More tension at work
Tension has been terrible at work all week. And today was perhaps the worst of all, luckily I was not involved in any of it. A new guy starts on Monday, perhaps the one who never came back after his first day, the one I thought was badly chosen. Well, he may be the one starting on Monday with a salary of $50,000 a year.
He is already dead, I know that much. I give him one month. Why? Because the Valley Girl was so pissed off today, she talked about it all day with the Chinese girl. And at the end of day, she could no longer contain herself and she shouted that not only he is very young, but on top of it he has no experience, and has the same salary as her. Even though she will be his boss.
I was amazed she would so openly state that loud, in front of me (and the Chinese girl), how dissatisfied she was with that situation. It is clear to me that she will do everything she can to get rid of him as quickly as possible. And now I believe that the last one, the one who left two weeks ago because she had enough of the office, might actually have left because she was under the Valley Girl and she must have made her life a misery.
The future will tell us if I am right, it is clear that the newbie won’t last. And then, I have proof that it would be a direct consequence of what the Valley Girl said today.
And the interesting stuff does not end there. My boss’ wife came to the Valley Girl, and she said to her that she had to work him hard, because he was young and inexperienced, and she had to make sure he would be doing something. Considering his salary, I can understand.
I could not sleep at night if I had 20 employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, and I thought that for one second they would not be pulling their weight. Then again, I had another proof that management plays mind games with us, and she is close enough to the Valley Girl to let her know: work him to death. Never mind if he leaves within a month.
There were many other problems today, of course I was not privy to it. When my boss’ wife left, she said to the accountant: I hope tomorrow I will find you with a better attitude! Or perhaps she was talking about someone else in the office, I’m not sure.
I had only one problem yesterday, with the Senior Manager. He freaked out because I did not stop everything once his latest brochure needed to be proof-read, and that a few hours later I still had not read it. So he made a big speech about it for five interminable minutes, in front of everyone else. I felt very humiliated, and I just said: OK.
Again, if I had pushed that one, and if it had gone further, to upper management, as I’m sure he reported me already, my bosses would have understood that instead of reading his brochure, I was in fact contacting one last time all my sponsors before my brochure went to print. Again I would have won. But it never reached that stage, because I did not argue. I said OK. That was the end of it.
It was the first time he felt the need to freak out about me. So I cannot really say that he is that terrible. I did not take it personally, he is a good person. He just felt that it was important that I read his brochure. Then again, he could have just said so very nicely, as he usually does when he tells me something that I still don’t know about the company and how we do things around here.
This panic attack from him suggested to me that the story was more serious than usual, and had already been reported to the bosses. And this is how negative stuff goes back to upper management, and positive things never get reported. And this is how your bosses get to feel that you are incompetent even when you work your ass off.
But who cares, this week this has been the least of my problems. I have a bigger one to confront tomorrow. I should have read my brochure and reported all the changes to be made already. Unfortunately I did not have the time yet. And I should have worked on that tonight. But Leonardo came here to pick up the film script and the DVD of the film I worked on, and hence, I did not do anything. Tomorrow will be again a big free for all.
I am also very unlucky, because the woman who did the design of my brochure, she had never done one before. And so everything is so wrong, it looks nothing like all the other brochures we have. I had to write 12 pages of comments to try to see how she could make it better, and I have not even yet fully read the first page! What a waste of time and money, for each brochure we get designed.
That is why that when I will start my own company, I will have a template, and I will use it every time, and I will do all the design of my brochures. And if I have to get my employees to do it, they will use my template, and it will look nice and it will take no time to produce those brochures, because I will show them how to do it.
I also noticed today that the two managers were getting closer to me. The two girls were trying to get me in their conversation, to include me, to get me to become their friend. Though it is nice that perhaps I have misjudged them, I had to work on my brochure, so I could not indulge. And anyway, it looked artificial and forced. So I went to the toilet, and when I came back they had disappeared.
It may be that, out of what happened this week, they will respect me a bit more. If it is the case, I am truly happy and surprised. We’ll have to see what happens in the next weeks to confirm or deny this new theory.
