Oh my GAWD, WHAT a freakin' DAY!
So today was the Office Manager, Boss, Boss's Boss meeting. I was pissed off from the get-go, because there was a 2 hour "pre meeting" to which I was not invited, at which "my situation" was discussed. Of the people summoned to that meeting, only Boss had a clue, and even his perspective is his own. So, let me understand this - you are all gathered to talk about me and why I'm leaving, and you don't invite me? Am I, like, really warped here, or does that strike you as a really "Walt, I'm worried about the Beaver! Let's have a Parent Teacher Conference without him and tell him what we think is his problem later!" approach to dealing with departure of a key player on your staff? Boss got really pissed at me when I pointed this out to him, but I think he was just internalizing it and I didn't mean it that way. It was just emblematic of what has been wrong all along. Let's get my non-construction lawyer, non-techie boss, the office manager who had never heard of a Bates stamp and can't name legal software packages at gunpoint, and has certainly never seen a construction case, and my tired, sad and long-suffering boss together and ask them why I'm leaving. I'd have been happy to do breakfast and tell them, but I, uh, wasn't invited. Is it just me being oversensitive, or is that really fucked up?
So by the time they sat down with me, after two hours of "pre-meeting" I was already in Fuck This Shit mode. I mean, am I being unreasonable to think that if they want to have a discussion about why I am leaving and what the position is and what they need to do so the next person doesn't walk, I should, uh, be there? It was just another one of those "Damn, those staff underlings are such a pain in our important management asses," moments. By the time we all sat down, I was seething.
But I have to admit the meeting was good. Boss's boss is a cool, very nice guy and totally got it. He didn't try to convince me I should stay, he said the door is always open if I ever want a job there, he repeatedly described me as a top performer, raved about my smarts and skills, understood that I had high expectations, and he's sorry that he didn't intervene sooner, but he understands. Bless his heart, he's an Old Construction Guy and unaware of many of the functional issues we accept as "how it has to be" because in his office, it ain't how it has to be. I told him functional problems I'd encountered and he nodded and totally got it. It was SO refreshing, since I've spent the past almost two years talking to the fucking wall on these issues, as I'm leaving, finally someone got it. Boss's Boss had no idea I was dealing with the issues, he's half a country away and not my first line of contact. My boss and the office manager both learned a lot about how they were, okay, let's just say it, fucking lied to, by power mad managers in other places, and they didn't even know what questions to ask to get through the bullshit. Available resources being withheld, technology that exists in secret, buried in someone's Personal Power Stash, corporate game-playing shit like that. If I ever say I'm going to work for a huge international corporation again, please slap me. The bullshit ain't worth it.
We had a good, at times funny discussion of what drove me out. He was enlightened, he handled it well, some things are within his capacity to change, others are not. I'm ever more confident that I am doing the right thing by leaving.
Bottom line: I am a professional, I want to be exempt, I don't want to use nine colored file folders, I don't want to be ordered to document everything I do in triplicate because somebody, somewhere, is afraid of being screwed by an hourly person in a wage and hour claim. I never fucking ASKED to be hourly, and it's not my fault that They - the faceless corporate They - made a decision to knock all paralegals down to the same shitty level before I got there, but so it is and I don't want to play. If I had known it was writ in a stone tablet when I was hired, I wouldn't have taken the job. (And yes, I know the federal law on this issue, because as I told our sweet but clueless office manager, I used to investigate wage and hour claims. While it is technically correct to declare all paralegals hourly, the work I was doing was not straight paralegal work, it was more investigative and technical in nature (when I had time to do it) but I wear the Scarlet P - a subject for another very long rant.)
So I have no regrets and I'm going on good terms. I told them my last day is next Friday, because dammit, I want a week off before the new job. I told them to put a secretary on my desk next time, and farm out the paralegal work I did in my Ample Spare Time between the scheduling and filing and shit to an underutilized associate who is eager to do it, and it will be so. And if it ain't, it's so not my problem. By the time the day was over I had a boa constrictor squeezing my skull and a volcano in my stomach - not from regret, but from frustration that I'm leaving a job that could have been so good if the non-legal-people in charge would let us do it right.
