Had a fairly intense conversation with my group's manager, the other day, the nut of which was, you're doing what we asked you to do, and you're doing it well, but we don't like paying full time for you to do it, because obviously, it doesn't take all of your time to do it. Which, as it happens, is true, but the proof of it was that I have time to a) dial into a recurring teleconference held by his boss's boss (capo di tutti capi? Not quite...), and they wondered how a grunt level person would have time to do this, and b) when he would hold his own team meetings, and at the end invite people who were remote (like me) to hang on and listen to the local stuff, I would -- thus proving that I didn't have enough to do. I thought that volunteering to sit in on these things demonstrated a certain amount of interest in how the organization works, above and beyond what is normally shown, but that wasn't how it was perceived. And since the organization runs on what they call 'claim codes', which is to say, billable hours, the people paying the bill objected to paying for me full time when part of the time -- obviously ! -- I had nothing to do.
Now this is a decent guy, trying to do his job with a minumum of bureaucracy.... and even I know that when a group manager gets that way, you'd better just nod and smile abjectly ....so that's what I did. Offered up some defense, but it didn't matter, he'd already come to a conclusion. Whether it was his or his boss's, I don't know. I'm disappointed in him and for him, though. He's better than that. So am I.
But the old Army aphorism was right. Don't volunteer.
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