How come “nobody” knows to reply-all when you actually WANT them to reply-all?
It is weird because she said things like “the VP really likes your work and thinks you are doing great things, and the CEO wants to steer the company based on the kind of data you’re producing.” Wait, this is the VP who regularly cancels meetings on me with no notice and hasn’t said word one about what he actually needs me to do despite repeated prodding my not only me but other people on my behalf? And the CEO who hasn’t spoken to anyone in the office except the VP and H in months? I mean for all intents and purposes my boss doesn’t exist and I’ve been running this department largely on my own. If the VP really thinks I’m mission-critical it would be nice to get some feedback once in a while.
Oh, and that data the consultant claimed the VP and CEO couldn’t wait to get their hands on? I sent a critical report to him two days ago and he didn’t bother to bring it before talking to the CEO.
I don’t think the consultant is a recruiter, she runs a one-person shop and all I can find about her is that she deals with “workplace problems.” I don’t know if she’s trying to use reverse psychology on me, but it’s working well. If I’m allegedly doing such great work, surely I could do that same work for somewhere else that didn’t have such a messed up workplace culture (and it would be nice if they paid a little better too).
Still no word on anything regarding H and V. Other co-workers are starting to try to read signs into little throwaway comments and moods (“V wasn’t here yesterday, I wonder if she was with an attorney”…“H was in a pissy mood, I wonder if the VP or HR said something to her”). So it continues to be a barrel of monkeys here.
Oh, and one other unrelated thing.
Headhunters! If you’re going to send someone a LinkedIn message followed up by an e-mail stating that you’re going to call them regarding a position, would it hurt to actually call the person when you say you’re going to call them, or if you can’t call them, to let them know about it so they don’t waste their time sitting at their desk waiting for your fucking call? Would it be too much to ask that when that person sends you an e-mail saying “sorry I missed you but I’d still like to talk about the position” you don’t completely ignore the e-mail? And when out of frustration that person sends an e-mail to your company headquarters politely asking, “Look, what the fuck here?” that the company ignores that e-mail too?
Look, I know that the employment market is flooded and all but goddammmmn. You guys get paid when I get a job, so what the hell is in it for you to waste my time and yours?
Hmm, I’d try taking the bait and see what happens - call up the consultant and say that you are thinking about changing positions, and see what her response is.
As for the headhunters, it sounds like they have the same bullshit attitude as temp agencies. Somehow temp agencies got the idea that temps aren’t important, and don’t need to be treated with any respect. They have somehow missed realizing that they get paid NOTHING if temps don’t sit in the chairs and book hours for them by actually doing the work. I don’t begrudge the agencies their cut, but I’d like to be treated with respect when I’m working to make money for them.
Not really a rant, but an update. Back in Sept I was bitching about doing a video interview with a prospective employer and how stupidly stressful the concept was. I ended up canceling the interview and mentally told them to take a hike.
Good thing too. Soon after that I was contacted about a job with a firm I worked for 25 years ago via a referral by my previous employer (who went back to work with said firm after his company folded). I accepted the interview, took the job, have fewer responsibilities and make more money. It’s a large firm, with the same sorts of HR and IT annoyances that nearly everyone else has and I can’t complain one little bit.
Agreed! I am not impinging on your right to have a cupcake, I just choose not to indulge. Just eat the fucking thing already! And people wonder why we have complexes about food.
Hooray for a happy Fae!
My current project is part-time. I got a call for something else, told my boss, he said no prob, told him which days I was being asked for, he said that’s great, now he’s suddenly realized it means I’ll be away for two and a half weeks.
He wanted me to “come by on Tuesday and Thursday both weeks or something”.
From some 500km away*.
And on a month in which I am supposed to work a maximum of 6 days and I’ve already worked 2 (will be 3 tomorrow).
Someone can’t count and it ain’t me.
- According to Google maps it’s 495km.
Found out today that my boss is transferring out of the department. He’s only been in this department a little longer than I have, I think he started in February. So he comes in, makes all these changes to the department- including bringing in the still glitchy and buggy new software- and now is bailing out because he can’t deal with the chaos he’s caused.
Oh and Snowflake, I spent an entire day getting you caught up… again. Not out of the goodness of my heart mind you, but because grandboss “asked” me to help you out. Let’s try staying at our desk and working for more than three hours out of the day, I bet you’ll get a lot more work done. You come in late, leave early, and socialize most of the day, and I’m the one who gets punished because I can keep up with my work.
