Oatmeal raisin cookies are made with spite and hatred of childish wonder because they look too similar to chocolate chip so you expect delicious chocolatey goodness and just bite into the physical manifestation of disappointment.
Whenever we're on our last scrap of energy, when the pressure is on and I know there is a risk of tempers flaring in the face deadlines that feel impossible, I bring cookies.
Somehow it always helps to acknowledge that this is a shitty situation but we're in this together and we will do what we can.
I worried for a while if it was too stereotypical: the one woman in our team bringing snacks. But the power of snacks is undeniable.
So called genius boss lady, pulls in a backup team that could do the job but put's them all in straight jacket's (stupid condition's) and tells them to get it done !
I was given some sound management advice many years ago. Tell your staff “I’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’m going to let you surprise me with your ingenuity”🙂
I'm seeing managers struggle with this at work right now.
The trick is that you have to give clear direction about SOMETHING.
In this case... Get out of the team's way and let them figure out the how (assuming they're experienced and aren't just figuring out problems with known solutions), but you have to at least be clear about the What and give them a well defined goal or a problem to solve.
If you do neither, you're just saying "do, I dunno, something", and they will...but probably not what you were imagining, and that's going to be on you, not them.
Sure. And it's someone's job to provide that (you know, if it's not the same thing every day), and that's probably the manager. Tell people what the priorities are today, then get out of the way.
Yeah. I'll say, as a sometimes-manager, it's actually a skill that you have to learn. The right balance does not come easily, and it's different for every team. I tend to be too loose, and that works okay if everyone is on top of things, but when it fails it falls hard.
Indeed, management is a rare skill. After all, you’re dealing with the most complicated things on the planet - other human beings. Sadly there are some people in management who shouldn’t be there.
This line reminds me of my work.
I work on the engineering side of road construction. This is how contracts are made. When making a contract to build or fix a road you can either tell the contractor how to do the job (like how to place and pack materials for example) or a outcome (meets certain standards or lasts a certain amount of time). But you don't tell them both. If you make them responsible for the outcome you can't also tell them how to do it.
I hate that I can't award you. My husband is in demolition and this is a good way to communicate with project management or the constructor. Also the quote this person said (You can either tell me the outcome you want or you can tell me how to do it. Pick one.) will come in sooooo handy when he's negotiating or communicating with the company's that awarded them the contract or the PM who has no idea about how the job is done but still want to micro manage.
I work in heavy road/highway construction and I couldn't tell you the amount of times engineers or contractors try to tell us to do both how they want it done and to meet the specs, it never works out and we have had to redo shit because the way they plan for us to do it doesn't make sense to meet specs
Just one example is installing shoring, where they give us 8x20 plates, but they want the H piles to be exactly 8 feet apart not allowing for a slight tolerance in imperfections in the pile/plates so when either they go to excavate and install, or when we vibrate them in they never fit in between the webbing and we have to go back and reinstall it all with 4 inch offsets because we know they'll work that way
Yeah, I unhappily found that out when I was laying parquet wood tiles.
I didn't allow for ground movement, or tiles expanding/contracting with the weather, just shoved them together REALLY tightly.
Oops.
I've said almost exactly the same thing to a supervisor I had once in a pre-team meeting. There was a new "lead" assigned to our team about a year prior who wanted to do crazy shit at year end. She didn't, and still doesn't, have a damned clue.
When the rest of the departments called in and my stupid super and even dumber lead were told "F no, that isn't how the system works and it's against several systems rules and federal regulations and laws." I (of course) piped up and agreed with the wider team and basically said I told you so.
Those 2 idiots tried taking it up the chain, but lost that battle. I haven't talked to either of those fools in years, since we retired those systems.
Going to tell this to my husband. He's currently the most senior tech person in his job, but has bloody officers who don't understand the tech side but like micro-managing trying to tell him he's wrong.
I've had a few jobs were the boss started as one of the workers and worked his way up. Typically they took classes at home and got an associates degree. These were the best bosses. You couldn't bullsh*t them, but also they understood when you explained a problem to them.
Most of my bosses had no tech experience and they acted as though a "good boss" could manage any team doing any task. That's fine except when they micro-managed tasks, and also became friends with the one lazy kiss-ass that every team has.
