Another Lousy Post

Warning! If you have had it with my complaining, stop reading now. Today was a bad day at work and I am really angry at the moment. I hate to feel this way but I am too darn old to suffer fools in silence. As I posted yesterday, I am in the middle of a problem with a customer because a coworker didn't do her job in a timely fashion. In fact, she hasn't done it at all. My boss, rather than addressing the problem, has pushed it back at me. He thinks he is a great leader, you know, an empower the little people sort of fellow. He is wrong, empowerment in corporate America is code for management failure. Bosses empower to relieve themselves of responsibility. It is a way of managing without the bother of actually managing. I can't accurately express how frustrating it is to have to rely on people who are unreliable. If you want the damn job then do it. If not, leave it for someone who does. Toss in a boss who won't address the problems and it becomes intolerable. No one ever calls to say I missed a deadline and I resent being put into that position by others. My boss has this tendency to ignore the problem employees and to try to pile the work on the willing ones. The more you do for this guy, the more he will dump on you. Some of the eager younger employees in our workgroup will accept this treatment because they have visions of upward mobility. As for me, I do my job and help out where I can, but I set boundaries because the workload is a monster that cannot be satiated. My day began with another phone call from my concerned customer's representative. I pondered what to do and finally walked over to my coworker's desk to see if there was any progress on her end. She wasn't there, gosh what a surprise. I accessed our CAD database and confirmed that she hadn't done anything about my problem. Zip, nada, zero, zilch. I thought it over for a while and finally sent her a detailed email explaining the urgency for her to act, which I copied to the boss. I don't like to play these games but I figure when it hits the fan, I might need some cover. I have been after my coworker and one of her co-conspirators for about a year to address this issue before it became the crisis that it is today, so it is not like it snuck up on her. Later in the day the boss responded by asking me what my plan B was. That would be my plan if my coworker doesn't do her job and the boss allows her to collect her pay for not doing it. Does he mean how will I cover if he doesn't do his job by, gasp, actually managing? Is that what he means? I think it is. My plan B was to tell you, Bub, what's your damn plan B?. I suspect that his plan B is for me to do her work for her, so that he doesn't have to confront the problem head on. Well, there are plan B's and then there are plan B's. My plan B is you broke it, you fix it. I composed several snappy replies, but finally sent him a reply that said, "That is an excellent question." No suggestions, no solutions. I am not going to be the patsy for these two, at least not without a scene. As if that wasn't enough for one day, my vagrant son called me as I left work asking if it would be possible for me to pick him up on my way home and give him a ride as far as my house. Clearly, the restraining order has been a failure, mostly because I don't hang up on him and call the cops. I try to help him if he is doing positive things, so I don't really mind him giving out our phone number to prospective employers, that sort of thing. I draw a line at his constant poor-mouthing his situation, a situation he will do nothing to fix. Of course, what he really wanted was to mooch some money, so we had a nasty exchange. He continues to wander around all day from one end of town to the other doing who knows what. Clearly he is not looking for a job, or if he is, potential employers who check on him, find he is wanted by the police and pass on the excellent opportunity to hire him. So all in all it has been a fairly bad day. Sorry for my constant complaining, but hey, that's my life and as Dr. Phil would say, I must be getting a payoff, because I keep doing it. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it. Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor