So it's been nearly three months at my new job and it's every bit as good as I had hoped it would be. It's not without its challenges or its organizational difficulties, but it's so vastly different in its approach to what's important that I can't believe I languished in the dead end of my old job for as long as I did.
Here, I look at the positions that I could potentially move into some day and think, "I can see myself doing that." At the call center, I looked at the logical career path up the management ladder and thought, "Hell, no!"
And I heard some great news the other day: my old boss - I'll call him Frank - was fired.
That's right: fired. And I know I was a large part of it. I had some nasty things to say about him in my exit interview, specifically about his lack of integrity. A few months before I quit there - forgive me if I've shared this before - he told us that his performance review was coming up and that he needed to get feedback from his direct reports, rating him on a scale from 1 - 5. "I need to get an average of at least 4 to pass my scorecard," he said, "and I want to make sure you all understand the questions so that you answer correctly."
I never made the time to sit down with him and learn how he would like me to answer the questions. :) So when it came time to write my evaluation of him, I scored honestly; mostly 2s and 3s, with the odd 1 and 4 thrown in where appropriate. Like hell was I going to lie for him. And I know that the other managers who did the feedback were just as honest.
Then you have to factor in that nearly HALF of his management team actively sought to get away from him, either by leaving the company, switching projects, or self-demoting.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they head honchos looked at who to cut from senior management. "Look at this one. Frank has chased away 4 managers, gotten a piss-poor evaluation from his direct reports, and... what's this... he wrote up Jim? Why, Jim was one of the most competent managers we've ever had! So that's why he resigned! Well, then, Frank clearly has to go. And see if you can get Jim on the phone to see if he wants his job back."
Clearly I'm fantasizing. Sue me. But I know that my evaluation and my leaving would have put Frank squarely front and center for the next round of layoffs as the company continues to hemorrhage. And I don't feel bad about it one bit. Even though Frank would have received a healthy severance package for being fired while I took a pay cut for leaving voluntarily, I'm still glad it worked out the way it did. I took control of my destiny and made a choice for me and my family. Frank... well, Frank got fired and is scrambling to find another job.
Nyah nyah.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Of First Things and Closure
So today was my first day on the new job.
I really have no clue what I'm doing; it's in a completely different field and I basically spent the whole day reading over the various processes they have.
But I don't mind one bit. This is a great workplace. The president and the top two VPs took me out for lunch. They have free coffee and bottled water. They have frequent barbecues in the summer. And everybody is being very patient with me while I get up to speed.
One guy said, "There's nothing worse than the first day on a new job, right?"
My reply was easy. "Yes there is. Being at my old job for one more day would be worse."
I find myself wondering how they're doing at the old call center, but also find that I don't really care anymore. Let them run themselves out of business.
As the memories of that place gradually fade from my conscious mind, I anticipate that I will not be posting here anymore, at least not for the foreseeable future.
So for the three of you who have read my management rant, I wish you all the best. Farewell!
I really have no clue what I'm doing; it's in a completely different field and I basically spent the whole day reading over the various processes they have.
But I don't mind one bit. This is a great workplace. The president and the top two VPs took me out for lunch. They have free coffee and bottled water. They have frequent barbecues in the summer. And everybody is being very patient with me while I get up to speed.
One guy said, "There's nothing worse than the first day on a new job, right?"
My reply was easy. "Yes there is. Being at my old job for one more day would be worse."
I find myself wondering how they're doing at the old call center, but also find that I don't really care anymore. Let them run themselves out of business.
As the memories of that place gradually fade from my conscious mind, I anticipate that I will not be posting here anymore, at least not for the foreseeable future.
So for the three of you who have read my management rant, I wish you all the best. Farewell!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Panic
My title today refers to my previous employer's (tee hee, that's so damn FUN to say!) mood as they watched me pack my things and suddenly realize just how much won't get done without me there.