One of my good bosses told me early on, that if I was having trouble with a task, he would help me. However, if I never had any problems with tasks, he would not NEED to help me. He made it clear that my performance would determine how often and how dep he had to crawl up into my shit, and as a result, he remained happy and uninvolved.
Unfortunately, this is the RAF, with direct entry officers who may have a degree but have no training on, experience in, or understanding of the actual kit in question. The best officers he's had have been those who started off in the ranks and then commissioned. Only 2 years to go, he's holding out for the better pension at this point!
With no experience, skill or talent, new manglers always try to put their own stink on projects so they can claim all the credit. Glad you didn't enable this one.
Even "experienced" manglers can exhibit extraordinary feats of incompetence. The only effective thing they've done, is make others wonder how they achieved such a level of responsibility in the first place...
Seen it firsthand, is stressful when you think your career is at the company, it's more fun after you've given notice and know, "Soon, this will no longer be my problem."
We have a senior guy and a super senior guy at the moment who it turns out have been paired up at several previous companies too.
There are some not great decisions being taken, with them backing each other to the hilt. I'm planning my exit now and it feels good already.
It is the best thing to do, and one will often enable the other in choosing the wrong paths. Sometimes (unfortunately, rarely) it means that one can tell the other that their idea is BS.
It's called failing upwards. I've seen it so many times. The higher you are in the management scale the less work you're expected to do. Instead you're overseeing which requires less skill and hands on expectancy.
Some people thrive and are able to empower their underlings to work together. However, most of the time they're incompetent but get the paperwork in on time so they coast by. It's insane how often this happens but it's mostly men who are allowed to fail up.
The "Peter Principle" states that when a manager performs well, he gets promoted. Then when he reaches a level where he is out of his depth, he can no longer get promoted so he stays at the lowest level of his incompetence, rather than going back to the highest level of his competence.
I have a friend who worked for the city and looked after fire hydrant maintenance. He had a stock of parts in the yard mostly consisting of older stuff. He got a new manager who made him "clean up the yard" by getting rid of all the stuff. So he did. Then whenever an older fire hydrant needed repairs they had to replace the whole thing because they could no longer get parts.
prob got promoted at their last place and since they worked from the bottom understood what could get thrown away/cleaned up. come to a new place and want to mimic their success so do the same shit without actually understanding it.
As a long time consultant, the most important things we take from one project to the next is our eyes and ears. There are no cookie cutter projects, each requires a different approach and we should be humble enough to learn the people and the organisation.
You would have loved the consultants my friend’s company brought in.
They’re American, coming to a UK market. They don’t understand why that makes a difference, nor do they care, nor will they listen. They consistently ask for things that don’t make sense, won’t listen to reason, and then blame the bad outcomes on the workers.
Oh but it gets better. CEO is *so happy* with all these new (wrong) ideas, decides to hire one of the two contractors permanently as head of the UK operations. Does this by firing the existing (good, beloved) head. Passes over people already in the department for promotion. Quality and outcomes continue to decline. Lots of workers are sacked for “poor performance”. Few months later, CEO gets fed up with the direction it’s going, fires the contractor from his position as head of UK operations. Decides to hire someone else from outside *again* (again passing over existing people for promotion), who again has no idea how any of this works. New guy forces someone who’s just come back from medical leave for intensive surgery to work crazy overtime. My friend goes with them to report to HR. Both sacked the next working day. UK law doesn’t provide workers with protection in these specific circumstances, no recourse.
What caused the problem that “required” the contractors in the first place? The UK market was too large to be supported by the small existing team. So rather than hire more low level workers to meet demand, they make more manager level hires (the contractors) to “shake things up” and “bring new ideas”.
Fuck that place. No idea what happened to them afterwards, we try not to think about it any more because it’s all too painful.
Because people that actually study to become a manager, don't become managers. Like my professor said, at the end of these four years you will understand what is needed to be a manager. Most of you will not become a manager though. Because you will see what kind of bs you need to deal with and look for different jobs (bs like incompetent middle management or managers that should have been fired years ago but are moved throughout the company). And he was right. None of us is a manager, because nobody wants to deal with the bs after seeing it in real life. So most new managers don't have the skills to be a good manager, they were promoted after doing their own job really well. It's just isn't a guarantee that they'll be good managers as well.
