Manager = Doddering Fool. Sigh.

It sucks when someone goes and proves something bad that you think about them. There’s a particular manager (not mine) in my department whom I’m fairly certain is a nice guy…but a complete, doddering fool as a manager.

Clue #1 is the constant blank, lost-sheep look in his eyes. I suppose that’s not really uncommon for managers, especially ones who’ve worked their way up to management with no formal management training. In other words, someone who is absolutely tops at coding interfaces in Unix may have no aptitude at all for employee engagement and planning meetings.

Clue #2 came last year when I was let into an e-mail chain between several managers about the budget of the project I was leading. They were debating what I should do with my remaining money — never giving me a clue, mind you, but that’s not the point — and this particular manager was not only certain that a decision had already been made, but was also a full $100,000 off regarding the initial budget my project had been granted…a number that had been shared like a parade clown shares bucket-candy.

Clue #3 was today, when I was walking through the department and this manager asked if was performing a job function for a job I haven’t held since 2006 — totally ignorant of the fact that I had been working for an entirely different team for four years.

I don’t want to think of a manager as an idiot…at the same time I know some of the other candidates that he was hired over, and I hate to see that a fool had been promoted instead of them. But such is the way of the world, I guess.

June Thirteenth, Friday

Working where I work is like wearing Scotch-Brite underwear.  Irritating.  Uncomfortable.  Discourages any real exertion.  The intolerance here is epic.  Salaried professionals can’t set their own schedule because the nanny-police complain to management.  Management listens to the nanny-police, rather than telling them to get back to work.  Folks who talk are reminded of “Cube Etiquette.”

“Just a friendly reminder that voices and
sounds carry in a cubicle environment, so
please try to minimize your hall and cubicle
conversations and be mindful that there may
be others around working on unrelated projects
/ issues and may not find the conversations
beneficial. Likewise please keep radio
/ audio volumes down and be mindful of
those near you when taking on the phone.
Thank you.”

Really?! This really went out in a department newsletter?  Gosh, it’s like I’m in fourth grade again!  If so, at least I’m still ahead of my son by a grade.  Geesh.

We’ve even been told not to open the door too hard when we leave the department.  Honestly.  Hitting the bar that unlatches the door is just too darn disruptive, I guess.

There’s a “break room” in our IT department.  It’s been turned into storage for our office supplies.  We aren’t allowed to take breaks…it’s frowned upon.  You can go to the “break room” and fill a cup of coffee, or maybe microwave your frozen entree…then scurry back to your desk.  We have a whiteboard in the breakroom…we’re just not allowed to write on it.  Humor is forbidden — management doesn’t want us to relax in our “break room” or anything.

In fact…my team is being managed by the lowest bidder.  There were qualified candidates who interviewed for the position.  The only thing I have heard, and it’s from two different sources, is that M— volunteered to be hired as a “Junior Manager” and not take a pay raise.  The people who were on the interview panel basically all said “Hire any of them except for M—.”  So our director hired M—.  She’s incompetent.  It’s like being managed by a Cocker Spaniel.

They got what they paid for.  They just don’t have to put up with it…I do.

Suck my Work…

…or something like that.  Today was an exercise in the sucktastic; the sucktacular.  Yesterday our team leader sent us an email — mostly he was the mouthpiece of our manager, our menopausal, bi-polar, cocker spaniel of a manager.  The gist of the mail was that “others” in the department had noticed none of us there after 4pm and complained to our manager, and that we had to expect to work as many 9 hour days as 8 hour days, and that if we kept putting in 40-hour workweeks, we were going to be deep in the shit.  Nevermind that we’re all salaried IT professionals here.

Then today our team leader…let’s call him “Dennis,” took the day off.

So today the four of us on the team pretty much bitched all day about having to generate the appearance of working by sitting our asses at our desks after 4pm, even though our work takes us around the company, so as to mollify these “others” who seem to have nothing better to do but wander around nitpicking other people’s habits.

And the expected overtime just galls me right to hell.  When I was blackmailed into being salaried, our director in one breath said “since this is a lateral transfer, under the same manager, without a promotion, we don’t need to give you a raise” and in the next breath said “we expect you to work 10% overtime, do you understand that?”  Let’s see…being forced to become salaried without a pay raise meant that through giving up my overtime and oncall pay, I essentially didn’t get a cost-of-living raise for 2007, which is when I became salaried.  So I’m being paid for a 38-hour workweek, and being asked to work a 48-hour workweek.

It’s almost as if our managewhore said “my teams are growing too much morale…how can I kill that, and ruin my employees’ productivity by making them disgruntled?  I know, I’ll send out another e-mail.”

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On a different note, I drove across town after work to Autozone and picked up some air conditioning refills for the cars.  It’s supposed to hit 89 degrees up here in Northern Michigan tomorrow through Monday, and if my wife drives the kids around in the van, they’ll all be really sweaty and irritable.

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Food has become outrageous around here.  My wife grocery shopped today…two weeks of groceries for a family of six plus my brother-in-law…$550.00.  Granted, she stocked up on a lot of bulk items at Sam’s Club, so our next grocery trip should be smaller…but damn!  I bought my first car for less than HALF that amount!  Granted, the car crapped out, but then again, so will the groceries!!