Misfortune and Carelessness
Posted on January 6, 2007
Filed Under Rant, work | Comments Off
I haven’t written much this week because, to use that old maxim, ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all‘. All in all, it’s been a pretty bad week for me in work.
My nice boss got fired just before Christmas and I’m still a little bit in shock about the suddeness of it all. Normally I hear these rumours in advance but not this time. To make matters worse, my nice boss was fired by my old boss who is now THE boss, if you know what I mean. They had a difference of opinion on strategic matters and THE boss won.
Worse still, my new temporary boss is head of the division that’s causing all the problems for everyone else. We’ve only spoken once since the new arrangements but, thankfully, he’s as good as said that he’s not going to bother me and my section.
But, just when I thought I might finish the week without any more shocks, rumour has it that my replacement boss is going to be the not-so-nice Welsh gal. She’s a real brown nose: the sort that writes you an email and copies her boss so it appears that she’s working real hard. Rumour also has it that she’s pregnant so that may rule her out of the job (that’s not my opinion, just the way the rumour has been told). She’s so annoying that if she did get the job, I’d seriously think about quitting even if I didn’t have another job to go to.
I had hoped the nice Welsh guy would become my new boss but he reckons he’s no chance as he’s already fallen out with THE boss. He’s only been with the company for 8 months so that’s pretty impressive. It took me about 18 months to fall out with THE boss. My old boss who is now THE boss used his ‘international management experience‘ with me to get his current top job. Now I’m all but forgotten, which is fair enough, except he rings my staff behind my back to get the dirt on me.
So it’s quite probable I’ll have had 4 bosses within 12 months. I wonder if this is some sort of record? To quote Oscar Wilde:
‘To lose one parent…my be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.‘
Next week’s not looking too good either. There’s a guy in one of my teams and his three-month contract ends in a couple of weeks. I’ve got to decide whether to keep him or let him go. The problem is that I don’t have enough information to make a decision. His team leader (who should give me this info) is not great at the paperwork and hasn’t
completed any for nearly a month. In fact, he was warned about it last summer but it looks like nothing’s changed.
I don’t know if I have the mental energy to fix the situation. The easiest option would be just to let the temp guy go and say there wasn’t enough evidence to keep him on. Which would be true…but the harder (and more humane) route would be to take the (my) time and (my) effort to get the paperwork up to date. The temp guy is a nice guy and a hard worker and it would be a shame if he had to suffer because of someone else’s thoughtlessness. I can get the temp guy a job in another company but that’s not the point. He chose to work with me and I’d like to reward his loyalty by keeping him part of the team.