A bunch of people asked me if they could contact me if they needed help with the things I used to do almost automatically, and I half-joked, "Certainly. At consultant's rates." The only thing that makes me say "half" is because I don't know what consultant's rates are. But I have a feeling that some of them will definitely try to take advantage of my kind nature over the next few weeks. Depending on who it is, turning them down will be either enjoyable or unpleasant.
My old boss hugged me as he left today (I quit, and he still gets off earlier than me!), which was just as disturbing as the first time he hugged me. Ughhh. I did indeed Jello his mouse as planned. Actually, it was an old mouse I had kicking around home (ironically, I got it from work when they were giving away their ball mice in favor of optical mice), so when he started to freak out about wrecking company property I told him it was mine. And then he ate the Jello. I kid you not. Would you eat something that countless people had touched over the course of years, had been sitting in a garage covered in sawdust, and then soaked in hot Jello water? Especially when it was prepared by an employee who had nothing to lose by, say, dropping in a few Ex-Lax tablets?
Alas, I was not that creative. But it was still very disgusting that he ate the Jello. I guess he needed some comfort food due to all the stress I'm causing him by leaving.
Also today I got word that one of my former agents had keyed the words "what a bitch" into a customer's permanent account history and needed disciplinary action. That'll wait until tomorrow. Heh.
Another big announcement was the layoff of two of the company's most incompetent managers, at the same pay grade as my boss. If you've been reading more of this blog, you may be surprised to learn that there were people worse than him around. That's the kind of trouble that company is in. My old boss made a comment in our managers' meeting today that as our agent population shrinks (due to the pissy pay we give them compared to the competition), we fortunately do not find ourselves in a position to have to lay off managers at my level because so many of us are voluntarily resigning. I've been speaking my mind a lot lately, not holding back when I'd normally think twice, so I blurted out, "That means you can't get rid of the people who deserve to go," which drew a chuckle from everybody in the room.
By the time I was done for the day, there was nobody there to 'walk me out,' so I turned in my own security and parking passes and asked the guards to deactivate them.
It was bright and sunny, still early in the evening, and the setting sun competed with my smile for its dazzling brilliance as I made my final commute home.
So long, all you incompetent agents, co-workers, managers, directors, VPs, and CEOs! I'm off to a better place with higher standards. I'll miss those of you who earned my respect. The rest of you... good luck. You're gonna need it, because you can't perform your way out of a paper bag.
A bunch of people asked me if they could contact me if they needed help with the things I used to do almost automatically, and I half-joked, "Certainly. At consultant's rates." The only thing that makes me say "half" is because I don't know what consultant's rates are. But I have a feeling that some of them will definitely try to take advantage of my kind nature over the next few weeks. Depending on who it is, turning them down will be either enjoyable or unpleasant.
My old boss hugged me as he left today (I quit, and he still gets off earlier than me!), which was just as disturbing as the first time he hugged me. Ughhh. I did indeed Jello his mouse as planned. Actually, it was an old mouse I had kicking around home (ironically, I got it from work when they were giving away their ball mice in favor of optical mice), so when he started to freak out about wrecking company property I told him it was mine. And then he ate the Jello. I kid you not. Would you eat something that countless people had touched over the course of years, had been sitting in a garage covered in sawdust, and then soaked in hot Jello water? Especially when it was prepared by an employee who had nothing to lose by, say, dropping in a few Ex-Lax tablets?
Alas, I was not that creative. But it was still very disgusting that he ate the Jello. I guess he needed some comfort food due to all the stress I'm causing him by leaving.
Also today I got word that one of my former agents had keyed the words "what a bitch" into a customer's permanent account history and needed disciplinary action. That'll wait until tomorrow. Heh.
Another big announcement was the layoff of two of the company's most incompetent managers, at the same pay grade as my boss. If you've been reading more of this blog, you may be surprised to learn that there were people worse than him around. That's the kind of trouble that company is in. My old boss made a comment in our managers' meeting today that as our agent population shrinks (due to the pissy pay we give them compared to the competition), we fortunately do not find ourselves in a position to have to lay off managers at my level because so many of us are voluntarily resigning. I've been speaking my mind a lot lately, not holding back when I'd normally think twice, so I blurted out, "That means you can't get rid of the people who deserve to go," which drew a chuckle from everybody in the room.
