[Donning HR Professional Hat] Signing that document could come back to bite you in the butt, Otto, even with your annotation. Despite your wish for a clarification, you’ve effectively agreed to the vague demands your supervisor wrote into that document and there is no way that you’ll be able to force the company to give your annotation any weight whatsoever, force your boss to actually come up with the revision or be sure that all copies of the original document are destroyed if the revision actually materializes. If your boss is truly attempting to build a case against you in hopes of getting you gone, she’s now got an important building block and you’re kind of out of leverage.
I hope for your sake that your situation improves and that the people you speak with in upcoming weeks are reasonable. But in the meantime, I strongly suggest approaching HR and addressing the issues you have with you supervisor now, like tomorrow. Mention that you feel that a lot of the problem between you in personality-conflict based, and make it clear that you’re dedicated to find a solution to things because you don’t feel that your performance on the job has changed substantively from the time when you getting high review marks, yet your new supervisor’s feedback indicates the presence of problems from the time she took the position. That should indicate that your performance was always crappy or the supervisor has a problem – HR should be able to suss out if the problem is with you specifically or if your supervisor is dissatisfied with everyone’s performance.
That is, of course, presuming that you wish to continue to work there. Unless there’s a chance of transferring to another department, I have to wonder why you would, at this point. That’s just my outsider’s take on it, though.
So sorry, Otto. You’re getting lots of support, and, even better, good advice from your friends on the board. Seems to me your bitch boss may well have been brought in as a hatchet. In which case you (and others, I’m sure) have no chance.
Once I was unexpectedly promoted by the board of directors of the agency I worked for. It soon became clear they thought I’d be the hatchet they wanted (they had power to hire only execs, not staff) and would fire people who didn’t grovel nicely enough to the board. They were wrong. I resigned and used my new title to get a much better job.
But a willing hatchet will do whatever it takes, and has no soul.
I wish you the very best and hope you soon find an employer who deserves you.
Otto, it sounds as if someone is planning to toss you out of the plane, time to get your parachute in order. Get your resume out, start making contacts with potential employers, and people who work for potential employers, if you can. Stay ahead of the curve. You may not NEED your resume – it is possible to outlast a bad boss, I’ve done it, but most of the time, if someone senior to you wants you gone, you’re gonna be gone.
And yes, this is one of the MANY reasons why employees need unions. Way too much of this shit going on in the workplace now that the economy is sick.
First of all Otto, you are being set up to be fired. Start looking for a new job. But this may not end badly. I’ve seen more than one “starting to terminate” process get backburnered (including my own when I had a boss that didn’t like me).
A similar story with a more unusual and happy ending:
My hubby worked for a woman who was insane. His responsibilty was the final step before the product got turned over to their internal customer. Say the deadline was March 10th and he had approximately three days worth of work to do on it. He’d get it from the other department March 12th, work his butt off, get in turned around in two days - and was blamed for missing the deadline.
She started the termination process. He didn’t sign (he had similar advice to tlw’s) because the HR person told him quite honestly that the terms were so fuzzy he was going to get canned - and if he was canned for performance - he could kiss the unemployment check goodbye. Also, if he signed, he couldn’t apply for any internal jobs. So he and HR made a deal. He’d be laid off after 30 days and get another 30 days severance. No performance plan. (He did have some dirt on the boss, she’d reprimanded one of my husband’s staff for moral reasons outside the workplace (she discovered he was getting divorced and thought that perhaps it was her business to disapprove) and she’d done some other things that HR was getting nervous about - (prayers during meetings - went over well with the athiest hubby))
Twenty eight days later, the company reorg’d. My husband got a new boss (and no mention of the whole situation). Within two months his old boss “decided to pursue other opportunities.” Within six months, my husband had a nice raise in hand, a nice bonus in hand, a stellar performance review and the president of the company came up to me at the Christmas party to say “I don’t know what we’d do without Mr. Dangerosa.”
Another course of actipon os to talk to your state’s Labor and Industry people - tell them the scenario (keeping it all ‘anonymous’ for now) and ask for their opinion on the matter. Can’t hurt.
I too have had the pleasure of a customer service job. I would get complaints from customers on a weekly basis. Basically cause they didn’t hear what they wanted to hear. I always followed policy so I could cover my ass. My supervisor would never back me though; she would make exceptions to the rules. She always gave me this crap about how I followed the black and white (the rules) and she followed the gray area – a.k.a. – a bunch of crap! I hated that line. Lucky for me I couldn’t have been fired from this job. I was in the military. Maybe go to jail, but never fired. Here is the crazy thing about this though. All policies that the government follows are put there by law! There should be no gray area of rules! Oh well. I have a sweet job now and will never have to deal with customers ever again!
I used to work the phones at the cable company. About three quarters of us were temps, the rest of the call-center was full-time. Full-time people had the authority to credit people’s accounts, extend people’s shut-off dates, etc. We temps didn’t have that much authority.
We had over a million subscribers, and I hated every one of them. However, if I could have gotten their complaining asses off the phone by giving them whatever they wanted, I would have. And the company knew it. Which is why they didn’t give temps power to do these things.
Otto, can you start being more lenient? Your job may be to enforce the rules while keeping people happy, but maybe you can pretend it’s a little more “keeping people happy” and a little less “enforcing the rules”. I know it’s frustrating to give in to customers’ unreasonable demands when they’re acting like demonic sacks of shit, but it’s the company’s problem, not yours.
Sometimes I used to have to sent a “hit” through the network from my computer to turn the customer’s cable box back on. I used to wish for another function, one that would send a few thousand volts through the customer’s body at the touch of a button.
“Yes sir, I think I can help you. Just walk over to your cable box. That’s right, pick it up and turn it over. Now do me a favor and read me the serial number while I make a few adjustments to your account…”
I’ll be starting the active job search shortly. I have no emotional investment in this place so leaving won’t be hard.
My bitch of a boss has to meet with me within a week at which time she will have to present me with a more coherently formed “action plan.” If she doesn’t then I will go to HR and raise all the personality issues and everything else. Since this isn’t something I’ve specifically raised before I didn’t feel like it would be given any weight at the initial meeting. Her failure to offer up anything more concrete would bolster my case.
I don’t think my uber-boss will intervene. She did in an issue where the bitch of a boss put false/inaccurate information on a review but by and large as an “associate manager” she doesn’t deal with the day-to-day stuff. There are entire days that go by where I don’t see the uber-boss.
So far today no one’s complained. 1/2 a day down, 29 1/2 to go. I plan to take some vacation days in this timeframe too.
Good luck to you, Otto. The one time I was in a similar situation, I was eventually laid off. It still makes me bitter to think about it. Here’s hoping and praying that your situation works out for the better – one way or another.
