Bosses and work.

[baboon]

I'm very fortunate after 36 years on the same job to be rid of a boss.

 

[oldag]

Good advice and thanks. We will see how it goes. My background is General fab welding and 3 axis mill work and master cam programming. I come from job sites and small shops. Lol not very compatible with office types. Other manufacturing/production exp in food/pharma packaging also. Aerospace is well paying but boy is there a lot of steps and verifying and the people you wait on drag their feet. The machine shop guys are cool as per usual in most places and assembly is cool. Everything else is insane and hypocritical.

Aerospace is huge on paperwork, documented QC, documented processes, etc. Back when I was in aerospace, it took me a while to get used to all that. Honestly, I don't know that I miss it much now.

One must develop patience with the systems.

 

[karlac]

Decided at an early age that I didn't need to be bossed into doing a good job.
Decided to work for myself.
44 successful years of self-employment and one thing stands out above all else:

Had as many bosses during that time as I had individual projects, hundreds of them.

Bottom line: you still must please your boss(es) to succeed.

 

[Reinz]

There is nothing more stressful than having an incompetent boss. All of mine in the past got their position by knowing how to play the corporate game better than most.

I feel for ya Sam. Hope you can work it out or outlast your boss like I did.

 

[MTA]

I started out working for a pipeline company. The bosses were entirely honest and direct. I had no problem with that. If they were mad, you heard about it immediately and often loud (and with any and all necessary cuss words). Flash forward to my second job and the bosses are passive-aggressive. It was like TORTURE working for them.

One day, the president of the company stopped in my office. He asked if my chair was comfortable, where did I get it, etc. After he left, I had to go to my immediate supervisor and ask what he meant. "Oh, he's trying to tell you that you have the wrong chair." Wrong chair? "Yeah, you have a cubicle chair but you have an office, so you should have an office chair." I have the f***ing chair someone gave me when I started. What's the difference? "He paid a consultant to design the offices and so he expects everyone to match the scheme. Office chairs are the same as cubicle chairs, but they have full-length arms." Then why couldn't he just tell me to order a new chair? "Because he's passive-aggressive and would rather guide you in your decision making than tell you what he's thinking."

I cant stand the passive aggressive stuff. It took awhile for my team mates to get use to how honest and direct I am. I get a pass since I am a veteran but some people are so use to the new age pussy way of interacting with people

Drives me nuts. There is a way to be tactful and also honest and direct. You don't have to be a passive aggressive fgt to get your point across. If this guy had such a problem with it, he should have just told you the chair is wrong. But he sounds like a serial killer or something, who cares about chairs or uniformity(in the civilian world) that much?

 

[Sam7sf]

I cant stand the passive aggressive stuff. It took awhile for my team mates to get use to how honest and direct I am. I get a pass since I am a veteran but some people are so use to the new age ***** way of interacting with people

Drives me nuts. There is a way to be tactful and also honest and direct. You don't have to be a passive aggressive fgt to get your point across. If this guy had such a problem with it, he should have just told you the chair is wrong. But he sounds like a serial killer or something, who cares about chairs or uniformity(in the civilian world) that much?

Exactly this. I’m noticing some psychological things that make me wonder. Lol does this person hate life? Kill pets? I have learned to be compassionate yet if something needs to be said let’s just be real. No one wins in the end when someone doesn’t understand the ramifications. I have never been a dick on purpose unless the person is a bully or something. Getting your point across doesn’t require special training.

 

[Hill Billy]

Too much to read. Sorry.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

 

[benenglish]

Executive Summary

Good communication is key. If the boss is capable of telling you what they want, the job becomes easy. If they aren't, you have to get creative.

Long Version

I've had good bosses and bad bosses and sometimes this...

Every task in the place has to have a written procedure - not so it's done right but so that HR can have something to hold against an employee if they screw something up.

...is an excellent thing.

One of my worst bosses was named Dan and he had a number of problems. The biggest one was that he didn't want to be there. He was married to an executive and had played the political games so well he got into a very respectable Special Agent position (on the criminal side of the bureau, obviously). He had failed so spectacularly there that he was given a choice to be fired or demoted to a management position in the far-less-prestigous civil side of the house. He took the demotion but clearly thought it was beneath him to be in charge of a group of mere Officers.

So, his attitude sucked. In practical terms, though, his most blatant shortcoming was his inability to communicate what he wanted. We had "the manual" and if you did the work outlined there, you were competent. I was at least that. I wasn't perfect but no one could say I wasn't competent.

