Month: June 2009

One of my cube neighbors asked me yesterday if I could keep a secret. Well, yes, sort of. I won’t tell anyone who could possibly know the person in question, which I think is what she meant.

Story number one: Our supervisor came up to my cube neighbor a few days ago and asked her whether or not she’d told our unit that she’s retiring. She honestly couldn’t remember whether or not she’d said anything. It’s a little weird, but she’s had brain surgery, and I know she has memory issues, so I think it’s understandable that she might not remember, and that, knowing herself she has memory issues, she might be paranoid that she’d said something and then forgot she said it. I get that. It makes perfect sense to me. But she hadn’t told us that she’s retiring. The thing is, though, she told my coworker that her supervisor insists that she did tell everyone she’s retiring. It’s that last part that has me boggled.

So, I was feeling a little sorry for our boss yesterday. That is, until she got cranky with everyone. Story number two: Another coworker asked her the proper format for something, and she got exasperated, saying “You people and all your questions…!” Now, she’s the boss. She trained most of us, right? If we have questions–and questions are inevitable, I don’t care how long you’ve been cataloging!–how the hell else are we supposed to get them answered? Yes, there are lots of resources available, where we can look stuff up, but sometimes it’s impossible to find the information you need, or you need someone higher up food chain to make a judgment call. She’s the supervisor, so it’s her J-O-B to answer questions and consult with us.

I would never, ever, EVER respond like that to an employee, no matter how stupid the question is. In fact, I go out of my way to make it absolutely clear to my students that they can ask me about anything, no matter how stupid they think it is. I want them to do their jobs well, and I think that requires good, open communication. Duh!

Which brings me to coworker story number three. My cube neighbor had a meeting with our supervisor yesterday, to go over questions about some ebooks she’d been cataloging. She was told that she is not to consult with other ebook catalogers (bosslady is a micro-manager and hates it when we go to other people with questions). If she has questions, she’s only to ask our supervisor. M’kay. Except that our supervisor is clearly not so good with the whole answering questions thing. Then, when my coworker tried to explain why she’d done X, bosslady got snarky with her and told her she didn’t care why. It was wrong, as in, “You misinterpreted my directions, so it’s your mistake, not mine.” Well, okay, it’s wrong (though I don’t think it’s appropriate to assign blame!), but again, part of being the bosslady is keeping communication lines clear, which in turn requires that bosslady acknowledges how and why communication went pear shaped. If she doesn’t take the time to listen to why an employee interpreted directions in a certain way, she’ll have no idea how to write better instructions in the future. And I should hope it goes without saying that it’s spectacularly bad management to blame someone else for your own poor communication skills.

I’ve had the exact same experience as story number three. The directions seemed to be written in pretty clear language, only they didn’t say what bosslady said they said. Even after she reinterpreted them for me, I still couldn’t figure out how on earth they were supposed to mean what she said they mean. She’s just plain bad at training and writing directions, and to make it even worse, she’s also really bad about blaming us for misunderstanding her training and directions.

But this whole retirement thing? While I feel bad for her on the “Am I losing my mind?” front, I think it’s good news. Rumor has it, though, that she won’t be leaving until next summer. It could be a really long year.