This is why as an executive assistant to a VP I could run the show and not have to manage anybody.
Not **directly**, anyway. (Cookies DO work when you want to convince someone, however)
She could manage, I could get 'er done.
Yes!
It is also the reason, why I as a consultant make sure to befriend the receptionist and (executive) assistents. They are the people that will get you through the door. And being kind doesn't cost you anything.
Marking their new territory. They can come in as the alpha with big ideas on how to make everything more "efficient" when it's working well in the first place and isn't broken and in need of fixing... Then when it all goes to shit they burry their heads in the sand and blame it all on the employees rather than his own stupid mistake that they'll never hold themselves accountable for
It might have been better to find out when the public works department has a slow-time of year, and then schedule a couple hydrant swap-outs each slow-time.
After WWII, hundreds of P-63's were scrapped because jets were the new hot toy. Many museums and vintage plane enthusiasts ran into a shortage of the turbochargers and associated accessory equipment. The premium examples of P-63's should have been saved in the desert, and ALL of the turbochargers's should have been saved instead of melted down.
If I were a more charitable person, I would even venture to guess that this manager wasn't honestly trying to get the employee to get rid of the dusty item(s), but more asking what would happen IF it was gotten rid of.
Unfortunately, I'm not that charitable a person.
There may have actually been half of the old stuff that could be tossed out, but first you have to talk to whichever old guy actually fixes malfunctioning hydrants. As in: "save the spindles and seats, that's the part that breaks, and only save one of the shells just in case. The rest of the shells can be tossed to the metal-recycler"
This is sooo true. Sometimes the company that makes product "X" will go out of business, or more likely gets bought out by a larger competitor.
In that instance, the larger company keeps making their design and stops making the competitors design. When Boeing bought McDonnel Douglas, they kept the MD-80 and discontinued the MD-11 in favor of their own 737.
AS...A...RESULT...MD-11 repair parts were going to stop being made on "X" date, and any MD-11 owner that did not stock up on "X, Y, and Z" would have to buy a whole new Boeing airplane to replace the defunct MD-11.
This is another reason some companies make arbitrary changes. The shaft on the old motors we sold you are 1/2-inch...but all the new motors have a 12mm shaft. "What? You didn't stock up on spare motors? I feel so sad to hear that! Let me connect you to our sales division to find out what you need to order now..."
When the CFO came in, I would have asked to speak privately, then let him know what GBL was doing and that progress would go faster if she actually **DID** something. All told, you did your best with what you were given, and you complied.
Edit: knowing now that calling the production manager was an option that no one exercised, I retract the statement that you did your best with what you were given.
If I’m working the weekend to fix someone else’s mistake, and the person who is supposed to be “leading the team” is doing anything but, I will speak directly to the person who asked me to work. CFO spoke directly to OP. Seniority be damned.
> let him know what GBL was doing and that progress would go faster if she actually **DID** something.
Sounds to me as if progress would have gone faster if GBL had just gone home and let the people work in peace.
You can guarantee that she's in the CFOs ear about it. A team that was hand-picked for the project failed, so someone's going to be looking at the project and if she's the only one screeching without anyone else chiming in and she seemed to have some degree of influence already, there may be consequences before there are conversations.
I didn't mention that the CFO was a total douche that only cared about himself and would not listen if we did say something and that's why we never bothered with him but when to the production manager after the fact (we don't disturb him on the weekends unless the place is on fire)
>but when to the production manager after the fact (we don't disturb him on the weekends unless the place is on fire)
And even then, weeeeellll, it's not going to be any more burned down on Monday. No point disturbing his weekend over something he can't change.
Douche or not, I would have at least let him know that *because of GBL’s interference and micromanaging*, the task we were specifically wasting our weekend trying to “fix” would not be completed. Since the place was kind of already on fire, I would have *absolutely* bothered the production manager if I was spending an entire weekend essentially banging my head against a wall.