Oh, I also have to say, that after reading that brochure of my Senior Manager, I felt revolted. It had no sponsor, no supporting organizations, and it was so badly written, it was the worst conference program I had ever read in my entire life. I truly wondered who in hell would want to attend that conference. I did not say anything, I just observed and learned.
It is not his fault if the program is so bad. They don’t expect from him the big events that I am doing. From him they want as many as possible, as quickly as possible. When they claim that we produce 50 conferences a year, well, he writes at least half of them, and then he gets his assistants (which I have also become), to do the rest.
The result is a series of terrible events that no one will ever want to attend. I would be ashamed to have written a conference program like that. Considering that English is my second language, I have assessed that I was writing programs like this 10 years ago, when I started. No research has been made, I’m not sure if he knows what he is talking about, and most of his programs are made of bits and pieces of other conference programs, including his.
The language used, the expressions, it sounds very much like all the other conferences out there. It is the vocabulary and style that all newbie needs to learn when they first need to write a program. They read many agendas, and hop, they write something similar on a different topic. That is what I am trying to avoid. I want to make it interesting and more human, less mechanical and boring.
They put me on the worst conference program of all today. It was also badly written, it had no content, and it flopped many times the previous years. We still produce it because we have one main sponsor putting $25,000 on the table every year for it. And I saw the contract today.
I told the Director, when he asked me if I had already invited the speakers, that it was the first time I heard the full title of that event today. And jokingly I said that I guess they were waiting to have confirmed $100,000 worth of sponsorship on it before finally giving it to me.
Though I said it as a joke, I think I made myself clear: don’t expect to have contacted all the potential sponsors in the database already, and then get me to do all these cold calls to chase them up. If I am not going to get my bonus for these sponsorship deals, then I am not going to call any of them. You do it!
I said in his office, innocently: so I guess I can concentrate on the speakers for that one, I don’t have to contact sponsors. Within an hour the conference had been cancelled. I guess they realized that it was a touchy conference. The bonus scheme has not been implemented yet. I don’t even know if all my hard work with the sponsors on my actual conference will pay me a dime, since the Director closed all the deals, even if I had done all the hard work. They appear to have discussed that all afternoon, in my boss’ office. I guess I did not have to say much to make them understand how I felt. Good.
I have to say, I never thought for one second that the conference would be cancelled. Not after seeing a $25,000 contract on my desk. I don’t know what happened there. Things that probably they have not told me. Obviously the boss did not hear my own suggestions about this event, otherwise we would be going ahead with that conference now.
I suggested that we should research the subject, bin the agenda the Senior Manager had written at lunch time, and do a proper conference with this. With well identified topics. Of course, by saying that, I was in fact insulting the Senior Manager. So it did not go anywhere.
Now they want me to produce their first ever European conference, based on their biggest conference ever they have in the US. I have to say, I love the idea. And I love even more what the Director said about it. He said that I can tell him all about how to produce conferences in Europe, since this is where my experience lay. I told him that it was the same as here, but he said that it was not so.
Well, I hope he is not expecting any magic tricks from me, because producing conferences in Europe is like producing them in the US. Language is not even a problem, we do everything in English. No European database however is a troubling situation. It might very well flop. We’ll have to see.
I will propose to them to do two conferences at the same time. One in London in English, the same one in French in France. We can do a double bubble and confirm our sponsors twice at the same time. Let’s see what will happen then. Of course, I still have to do a lot of research, and many phone calls. So it is not going to be easy. I look forward to that challenge however. It might be finally what will make me appreciate that job.
Think about it. If we start producing conferences in Europe, it means opening an office there eventually. If I were to remain in that job for a long time, and manage to get my baby to move here and work with me, then we would open that office in Europe together. At the very least, all my reports must prove to them that I am capable. No one else in the company would want to move to London, they all have houses and family here.
