I have a coworker, Ed, who handles personnel. Ed supervises Chuck, who handles employee scheduling.
A handful of payroll questions keep coming up, which forces me to go track down Ed or Chuck for answers. Chuck informed me that it would be easier for me to ask him than to ask Ed, since Chuck knows the answer and Ed has to ask Chuck for the answer.
Two days ago, one of those payroll questions came up. I went to Chuck’s office (which is right beside Ed’s office) to ask him the answer. He told me.
Later that day, Chuck was in a casual conversation with the Big Boss, and Big Boss asked about one of the job applicants that had been in earlier in the day. She thought she recognized the applicant. Chuck confirmed who it was, and said that Ed said a hire was unlikely.
Ed leaves that day without notifying me that some paperwork I needed was done.
Yesterday, Ed was uncommunicative and surly. After my third attempt to be friendly, and after he left the office area for the factory floor, I asked Chuck if Ed was in a bad mood and Chuck told me that Ed was angry because:
I asked Chuck, not Ed, for the payroll information, and
Big Boss asked Chuck, not Ed, about the applicant.
Ed is still grumping around today and, frankly, I want to smother him in a truckload of fiberglass.
Someone please explain a possible cause of Ed’s ire. He’s refusing to talk to me.
He is an ineffective cog in the gears and he has now had two examples of his lack of value (one from a lateral postion and one from a superior) that demonstrates that more people than he know that he is unnecessary.
He’s not ineffective, and the boss doesn’t think he’s ineffective. I didn’t say anything about him being ineffective.
He’s pissed off because one casual conversation led to the boss asking a casual question of another person, and he’s pissed off because I skipped the middle man with a different question about payroll. There is NO implication of ineffectiveness in my OP.
Even more worse (worser?), it’s become obvious to him that his direct report (Chuck) is more competent and more effective than he is. I had been reading the OP and the following posts the wrong way (i.e., that Chuck was Ed’s supervisor) and thinking that Ed was being really whiney and childish. I still do think those things, but understand it a little better now that I have the correct work relationship between them correct.
Sound like someone has a case of the Mondays. :rolleyes:
My first impression was that this guy is an empire builder and it upsets him that others don’t recognize his empire. Of course, I’m not very good at reading people…
In the interest of peace in the workplace, try to arrange a meeting with Chuck, Ed, and you in which you all come to an agreement as to what questions need to go through Ed, (making it clear that he will be informed of all questions, but that for the sake of expediency, adding him to the loop slows down responses to employee issues and places an extra burden on him to be available to pass the information in each direction when he could be using his time to handle his other job responsibilities).
Okay, then, he’s out of the loop, when he thought he wasn’t. Next thing you know, he’s heading for tribal council thinking everybody’s going to be voting off that guy in Accounting who always leaves half of the last Danish rather than taking the whole thing, and he ends up going home instead.
He was responsible for something and now he feels he is not. It isn’t fun or good for the self esteem to have responsibilities taken away from you. He may feel like if this continues he will be fired or demoted as obviously no one seems to need his help with this anymore. Even if that is not true he probably feels that way and doesn’t want to lose his job. Being pissy about it isn’t helping him with that but he probably just needs some time to deal with it.
I just cornered him and said I’d like to get with him and Chuck to make sure that all the lines of information are moving, and he shrugged it off with one of those “Fine!” reactions. Urk.
