The Year of Living Frugally – Week 10

These unhappy [outer space] agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth – a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy and pointless death.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – The Sirens of Titan

In honor of empty heroics, low comedy and pointless death – it’s time to revisit the employment situation.

I last presented my employment plan while at a conference in Monterey.

Toward the end of that conference – my supervisor found me before we were each going to different workshops.

He told me, “You need to carry my things back with you.” – motioning to all of the free corporate-giveaway schwag and work-materials. He was renting a car, and leaving the conference early, to take a few personal days to drive and visit someone.

I was so surprised, all I could do was laugh.

As we were walking, I looked for clarification, “Let me get this straight, you want me to carry your things in my backpack – for the last morning of seminars – AND my half day of walking around town waiting for my flight?”

“It’ll build character”, he said as we split to our individual areas.

I did not reply to the voicemail to the room after I got back from dinner (it was a dinner invitation – from my supervisor – and an explanation of why he thought it was a better idea for me to carry his things, and his frustration with the front desk for refusing to give him my room number).

What an asshole.

Since then, our relationship has soured.

With that last act – my nearly six months of attempting to train him had finished.

He had neither taken any notes, learned any of the California regulations, nor bothered to learn our hardware and software solutions. He expected a dozen people to learn and integrate his outdated “preferred” software, mistakenly referred to regulation from the Small South-Eastern Company as if it applied to us, but interfaced with the senior administrators well.

He was your typical “well-qualified” middle-management ass-kissing sycophant – he would micromanage with an iron fist, and not know a single thing about the processes he was trying to micromanage – quite a few people felt he was perfect for the job.

So now, after butting heads for the last couple weeks – my supervisor is trying to get me fired. He is trying to build a case to show my incompetence, and how the institution would not miss me.

I drink coffee. I belong to a coffee club in a department 70 feet down the hall. My supervisor’s office has windows that look into the hall – so he sees when I leave my department to get coffee.

Lately, when I go to get a coffee, he follows me to try to catch me talking with other rank-and-file workers. Recently, I had taken the last cup of coffee, and was making a fresh pot. My supervisor walked into the room, looked at me, looked Mr. Coffee (the machine, not me), and turned around and left without saying anything.

Is this the pinnacle of evolution of our species? All that struggle to build civilizations for this?

In an effort to bring levity into the workplace, I am devising games to play. One of my favorite is “Supervisor Snipe-Hunt”.

In Supervisor Snipe-Hunt, I walk through the usual doors to get my coffee – so my supervisor can see me leave. Once I get my coffee, I leave the “coffee-office” through an exit door to the outside – walk around the back of the building and use my key to get in through the back door to the IT area. My supervisor – whose office window faces out into the public hallway (and not into the IT area) – has no idea I’m back in my office. After getting impatient, he walks into the coffee-office – and usually looks around without acknowledging the presence of anyone else. The rank-and-file workers in the coffee area are in on the game (and despise my supervisor also). When they see him looking for me, they ask “Can I help you?”

He usually will begin to explain – “I’m Mr. Supervisor, Director of This and That…”

At which point the rank-and-file interrupts, “Yeah, I know who you are – can I help you?”

At this point he usually leaves without saying anything. Sometimes he says “Just taking a walk.”

The emails I receive from the rank-and-file – documenting this behavior – all go into my formal evaluation of my supervisor.

This week, I will go to a committee meeting – while my supervisor is on vacation, just so we can talk about him. I will either get the ball rolling for “fixing” my supervisor problem, or I’ve just been given enough rope to hang myself with. It’s exciting – kind of like bungee jumping – although I think the probability of survival seems to be the same for both cases.

Obviously, my supervisor suffers from “old man disease” – specifically, the inflexible mind. Unfortunately for him, in this business to stand still is to regress and go backwards.

Sometimes, when he is not annoying me, I feel sorry for him. And I tell myself (as a prayer? an affirmation? a reminder?), that it will never happen to me.

In the meantime, I will do what I can to improve this institution. I have selfish reasons for doing this – it will make my job easier.

My supervisor has been running this office into the ground and pissing people off while doing it. He has taken my workplace satisfaction away from me, and contributed to my decision to begin this Year of Living Frugally. I do not worry about losing my job in it’s present form.

In the words of Lester Burman – I’m just an ordinary guy, with nothing to lose.

(continue on to Week Fifty-Two)