I’m afraid I might have left them by the time the idea even goes anywhere. If they have anything planned for me, as they led me to believe when they lured me here, I suggest they tell me now or before the end of next month. Because then, it will be too late.
He is already dead, I know that much. I give him one month. Why? Because the Valley Girl was so pissed off today, she talked about it all day with the Chinese girl. And at the end of day, she could no longer contain herself and she shouted that not only he is very young, but on top of it he has no experience, and has the same salary as her. Even though she will be his boss.
I was amazed she would so openly state that loud, in front of me (and the Chinese girl), how dissatisfied she was with that situation. It is clear to me that she will do everything she can to get rid of him as quickly as possible. And now I believe that the last one, the one who left two weeks ago because she had enough of the office, might actually have left because she was under the Valley Girl and she must have made her life a misery.
The future will tell us if I am right, it is clear that the newbie won’t last. And then, I have proof that it would be a direct consequence of what the Valley Girl said today.
And the interesting stuff does not end there. My boss’ wife came to the Valley Girl, and she said to her that she had to work him hard, because he was young and inexperienced, and she had to make sure he would be doing something. Considering his salary, I can understand.
I could not sleep at night if I had 20 employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, and I thought that for one second they would not be pulling their weight. Then again, I had another proof that management plays mind games with us, and she is close enough to the Valley Girl to let her know: work him to death. Never mind if he leaves within a month.
There were many other problems today, of course I was not privy to it. When my boss’ wife left, she said to the accountant: I hope tomorrow I will find you with a better attitude! Or perhaps she was talking about someone else in the office, I’m not sure.
I had only one problem yesterday, with the Senior Manager. He freaked out because I did not stop everything once his latest brochure needed to be proof-read, and that a few hours later I still had not read it. So he made a big speech about it for five interminable minutes, in front of everyone else. I felt very humiliated, and I just said: OK.
Again, if I had pushed that one, and if it had gone further, to upper management, as I’m sure he reported me already, my bosses would have understood that instead of reading his brochure, I was in fact contacting one last time all my sponsors before my brochure went to print. Again I would have won. But it never reached that stage, because I did not argue. I said OK. That was the end of it.
It was the first time he felt the need to freak out about me. So I cannot really say that he is that terrible. I did not take it personally, he is a good person. He just felt that it was important that I read his brochure. Then again, he could have just said so very nicely, as he usually does when he tells me something that I still don’t know about the company and how we do things around here.
This panic attack from him suggested to me that the story was more serious than usual, and had already been reported to the bosses. And this is how negative stuff goes back to upper management, and positive things never get reported. And this is how your bosses get to feel that you are incompetent even when you work your ass off.
But who cares, this week this has been the least of my problems. I have a bigger one to confront tomorrow. I should have read my brochure and reported all the changes to be made already. Unfortunately I did not have the time yet. And I should have worked on that tonight. But Leonardo came here to pick up the film script and the DVD of the film I worked on, and hence, I did not do anything. Tomorrow will be again a big free for all.
I am also very unlucky, because the woman who did the design of my brochure, she had never done one before. And so everything is so wrong, it looks nothing like all the other brochures we have. I had to write 12 pages of comments to try to see how she could make it better, and I have not even yet fully read the first page! What a waste of time and money, for each brochure we get designed.
That is why that when I will start my own company, I will have a template, and I will use it every time, and I will do all the design of my brochures. And if I have to get my employees to do it, they will use my template, and it will look nice and it will take no time to produce those brochures, because I will show them how to do it.
I also noticed today that the two managers were getting closer to me. The two girls were trying to get me in their conversation, to include me, to get me to become their friend. Though it is nice that perhaps I have misjudged them, I had to work on my brochure, so I could not indulge. And anyway, it looked artificial and forced. So I went to the toilet, and when I came back they had disappeared.
It may be that, out of what happened this week, they will respect me a bit more. If it is the case, I am truly happy and surprised. We’ll have to see what happens in the next weeks to confirm or deny this new theory.