By the time I was done for the day, there was nobody there to 'walk me out,' so I turned in my own security and parking passes and asked the guards to deactivate them.
It was bright and sunny, still early in the evening, and the setting sun competed with my smile for its dazzling brilliance as I made my final commute home.
So long, all you incompetent agents, co-workers, managers, directors, VPs, and CEOs! I'm off to a better place with higher standards. I'll miss those of you who earned my respect. The rest of you... good luck. You're gonna need it, because you can't perform your way out of a paper bag.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
One More Day
Well, my final day at the "customer dissatisfaction factory" is approaching. I'll waste two hours in a meeting to start my day, do an online "exit survey," send my grand farewell email to my peers, and another one to my team, as well as tying up the various management loose ends I'll leave behind.
My desk is pretty well emptied, and my self-purchased office supplies are home and awaiting the trip to my new office. Just a few pens & whiteboard markers left, and I'll be all cleared out.
I had previously booked time off this weekend and so have been enjoying a four-day hiatus from paid work of any kind and have been really enjoying the extra time with my family.
This is going to be a great move. I'm very excited.
And although I've been directed not to pull any more office pranks, I will be doing the classic 'mouse in Jello' for my boss as a send-off.
I hope it doesn't get me fired. ;p
My desk is pretty well emptied, and my self-purchased office supplies are home and awaiting the trip to my new office. Just a few pens & whiteboard markers left, and I'll be all cleared out.
I had previously booked time off this weekend and so have been enjoying a four-day hiatus from paid work of any kind and have been really enjoying the extra time with my family.
This is going to be a great move. I'm very excited.
And although I've been directed not to pull any more office pranks, I will be doing the classic 'mouse in Jello' for my boss as a send-off.
I hope it doesn't get me fired. ;p
Friday, May 9, 2008
Hard To Care
The title sums it up. It's really hard to care about my job right now. Whether it's trying to figure out why an agent felt his 15 minute paid break could be 28 minutes, or tracking down an agent who has been absent more than present, or giving feedback on how to sell a product which I would never allow into my home (and using dishonest sales strategies to boot)... I don't know how I'll muster up the effort to put in an honest day's work for the next week and a half.
What's more, I've been enlightened as to one factor which may explain why I've struggled to meet my targets - I'm the only manager who was doing his full job. We get feedback from our client in a massive Excel pivot table which tells us if our agents are processing work orders incorrectly. We're supposed to relay that feedback to our agents and point out the things they should be doing differently. And we're supposed to track the feedback date & times so our client knows the feedback happened. Done properly, this is a good 30-60 minutes of my day, considering processing the data, verifying its accuracy (I've learned this is a necessary step), and delivering the feedback.
Now nobody will be doing it. Hell, I've stopped, and I'd been doing it for months. Why bother anymore? What has this company done for me? Written me up for not meeting my targets? Failed to catalog all the targets I'm required to meet? Completely missed how vital I am, in all humility, to our project's success? Yes, they have, on all counts.
It's never been my style to burn my bridges. But here, the bridge is crumbling behind me as I cross it. It's beyond my control. Every day a new issue with our computer systems appears; a horrid process is made even more horrid; a senseless rule is applied even more strictly - and I find myself reacting honestly to all of it, saying things I would never say had I not submitted my resignation. My boss is as out of touch with it all as he ever was, and were I to break it to him before I leave it would really hurt his feelings because I hadn't shared my perspectives with him before. That's partly because he won't shut up when we're in a "meeting," but also because any time I have raised issues, he always has the perfect corporate-speak response. Note my choice of word: he has no answers, he has no solutions. Just responses. Retorts. Argument-stopping rebuttals. Nothing is ever constructive or helpful - it just adds to the delay.