That didn't cut it with this boss. No matter what I did, he wanted something else. I'd finish a case, write it up, and turn it in for closure. He'd tell me to investigate more leads or investigate differently or go back into the field for more observation or something. It was always something. Whatever it was, it was always something not required by law, regs, or the manual. Sometimes it was something truly bizarre. However, without it I couldn't get his signature to close my cases. It always took me twice as long to close any case because he always rejected my cases.

After doing the extra work, I always reached the same conclusions, proposed the same disposition actions, and then got the approval I should have gotten the first time around.

He eventually got so frustrated with me he decided to fire me. Per procedure, he was required to issue me a letter telling me I had 90 days to correct the deficiencies in my work or be dismissed. Per procedure, the letter had to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong.

That was a godsend.

Because he had to put into writing exactly what he thought my deficiencies were and define exactly how to correct them, my job instantly became simple as pie. I could follow instructions. I followed the written instructions to the letter.

At the end of the 90 days, he said he was going to fire me. I went into the final consultation with him and my union rep.

Point by point, my boss went through the dismissal letter stating a reason why he was firing me. Point by point, my union rep said, over and over, "That's not what you told him to do. Look at the 90-day letter. You told him to do X. He did X." My boss would reply "But what I wanted him to do was really Y." My rep would say "He can't do what you want him to do unless you tell him. If you wanted Y, you should have asked for Y. You asked for X; he did X."

We worked our way, paragraph after paragraph, through the 90-day letter. After a half dozen exchanges that went almost exactly as described things got a bit heated between my boss and the union rep. My boss terminated the interview; he and the rep went to see Dan's boss.

When they came out, my boss invited me back into his office for a meeting that lasted less than 30 seconds. He informed me I had fulfilled the requirements of the letter, it was revoked, and I would not be terminated. Then he told me to get out of his office. I don't think he ever reviewed another one of my cases again; he just signed whatever I put in front of him.

Immediately afterward, the union rep told me my 90-day letter was the worst written he'd ever seen, requiring me to do all sorts of random stuff that wasn't required to do the job in addition to the actual job requirements. He was surprised that I'd put up with that and advised me to request a transfer to another unit because, in his words, "Dan is an idiot." He also said that Dan's boss was not happy with how sloppy Dan had been about the whole process. I moved to a different location; a year or more later Dan was demoted down to civil field work.

As a selfish addendum, I admit to a bit of schadenfreude when I also found out that his wife, an amazingly competent executive with whom I had a good relationship, had divorced him.

As a my-integrity-would-be-questionable-if-I-didn't-mention-this addendum, I note that a decade later Dan and I ran into each other at a conference and he took responsibility for his actions. He said he'd had a bad attitude because things in his life were going bad at the time. He admitted he had taken it out on me. He said he had learned a lot from our problems with each other. Then he sincerely apologized and thanked me for helping him grow.

In conclusion, sometimes having written procedures and a formal mechanism for enforcing them is a blessing. They force communications to happen, even if one or more parties is incompetent at communicating.

Postscript, getting back to the point for the OP

I think all this lands squarely under the heading of "Competency in Leadership", something that should come from bosses but can come from any level of any organization.

To that point, try going to 48:20 in this interview and see how Jocko Willink answers the question "What should you do if your boss is an idiot?"

 

[Sam7sf]

Executive Summary

Good communication is key. If the boss is capable of telling you what they want, the job becomes easy. If they aren't, you have to get creative.

Long Version

I've had good bosses and bad bosses and sometimes this......is an excellent thing.

One of my worst bosses was named Dan and he had a number of problems. The biggest one was that he didn't want to be there. He was married to an executive and had played the political games so well he got into a very respectable Special Agent position (on the criminal side of the bureau, obviously). He had failed so spectacularly there that he was given a choice to be fired or demoted to a management position in the far-less-prestigous civil side of the house. He took the demotion but clearly thought it was beneath him to be in charge of a group of mere Officers.

So, his attitude sucked. In practical terms, though, his most blatant shortcoming was his inability to communicate what he wanted. We had "the manual" and if you did the work outlined there, you were competent. I was at least that. I wasn't perfect but no one could say I wasn't competent.

That didn't cut it with this boss. No matter what I did, he wanted something else. I'd finish a case, write it up, and turn it in for closure. He'd tell me to investigate more leads or investigate differently or go back into the field for more observation or something. It was always something. Whatever it was, it was always something not required by law, regs, or the manual. Sometimes it was something truly bizarre. However, without it I couldn't get his signature to close my cases. It always took me twice as long to close any case because he always rejected my cases.

