Roger the Cabin Boy
29th November 2006, 20:41
Mocaholic shares this touching story of love in the workplace...
You are all pussays.
You have not had a boss from hell until:
- he tells you that you are an unfit parent (he doesn’t have kids);
- to ‘counsel’ you, he takes you into the floor foyer (the only access to the liftwell), and basically yells at you for being a hopeless employee so you cry (ps – only to FEMALE employees, most blokes are bigger than him);
- he steals from the honesty box which is for a charity for maxilo-cranial reconstruction, and on looking at the picture on the box says: “you’d drown them at birth, wouldn’t you?”
- he pulls all the male members of the team together and is sympathetic to us whilst he says: “look, I don’t want to say this, but the girls (ie, female team members) have asked me to say…” and in fact the girls had not mentioned anything of the sort.
- After a staff member topped himself (not in our team), he was called upon to deliver the work/life balance to us whilst telling suicide jokes.
- After paying exorbitant fees to an external consultant to get a snapshot of our team’s ‘satisfaction’ and why we're not happy and cohesive, he bails us up in a meeting room for two hours going through the report word by word, questioning every point, and accusing the team members as the whim took him, ie: “you said this, didn’t you? Why would you say this? I can’t believe you said this.”
- When releasing information about payscales at a special presentation, everyone of us noted that we were all well below the median range, some below the lowest point. When we raised this issue, we (well, me mainly) were called Bolsheviks, lucky to have jobs in the first place, inept etc.
- When I found out my one-y-o daughter had had a fit (febrile convulsion), which I found via a voice message from my wife, at 6.00pm during a break in a meeting (all our meetings were after 5.00pm), I went back into the conference room (I was giving a pres’n at the time) and when I said “I think I’d better go, one of my daughters has had a fit”, he stops me and says “Just before you go, could you go through the specs…” before being told off by his boss, who was in the meeting, who tells me to fuck off home that second.
- The next day, after spending the night at ICU in Monash, I go into work (to my eternal shame) at lunch after ringing my mate telling him I’ll be late in – and my boss cracks it because I’m late.
And this isn't even starting on his ineptitude as a manager and his inability to do his job. This is just scratching the surface.
Look, I'm absolutely serious about this dude. Although I moved jobs about four years ago, I'm still good friends with the people I worked with there. It's like we have all been through hell together.
Some of his work efforts?
- The second day I was there he left a meeting and a few seconds later I hear a 'thump-thump, thump-thump', to which nobody paid any attention. When I asked what the hell that was, one girl rolled her eyes and said "It's [the boss] trying to get something for free from the big vending machine in the foyer". I kid you not.
- Telling his boss's boss that a new piece of software will be delivered on x date (incredibly stupid, given the SDLC) and then coming back to us that afternoon and giving us the time frame. "the Bus Specs won't take long, what about two days to write?" "Hang on, we've spoken to nobody, in the business, or in IT about this module - it cannot be done in that timeframe." "Well, your test cycle will be for seven days and till 9.00pm each night to help make up the time if you're late in delivering the specs to IT."
- He was so bad with his annual review discussions (they were almost two hours of agony and belittling - females were known to cry) that your self-esteem was rock-bottom. I cannot impress upon you how bad these meetings were.
- In a meeting with external consultants, he was throwing tea-bags at the ceiling (those foam tile things), some of which were getting stuck.
- Following a restructure, he called a meeting in which the new project director was attending. He got up and directed the meeting much to everyone's astonishment. (His conduct in meetings when he wasn't chairing them were deplorable - he'd either not turn up, or sabotage them.) Later at drinks that evening, one of my mates asked an 'innocent' question to the consultants working for us at the time (large, well-known firm) along the lines of "Wasn't it funny to see [the boss] get up and take control?" and the consultants, went off with unparalleled abuse (those of you who have worked with a group of external consultants may know that this is unheard of - they are to a fault apolitical, and never enter this sort of conflict), but their abuse of him - they'd worked with him for about six months by this stage) was staggering. Of course my mate who asked the question, did so in the knowledge that the new director was standing behind the consultants well within earshot.
- I can't tell you the amount of times we were called to do testing at 3, 4, 5am on Sunday mornings when we could've done them at 9.00am or even 2.00pm. Just cos he wanted us to.
Look, he is a clever guy and has a masters in (surprise, surprise) psychology. (Most of which he completed on work time, whilst we were going mad around him.) He was also found to have a book on 'anti-management', one of those books that talk about keeping your work force down by divisive means, constantly keeping them unsettled etc. He could even hold a conversation with you one-on-one and sometimes could almost convince you that he was human.
His peers hated his guts too - his boss (previous director) used to joke to the whole area that my boss' team were always marked harder in forced ranking sessions. Yeah, thanks, I'm glad you found it funny.
My theory is that he knew exactly what he was doing. Every little bit. I saw him turn on the fury at a meeting one day and storm out of the office. Two minutes later, whilst we were all a bit bemused (I was new to the team at this stage), he called me out and was perfectly normal in asking me to do something.
