Well, I’m a Mouthy Asshole, so I tend not to be very nice to micromanagers. I can twist them in fucking loops and they learn soon enough to leave me the fuck alone if they value their sanity (and their jobs).
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. You have my full sympathy. Day-yum. On the other hand … job security?
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Who was this intended for? (Me? :()
May I please clone you?
Mine: Call from manager, trying to assist customer. Customer cannot see XYZ feature. Manager logged in under her own credentials can see them; logged in under the customer’s credentials, she cannot.
- troubleshooting ensues*
Manager: “Oh, I see at the bottom of this page: ‘Click here to complete registration.’ Would that be the problem? Does that mean she’s not actually registered?”
Me: :smack: “Yeahhhhh. Yeah it would.”
Manager: “OK. She didn’t like the privacy policy so she hadn’t clicked on that. I’ve done it for her, and – oh! There’s the XYZ feature!”
Me: :dubious:
The poster who quoted the opening post of a thread that has 37 pages (for me, I can only imagine how many pages it has if you still use the forum default.).
My boss of course agreed to screenprint on someone’s two dozen personal shirts without even glancing at the job. Every shirt is a combination of different color, different manufacturer, and/or different fabric composition. All of them are sport shirts so all have more difficult manmade fibers in them to deal with.The customer claims “Price is no object” and goes on to question why it’s not a good idea to print neon orange words on a neon orange shirt (because you can’t see the same color printed on top of itself very well, numbskull).
The “logo” (of which her description varies - sometimes “logo” refers to just the words, or just the icon, or both together, so clarification is needed every time she uses this word) contains a full-color 3-d rendition of a vitruvian man. Not exactly logo OR screenprinting material. It’s going to look awful.
This project is going to be hell on earth. My boss of course will say “Just do the design before we quote, because she’s a friend of a friend”. He never says no, and then whines and complains constantly about what he got himself into for a miniscule price, and how he doesn’t even like them anyway, and a bunch of other completely preventable problems.
Then the customer will see the price tag for a full-color print of her logo on 24 different shirts that require different ink types, and even though this price is half the normal price, it will suddenly be “too high” for her “price is no object” claim, and she can’t do it, and we’ll have done all the setup and proofs for nothing.
Yes, beautiful. Lovely. Wonderful.
The last place I interviewed at says that they’re still in the process of evaluating their candidates. Pleeeeeeeaaseee! I want out of here!
Yup (forum default of 50 posts/page puts me on page 147 here).
Sorry if I alarmed you, PHS. For future reference, if I look like I might be responding to a post and I haven’t quoted a post, it’s the poster right above mine.
I love you, you’re perfect; change.
It’s the title of a comedy but it also describes the point at which I am in a certain interview process. The Big Consulting Firm asked me to submit a form with my info and want me to take out those parts which IME the end clients value most - but which mean nothing to people who’ve worked in consulting all their lives.
If I get it hopefully it won’t be as much of an irritating bore; if I don’t, I’ll consider it a dodged bullet.
Thanks, all.
I’m a bit torn because Original Boss is still here (New Boss bought into a partnership) and she’s awesome, I don’t want to abandon ship on her just yet.
It’s part-time anyway, so knowing I can quit at any time and squeak by on my main job makes it a lot easier to cope.
On the plus side, NB doesn’t really know operations, and I’m the only one who can handle a few of the software programs, so I’ve been ‘innocently’ calling him out on a few things.
Been in current job for 12 months … got asked to go for coffee with my manager … who then informs me that performance reviews are coming up and he is a bit concerned with my performance (first meeting in the entire 12 months regarding any work I do - other than specific task questions that I initiated). He acknowledged that I have recently been ill (with supported medical certificates) but that I should be taking on more work. I ask what work I’m supposed to have done … and he says I should be finding the work.
So I point out that I continually ask for more work, have offered to take on work from everyone else in my team, have approached him about more work. I picked a specific example of work I would be happy to take on (but got told that the slower member of the team had to do it because he doesn’t understand it). He acknowledges that I often ask for more work and admits that perhaps he may be at fault but that I should find more work.
So … he doesn’t know what work I’m supposed to do … but I am?!
Then I decide I’d better check on what exactly I will be assessed on in my performance review … to be told that there wasn’t a plan done for my role and I should just make up some objectives.
So … I’m not performing objectives that do not exist.
I’ve been through this before in another role … nightmare. No point talking to HR of course.
sends some chocolate through the CD slot
Gawd what a nightmare, “you’re not doing what you should only I have no idea what is it you should be doing”. O-lait for clari-tay.