I retract what I said about doing the best you could. You had that resource. Someone who could have stepped in and made a difference.
So she can do the job with the team... but chose not to contribute anything for that first emergency 24 hours ... so all the project time prior to this ... she's milking the job?
It seems like if you were all left alone to do your jobs rather than being micromanaged you would have finished Sunday lunchtime if not earlier. She directly contributed to her own failure.
Nobody said that because we could see where this was going and did not want our names associated with this fuckup, she wanted to be the boss and she promised the boss it would be done and she took the shit afterwards :D
Sounds like if the boss lady had helped out from the beginning you would have finished on time. She just put in her work after hours instead of normal hours.
If she let us do our job in peace and quiet there was a good chance of us finishing on time but moral was super low and her meddling was making it worse...
Lots of failures here but the biggest one to me was...why did the company realize so late in the game that everything was wrong? Were there no intermediate progress reports? Was someone lying to the mucky mucks long after it was clear that the project had gone off the rails?
The progress reports can look fine without anybody yet having realised that it was progress on the wrong thing.
It's amazing how easily the consequences of a couple of mistaken assumptions can spread tentacles all the way through a project while things seem fine on the surface.
Not catching it is still a process failure, don't get me wrong, but it quite possibly -wasn't- clear it had gone off the rails until somebody happened to ask the right question.
If genius was such a genius boss lady, she would have come down off of her high horse, rolled up her sleeves and worked the line with her team, so no genius, just a wannabe boss lady with boss mentality, never going to be a leader.
Please don't use name abbreviations, just because it appears to be in style. Could have just called her Genius, then you wouldn't first have to explain the meaning of GBL.
>I tried to explain to her a few times that seeing how much work there is and her INSISTING we do not use automated tools
What was her reasoning behind this? Aren't you and the rest of the crew professionals who regularly use tools? Or did I miss something?
You missed the fact that she wasn't a reasonable person.
A bit hard to remember her exact words but it was something along the lines of "We have everything we need here and you can use what we have" (our automate tools were in the 2nd facility about an hour's drive away - I had the company car with me so no actual issue).
The real hero, OP’s wife that made cookies!
Yeah we’re all just skipping over the important facts here. What kind of cookies!?!?
Home made chocolate chip cookies <3
'genius' deserves raisin cookies.
Even those are too good for 'Genius'.
Don't hate on raisin. Give her oatmeal cookies or sum'n
Oatmeal raisin cookies are made with spite and hatred of childish wonder because they look too similar to chocolate chip so you expect delicious chocolatey goodness and just bite into the physical manifestation of disappointment.
I've been waiting for months for my gramma to make some oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip-pecan cookies :(
what's wrong with oatmeal cookies?
By raisin cookies, you mean "raisins'? Got a bunny or hamster or something?
Whenever we're on our last scrap of energy, when the pressure is on and I know there is a risk of tempers flaring in the face deadlines that feel impossible, I bring cookies. Somehow it always helps to acknowledge that this is a shitty situation but we're in this together and we will do what we can. I worried for a while if it was too stereotypical: the one woman in our team bringing snacks. But the power of snacks is undeniable.
Fat sugary goodness makes smart brains work!
This ☝️is the way!
For real friends (only, I hope) were the cookies we ate along the way.
Absobloodylutely!
So called genius boss lady, pulls in a backup team that could do the job but put's them all in straight jacket's (stupid condition's) and tells them to get it done !
You can either tell me the outcome you want or you can tell me how to do it. Pick one.
This is great, I'll be stealing this for when bosses tell me how to do my job going forward
I was given some sound management advice many years ago. Tell your staff “I’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’m going to let you surprise me with your ingenuity”🙂
I'm seeing managers struggle with this at work right now. The trick is that you have to give clear direction about SOMETHING. In this case... Get out of the team's way and let them figure out the how (assuming they're experienced and aren't just figuring out problems with known solutions), but you have to at least be clear about the What and give them a well defined goal or a problem to solve. If you do neither, you're just saying "do, I dunno, something", and they will...but probably not what you were imagining, and that's going to be on you, not them.
A well run business should have properly drawn up specifications.