After another day of the situation I described above going without a solution, I was thinking about why it was so troubling and why it was prompting me to plan on leaving a company I’d worked for for 12 years.
The harassment situation between H and V should have been resolved in a week. HR should have taken statements from H, V, and the witnesses, and consulted with Title IX. The office should have met with H’s boss and hashed out a statement that went something like this: “We recognize that H acted unfairly to V, and we recognize that her behavior rose to the level of harassment. However, we do not recommend that H be let go as it is a first (official) offense. Instead we will recommend that H be sent to management training, and be put on probation for a certain length of time, after which her behavior will be reviewed. We also recommend that V be moved to another line with a different supervisor, although she will retain the same duties.”
And that, I think, might have ended it. At the start V had told me all she really wanted was to have H recognized as a bully and to not to have to work for her any more. H would have seen she’d dodged a bullet and just might have changed her ways if it meant keeping her job.
Instead, HR and Title IX acted like a deer in the headlights. They understood that H and H’s boss had a lot of clout in the company…more so, certainly, than the head of HR and the Title IX person. So they stalled and stalled, calling more “witnesses” and declining to pronounce any punishment in the hopes that everybody would just forget about the situation. Unfortunately they couldn’t even take the obvious step of moving V to another sub-department, which meant that every day V was reminded that she was being supervised by her own harasser. Then finally HR came down with the half-assed order that “H should try to stay away from V, if that’s convenient for H”, which disgusted a lot of people. But even then it was still mostly about H and V and the rest of us in the department ignored it.
Then came the awful meeting in October where the VP accused us all of “rumormongering” about the H and V situation. That turned a contremps between two people into a situation which involved the entire office. The biggest irony is that to a man we are certain that it was H who was spreading the rumors, most likely telling the CEO that “people in the office are so mean to me because I harassed an underling and got away with it” or something…none of us were even talking about that two-month-old incident anymore. But now this incident got turned into a BIG DEAL which required the involvement of a third-party consultant. Oh, maybe the biggest irony is actually that the executives hoped that the consultant’s report would exonerate H and paint V as a big crybaby, when instead it depicted H as a troublemaking bully who nearly everyone in the office would quite like to see gone.
So now it’s more than two weeks since the consultant’s report dropped, and all is absolutely quiet from above. Reading between the lines of what the consultant told me over the last two weeks, she is recommending that H be let go or at least reassigned, and HR, the CEO, and the VP are fighting that tooth and nail. And since then I’ve heard at least five people in the department say they’re considering leaving or taking early retirement if H stays. I can’t say that I blame them. H has been pretty awful to some people in the department, but it’s more to do with what we’ve been dragged through over the last three months. The only official word we have heard from anyone at the company on the situation was that we were traitorous gossips. Every day that goes by, we remember how the company used to be, how it supported its workers. Why, 10 years ago they actually canned a VP largely because of the way he treated his employees! Now you get nothing…unless you are one of the favorite few who get what they want regardless of talent or prior success. H is one…and we’re not. So is this office favoritism–the same favoritism that sparked off this boondoggle in the first place–going to save H? I think it will. At only the cost of nearly half of the department.
On one hand, I enjoy what I do and I am eager to take on new tasks that right now, only my two more senior co-workers do. Our manager is definitely interested in having this cross-training happening so people aren’t indispensable and those tasks keep getting done when people go on vacation.
On the other hand, they were both told to start cross-training us two months ago, and have only given us the most cursory of overviews, and then only in team meetings when they were asked to do so. They’re both far too possessive of their tasks to let go. Then one of them is Ms. Monthly Drama, and I know with dread certainty that, should we perform her tasks in her absence, the moment she returns she will spend a solid half a day combing the system in minute detail for something, anything that she can raise as an issue and be confrontational over, no matter how inconsequential it is.
But yet, I’m told she has some right based on past history to be so possessive and pissy about things… Which totally makes NO FUCKING SENSE WHATSOEVER, because you can’t create conditions where people are afraid to touch things and then complain that they don’t jump to do it.
That would be very upsetting - if they can do it to V, they can do it to you. I’m sure everyone in the department is thinking that at this point - the company protecting a bully is bad news for everyone.
