White Castle Memory

Today I had White Castle for lunch. Up to then, I had not had a genuine White Castle slider in about a decade. It was as delicious as I remember, and even more satisfying was that my memory of it actually lived up to reality.

Mismanagement 101

I think they must teach this in a business class or something:

1. Discover a competent employee who understands complex directions and takes initiative
2. Reward him with compliments, raise
3. Give him more autonomy and trust him to set his own priorities
4. Get rid of employee's not doing as well
5. Give incompetent employees duties to competent employee
6. Promise to hire people to work under competent employee and also to have developers create workflow management tools to aid him in his job
7. Never make good on your promises
8. Continue to grow your business but not to scale it in any reasonable way, giving competent employee even more work
9. Half-heartedly listen to competent employee's request for help more manpower
10. Hire incompetent temp to do work that you didn't trust incompetent full-time employees to do
11. Fire temp; wonder why temp didn't work out
12. Confront competent employee about his duties not getting done
13. Tell competent employee that you will begin to prioritize his work for him
14. Don't prioritize his work for him
15. Have competent employee explain to you just what is so hard about his job
16. Disregard his attempt to tell you that the two halves of his job are actually two jobs requiring two employees
17. Inform him that one of the "halves" is the most important part of his workload, but that it should only be taking him one or two hours a day maximum
18. Constantly and with suspicion question once-competent employee about what he is currently working on
19. Act surprised when employee is disgruntled

Seriously, I've seen this happen before to a number of coworkers, and have even experienced it first hand. Where do managers pick this stuff up?

Maybe I'm being a bit over-dramatic here. I mean I still like my job and, despite me no longer thinking he's a good manager, I still like my boss. And I don't plan on quitting any time soon.

This all stems from my work getting increasingly difficult as our company grows, but no one listening to me asking for help. But the kicker is what happened today. Basically, my boss sat down behind me today and told me, in so many words, to prove that I was actually working and not jackassing around.

It is beyond annoying that he doesn't realize that I'm working diligently, no matter how hard I try to explain and demonstrate that fact. Hell, one night last week I didn't even go home! I stayed at the goddamn office all night because I was that dedicated to getting a project done. But now it's in doubt whether or not I'm wasting time.

Part of me wants to become the incompetent employee I'm assumed to be. I would get to be lazy and would not shatter anyone's current expectations. Another part of me wants to put even more hours in, get everything that is done that is expected of me, no matter the cost to my personal life or health. I would get to be a martyr and could revel in my own self-righteousness. The more reasonable part of me, though, knows that I should just keep doing what I'm doing: working as hard as I can, within reason, and doing my best. It's not my job to make sure the business is being managed properly. If my boss sees that work is not getting done and can do nothing more about it than blame an employee that is already working hard, then that is not my problem. If it comes to me being fired for incompetence, then he is even more stupid than I thought.

Crappy Idea

I'm thinking of starting a new blog entitled My Magnificent BM and Other Colontastic Adventures.

Its content will at least be better than the shit on this blog.