Today was pretty tiring, but the end wasn’t bad, as the conclusion was, basically, that the auditor problem which is about to occur isn’t my fault. I didn’t get an absolute absolution, as the manager involved seems to feel that if a problem occurred, then of course some one is at fault, and since I’m the only one in her organization that was involved, it must be my fault. And, truth to tell, some of it is. My reckoning puts that level of culpability at about fifteen percent; hers would likely be around forty percent. Whatever – its still less than the subjective level that I think could result in me getting fired. Course, that’s not the same as quitting. Still want to quit this organization. Mostly its because they deal with auditors, and I don’t like auditors or the auditor mindset. A little bit is that I don’t like the job overall, in comparison to the one I’ve been trying to move over to. And the rest is that I am not fond of the organizational style of the company – the attitude that all activity must be approved by a manager. I think that’s more appropriate to a McDonalds – and a not very well run one, at that.
This afternoon we Had A Meeting to discuss the project I have been working on. I didn’t expect anything useful to come out of it, and almost nothing did. I guess I don’t understand something, there. The two guys involved in the meeting are both relatively successful in being ‘managers’, but one of them doesn’t seem very forceful or organized. He does do a lot with Microsoft Project, and spreadsheets, and emails, and he holds lots of meetings, after which things do happen, but I can’t draw a clear conceptual line between what he does and the result. I think he does affect the things that happen; I just can’t quite believe that it happens because of him. It’s a mystery to me. The events would happen anyway, I think; just in a not quite orderly way. So if what he does is bring order to a disorderly process, why is what he is doing with my project so ineffectual? Or is it that it really is effectual, but in a slow, tectonic-plate-movement kind of way? Maybe that’s it.
But still...not a bad day.
4 comments:
It seems that auditors and economists are making troubles everywhere in the world. It is the same here.
My husband has he same problem with his job. A lot of the managers in the company he works for should not be there and a lot of the workers could not understand why there should be a lot of middle management.
If only it was easy to quit.
I am fascinarted by what you say. It never occurred to me that this condition could exist elsewhere -- somehow I just assumed it was unique to large companies, like mine. I'm going to need to think about this....
Thanks for the insight.
It most cases it almost always boils down to the old concept of "to many chiefs, not enough indians".
You had me chuckling tho. If that had been MY day, I probably would have chalked it up to a bad one. ;)
Several years ago (back when Nixon was President), I read an article about someone being quite pleased because he'd gotten H.R. Haldeman to initial a document. At the time, I thought that this was an incredibly lame thing to be proud of. Now that I've been in the classic Big Organization for a while, I understand why someone would be proud of that.
But I still think it's lame.
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