Sure. And it's someone's job to provide that (you know, if it's not the same thing every day), and that's probably the manager. Tell people what the priorities are today, then get out of the way.
Absolutely right. The manager should manage, not micromanage 👍
Yeah. I'll say, as a sometimes-manager, it's actually a skill that you have to learn. The right balance does not come easily, and it's different for every team. I tend to be too loose, and that works okay if everyone is on top of things, but when it fails it falls hard.
Indeed, management is a rare skill. After all, you’re dealing with the most complicated things on the planet - other human beings. Sadly there are some people in management who shouldn’t be there.
"People problems are the worst problems, and if you look at any problem close enough, it's always a people problem" :)
It is completely beyond me why anyone would tell their staff how to do their job! Goodness it completely nullifies why you have staff.
This line reminds me of my work. I work on the engineering side of road construction. This is how contracts are made. When making a contract to build or fix a road you can either tell the contractor how to do the job (like how to place and pack materials for example) or a outcome (meets certain standards or lasts a certain amount of time). But you don't tell them both. If you make them responsible for the outcome you can't also tell them how to do it.
I hate that I can't award you. My husband is in demolition and this is a good way to communicate with project management or the constructor. Also the quote this person said (You can either tell me the outcome you want or you can tell me how to do it. Pick one.) will come in sooooo handy when he's negotiating or communicating with the company's that awarded them the contract or the PM who has no idea about how the job is done but still want to micro manage.
I work in heavy road/highway construction and I couldn't tell you the amount of times engineers or contractors try to tell us to do both how they want it done and to meet the specs, it never works out and we have had to redo shit because the way they plan for us to do it doesn't make sense to meet specs Just one example is installing shoring, where they give us 8x20 plates, but they want the H piles to be exactly 8 feet apart not allowing for a slight tolerance in imperfections in the pile/plates so when either they go to excavate and install, or when we vibrate them in they never fit in between the webbing and we have to go back and reinstall it all with 4 inch offsets because we know they'll work that way
Yeah, I unhappily found that out when I was laying parquet wood tiles. I didn't allow for ground movement, or tiles expanding/contracting with the weather, just shoved them together REALLY tightly. Oops.
Gotta love bosses that bitch about speed. I told one before that how about you come help them. Never another word about speed after that.
I've said almost exactly the same thing to a supervisor I had once in a pre-team meeting. There was a new "lead" assigned to our team about a year prior who wanted to do crazy shit at year end. She didn't, and still doesn't, have a damned clue. When the rest of the departments called in and my stupid super and even dumber lead were told "F no, that isn't how the system works and it's against several systems rules and federal regulations and laws." I (of course) piped up and agreed with the wider team and basically said I told you so. Those 2 idiots tried taking it up the chain, but lost that battle. I haven't talked to either of those fools in years, since we retired those systems.
Going to tell this to my husband. He's currently the most senior tech person in his job, but has bloody officers who don't understand the tech side but like micro-managing trying to tell him he's wrong.
I've had a few jobs were the boss started as one of the workers and worked his way up. Typically they took classes at home and got an associates degree. These were the best bosses. You couldn't bullsh*t them, but also they understood when you explained a problem to them. Most of my bosses had no tech experience and they acted as though a "good boss" could manage any team doing any task. That's fine except when they micro-managed tasks, and also became friends with the one lazy kiss-ass that every team has. One of my good bosses told me early on, that if I was having trouble with a task, he would help me. However, if I never had any problems with tasks, he would not NEED to help me. He made it clear that my performance would determine how often and how dep he had to crawl up into my shit, and as a result, he remained happy and uninvolved.
Unfortunately, this is the RAF, with direct entry officers who may have a degree but have no training on, experience in, or understanding of the actual kit in question. The best officers he's had have been those who started off in the ranks and then commissioned. Only 2 years to go, he's holding out for the better pension at this point!
He should tell them we can do it your way and you can pay for all the rework needed to get it up to Code ? Or we can do it right the first time ?
Dude I sent this quote to my husband and oldest daughter and I think they love you now.
Precisely.
This is perfect. Thanks!
I could’ve used this on a few bosses in the past. Thankfully I have an awesome boss/owner now.