Boss didn't get the job he was up for. He's bereft and miserable, I'm leaving and he isn't - yet. I pointed out that the job he didn't get came leaping at him the first time he dipped his hook in the water, he wasn't even seriously trying. Now he will seriously try and land something even better. But the next ten days are going to totally blow. This week has gone on forever, and it's only Wednesday.
Man, I've seen some pretty screwed up workplaces, but it sounds like yours really takes the cake.
ReplyDeleteI mean, hello? We're talking efficiency and money here, and existing resources are withheld so that some mid-level drone can "get off" (literally and figuratively) on how important they are?
And the meeting without you was DEFINITELY a mistake.
Hey.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know how today went for you - sorry it was so shitty at times.
Way glad that you have a week off between gigs - smart move!
Best to you,
Martha
You know, when the story of the "secret software list" came out, boss's boss was floored that it was a secret, and I just laughed out loud - it was total vindication for me, everything I said about that controlling uber-secretary bitch was true, and she is in fact even worse than my darkest mutterings. Oh, and I realized later that Ward is the Beav's father, not Walt, but whatever. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI've been waiting to hear how TheMeeting went. Grinned all the time I was reading it too. Well, sugar - it's behind you now. Time to have some fun - especially with those 20 extra minutes a day you're gonna shave off your commute. Time - more valuable than money!
ReplyDeleteWishing you nothing but good things.
Your situation sounds awful... glad you're leaving. Sorry your Boss isn't - he sounds like a great person. He'll find something great soon.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm not sure the pre-meeting meeting was a huge mistake (yeah, I'd be sensitive about being talked about too, but I've been in a few of those beasts). 2 hours seems excessive - but it was probably more of a strategy meeting for Boss's Boss. It set the tone for the meeting with you - whether it was a "convince Catherine to stay" meeting, or a "find out why Catherine is leaving and fix it" meeting. Its totally a corporate thing to do.
Yes, Melissa, it is indeed very corporate for four people to spend two hours talking about a fifth person, when THREE of the people at the meeting had no idea what was going on and one was summoned to give his perspective on what the missing person was thinking. That is, indeed, the way Corporate America Does It. Seriously, I know this is a corporate thing to do, if you accept that "corporate" is another synonym for "fucked up." At least they had a nice leisurely breakfast with their meeting. I was starving when I was "invited" to join them, and at that point so far past giving a shit about any of it, it did make the entire conversation much easier. And to his great credit, Boss told them I wasn't going to be salvaged with money and/or more happy horseshit, and he was right.
ReplyDeleteI recall when I left my last horrible workplace. It was government rather than private sector, but when organizations reach a certain size, they all behave the same way.
ReplyDeleteI had put in my resignation, requested my payout, and had made plans to leave by the beginning of summer. I had already made arrangements to enrol in university, etc. for the fall.
Then I get a joint memo from my boss and HIS boss, telling me I CANNOT leave, and telling me that if I do leave anyway, my payout would be withheld.
I went as far up the chain as possible and kicked up a fuss. Consequently, I was able to resign when I chose to, with my payout.
I later found out that they hadn't wanted me to leave yet because the department was in transition, and it would have meant losing my position, and they needed me to stay another few months so the position would stay on the books (another long story).
The upshot is that if they'd been honest with me and actually TALKED to me, as fed up as I was I might have agreed to delay my plans a few months. As it was, I told them to go screw themselves.
Wow, a gov't office withholding pay to coerce an employee to stay (when honesty might have worked) may be worse than this stuff, which is basically Dilbertian Corporate Stupidity.
ReplyDeleteIt's truly a save yourself, because nobody is looking out for you world. Not the workplace my parents lived in, they can't identify with this stuff at all.