New manager is as sharp as a marble

Post #31,231 by bconnors 3/7/02 2:40:47 PM Reply	New manager is as sharp as a marble 2 weeks ago I get pulled into a new project. Our #1 customer wants us to set up all of the different kinds of letters we print for them to be translated into a foreign language, in preparation for handling over a dozen foreign languages in the future. So I spend a week collecting original customer input records that will produce damn near every different type of letter output, run them through our system and notify the project lead of the output file locations on the network. Rememer when I bitched about being "stealth" transfered from my original manager to this new (woman) manager? Well, gender has nothing to do with bone-headedness. Tuesday at 4 PM the project lead stops by and says that the manager didn't like the way I collected customer records and ran them through; no, she wants it done another way. Naturally this way is slower. Oh, by the way, did I menetion that the customer was sending reps to review printouts Thursday morning (today)? So I have to drop what I'm doing and put in two 15 hour plus days to do things her way. Last night our SQL Server 7 database decides to drop its connection, so that I can no longer get records into it to even begin the process. Since it's late in the evening, no network/ support people are here. Numerous pages later, one calls back and says "Since it's the development system, it can wait till morning". The freakin' moron!!! I tried to stress to him the urgency of needing the database, to produce output for the customer who will be here tomorrow morning, without success. So I have to page my new manager, explain the situation, and SHE gets to call the head of networking/support to get him to kick one of his people in the ass to get them to come in and fix the freakin' database problem. In the meantime, the clock is ticking. Isn't it just fun to attempt to do a week's worth of shit in only 2 days? Finally another person shows up, takes the WHOLE SERVER offline, and starts playing it with. At around 1 AM, he says, "It's going to take me few more hours". TO DO WHAT??? I'm not a database admin or anything like that, but at least he could have told me WHY the database went down, WHY he needed to offline the whole server (we do other things on it as well), and WHAT he's been doing to fix it, rather than keep me in suspense for over 2 hours. At this point, I said "FUCK IT!" and left. In early this morning, server's online, database is up. Ran remaining data through processing, notify project lead of file locations, and catch my breath. Thankfully customer reps are late driving from their hotel to our site, since we don't have sample printouts yet. BY WAIT...there's more: Project lead comes by and says that my new manager wants PRINTOUTS of the original input files. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? We're talking flat file records that are over 1000 bytes in length, and I needed to use thousands of sample customers!!! So I shove legal paper into the group printer, copy all data records into MS Turd to shrink it down to 8 point font, hit the duplex button, and waste hundreds of pages while pissing off a fair number of coworkers as my print job runs for half an hour. WE'RE NOT DONE YET...!! Then the project leads returns to inform me that she wants printouts of various table data, that sets the conditions that produce all of the variations of these letters CROSS-REFERENCED to which customers got what. I just look at him and say "I'll get it to you as soon as I can, but he won't be today". He nods and says "Don't shoot the messenger; I've never had a manager dig down into the data level like this before either". It wasn't her gender that was a big deal - it was the fact that she has a couple of shelves of COLLEGE MANAGEMENT class textbooks sitting in her office as "Warning Sign #1". I need some beer and a LOTTA sleep. P.S. - I better pray that they don't have a keyboard logger installed, or I'm dead meat! BConnors "Prepare for metamorphosis. Ready, Kafka?"
Post #31,234 by boxley 3/7/02 2:51:51 PM Reply	I know what forum this is but its time to swing by the managers office and say "houston we have a problem" or something of that nature. Have her explain what she wants and you tell her estimated times for those kind of actions. PPP on her part does not produce an emergency on your part. type of conversation. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #31,311 by bconnors 3/7/02 11:52:47 PM Reply	Can't really do that Boxley: She's really a "hands off" type of manager. Always on the go, in meetings, on the phone behind closed door, and sending out orders through subordinates, ESPECIALLY when those people DON'T WORK FOR HER. I really couldn't fight back at all since the client reps were due in this morning, and in an ideal world I could have gone to her ASAP and said "there's not enough time on the clock" and she would have listened. BUT THAT'S NOT HER STYLE. She's a "management by the book" type manager, not a "management through common sense" type manager. BConnors "Prepare for metamorphosis. Ready, Kafka?"
Post #31,315 by Ashton 3/8/02 2:26:24 AM Reply	Given now many of these vignettes, through the years wherein the blind (and unwilling to acquire a Seeing Eye dog) lead the 'sighted' (but un-Suited) to regularly work feverishly to accomplish the barely-possible (and often - the not merely unnecessary but, logically-flawed to boot) -- I think I'd rather become a Florist. Or a mercenary. Or an ex-patriate (?) Y'know? Condolences on picking an esoteric vocation while dwelling in an increasingly concrete-dense society of pushers of Power-Point fantasies (in lieu of Honest Work\ufffd) Ashton who notices that this week, the Vast Tee Vee Wastelend includes PBS too: several variations on ~ Ethel Glotz's Map for Success or other inspirational titles reminiscent of, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. So it ain't just at your shop, where the madness is getting to be almost routine.. Something in the water...
Post #31,334 by boxley 3/8/02 8:54:37 AM Reply	its not a qustion of fighting back Just letting her know what the capabilities are. If she is that dense she might not even know what the actual time costs to do the tasks she wants and if everyone is afraid to tell her she is working in a vacuum. Of course I dont work there so who am I to give advice. thanx, bill There is no difference between a "settler," "soldier," "secular," or "Chassidic Jew." The target is the JEW. \ufffd Harvey Tannenbaum
Post #31,388 by bconnors 3/8/02 3:29:49 PM Reply	Here's the latest project lead comes by at 11 AM today and says that it looks like the launch date will be pushed back 1 - 2 weeks minimum. See, one of the client personnel is fluent in Korean: reads it, speaks it, writes it. The client team pores over our sample printouts ALL DAY yesterday when the bi-lingual person starts pointing out how some passages in letters aren't translating correctly into Korean. The files of translated text were sent to us over a month ago. AND JUST NOW SOMEONE AT THEIR COMPANY LOOKS AT IT AND SAYS "IT'S NOT TRANSLATING CORRECTLY"???? Do ya think that somebody, ANYBODY, at their company might have THOUGHT to check the translations BEFORE sending them to us??? Un-fucking-believeable. TGIF BConnors - In search of a new sig. Anybody got any suggestions?
Post #31,454 by static 3/9/02 4:07:46 AM Reply	Why is this a problem? I mean, yeah, I can understand your frustration, but this kind of idiotic inefficiency is dreadfully commonplace. It's a process thing that companies seem unable to completely stamp out. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #31,472 by nking 3/9/02 11:54:31 AM Reply	Too true the managers keep making mistakes and grossly mismanage people, yet they are kept on while people under them are forced to quit or let go? Corporate america is almost always like this. It is hard to find a good manager. "Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
Post #31,256 by nking 3/7/02 6:00:40 PM Reply	I know the feeling we had someone promoted to management at the lawfirm, and she would drop last minute changes on me before I would get done. She had no idea how long it would take to make those changes and what type of hours I had to put in to do them on time. But alas, she may be doing that to someone else by now, unless she became more computer savvy? Other managers, regardless of gender, did about the same darn thing to me. They are supposed to go to my supervisor first about these, and usually I forwarded the mail to him, and he said do it anyway (The man does not know how to say "no" to anyone no matter how insane sounding the task at hand was). "Whats the matter Norman? We are only asking the impossible in too short an amount of time?" "Will code Visual BASIC for cash."

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