Good colleages and piss poor managers.
I used to work in the healthcare industry and it was a job I enjoyed immensely. Even though I wasn't fixing broken people, I was there in the background helping the doctors who helped the people get better.

We had a decent manager, a smart guy, friendly, had parties, etc. Well all that changed when we found out that the hospital was going to "outsource" us. You will all be hired by the new company and will get salaries commensurate with the industry. If you ever hear a line line that.. don't sign anything - it's a crock of shite.

The next manager was, how shall I put this politely, a small man of Pakistani descent with some sort of huge chip on his shoulder. During the interview process (yes we got to interview our manager) I posed the question "tell us about your management experience" to which he replied "I manage staff at my current job" so thinking this wasn't nearly enough information I said "can you tell us a bit more? what size staff do you manage, for how long have you managed them and how is your work environment" after some half answers he let slip that the person (NOT people) he managed is a contractor. Not a real employee at all.. so I said "do you have any real management experience involving actual staff not contractors who can be fired as easily as telling them don't come in anymore" bit of a pause... "err well no not really"

So I saw my opportunity and said "Ah so you don't really have any management experience that would be similar to managing this department with the 4 of us here" and he agreed that yes that's probably true.

Well naive me thought once I and the rest of my colleagues gave a thumbs down to this twit we'd see other choices.. not so! they hired this fuckwit and he showed up the first day and immediately pissed off the senior guy (who was Indian) He also (although being 5 foot 5) decided to antagonize the 6 foot 7 250lb black man who was my partner in crime. He annoyed the Indian guy to the point that he just quit, he had a new job lined up and gave them 5 minutes notice. "Why are you putting your stuff in a box?" "because this is my last day of work, Here is my letter of resignation"
Now that was funny.

He kept on digging at the big black dude until he snapped (not violently but vocally) he kept getting into the guys face and (looking up) pointing at him. The guy just said calm and quietly "If you don't take that finger out of my face I'm going to rip your arm off you third world bag of paki monkey shit" you could have heard a pin drop.. This dude went on to bigger and better pastures leaving me and two other dudes that came from "headquarters" to help.

Now we were in the last weeks of pre-outsourcing and I took on an air of calmness. He started giving me crap about something I was doing and I said "I can't wait until FCG (the consulting outfit) takes over"
which made him pause and ask "why is that?" so I continued "Well I'm thinking they will interview each one of us when they come in and I'm going to tell them how you ran K out of here for what appeared to be an Indian/Pakistani feud - since he knew this institution inside-out and would have been of great value to the new company" you could see the smirk fading from his face at this point so I continued. "add to that the fact that you needled E to the point that he threatened you with bodily harm and he was the most gentle soul I'd met here until that point. Was it because he was black?" err err no err "well all I can hope for is that they listen to what I have to say and if they do, you will be fired so fast you won't even realize it until you are walking out the door"

Well at this point he lost it.. started raising his voice (octave not volume) "I know what you're doing, I know what you're doing" so I just walked away chuckling. Next thing we knew he was announcing he was taking a position at another location (which would avoid the outsource) and was gone from our lives. He tried to make nice before he left, wanting to shake hands etc but at the time I was holding some equipment and didn't put it down. I left him with my parting nugget "If you go into the new position and do NOTHING that you did here, you may be ok, because frankly you have been the worst manager I've ever had the misfortune to work for" and that was the last time I saw him.

After that twat left we got a new manager, a huge super supreme BS artist. He could represent the country in olympic bullshitting. He flew back and forth across the country on the weekends, promised the world and delivered nothing, suggested "Oh it's easy, we will do this using so and so..." and when pushed for details as to how it would really work came up with "this is easy stuff, I'll show you in a bit when I'm done with my meetings". Eventually they fired him for incompetence which surprised us as we thought that it was a requirement of the management for this outsource company.

Well I lasted 3 months with the outsource company before I had reached my limit. I left there 8 years ago and have never regretted it. I just feel bad for the people that allowed this tragedy to befall them.. what a swindle.

Ah well.

Pardon the length, but being in a hospital I had a bit added to it..
(Lurkaloid awarded wanking black belt on, Sun 27 Jan 2008, 1:07, Reply)