Well, I’ve only ever had to do it once, but when I got a laughably bad review from a boss who should have known better, I went to his boss and discussed it with him. I was being dunned for something that happened 8 months previously that my boss had never bothered to discuss with me, and that was the point I made - that if this ‘performance issue’ was so bad as to nuke my entire performance review and raise, then why was it not brought up at the time it happened and why did we never discuss it? Director agreed and had my manager re-write my review to remove it.
Yes, HR is never your friend and you will almost never get anywhere with them. But your bosses boss may be interested in your bosses inability to manage properly. (I just wouldn’t say that directly.)
Stick to the facts, argue only that one point. Don’t bring other issues or complaints into it. Have a game plan, have your ducks lined up. If that hot mess appears on your review, be ready to discuss it with his manager, including his admittance that he may be at fault for not giving you the work that he’s dunning you for not doing.
Did your boss at least pay for the coffee?
We got a new micro-managing boss with limited people skills at the beginning of the year. In 6 weeks she’s managed to rub *everyone *in the building the wrong way, including several long-time customers that provide about 20% of our business. After 8 years with the previous boss, now we’re doing everything wrong, despite our successful track record and high customer satisfaction. My coworkers and I are walking around in a state of shock, wondering how things could turn around so quickly.
We’ve heard talk from people that have dealt with her before, and it confirms our first impressions. Her management style is heavy-handed and there seems to be some anger issues simmering underneath a very thin skin. We had a meeting the other morning where she addressed a coworker in an “in-your-face” tone that I have never experienced in any job that I’ve ever had.
I’ve got 31 years with the company, and hope to make it to 35. From what I’ve seen thus far, the next four years might be kind of tough. At least I have the option to retire with full benefits if things get too bad.
Dude, sorry to hear that. I only have 18 months to get to 35 years (and retirement) and each week makes me wonder if I’m going to make it. The shit just gets deeper all the time, the willful blindness, the willingness to antagonize some of our biggest customers for the sake of change, and so on. All this since the new CEO came in last year.
Watch out for CEOs who smile and are friendly and crack jokes in speeches, and then make unreasonable demands behind the scenes. Their minions will make your life hell.
Roddy
Dear cubicle neighbor: stop sighing. You sigh constantly, from the dawn’s early light right up until the rustle of folks pushing in their chairs and gathering their belongings fill the air. The other day you actually sighed just before ass hit chair to begin your day. A preemptive sigh, I suppose.
And your sighs are loud. And substantial. They could fill a balloon. They could blow out a 12-year-old’s birthday candles. They could clear the lawn of autumn’s litter.
With apologies to The Pretenders:
It is time for you to stop all of your sighing
Yes it’s time for you to stop all of your sighing oh oh oh
There’s one thing you gotta do
To keep me from leaping over the cubicle wall and fist-clubbing you
Gotta stop sighing now
Yeah yeah stop it stop it
mmm
Who knew that your cubicle neighbor was Spoo?
My manager’s boss has just returned from maternity leave … I think this is actually coming from her. I offered to to do work for another team and that manager approached her … and they’ve just realised that I’m not doing enough (not that my repeated asking for more work has given them any indication). I think that was my big mistake … now they’ve got to find an explanation for why I’ve got so much spare time that I’m seeking work from another team.
I’ve got no way of going higher unless I go through HR … so I’ll just play along!
Nope!
The place I work for has semi-weekly meetings where we are all supposed to be rah-rah pumped up and loving our jobs and each other. Some weeks I feel like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a religious revival or something. They’re annoying, but at least they’re on Friday mornings and I know when I have to sit through one the week is almost over. This week the big boss isn’t in town on Friday so they’ve moved the meeting to… Monday. It’s just wrong, I have to come in early and sit through this nonsense and it won’t even be Friday.
Call your doctor about that issue you posted about in the mini-rants thread a couple of minutes ago, and schedule a consultation for Monday morning. 
Excellent idea! I agree.
Our program is expanding into additional states, which is great, but we keep getting idiotic questions from new hires in the new states. No, I mean seriously idiotic.
[ul]
[li]I send an e-mail, reminding people that they have a lecture to watch on Friday that week from noon to two. There’s a flyer for the whole series attached to it too. I get an e-mail saying “the flyer says that all the lectures are from 12-2. Does that mean the lecture this week is from 12-2?” [/li]I desperately want to write back “Nope. Those are just my favorite hours of the work day, so I mention them on everything.” The e-mail mentioned the time, the flyer’s time matched, how could this possibly be confusing?
[li]My boss sends out a reminder about a conference call that’ll be on a different Friday, giving them the conference number and participant code they’ll need. On TH she gets a call: the person wants to know if the conference number and participant code she gave them for Friday are the numbers they should use Friday.[/li][/ul]
Are they secretly conducting a contest to see who can ask the dumbest questions?