Hey, New Boss! Remember a few months ago, when that guy who was real good at selling pest control for you had himself transferred to the program I was on, yet you kept bringing him back for a half or seven-eighths of a day, every day, because you had hours to fill but you hadn’t bothered to train someone new because my Old Boss was so nice and accommodating that you didn’t bother? And remember when I took you aside to tell you that Old Boss had hours to fill, too, but she’s too nice and polite (I didn’t call her a doormat) to tell you that it was pissing her off and you should take her needs into account, even if you slightly out-rank her, though I’m pretty sure you don’t? No? None of it? I shouldn’t be surprised, since self-centered and self-aware rarely go together.
The thing is, you’re doing it again. Yesterday I mentioned to my Current Boss that you were going to pull me off for training on our new program, and this was the first she heard that I was not hers forever. You can’t do this. She has to plan her team’s day, too, and you can’t be pulling three people off for hours or for the foreseeable future without a by-your-leave and expect your peers to like, respect, or tolerate you.
You’re a nice-enough fellow, with a football quarterbacks face but an IT guy’s understanding of hoo-mans. You just need some guidance. I will continue to give that guidance because I know that nothing I say will register, so I know I won’t get in trouble.
And get me over on that new program like you keep saying you will. Telling others how great I was on my Old Program is nice, but I’m still selling Robot Insurance for a buck an hour less. The Old Program might be coming back with new people at the client end, so play me or trade me.
“I need help installing this software on a server”
Well good luck with that, we don’t support servers.
“Then who do I ask for help?”
We assume that if you’re tasked by your management with doing this, then you can handle it. If you can’t, all we can do is point you at the manuals and your manager.
“But who can I talk to for help?”
I don’t know. Would not be us. We do NOT do server software installs.
“Can I talk to someone else about this?”
My team lead is away right now, but he’ll give you the same answer.
20 minutes later, co-worker’s phone rings.
Same conversation.
“Hey Al, you know Peter’s family, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Do I happen to look like his Mum at all?”
“Not really, why?”
“He seems to be confused about which is the one that works here… he came back from vacation this week and every time he’s done something in the system he’s mailed me the screenshots ‘to check’ before saving.”
“Oh God :D”
“At least he knows how to take screenshots…”
“Yeah. Hey, that’s advanced skills or something :D”
Squirrel AGM, you do not need to go into a tizzy when you cover the desk. Just take things as they come and stop freaking the fuck out. You were the one who fubar’ed the schedule this week, so climb down off your cross and deal with it.
Bad news/bad news: sweet lovable capable assistant lead is moving to another department. This seriously pisses off the newest member of our team, who was just transferred from the department dear asst. lead is headed for. Ms. Anger Non-Management is quite certain she’s being totally persecuted, favoritism is in play and victimizing her, etc. Had to listen to enough ranting and bitching and whining that it’s a minor miracle I didn’t yell at her to just STFU, suck it up, and DEAL, especially since the combination of PMS, little/poor sleep, and working in a hot warehouse does not exactly make me Susie Sunshine as it is. This woman has such major anger problems that I was actually a bit afraid to leave our lead alone with her when my workday ended (lead laughed and assured me she’s quite capable of pounding our problem child into the ground if needed).
Attention unreasonable bitch: how many goddamn times do you have to be told to requote the order??? The initial quote was based off of specifications from 2003…our requirements have changed quite a bit since then. And your company is used to our company’s often unusual requests (which we’re quite willing to pay extra for, by the way). So shove the snippy little “Did you not receive this?” copypasta emails up your ass and REQUOTE THE DAMN ORDER.
Gah, so I lost my best member of staff today. And for stupid reasons, too - and totally preventable. Sort of.
My worker (we’ll call him A, because I’m lazy and unimaginative) has a serious problem with another worker (B). Properly serious, as in A doesn’t even want to be working in the same building as B. I’m not going to go into detail here, but A does sort of have a point, even though (IMO) he’s overreacting a little.
So it all came to a head today when A resigned. As he doesn’t want to even be in the building at the moment, he’s not giving any notice, either.
Here’s where it gets dumb - worker B isn’t on my staff, so I can’t (directly) do anything about him. B’s boss, who can do something about him, is on holiday until the end of next week - but A suddenly decided he didn’t want to wait that long.
What I do know, though, is that B is getting laid off next month anyway, so this problem will go away. Obviously, I couldn’t tell A this (it’s extremely confidential), although I was trying like hell to (not so) subtly drop some hints. He didn’t pick up on them.
