he has someone in a completely unrelated field serve as the liaison to review all the documents I create completely baffles me.
First off, boss wants a very formal, detailed document, adding “but just keep it to one page.” That’s not possible, unless you want me to shrink it to an unreadable font. The 8 examples I researched to use as a template all went close to the double-digit range in page count.
Then, when I show the 7-page document to the person to the aforementioned intermediary, I’m told, “I have no familiarity with this kind of document and I’ve never seen one before,” followed by (paraphrased) “Here are the many, many things wrong with what you did.”
It’s gotten to the point where most of us don’t interact with this person until the work product is all but finished, so minimize potential needless input and superfluous complications.
I was chastised today for telling one of our marketing people that, legally, they would need to put 2 items on separate lines, so as not to violate state law where we can’t have the appearance that the two are directly related, without consulting with the intermediary first.
I was literally scolded for telling someone to hit the “Enter” key.
I work in a chemical plant. Sometimes, they pull odd substances out of pipes and tanks, and want to know what the stuff is. Unfortunately, the reaction in such cases has become “Let’s give it to Lightray to figure out!”
So, they pulled some goop from a filter. I made an educated guess as to what it probably is, and did all the analysis that is possible here. But I have to ship it to HQ for more analysis.
Chemical shipments require the appropriate Safety Data Sheet… I’m currently trying to get past the second go around of “I need to ship this unknown sample for analysis, what SDS do I use?” followed by “We’ll let you know once we see the analysis.”
I feel like Yossarian.
I figured it was something like that.
I’ve taken similar surveys and I’ve never had, nor have heard of anyone receiving repercussions from anything negative.
The access logs, OTOH…
Tell them it is solid FOOF
I’m a project engineer, doing capital projects in a plant, and work is extra frustrating right now.
In my employee review, my boss asked if there was something I felt I needed to improve on. I picked two things because I honestly do have two things. One is electrical installation knowledge. But the other is my relationship with the maintenance team leader, Bob*.
Bob is a really smart and really good maintenance tech. He is a cool guy most of the time. But when he’s upset, he is a real asshole. Every time I have to come to him for buy in on something he may not agree with, he often yells at me, storms around and spends a good 3 minutes telling me why its stupid. I get why he’s frustrated. Bob feels his needs aren’t given the same priority as production’s. He just always takes it out on me.
And what do I do? Well I let him. Because I’m an idiot.
I know that I need to stand up to him and to not let him bowl me over every time. But I’ve only been able to do that once. It is just not how I’m used to doing things.
It gets worse when he criticizes my motives. I can understand that he might have wanted things to go a certain way but when he accuses me of cutting corners, it hurts. My performance is based on how well I budget the projects. If every project I’m doing is going over budget because we suddenly need to do things the way Bob wants them even though Bob would not participate in the quoting process, I will get fired.
So, today, I went to him to ask him a simple question. How does a certain sensor work? When he asks me why, its because an operator used the poorly named Kaizen program to submit a request for engineering and I was doing my due diligence. I suspected that the sensors they wanted had too short a range to do what they wanted them to do and I needed to verify. But does Bob let me say that? No, he yells at me, tells other people about the stupid idea I’ve brought up and stomps around until we come to another solution that might work. And I felt humiliated once again.
You would think that I would have thicker skin by now. Still, my feelings are hurt and I’m a fucking doormat.
*Name changed to protect the innocent
We have a crappy intern. 
So far he’s had simple things to do, and he’s not getting them done right, and he’s working very slowly. He wants to work on more interesting projects, but at this rate he’s not going to get that chance. I feel like we might have a situation tomorrow, and I’m not looking forward to it. What do you do when your intern blows up and you don’t have the authority to fire them?
The first one I thought of was Mar. 5, '92
My previous company addressed that by farming out surveys to a contractor that only returned results to management. I suppose there could have been a back channel for tracking who said what, but that’s getting into CT territory.
Bob, Bob, Bob… (who might actually be Ralph or Wendell, but he’ll always be Bob to me).
I wish people like Bob or the Angry Intern could be captured on video. If they have a boss that’d care, of course.
NO? REALLY?
Heck, one reason I like it when I get a project involving Maintenance is that they’re so used to getting the short end of the stick that having someone who says “yeah, I think we can do that” is like Christmas. They’re so grateful!
Bob is in the wrong line of work, if he wanted to be top priority 
Well, I filled out the survey I mentioned upthread. Evidently not many people did, as we had a general meeting the other day and our HR person was literally begging people to complete it and that TPTB “is shocked that we’ve gotten so few responses.”
There’s a reason why there’s a mass exodus going on, btw.
Coincidentally, a colleague shared a blog today that had an amusing overview of FOOF, in case non-chemistry-nerds didn’t catch the joke here.
double post
I found out about FOOF from the correctly named blog “Things I Won’t Work With” . Methylmercury, anyone?