Bosslady-- go home. Please. Work your eight hours, and go HOME. Eat dinner with your family. Get a good night’s sleep. The world as we know it will not end if the backroom is not perfect during the Christmas Season.
And QUIT tweaking the Schedule PLEASE!
(It makes me cranky that EVERYONE is supposed to work one “night” per week, and my boss keeps tweaking various people’s schedules on the fly so that they in fact don’t always work their night. Especially when the stuff she tweaks it for is stuff that any idiot (or new hire) could do, and not stuff that the people in question are especially suited for.
Also, the reason she wouldn’t go home today? A visit from a VIP tomorrow. We get more visits next week. And re-certified. She’s angsting about all of those things. Which is understandable and goes with her job title. It’s just, preparing for VIPs and re-certification are both things which expand to fill all the available hours, so I strongly vote for her going home at the end of her shift, and and not worrying about things. I’m not the boss of her, though, so she was still hard at it when I ran away).
Oh, and to add one other thing to that…V’s hinting at hiring an attorney. I admit to not knowing much about employment law, but forcing someone to work for three months for someone who’d already been charged with harassing them isn’t going to look good for the company. Or there’s the possibility that the company offers a buyout to H to make her go away. Either way, this situation–which, again, should have been resolved in a week with no ill feelings by either party–could cost our place a considerable amount of change.
I don’t suppose there is any chance that your integrity would allow you to, say, slow down on your own work so that you just barely get finished or maybe not quite finished by whatever deadlines you work under? I know, I know, but I’ve seen this my entire working life. I just want a little payback once in a while, a little appreciation and recognition for the people who actually get stuff done rather than those who are merely decorative (not that you aren’t decorative, DG, I was speaking more for myself).
Three layoffs at work today, leaving the marketing department in a shambles. And my boss did some more empire-building by snatching one of the remaining marketing people for her own department.
They are giving nice severance packages, though - 2 weeks pay for every year of service. I wish they would pick me next, that’s well over a year’s salary. I could come damn close to retiring now.
Roddy
Very, very mild gripe as I could have it so much worse.
I just received an email that they are granting us leave for the day after Thanksgiving, which is nothing new as they do it every year, and Christmas Eve, which they’ve only done the past 2 years (I think). The minor gripe comes from the fact that Christmas Eve is on a Tuesday so we will still have to come in on that Monday.
Well, I would join in the workplace griping…but I can’t. Got laid off last week and now I’m on the job hunt again.
I guess I could gripe about that, but I’m just too damn tired to.
That sucks. Much luck on the search.
Another one I thought of.
I had my 18th anniversary on Tuesday which usually is recognized by a congratulatory email. I have not received said email. I just hope my longevity pay shows up at the end of the month.
Patients complaining about the wait when there’s someone on a hospital gurney in the waiting room of our clinic. Even if they weren’t there to see the man collapse in agony, vomit, etc., you’d think they could extrapolate from the sight of someone on a gurney and guess why there might be a long wait.
I am honestly sorry to hear that, Clothahump. Stay with us during these hard times.
Before I left on Friday someone claimed to have spoken to the VP and he mentioned “a resolution” and “some changes”. This person also repeated what the consultant said about my work being crucial to the operation…which, as I say, hasn’t been borne out by any actions from anyone. The claim was that the recent delay was due to a project the VP was doing which wrapped up on Friday. So we could hear as early as tomorrow what’s finally going to happen after all these months. I wouldn’t even begin to guess. The number of times we’ve gone into a meeting expecting one thing and getting another–no, it’s not just that. It’s the gut feeling we all have that the right thing won’t happen. Too many times the executives here have had the option of making a popular, easy, obvious, profitable, and honest choice, and they’ve gone with the option that benefitted the favored few. Why change now?
I looked over the open jobs in my field over the weekend. Nearest one was 250 miles away. I stopped looking because I was crying too hard. I’m in the position of not just working with but being asked to prop up the career of a bully who’s tried to sabotage my own career–to say nothing of risking the company’s finances through getting a harassment charge upheld–or live apart from my family, perhaps for years, at a time when my son needs a lot of help and…well, when I need a lot of help. When I told my counselor of this dilemma, she went silent for a while, then for the first time in a long while asked me if I was considering suicide.
Or, my company could do the right thing. Fingers crossed.