Anhydrous Wit

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Everyone Else's Mistress

Grab some cheese. I'm about to serve up a big glass of whine.

The favorite word of Boss and Ob and Ob's Counterpart is "communication". Unfortunately, none of them seems to know what it means.

What They Say "Communication is a two-way street."

What They Mean "You have to report to me everything you do, but I don't have to tell you anything."

One example is that today's weekly meeting was again cancelled, and I again was not told. (Sorry, Betty. Last Monday's result seemed so promising.) This time, as a novelty, Worker Bee wasn't informed, either. Later, I heard Boss tell someone, "We were all too busy." Oh yeah. I was busy sitting in the office for half an hour, waiting to see if we were having a meeting or not, rather than inspecting the student apartments, as I could have been doing.

There must be a way to quantify this: it seems that meetings are cancelled only on days when I have a list of things to announce or for which I need input. Then I e-mail everyone and wait a week, twiddling my thumbs until the next meeting, to ask them why they didn't reply to my e-mail. On days I have nothing pending, the meetings are held as scheduled. (At this point, it strikes me that I should be grateful to be paid for sitting in an air conditioned office, taxing neither my body nor my mind.)

They weren't too busy later in the day, when they discussed things in Boss's office for nearly an hour. In the meantime, I ran the daily supervisors' meeting and processed the timesheets, since I wasn't "too busy" at the same time they were this morning. (How do they get busy when they know we have a meeting at the same hour on the same day we have had it for five years? Or am I just stupidly insistent on hurting my brain by wondering this?)

Don't bother asking me why I don't just hit boss with my questions as soon as he walks in the door. Boss has perfected a variation on postponing important business: he almost never comes to the office. I can wait for him all day, to present him with vital information he phoned me and said he needed "right away" -- four hours ago. I can even stand by his doorway, with a memo threatening us with losing funding if we don't fill the vacancy that Boss has been sitting on for almost four months, waiting for Ob to shut up (which, it seems, he is physically in capable of doing) and get out of Boss's office, and they see me, but nothing happens. However, if Boss deigns to bless the office with his presence for a few minutes, and he hollers during my lunch break, I am expected to appear by his desk with alacrity.

Here's another example. Boss told me three weeks ago that he was going to send me to an account in Texas to measure the acreage. (One, it was already done by the person who performed the site survey. Two, Boss himself went there later but couldn't be bothered to do it himself.) I intended to speak with Boss on Fri. 7/20 and schedule the trip for Thu. 7/26 and Fri. 7/27. Boss was "out of the office" that Fri. and in ABQ on the following Mon. I had a chance to set the groundwork on Tue. (leaving me less time than I was comfortable with to plan the trip, but it could still be done), but Ob phoned and interrupted our conversation, which I am still waiting to resume, a week later. (I guess I'm not going last Thu., am I?) The day I had intended to go, I overheard a discussion about sending our irrigation consultant to the account to repair or install irrigation for them. Maybe he could measure while he's there, and save me a trip and the company money? Maybe he needs the measurements before he goes? I don't know; I'm still waiting for Boss to speak to me.

Phone calls are a perfect example of both hypocrisy and my coworkers' misinterpretation of "communication". Boss decreed ages ago that we should all shut off our cell phones during the (supposedly) weekly Monday meetings. 1) He doesn't. 2) He answers his calls, which usually involve his personal, non-job-related, homebuilding business, during these meetings. 3) Ob and Friend have taken to imitating Boss, by answering their own phones during this meeting. 4) Worker Bee and I will sit there, waiting and wondering why we are there.

Why don't I just phone Boss and ask him for the input I need? Well, duh, he's already on the phone with everyone else. (One day, he replied to my voice mail after five p.m. and left a three-minute message that meant "yes" -- but I had already turned in my estimate, hours before his response.)

Conundrum: "Why are you coming to me with this? You can make this decision on your own." and "Why did you make that decision? Why didn't you come to me first?" I love my job... I love my job... I love my job...

Heck, since I've turned this post into a gripe about work, I might as well add this one about these soon-to-be-infamous weekly "team" meetings. 1) I am almost always ignored. Every so often, I'll open my mouth then ask myself why I bothered, since I already know better. 2) Frequently, Boss will dictate, orate, and pontificate, adjourn the meeting, then say (already halfway out of his chair), "Nobody else has anything, do they?" That's not a "meeting", Boss, that's called a "lecture".

Ob's constant companion, my co-assistant manager, is better at screwing up communication, rather than just misusing it. He involved himself in a project that I thought was mine (the third one, by the way), set up a meeting that I wasn't told about but was expected to attend (during my lunch break), and sent out a flurry of e-mails trying to find out who would pay for it, all without bothering to gather information first. The result was three work orders (charging maybe the same or maybe different accounts, for different dollar figures, for maybe the same or maybe different work, opened by maybe two or maybe three people), one pissed-off construction manager (not me, I'm just an peeved, overpaid underling), and a meeting needing four people (and Ob) to straighten it out. I will take that as a sign that it's not my project any more, and I should be glad that it isn't.

I also have an issue with Boss wasting both this limited (I think) and confused (definitely) project budget and my time, but I don't want to get into that now.

My coworkers seem to be enamored of "Ms. Communication" and are in her company most of the time. What I can't figure out is, if she's mistress to all of them, why am I the one getting screwed?

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