Speed
Quality
Price
Pick any two.
I did tell him I was juggling some other projects at the time, but have you ever told your supervisor he needs to be at work earlier and leave later?
He’s not a buzzword spewing drone. He’s actually a decent supervisor except his myopia. His project is always the one that needs to be done, no matter what.
buzzword bingo with respects to teh conversation in the thread =)
I suspect this is the root of the problem. He screwed up and now he’s scared. I had a manager like this. I’d try to be calm and work with her to figure out how we could fix the problem, but there was no talking to her when she was an emotional mess about it.
All I could do was, over and over, go to her and tell her my proposed solutions to the problem, what I needed from her, etc. The first couple of times she’d go into another emotional, completely unfocused, stream of consciousness tirade. Usually, by about the 5th or 6th time, she’d be rational enough that we could come up with a solution.
It sucked. But she had enough good points in other areas that I stuck with it.
<tweet!> Ok, TEAM, listen up!
There may not be a U in team or a WE, but TEAM is an anagram for MEAT and MATE.*
Back to work now!
- this kind of obscure shit, movies about men throw fish in Seattle or going to Abliene (as if anyone would ever want to go to Abilene) is what a certain manager/administrator used to do at my RN job.
OP, is it feasible for you to have the offending suprvisor take it up with your other supervisor(s) if he has a problem with your productivity being utilized by someone other than him?
No, but there is a “u” in Dumbass. I love that one.
Sort of. I had a several people on my team who would come in early, because they could get a lot more done without the phones ringing or people dropping by their desks. My senior manager decided that he would use the hour before eight as his social hour. My folks complained to me. I went into his office, and gently beat about the bush about how S, K, and M all came in an hour early, because they were much more productive when their phones weren’t ringing, and people weren’t stopping by their desks to chat. He agreed that was a good idea, but didn’t get the hint. I had to apply the clue-by-four. “Len, I’m talking about you. Please let S, K and M do their work.”
This is my suggestion, too. If Supervisor A is made aware that you are working on Supervisor B’s project right now, because he had provided all the required resources, but Supervisor A had not, he might get it.
If everything is highest priority, NOTHING is highest priority. I’ve had supervisors with the “all of them” attitude before, too. They HAVE to prioritize their own projects, because I am not qualified to discern how these projects impact the organization overall.
The only things that indecision and waffling on the part of a supervisor produce are procrastination and alienation on the part of an employee.
When I was in college, I worked in the produce dept. of a grocery store. One of the old timers there had worked in several grocery stores. He told of a store manager that would come through the store early in the morning and pick apart every department to be sure it was ready for opening. If things weren’t up to his standards, he’d let the employees know what was expected. He would say, “Now, Bruce, this is important and needs to be done first. Every day!” So after hearing this for quite some time, he started making a list of things that needed to be done FIRST. After compiling quite an exhaustive list, one time when A-Hole Manager came through telling him something else that needs to be done first, Bruce showed him the list of everything that was supposed to be done first. He said the guy just handed him back the list and walked away, never again telling him what to do first.
There’s no I in team, but there are three Us in “shut the fuck up.”
I’d suggest taking it up with the other supervisors if they’re more reasonable, but you’d have to do it in a diplomatic fashion. Since I don’t know your work situation I couldn’t exactly tell you what to say, but something like “Hey Fred, you said you needed project X by tomorrow morning, but Bob just told me to make project Y my highest priority. How would you like me to handle that?” Ideally, Fred will go talk to Bob.
I’ve done this in the past. Fortunately, it wasn’t due to mismanagement but just bad timing. In all cases, the supervisors worked it out and told me which one to do first.
It is my goal in life to some day win the lottery, so that through the last few weeks of my job (or however long it takes to find someone that I can then teach how to do all the obscure things I do around here), I can finally take the opportunity to respond to some particularly ridiculous requests with:
Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Are you guys ISO 9000 compliant?
I need this tattoed on every single one of my customers. Anyone know a tattoo artist that works in bulk?
Yeah, but their slow and shaky.
Cheap though.
If I’m not mistaken, a lot of Maori tribal tattooing is done with something that is sort of like a rubber stamp, but with inked needles. Perhaps you could have something like that made up.
When you work for a small company where everyone wears 500 hats, you often wind up with 2 or 3 “number 1 priority” problems - and they are ALL legitimately highest priority, depending on which hat you’re wearing.
sigh
It sucks.
Wow.
I totally felt the OP’s pain and frustration.
It made me feel better about how my boss did to my team this week.
At least we only have a single top priority: get a complete product demo ready by 1500 today or be fed to the grue.
Flashlight. Just sayin’…
Or just leave the lights on.