ellienihon | My head hurts

I just want Saturday to be over already. We're putting on a seminar at my work, and my boss just cannot get his priorities straight. It's not that I have an idea of how things should be so much as the top priority thing changed multiple times today. I would mention something to him, and all of a sudden, that was the most important thing and everything else could wait. :sigh: And I have a headache for no reason :-( I'm just feeling icky.

Oh, I don't think I've mentioned this. My coworker accused me of putting a scratch in her new car. I have no idea what happened, but I know I was not involved in scratching her car. I hate being around angry people. I especially hate being around people who are angry at me. Particularly when I had NOTHING to do with it. Can someone just make the crazy lady go away?

Actually, I'm finding that I'm mad at her. This is ridiculous. The day she says it was scratched, I arrived before her and left after her. Besides which, a coworker looked at the scratch, and it's below her door handle-- too low for my mirror to scratch. I deal with anger in myself about as well as I deal with it in others. I understand that she had a difficult childhood or whatever, but that does not give her the right to take it out on me. I need to work on having better boundaries with crazy people. I'm really overreacting to this.

Current Mood: cranky

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

thespeaker.livejournal.com

Welcome to my life. My manager has two priority levels: "Run around, scream and panic" (he likes to call it "ASAP") and then everything else (which was "ASAP" until he found the next thing).

The cool thing he finds about this system is that as everything is technically ASAP, he bumps things down to make his latest focus the all important one but still gets to criticise you for his bad management when the previous ASAP doesn't also get finished in its original timeframe.

The way I tend to deal with it is to just ignore him. Getting in to a flap as well isn't going to help me get through it any quicker...

I've got a whiteboard. I write each project, as he gives it to me, on the board. They're all numbered based on his latest panic order. When a new one comes in and he tells me it's ASAP, I either make him look at the board or email him a copy of what he's already scheduled as ASAP and then ask him where he wants it to fit. It's invariably position 1. I then tell him once that that'll bump everythign else down - there's no point in repeating it, you just make them mad but it's important to do it once so they can't claim they weren't informed. Then I renumber everything and carry on.

With the list like that, I've just learned to stop caring about efficiency. I would like to be more efficient but to do so would mean disobeying management and, no matter how much good you do through efficiency, they'll never see it come close to equalling their perceived "bad" of disobeying them. So, it's his decision and it's made clear to anyone that asks that I warn once then quote The Princess Bride ("as you wish"). If he wants to make his team look bad, that's up to him. I can't change it so why get stressed about it?

On the positive side, I adopted the same approach with another manager (my manager's manager) and it really paid off. He knows that, technically, I know my stuff way better than he does. He's learned that when I say, "As you wish," he should get scared. He knows it means that someone who knows better thinks that it's a bad idea and he's setting himself up for a fall. Without it ever being a direct argument, he doesn't have to climb down (managers, like children, would rather things go to hell than admit they're wrong). Strangely, he usually has another brilliant idea, that he came up with all on his own, that's suspiciously identical to what I'd just suggested.

From:

ellienihon.livejournal.com

LOL so good to know I'm not alone. Thank you for your response. I haven't developed a method for dealing with my boss yet, although I have learned enough to not get too ruffled by it. I'm still frustrated by the lack of efficiency though.

One strategy I use is to make sure that my coworkers all know what I'm being asked to do. In the past, my boss has tried to give me jobs that others told him couldn't be done for one reason or another. Packaging product with solvents for shipment is the most memorable of these. After going to a coworker for help, I was informed that our shipping person had refused to do it because it was illegal to ship. I also try to keep a running tab of what it is he wants to get done, but sometimes he comes up with these harebrained ideas to reorganize somthing that works. I just ignore those and hope they go away. Usually they do.

Alot of the problem is that he has a hard time communicating well, and also has some kind of compulsion to not say exactly what is going on with many of the tasks he gives me. Often, I will come to him with a completed task, and he'll say "I wanted this" and then give me information that makes it obvious what is needed. I honestly think he is doing his best to communicate what he wants, most of the time. However, he has a VERY hard time ever admitting he's wrong, and will go to great lengths to avoid letting me know that I'm fixing one of his mistakes (which seems to be alot of my job). It annoys me that he's so hypocritical. When I make a mistake, it's not a big deal, but heaven forbid he should make a mistake. Anyway, I gotta get to bed. Long day tomorrow.

