This one's a God-Botherer too.
Being the middle-aged sad ole git I am, I've worked for a fair while with a wide variety of organisations from small private companies, through public and private utilities to central government. While public and private sectors gob on about how they are so different from each other, there are one or two similarities, such as;

1. "Nobs of a feather suck together" - if you find one colleague or manager who's a complete cnut and still alive, it's frequently because they aren't alone. Whole departments and entire companies can exist using nothing but twatty arrogance until they have to do something unnatural like actually think. This crisis is usually due to the outside world breaking in on their dreams.

2. "Teams of nothing but centre forwards" - "teams" are everywhere, but *teamwork* doesn't really exist any more as a working
environment in most jobs. Many of the people who are in "teams" still have their own targets to meet and their own ideas on how they're going to get promotion, more dosh etc. I've had to teach the alien concept of co-operation too many times in the last few years, but it paid off big when it sunk in - which wasn't often.

3. "Managers - Hell on earth in a suit" - in umpteen years of having to report to managers, the trend seems to be that half of them don't seem to want to be there doing the job themselves (they were happier in the previous non-managerial job they had), so take it out on others. Most of the rest are basically bullshitting it and trying to give out a confident aura or are hooked on the buzz of making other peoples lives shit. I've only met one or two managers who actually could do the job *and* keep the staff on side - ironically, one had been on an extensive program of proper management training (not buzzword-filled seminars), and the other had no formal qualifications in management at all. Perhaps it's down to picking the right people to start with.

Which leads me on to;
3a."Of course I can manage! I've got a degree!" - er, it doesn't always follow. In fact, it very rarely ambles anywhere near.

But you don't want the generalisation do you! OK, here's a specific example.

My most recent ex-manager, head of technical stuff somewhere in the 20th. century. 100 percent number 3, with a delightfully arrogant side order of 3a. He'd taken over from someone who enjoyed running his department like a medaeval lord, so he had a lot of diplomacy to do with all the various user groups, other managers, directors etc.

A few months later I turned up and got on with the diplomacy myself. It was that or get used to the stony silences, death threats and nooses through the internal mail (last bits may be docu-drama).

What made it a real laugh was that I had to do it behind his back, or I would get hauled in to his office for a reprimand. The offence? "Being too autonomous". Huh? You mean, not being a mini-you? I knew I was going in the right direction when the IT support guys actually started to work with me instead of just snarl at me, and the director of marketing whispered to me "what's it like to be the only one that people want to talk to?".

Oh, the fun we had! For example, I spent ages convincing him that even if you sniffed an email off the internal network, you couldn't tell who it had been BCC'ed to (politicking twat, in an admittedly politics-ridden place). Or that a hands-free desk phone didn't mean that you *had* to make all your calls by shouting at it Dom Joly-stylee (in an open-plan office, natch). Whaddock Hunt.

He used to make journeys up country from time to time, and never check how much fuel the car had before getting on the motorway. At least it kept him away from the rest of us for longer. His company car was forever getting smacked in the rear or side. I think he had the "Jesus is my airbag" insurance. Or perhaps the other parties knew him.

In the end I fucked off - and he told me had no idea why I was going. There aren't enough swearwords or breath in my body to do justice to what he deserves.

Hey B3ta - thanks for the self-help QOTW!
(Naughtius Maximus Stuck on the blog, desperate to log out., Fri 25 Jan 2008, 16:56, Reply)