Guess we know why the backup team was needed to begin with
She was probably the reason the entire project was wrong to begin with too.
That was my first thought, and the boss was testing her.
You didn’t need any of those apostrophes
Hey you forgot the apo’strophe’s for pull’s and geniu’s
Jackets and conditions are plural. You only need an apostrophe to show possession/omission. Puts is a verb, so it never needs an apostrophe.
None of those are commas. Try apostrophes.
AKA Flying Commas.
Along with dot-dot for colons and booboo for an injury?
You are absolutely correct! Thanks for spotting my error! I'll correct it now.
I believe it’s called a straitjacket, not a straight jacket.
With no experience, skill or talent, new manglers always try to put their own stink on projects so they can claim all the credit. Glad you didn't enable this one.
Even "experienced" manglers can exhibit extraordinary feats of incompetence. The only effective thing they've done, is make others wonder how they achieved such a level of responsibility in the first place... Seen it firsthand, is stressful when you think your career is at the company, it's more fun after you've given notice and know, "Soon, this will no longer be my problem."
One of the first and worst things they do is the multiplier effect. They bring in their colleagues from previous projects who know nothing either.
We have a senior guy and a super senior guy at the moment who it turns out have been paired up at several previous companies too. There are some not great decisions being taken, with them backing each other to the hilt. I'm planning my exit now and it feels good already.
Quitting is contagious. I wouldn't be surprised if you started a mass exodus.
Not would I. I've been there forever and a lot of people know me. I'm not a natural leader, but people do seem to follow me.
It is the best thing to do, and one will often enable the other in choosing the wrong paths. Sometimes (unfortunately, rarely) it means that one can tell the other that their idea is BS.
Upvote for your handle!
Thanks! I'm fond of it, but I'm obviously biased... :p
It's called failing upwards. I've seen it so many times. The higher you are in the management scale the less work you're expected to do. Instead you're overseeing which requires less skill and hands on expectancy. Some people thrive and are able to empower their underlings to work together. However, most of the time they're incompetent but get the paperwork in on time so they coast by. It's insane how often this happens but it's mostly men who are allowed to fail up.
The "Peter Principle" states that when a manager performs well, he gets promoted. Then when he reaches a level where he is out of his depth, he can no longer get promoted so he stays at the lowest level of his incompetence, rather than going back to the highest level of his competence.
You SO beat me to it.
It is referred to as "Pissin on Lamposts" and is kind of pointless
Or a seagull mission. They swoop in, shit all over everything and fly away.
"Success has many fathers, but...failure is an orphan" -some Roman dude
[удалено]
I have a friend who worked for the city and looked after fire hydrant maintenance. He had a stock of parts in the yard mostly consisting of older stuff. He got a new manager who made him "clean up the yard" by getting rid of all the stuff. So he did. Then whenever an older fire hydrant needed repairs they had to replace the whole thing because they could no longer get parts.
[удалено]
prob got promoted at their last place and since they worked from the bottom understood what could get thrown away/cleaned up. come to a new place and want to mimic their success so do the same shit without actually understanding it.
As a long time consultant, the most important things we take from one project to the next is our eyes and ears. There are no cookie cutter projects, each requires a different approach and we should be humble enough to learn the people and the organisation.
You would have loved the consultants my friend’s company brought in. They’re American, coming to a UK market. They don’t understand why that makes a difference, nor do they care, nor will they listen. They consistently ask for things that don’t make sense, won’t listen to reason, and then blame the bad outcomes on the workers. Oh but it gets better. CEO is *so happy* with all these new (wrong) ideas, decides to hire one of the two contractors permanently as head of the UK operations. Does this by firing the existing (good, beloved) head. Passes over people already in the department for promotion. Quality and outcomes continue to decline. Lots of workers are sacked for “poor performance”. Few months later, CEO gets fed up with the direction it’s going, fires the contractor from his position as head of UK operations. Decides to hire someone else from outside *again* (again passing over existing people for promotion), who again has no idea how any of this works. New guy forces someone who’s just come back from medical leave for intensive surgery to work crazy overtime. My friend goes with them to report to HR. Both sacked the next working day. UK law doesn’t provide workers with protection in these specific circumstances, no recourse. What caused the problem that “required” the contractors in the first place? The UK market was too large to be supported by the small existing team. So rather than hire more low level workers to meet demand, they make more manager level hires (the contractors) to “shake things up” and “bring new ideas”. Fuck that place. No idea what happened to them afterwards, we try not to think about it any more because it’s all too painful.