Oh, I also have to say, that after reading that brochure of my Senior Manager, I felt revolted. It had no sponsor, no supporting organizations, and it was so badly written, it was the worst conference program I had ever read in my entire life. I truly wondered who in hell would want to attend that conference. I did not say anything, I just observed and learned.
It is not his fault if the program is so bad. They don’t expect from him the big events that I am doing. From him they want as many as possible, as quickly as possible. When they claim that we produce 50 conferences a year, well, he writes at least half of them, and then he gets his assistants (which I have also become), to do the rest.
The result is a series of terrible events that no one will ever want to attend. I would be ashamed to have written a conference program like that. Considering that English is my second language, I have assessed that I was writing programs like this 10 years ago, when I started. No research has been made, I’m not sure if he knows what he is talking about, and most of his programs are made of bits and pieces of other conference programs, including his.
The language used, the expressions, it sounds very much like all the other conferences out there. It is the vocabulary and style that all newbie needs to learn when they first need to write a program. They read many agendas, and hop, they write something similar on a different topic. That is what I am trying to avoid. I want to make it interesting and more human, less mechanical and boring.
They put me on the worst conference program of all today. It was also badly written, it had no content, and it flopped many times the previous years. We still produce it because we have one main sponsor putting $25,000 on the table every year for it. And I saw the contract today.
I told the Director, when he asked me if I had already invited the speakers, that it was the first time I heard the full title of that event today. And jokingly I said that I guess they were waiting to have confirmed $100,000 worth of sponsorship on it before finally giving it to me.
Though I said it as a joke, I think I made myself clear: don’t expect to have contacted all the potential sponsors in the database already, and then get me to do all these cold calls to chase them up. If I am not going to get my bonus for these sponsorship deals, then I am not going to call any of them. You do it!
I said in his office, innocently: so I guess I can concentrate on the speakers for that one, I don’t have to contact sponsors. Within an hour the conference had been cancelled. I guess they realized that it was a touchy conference. The bonus scheme has not been implemented yet. I don’t even know if all my hard work with the sponsors on my actual conference will pay me a dime, since the Director closed all the deals, even if I had done all the hard work. They appear to have discussed that all afternoon, in my boss’ office. I guess I did not have to say much to make them understand how I felt. Good.
I have to say, I never thought for one second that the conference would be cancelled. Not after seeing a $25,000 contract on my desk. I don’t know what happened there. Things that probably they have not told me. Obviously the boss did not hear my own suggestions about this event, otherwise we would be going ahead with that conference now.
I suggested that we should research the subject, bin the agenda the Senior Manager had written at lunch time, and do a proper conference with this. With well identified topics. Of course, by saying that, I was in fact insulting the Senior Manager. So it did not go anywhere.
Now they want me to produce their first ever European conference, based on their biggest conference ever they have in the US. I have to say, I love the idea. And I love even more what the Director said about it. He said that I can tell him all about how to produce conferences in Europe, since this is where my experience lay. I told him that it was the same as here, but he said that it was not so.
Well, I hope he is not expecting any magic tricks from me, because producing conferences in Europe is like producing them in the US. Language is not even a problem, we do everything in English. No European database however is a troubling situation. It might very well flop. We’ll have to see.
I will propose to them to do two conferences at the same time. One in London in English, the same one in French in France. We can do a double bubble and confirm our sponsors twice at the same time. Let’s see what will happen then. Of course, I still have to do a lot of research, and many phone calls. So it is not going to be easy. I look forward to that challenge however. It might be finally what will make me appreciate that job.
Think about it. If we start producing conferences in Europe, it means opening an office there eventually. If I were to remain in that job for a long time, and manage to get my baby to move here and work with me, then we would open that office in Europe together. At the very least, all my reports must prove to them that I am capable. No one else in the company would want to move to London, they all have houses and family here.
I’m afraid I might have left them by the time the idea even goes anywhere. If they have anything planned for me, as they led me to believe when they lured me here, I suggest they tell me now or before the end of next month. Because then, it will be too late.
posted by Mycroft Holmes @ 8:12 PM
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