On 3/7/2013 11:29 AM, Dave Smith wrote:
> On 07/03/2013 10:58 AM, jmcquown wrote:
>
>> The reason she gave me was, in reviewing the requests, "This guy has
>> kids, you don't. He might prefr Christmas." (Man, did that tick my
>> father off when I told him about it!) She made it sound like Kevin had
>> complained about the vacation schedule.
>>
>> He and I were friends. I said hey, if you want your vacation over
>> Christmas off I have no problem switching. He said no! He'd scheduled
>> his vacation around a family camping trip in July. We didn't know why
>> she was trying to micro-manage our time off.
>
> That's part of the problem with the corporate world. There are a lot of
> middle management jobs that don't really need to be there. They don't do
> much for productivity and in many cases they actually interfere with it.
> Many of the people in those positions are filled by people who really
> don't know that much about the job. They just want to be in charge.
>
With the exception of two mid-level managers (at this same company),
none of them could have done my job. I'm a firm believer the person you
report to should be able to step in and take up the slack if necessary.

Mostly what they were good for was scheduling useless meetings which
definitely interfered with productivity. How could we work on software
issues when we were stuck in a conference room? I'd volunteer to take
the pager and pray we'd get beeped. Uh oh, the database went down in
Tempe, sorry. Please continue bloviating while I do something useful.

> I was lucky in my career with the government. Most of my bosses were
> pretty good. I worked hard for them and most of them appreciated it and
> recommended me for promotion. A couple were jerks. When I first
> transferred to enforcement the local supervisor was a jerk. Pick pick
> pick pick pick all the time. He was always looking for the negative. It
> was a good thing for me that I had access to the district productivity
> stats because the year he tried to give me a negative appraisal I stood
> up to him and pointed out that I was the top producer in the district by
> far. He ended up having to re-write my appraisal before I would sign it.
> What a weasel to give negative that he could not defend.
>
Yeah, I've run into a few of those, too. I kept track of department
stats for just that reason. (I don't think the manager at the time even
knew we could do that.)

Jill