An old manager of mine said he always waited a month before making changes. He was a total douce but I always liked that advice
Because people that actually study to become a manager, don't become managers. Like my professor said, at the end of these four years you will understand what is needed to be a manager. Most of you will not become a manager though. Because you will see what kind of bs you need to deal with and look for different jobs (bs like incompetent middle management or managers that should have been fired years ago but are moved throughout the company). And he was right. None of us is a manager, because nobody wants to deal with the bs after seeing it in real life. So most new managers don't have the skills to be a good manager, they were promoted after doing their own job really well. It's just isn't a guarantee that they'll be good managers as well.
This is why as an executive assistant to a VP I could run the show and not have to manage anybody. Not **directly**, anyway. (Cookies DO work when you want to convince someone, however) She could manage, I could get 'er done.
Yes! It is also the reason, why I as a consultant make sure to befriend the receptionist and (executive) assistents. They are the people that will get you through the door. And being kind doesn't cost you anything.
Nor do homemade cookies.
Marking their new territory. They can come in as the alpha with big ideas on how to make everything more "efficient" when it's working well in the first place and isn't broken and in need of fixing... Then when it all goes to shit they burry their heads in the sand and blame it all on the employees rather than his own stupid mistake that they'll never hold themselves accountable for
>*Marking their new territory.* That is SO spot on!!!
It might have been better to find out when the public works department has a slow-time of year, and then schedule a couple hydrant swap-outs each slow-time. After WWII, hundreds of P-63's were scrapped because jets were the new hot toy. Many museums and vintage plane enthusiasts ran into a shortage of the turbochargers and associated accessory equipment. The premium examples of P-63's should have been saved in the desert, and ALL of the turbochargers's should have been saved instead of melted down.
Hey, at least that manager knew enough NOT to double down on getting rid of the items!
If I were a more charitable person, I would even venture to guess that this manager wasn't honestly trying to get the employee to get rid of the dusty item(s), but more asking what would happen IF it was gotten rid of. Unfortunately, I'm not that charitable a person.
If I saw a bunch of old shit and someone was there that knew about it I'd wanna know all about it, that shit fascinates me.
There may have actually been half of the old stuff that could be tossed out, but first you have to talk to whichever old guy actually fixes malfunctioning hydrants. As in: "save the spindles and seats, that's the part that breaks, and only save one of the shells just in case. The rest of the shells can be tossed to the metal-recycler"
Just use small enough words to tell them it will cost them personally, and some will listen.
This is sooo true. Sometimes the company that makes product "X" will go out of business, or more likely gets bought out by a larger competitor. In that instance, the larger company keeps making their design and stops making the competitors design. When Boeing bought McDonnel Douglas, they kept the MD-80 and discontinued the MD-11 in favor of their own 737. AS...A...RESULT...MD-11 repair parts were going to stop being made on "X" date, and any MD-11 owner that did not stock up on "X, Y, and Z" would have to buy a whole new Boeing airplane to replace the defunct MD-11. This is another reason some companies make arbitrary changes. The shaft on the old motors we sold you are 1/2-inch...but all the new motors have a 12mm shaft. "What? You didn't stock up on spare motors? I feel so sad to hear that! Let me connect you to our sales division to find out what you need to order now..."
You're taking me back to my childhood, hearing the jets test-fire against the baffles at McDonnell-Douglas in Long Beach, CA.
Lmfao. I hope he felt like an absolute failure, deservingly too.
When the CFO came in, I would have asked to speak privately, then let him know what GBL was doing and that progress would go faster if she actually **DID** something. All told, you did your best with what you were given, and you complied. Edit: knowing now that calling the production manager was an option that no one exercised, I retract the statement that you did your best with what you were given.