After doing the extra work, I always reached the same conclusions, proposed the same disposition actions, and then got the approval I should have gotten the first time around.

He eventually got so frustrated with me he decided to fire me. Per procedure, he was required to issue me a letter telling me I had 90 days to correct the deficiencies in my work or be dismissed. Per procedure, the letter had to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong.

That was a godsend.

Because he had to put into writing exactly what he thought my deficiencies were and define exactly how to correct them, my job instantly became simple as pie. I could follow instructions. I followed the written instructions to the letter.

At the end of the 90 days, he said he was going to fire me. I went into the final consultation with him and my union rep.

Point by point, my boss went through the dismissal letter stating a reason why he was firing me. Point by point, my union rep said, over and over, "That's not what you told him to do. Look at the 90-day letter. You told him to do X. He did X." My boss would reply "But what I wanted him to do was really Y." My rep would say "He can't do what you want him to do unless you tell him. If you wanted Y, you should have asked for Y. You asked for X; he did X."

We worked our way, paragraph after paragraph, through the 90-day letter. After a half dozen exchanges that went almost exactly as described things got a bit heated between my boss and the union rep. My boss terminated the interview; he and the rep went to see Dan's boss.

When they came out, my boss invited me back into his office for a meeting that lasted less than 30 seconds. He informed me I had fulfilled the requirements of the letter, it was revoked, and I would not be terminated. Then he told me to get out of his office. I don't think he ever reviewed another one of my cases again; he just signed whatever I put in front of him.

Immediately afterward, the union rep told me my 90-day letter was the worst written he'd ever seen, requiring me to do all sorts of random stuff that wasn't required to do the job in addition to the actual job requirements. He was surprised that I'd put up with that and advised me to request a transfer to another unit because, in his words, "Dan is an idiot." He also said that Dan's boss was not happy with how sloppy Dan had been about the whole process. I moved to a different location; a year or more later Dan was demoted down to civil field work.

As a selfish addendum, I admit to a bit of schadenfreude when I also found out that his wife, an amazingly competent executive with whom I had a good relationship, had divorced him.

As a my-integrity-would-be-questionable-if-I-didn't-mention-this addendum, I note that a decade later Dan and I ran into each other at a conference and he took responsibility for his actions. He said he'd had a bad attitude because things in his life were going bad at the time. He admitted he had taken it out on me. He said he had learned a lot from our problems with each other. Then he sincerely apologized and thanked me for helping him grow.

In conclusion, sometimes having written procedures and a formal mechanism for enforcing them is a blessing. They force communications to happen, even if one or more parties is incompetent at communicating.

Postscript, getting back to the point for the OP

I think all this lands squarely under the heading of "Competency in Leadership", something that should come from bosses but can come from any level of any organization.

To that point, try going to 48:20 in this interview and see how Jocko Willink answers the question "What should you do if your boss is an idiot?"

A post longer than mine. Lol

Words of wisdom Ben.

 

[benenglish]

A post longer than mine. Lol

I've cut down in recent years. Years ago, I commonly posted stuff that hit the per-post word limit and I had to split a single post into two and sometimes 3 separate segments.

Be thankful.

 

[Sam7sf]

It’s pretty obvious I’m sheltered but in an ironic way. All of my past jobs have been like the Wild West. Seeing Employees wrestling it out in a warehouse over a dispute to telling bosses on a job site their full of it and no one gets fired. Even when I supervised production crews, I never went to my bosses. Own up to a mistake, don’t lie to me, or hash it out with me, or call me out if I’m out of place, then it’s squashed.

So I see these passive aggressive guys and I definitely feel they read me wrong.

 

[Dad_Roman]

I've cut down in recent years
Be thankful.

Great post with quite a surprising conclusion at the end...

...thanks Ben.

 

[benenglish]

Great post with quite a surprising conclusion at the end...

I don't mean to be ungrateful but that surprising conclusion was useless to me. Having been put on notice once, I was damaged goods. He derailed my career for a couple of years and even after my performance folder was cleaned of his attempt to fire me, managers would wonder what was wrong with me since I was stuck so long at the same level.

I had to change divisions and jobs completely to get away from all that. I found more satisfying work, eventually, but I had lost forever the track of promotions I would have otherwise had.

Looking back on it, I have to weigh the nice feeling of him apologizing against the fact that my pension is half of what it would be if I had never worked for him.

Those scales don't balance.