So, I’ve lost a good worker because of a crap worker who will be on their way out soon anyway. And from speaking with my boss earlier (who is quite pissed off about the whole thing), it looks like I won’t be able to take him back again, even if he does change his mind.
Friday afternoon (for an assignment for next week):
“I just don’t understand why I have to do this.”
“Did you read the procedure that says you have do it?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand WHY I have to do it?”
"Did you read all the references in the procedure?
“Yes, [liar] but I don’t understand why the procedure says I have to do it.”
“Did you read any of those updates I send out, about what happens when people don’t do this?”
“Yes, [bold-faced liar], but I don’t see how they apply to us.”
Long pause.
In which I evaluate how much I want my job.
“If I say, since understanding obviously isn’t your strong suit, you should just shut up and do it, will you report me to HR?” [It was actually less civil than that.]
“Yeah …”
“Then let’s talk on Monday.”
Goddammit, don’t put untested patches on my production servers!
I swear, every time I think I’ve papered over a hole with yet another blasted SOP, someone somewhere finds a way to break stuff in an entirely new way.
For some reason this reminded me of a customer call I had many years ago when I was a software engineer saddled with also doing customer support (and project management and OS installs and hardware configs, and, and and…). Note that I was working for a defense contractor, NOT Microsoft. Notoriously stupid customer from a high maintenance agency calls me up. It takes a LOT for me to call a customer stupid, this guy frequently demonstrated that he wasn’t playing with a full deck so the term is merely descriptive.
Anyway, he opens the call by saying that he was having problems getting a Microsoft program to work properly and he logged a problem with them. He knew that I couldn’t troubleshoot Microsoft software but while he waited for them to call him back was there anything I could think of for him to look at?
A woman came into my workplace today to fill out an application for a kitchen position. Our receptionist came into the kitchen to tell me that this applicant really wanted to speak to me.
So I went out to speak to the applicant, assuming she was applying for a server position. Erm, no. She thought she was applying for my job. Awkward conversation. I was only recently promoted to my management position, and I haven’t even completed my probationary period. The ad she saw on Craigslist was for my company’s location across the river (at least I hope so).
I’ve seen these ads before on Craigslist, and my out-of-state company titles them badly. See, I work in [my city], and across the river, in a different county, is “East [my city]”. So the title on the job posting reads [my city], and you have to read the entire ad to discover that it’s actually talking about “East [my city]”. And reading the entire ad is something this woman didn’t do.
Actually, I’m going to check Craigslist right now …
Oddly enough, there was no conversation - the work was just done.
Apparently forcing people to lie about understanding the process and then implying they are idiots actually encourages some people to either:
a) read the references, or
b) shut up
I expect tomorrow afternoon to be fun though; I took over 90% of a co-worker’s (boring, thankless, and fundamentally unnecessary) task, and s/he still whines about the 10% left. Tomorrow afternoon, if I hear one word, I will sympathize, and offer to have the person removed from the project.
Well fuck. I found the ad she must have been responding to, and it specifically names my facility, and is advertising for my job.
What, are the execs in my company so ignorant that they’d think I wouldn’t look at Craigslist now and then?
But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, and say that they’re hedging their bets and collecting resumes in the event that I fail. And I accept that I may fail. I’ve been doing what I do for 32 years, but this is my first shot at management, and I’m discovering management to be hella hard (especially when you’re trying to manage a bunch of teenaged twits who don’t yet understand what “having a job” means).
But what was this applicant thinking? Asking to speak to the person whose job she’s applying for? If I was applying for a management position with a company I didn’t already work for, I’d ask to speak to the General Manager, not the person whose job I was hoping to take.
I bet it’s leftover from before they hired you, Mister Rik. You should still talk to your boss about it, but I’m almost sure that will turn out to be the explanation.
That woman is a gift, now, because you don’t have to admit to looking at jobs on Craigslist to bring it up with your boss. Tell him that she came in to apply for your job, and you thought it was weird, so you went and looked, and there was your job on Craigslist. You know that you are in your probationary period and they’re probably collecting just-in-case resumes. But is there anything he wants to tell you about the job you’re doing so far?
Well, “he” is actually “she”. My boss was internally promoted just like I was. So she and I have been working together for two years, and she gave me the promotion. So I’ll feel comfortable asking her about this (especially considering that her own position is as precarious as mine).