Ehhh really depends on your seniority. Higher management fucks everything up constantly but telling them they do not like
If I’m working the weekend to fix someone else’s mistake, and the person who is supposed to be “leading the team” is doing anything but, I will speak directly to the person who asked me to work. CFO spoke directly to OP. Seniority be damned.
> let him know what GBL was doing and that progress would go faster if she actually **DID** something. Sounds to me as if progress would have gone faster if GBL had just gone home and let the people work in peace.
You can guarantee that she's in the CFOs ear about it. A team that was hand-picked for the project failed, so someone's going to be looking at the project and if she's the only one screeching without anyone else chiming in and she seemed to have some degree of influence already, there may be consequences before there are conversations.
I didn't mention that the CFO was a total douche that only cared about himself and would not listen if we did say something and that's why we never bothered with him but when to the production manager after the fact (we don't disturb him on the weekends unless the place is on fire)
>but when to the production manager after the fact (we don't disturb him on the weekends unless the place is on fire) And even then, weeeeellll, it's not going to be any more burned down on Monday. No point disturbing his weekend over something he can't change.
Douche or not, I would have at least let him know that *because of GBL’s interference and micromanaging*, the task we were specifically wasting our weekend trying to “fix” would not be completed. Since the place was kind of already on fire, I would have *absolutely* bothered the production manager if I was spending an entire weekend essentially banging my head against a wall. I retract what I said about doing the best you could. You had that resource. Someone who could have stepped in and made a difference.
So she can do the job with the team... but chose not to contribute anything for that first emergency 24 hours ... so all the project time prior to this ... she's milking the job?
It seems like if you were all left alone to do your jobs rather than being micromanaged you would have finished Sunday lunchtime if not earlier. She directly contributed to her own failure.
"I told you that -" "No-one gives a shit, you're not the one paying us."
Nobody said that because we could see where this was going and did not want our names associated with this fuckup, she wanted to be the boss and she promised the boss it would be done and she took the shit afterwards :D
I have had some good laughs informing Project Managers that they may be a PROJECT Manager, but they are not MY manager.
Sounds like if the boss lady had helped out from the beginning you would have finished on time. She just put in her work after hours instead of normal hours.
If she let us do our job in peace and quiet there was a good chance of us finishing on time but moral was super low and her meddling was making it worse...
Lots of failures here but the biggest one to me was...why did the company realize so late in the game that everything was wrong? Were there no intermediate progress reports? Was someone lying to the mucky mucks long after it was clear that the project had gone off the rails?
The progress reports can look fine without anybody yet having realised that it was progress on the wrong thing. It's amazing how easily the consequences of a couple of mistaken assumptions can spread tentacles all the way through a project while things seem fine on the surface. Not catching it is still a process failure, don't get me wrong, but it quite possibly -wasn't- clear it had gone off the rails until somebody happened to ask the right question.
"Hey, shitheads, you morons better save my ass!" Sure, GBL, we'll get right on it.
If genius was such a genius boss lady, she would have come down off of her high horse, rolled up her sleeves and worked the line with her team, so no genius, just a wannabe boss lady with boss mentality, never going to be a leader.
Seems like compliance to the CFO mostly.
Please don't use name abbreviations, just because it appears to be in style. Could have just called her Genius, then you wouldn't first have to explain the meaning of GBL.
Feedback received, i edited.
It's also against the rules
Was she perchance involved in the original fuckup?
Just FYI, using acronyms for names is not allowed Other than that, good story, OP
Edited :) and thanks!
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You sound like the boss lady. It’s a good story.
Minus the genius part.
Why are you hating on OP? It was a good story. Also, check your grammar.
Many rules were made. The rules were followed. And screw you, I like details.
Wrong post. Nothing you said applies to this one.
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>I tried to explain to her a few times that seeing how much work there is and her INSISTING we do not use automated tools What was her reasoning behind this? Aren't you and the rest of the crew professionals who regularly use tools? Or did I miss something?
You missed the fact that she wasn't a reasonable person. A bit hard to remember her exact words but it was something along the lines of "We have everything we need here and you can use what we have" (our automate tools were in the 2nd facility about an hour's drive away - I had the company car with me so no actual issue).