From:

thespeaker.livejournal.com

You know you're getting a two parter... ;)

I think that part of what frustrates me so much with bad management is that, to a large degree, management and D/s are much the same thing.

As a Dominant or a manager, you should be working your ass off, pretty much your whole life, to improve on a very similar set of skills:

Consistency - without it, those who're serving you have no way of knowing what you're going to want this time. Integrity - if those who are serving you don't feel that you're doing things for a good reason, how on earth can they be expected to follow you? Self-examination - if you're not constantly questioning yourself, pushing yourself to do better, you're not growing. If you're not growing, odds are that it won't stop them and they'll reach the point where they see your mistakes even if you don't. You don't have to appear weak by questioning yourself (a mistake a hell of a lot of both Managers and Dominants), if anything it shows integrity, so long as it doesn't become paralysing, and it lets others know you have already considered everything so they can trust you and get on with it, rather than needing to pick holes. Training and development - those under you need to feel as though, by serving you, they're growing, they're developing, they're becoming something they can take pride in. Pride - and yes, as I was just saying, pride. Not only do those under you need to feel like they're doing well, they seek your pride, your rewards, your acknowledgement. Without recognition, you're taking away from their every achievement.

Those are just a few of the concepts that I could rattle off quickly. There's no real structured order or anything and most concepts'll overlap anyway. Still, it kind of makes the point.

Sometimes it's hard to tell where I draw the line between my two roles. If anything, I don't think there really is one. I've been known to tell subs, "If there's an emergency, I'll always be there. But, at work, I'm responsible for a lot of other people too and it'd be unfair to not give them 100%"

Hmm. This is turning in to a stream of conciousness kind of a post. Anyway, that brings up another concept that a lot of Doms and a lot of managers don't seem to get: I'm responsible for them. Neither Dominance nor management should ever really be about purely taking. It's about how, through your control and leadership, you bring out the vey best in them - not being too proud to occasionally take on the tasks yourself, when it makes the most sense - to get the best possible results from the larger whole.

From:

thespeaker.livejournal.com

That's what I love about the way Erin and I (and M to a large extent) interact. On my own, I can achieve so much. Working on different things, in the same space, uncoordinated, we'd just get in each other's way. Working together, in a marriage, like any vanilla couple, with just unspoken cooperation, we'd probably achieve a bit more than as separate individuals. Working together, knowing I can ask her to take care of something that she's good at while I take care of something I am, knowing there's no friction, we achieve a massive amount (even if it's something as unquantifiable as "hanging out" - even the little stuff just works better *grins*).

My final point really ties back in to something I said at the beginning: "As a Dominant or a manager, you should be working your ass off, pretty much your whole life, to improve on a very similar set of skills."

As already mentioned with introspection, this is something you work at. Too many managers and too many Dominants think that just because you get the title and do a bit of it all of the time, you are perfect and should never be questioned. Bullshit. A promotion isn't all it takes to be a good manager. A title, a couple of toys and attending the odd mindless munch for little other than socialising doesn't make you a good Dominant.

I think that's part of what frustrates me so much in both genres. Most of my managers have never been on a training course, have never even read a basic book on management and make sure they schedule holiday whenever a compulsory half-day management seminar is on. As a low level manager, I've got half a dozen texts on the subject, from straight management through to listening skills (yeah, I know I still suck there) and I've taken the time to read and learn from every one of them. With the scene, I get irritated by Doms who give themselves the title and then, once they get the kinky sex, they see no reason to ever do any more (save the odd workshop so they can tell the world how advanced they are). Again, come look at the bookcase we have of scene books, read Soul's Haven, watch how I enjoy debates like this that makes me thing.

Anyone who thinks that getting the title and doing it with no self analysis is all that it takes... Yeah, sure.