Psychopath.
You are all pussays.
You have not had a boss from hell until:
- he tells you that you are an unfit parent (he doesn’t have kids);
- to ‘counsel’ you, he takes you into the floor foyer (the only access to the liftwell), and basically yells at you for being a hopeless employee so you cry (ps – only to FEMALE employees, most blokes are bigger than him);
- he steals from the honesty box which is for a charity for maxilo-cranial reconstruction, and on looking at the picture on the box says: “you’d drown them at birth, wouldn’t you?”
- he pulls all the male members of the team together and is sympathetic to us whilst he says: “look, I don’t want to say this, but the girls (ie, female team members) have asked me to say…” and in fact the girls had not mentioned anything of the sort.
- After a staff member topped himself (not in our team), he was called upon to deliver the work/life balance to us whilst telling suicide jokes.
- After paying exorbitant fees to an external consultant to get a snapshot of our team’s ‘satisfaction’ and why we're not happy and cohesive, he bails us up in a meeting room for two hours going through the report word by word, questioning every point, and accusing the team members as the whim took him, ie: “you said this, didn’t you? Why would you say this? I can’t believe you said this.”
- When releasing information about payscales at a special presentation, everyone of us noted that we were all well below the median range, some below the lowest point. When we raised this issue, we (well, me mainly) were called Bolsheviks, lucky to have jobs in the first place, inept etc.
- When I found out my one-y-o daughter had had a fit (febrile convulsion), which I found via a voice message from my wife, at 6.00pm during a break in a meeting (all our meetings were after 5.00pm), I went back into the conference room (I was giving a pres’n at the time) and when I said “I think I’d better go, one of my daughters has had a fit”, he stops me and says “Just before you go, could you go through the specs…” before being told off by his boss, who was in the meeting, who tells me to fuck off home that second.
- The next day, after spending the night at ICU in Monash, I go into work (to my eternal shame) at lunch after ringing my mate telling him I’ll be late in – and my boss cracks it because I’m late.
And this isn't even starting on his ineptitude as a manager and his inability to do his job. This is just scratching the surface.
Look, I'm absolutely serious about this dude. Although I moved jobs about four years ago, I'm still good friends with the people I worked with there. It's like we have all been through hell together.
Some of his work efforts?
- The second day I was there he left a meeting and a few seconds later I hear a 'thump-thump, thump-thump', to which nobody paid any attention. When I asked what the hell that was, one girl rolled her eyes and said "It's [the boss] trying to get something for free from the big vending machine in the foyer". I kid you not.
- Telling his boss's boss that a new piece of software will be delivered on x date (incredibly stupid, given the SDLC) and then coming back to us that afternoon and giving us the time frame. "the Bus Specs won't take long, what about two days to write?" "Hang on, we've spoken to nobody, in the business, or in IT about this module - it cannot be done in that timeframe." "Well, your test cycle will be for seven days and till 9.00pm each night to help make up the time if you're late in delivering the specs to IT."
- He was so bad with his annual review discussions (they were almost two hours of agony and belittling - females were known to cry) that your self-esteem was rock-bottom. I cannot impress upon you how bad these meetings were.
- In a meeting with external consultants, he was throwing tea-bags at the ceiling (those foam tile things), some of which were getting stuck.
- Following a restructure, he called a meeting in which the new project director was attending. He got up and directed the meeting much to everyone's astonishment. (His conduct in meetings when he wasn't chairing them were deplorable - he'd either not turn up, or sabotage them.) Later at drinks that evening, one of my mates asked an 'innocent' question to the consultants working for us at the time (large, well-known firm) along the lines of "Wasn't it funny to see [the boss] get up and take control?" and the consultants, went off with unparalleled abuse (those of you who have worked with a group of external consultants may know that this is unheard of - they are to a fault apolitical, and never enter this sort of conflict), but their abuse of him - they'd worked with him for about six months by this stage) was staggering. Of course my mate who asked the question, did so in the knowledge that the new director was standing behind the consultants well within earshot.
- I can't tell you the amount of times we were called to do testing at 3, 4, 5am on Sunday mornings when we could've done them at 9.00am or even 2.00pm. Just cos he wanted us to.
Look, he is a clever guy and has a masters in (surprise, surprise) psychology. (Most of which he completed on work time, whilst we were going mad around him.) He was also found to have a book on 'anti-management', one of those books that talk about keeping your work force down by divisive means, constantly keeping them unsettled etc. He could even hold a conversation with you one-on-one and sometimes could almost convince you that he was human.
His peers hated his guts too - his boss (previous director) used to joke to the whole area that my boss' team were always marked harder in forced ranking sessions. Yeah, thanks, I'm glad you found it funny.
My theory is that he knew exactly what he was doing. Every little bit. I saw him turn on the fury at a meeting one day and storm out of the office. Two minutes later, whilst we were all a bit bemused (I was new to the team at this stage), he called me out and was perfectly normal in asking me to do something.
Psychopath.