Edit–great minds think alike
Yeah. The kicker as to why he was showing me that blog was that I’ve been teasing him about “getting” to work on a process I used to do some work on – which uses BF3/HF for alkylation.
Whee! Crazy reactive and the potential for hideous hydrofluoric acid burns, sign me up amirite? (note: do not google “hydrofluoric acid burns”, even if you have a strong stomach. that stuff is nasty.)
I kinda think he’s whistling past the graveyard: “No, there’s nothing to worry about, strolling past the tank of Pressurized Death; at least I’m not working with FOOF.”
A manager that I’m doing a lot of work for lately has instituted a new “thing”. She’s starting her team meetings with the agenda item “share something you’re grateful for”. Now really, I’m a nice person who appreciates good coworkers and praises people directly (and sometimes to their bosses) when they do a good job, so don’t assume I’m an asshole. But this forced Mary Poppins niceness really makes me want to puke. It’s “voluntary” but it’s very visible in the meeting if you opt out because everybody is jumping on this like it’s made of bacon. If it was one time, I could go with the flow. But this is every team meeting. And some people are so thrilled about it that they’re bringing it to other meetings too. It’s all I can do to not snarl “whatever, yeah yeah, let’s get this fucking meeting over with already.”
:mad::mad::mad::mad:
JcWoman, the timing is perfect. Start cutting out Dilbert cartoons daily and leaving them on her desk. Today’s example is here.
It would be so lovely if my employer could figure out how long I have worked for them. I began in 11/2006. In 2008 I left for another county for 6 months. Came back. When I came back, no one could tell me if I was a reinstatement or a rehire. Leave of absences are good for 6 months, I signed prior to the 6 month mark.
Today I received an email congratulating me for my 20 years of service, here pick a prize. I look at my timecard, that says I have 17.96 years in. Last November, our division had a little ceremony celebrating years of service, I received a 20 year certificate. They messed up my name, so when my boss sent it back to be fixed, they pulled it back, stating I did not have 20 years in.
Where it causes issues: 12-18 years of service = 20 days of vacation/year, over 18 years = 23 days of vacation.
I emailed payroll for clarification. Payroll responded with: “It looks like you are credited with almost 18 years for vacation. Your [sic] credited with 19 years of credited Non continuous service. You will be eligible for 20 years of service next year but vacation hours won’t upgrade until 2019.”
Hunh? If I am not eligible for 20 years of service, why did I get the email today? If increased vacation won’t upgrade until 2019, why does our accrual schedule increase at 18 years? What situations merit continuous service and what merit overall service? PLUS, during my 6 months at the other county, my employer got rid of “rule of 90” (age + years of service = full retirement). If I was a reinstatement instead of a rehire, I would still be eligible for rule of 90, meaning I could retire 5 years earlier than I am currently scheduled.
Oh, I have a little story.
Every year around annual survey (see my last post) time a few PTBs fan out to the stores and hold “town meetings” where they gather groups of employees for a sit-down, here’s what’s going on on our end, we want to hear from you, questions, concerns, etc. OK, great – I’ve never had any former employer do this. I went even though it was my day off (don’t worry, I was paid).
What I didn’t expect was flipping out in the middle of the meeting. The PTBs fielded a bunch of complains/concerns from others around the work load vs. payroll, specific issues in specific departments, etc. When the PTB mentioned that my department has seen the biggest, most 180-degree change (and looking right at me while saying it), I lost it. Completely, absolutely. Totally unplanned. PTB asked me very nicely what concerns I had…and I basically let them have it. Nicely, of course, while trying not to fall completely into a blubbering mess.
Nobody else uttered a word, not even the PTBs. Not that I was expecting anyone to say anything, but still, it was weird.
I was asked to stay after the meeting adjourned, given kleenex, and calmed down enough to actually talk. They listened. They said they’d been told that I’ve been under enormous stress between the job itself and my acting manager (who, btw, has his own flipping out/anxiety issues which tend to trigger my own, so yeah, it’s a blast when we’re both feeling triggery). No head pats, nothing like that. They said to give them a chance, and things should start clearing up.
Okaaay then. I’ve heard this line before, but hey, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Lo and behold, not two weeks after this I’m called up to HR and told that everything I’d said at the meeting was true: Too much work expected of me, not enough time to do it all, I need help I’m not getting, I’m either going to burn out or explode, etc. They don’t want that because otherwise they’ll lose me, so from here on out EVERYBODY is expected to pitch in with my stuff. For example, if I’m off or leave for the day and something I usually do needs to be done, somebody else has to do it, don’t wait for me. Acting Manager has to pitch in too. Spread some of my duties around.
I was told that if none of this happens, let HR know.
So far, so good. I guess Acting Manager and a few other people were read the riot act.
Of course, the irony to all this is that they cut payroll again across the board which means that the work load, in turn, is lighter, at least for the time being.
Surely all this is something your union rep could handle for you.