I put a trouble ticket in for an issue affecting random systems across our project 6 days ago, and our local technicians were only made aware of it today. They called my boss (as per the instructions I left in the ticket, which was my boss' wish so as to remove work from our plates) to inquire for more detail. Never mind that there was a page and a half of detail in the ticket itself. My boss' response? "Oh, that was resolved already. Call Jim for more information."
No, boss, it wasn't resolved. All that happened is that some schmuck in our outsourced IT group sat on his hands for almost a week before notifying our local techs of the problem, and you didn't hear anything back within the required 24 hour deadline for system issues, so you assumed that it was resolved. Did you even look at the ticket to see if it had been closed? No, it was just "call Jim."
And Jim (that's me) has to explain to our local tech, who is relatively without fault on this and doesn't want to take the scorecard hit on a six-day-old ticket if she closes it, that the issue is not resolved. "Call my boss," I instruct her. "He wants to be in on these discussions."
Minutes later my boss comes up to me. "I've found a loophole in the systems process so we can get this done right. They're going to cancel the ticket and I need you to re-enter it." Loophole, my ass. Somebody in Timbuktu messes up his job, and who pays? Me.
Gar. I won't miss this job at all.
What's more, I've been enlightened as to one factor which may explain why I've struggled to meet my targets - I'm the only manager who was doing his full job. We get feedback from our client in a massive Excel pivot table which tells us if our agents are processing work orders incorrectly. We're supposed to relay that feedback to our agents and point out the things they should be doing differently. And we're supposed to track the feedback date & times so our client knows the feedback happened. Done properly, this is a good 30-60 minutes of my day, considering processing the data, verifying its accuracy (I've learned this is a necessary step), and delivering the feedback.
Now nobody will be doing it. Hell, I've stopped, and I'd been doing it for months. Why bother anymore? What has this company done for me? Written me up for not meeting my targets? Failed to catalog all the targets I'm required to meet? Completely missed how vital I am, in all humility, to our project's success? Yes, they have, on all counts.
It's never been my style to burn my bridges. But here, the bridge is crumbling behind me as I cross it. It's beyond my control. Every day a new issue with our computer systems appears; a horrid process is made even more horrid; a senseless rule is applied even more strictly - and I find myself reacting honestly to all of it, saying things I would never say had I not submitted my resignation. My boss is as out of touch with it all as he ever was, and were I to break it to him before I leave it would really hurt his feelings because I hadn't shared my perspectives with him before. That's partly because he won't shut up when we're in a "meeting," but also because any time I have raised issues, he always has the perfect corporate-speak response. Note my choice of word: he has no answers, he has no solutions. Just responses. Retorts. Argument-stopping rebuttals. Nothing is ever constructive or helpful - it just adds to the delay.
I put a trouble ticket in for an issue affecting random systems across our project 6 days ago, and our local technicians were only made aware of it today. They called my boss (as per the instructions I left in the ticket, which was my boss' wish so as to remove work from our plates) to inquire for more detail. Never mind that there was a page and a half of detail in the ticket itself. My boss' response? "Oh, that was resolved already. Call Jim for more information."
No, boss, it wasn't resolved. All that happened is that some schmuck in our outsourced IT group sat on his hands for almost a week before notifying our local techs of the problem, and you didn't hear anything back within the required 24 hour deadline for system issues, so you assumed that it was resolved. Did you even look at the ticket to see if it had been closed? No, it was just "call Jim."
And Jim (that's me) has to explain to our local tech, who is relatively without fault on this and doesn't want to take the scorecard hit on a six-day-old ticket if she closes it, that the issue is not resolved. "Call my boss," I instruct her. "He wants to be in on these discussions."
Minutes later my boss comes up to me. "I've found a loophole in the systems process so we can get this done right. They're going to cancel the ticket and I need you to re-enter it." Loophole, my ass. Somebody in Timbuktu messes up his job, and who pays? Me.
Gar. I won't miss this job at all.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
100%
I've accepted the new job offer.
It's not in management, so I'm not sure what will become of this blog. Perhaps I'll mothball it and fire it up again if I get promoted. Not that I'm too eager for that; I refuse to manage teenagers again.
I brought my letter of resignation in to my boss today. While he was somewhat expecting it, he was still caught off guard. He offered me some words of wisdom on how I can be a better worker in my new job, and then hugged me.
Ugh. And, uh, thanks for the input.
That being said, I still have two weeks to put in here, and I haven't really paid attention to my team in about a week, so I'm sure that once I start looking at them again I'll have more material for blogging.
It's not in management, so I'm not sure what will become of this blog. Perhaps I'll mothball it and fire it up again if I get promoted. Not that I'm too eager for that; I refuse to manage teenagers again.
I brought my letter of resignation in to my boss today. While he was somewhat expecting it, he was still caught off guard. He offered me some words of wisdom on how I can be a better worker in my new job, and then hugged me.
Ugh. And, uh, thanks for the input.
That being said, I still have two weeks to put in here, and I haven't really paid attention to my team in about a week, so I'm sure that once I start looking at them again I'll have more material for blogging.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
98%
I nailed my second interview and have received an offer. I will be meeting with my prospective new employer shortly to confirm salary, benefits, job expectations, etc.
It's probably gonna be a $4,000 pay cut which makes things pretty tight around home, but I think we can manage. There are opportunities to move up and tap into my abilities more fully. Plus, it's Monday - Friday, 9-5. I'll get to see my kids.
I'm 98% certain that I'll be taking this offer, and told my boss so today. He knew I'd been looking, but was still quite surprised.
On a related note, the manager schedule rotation is about to get worse again, as my boss just learned that we can't use our managers-in-training to fill in the rotation. They'll replace my position, but wow, I'm glad I'm getting out when I am.
Also announced today was a new policy change which... well, for this, you need some background. It used to be that the day-to-day client-related administrative work, such as monitoring call volume and staffing trends, was done my us managers. Then the company got a great idea (from an initiative our site started) to create a team of specialized people who will take care of all that stuff for the whole building. It was a good idea when we did it locally, but it was implemented terribly on the global scale. We did it better before they took our practice, tweaked it like only corporate loonies can do, and rolled it out to the corporation as a standard operating procedure. So as managers, we were never really satisfied with the work this group did. I really pitied the poor souls who volunteered for that job - they got tremendously overworked and had a schedule worse than mine. But... they volunteered for it.
Lately, many of those people "have moved on to pursue other opportunities," shrinking that group and making it even worse for the people left in it. So they've decided to push back some of the work they took off the managers' plates, back on to the managers' plates.
Right back where it started.
If all goes well, I'll have to tolerate that increased workload for about 12 days. I think I can handle that.
It's probably gonna be a $4,000 pay cut which makes things pretty tight around home, but I think we can manage. There are opportunities to move up and tap into my abilities more fully. Plus, it's Monday - Friday, 9-5. I'll get to see my kids.
I'm 98% certain that I'll be taking this offer, and told my boss so today. He knew I'd been looking, but was still quite surprised.
On a related note, the manager schedule rotation is about to get worse again, as my boss just learned that we can't use our managers-in-training to fill in the rotation. They'll replace my position, but wow, I'm glad I'm getting out when I am.
Also announced today was a new policy change which... well, for this, you need some background. It used to be that the day-to-day client-related administrative work, such as monitoring call volume and staffing trends, was done my us managers. Then the company got a great idea (from an initiative our site started) to create a team of specialized people who will take care of all that stuff for the whole building. It was a good idea when we did it locally, but it was implemented terribly on the global scale. We did it better before they took our practice, tweaked it like only corporate loonies can do, and rolled it out to the corporation as a standard operating procedure. So as managers, we were never really satisfied with the work this group did. I really pitied the poor souls who volunteered for that job - they got tremendously overworked and had a schedule worse than mine. But... they volunteered for it.
Lately, many of those people "have moved on to pursue other opportunities," shrinking that group and making it even worse for the people left in it. So they've decided to push back some of the work they took off the managers' plates, back on to the managers' plates.
Right back where it started.
If all goes well, I'll have to tolerate that increased workload for about 12 days. I think I can handle that.
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