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Old Jan 25, 2009, 01:20 PM
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filifera filifera is offline
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Member Since: Sep 2008
Posts: 58
To clarify, I like my work and did it well and got along well with the people in my group, but as a result of reorganization I was transferred last spring into a different group, which has some long term dysfunctional cultural problems as a result of poor or no "adult supervision" for several years.

It's like the difference between having 20 years experience and 1 year's experience repeated 20 times -- what little leadership they do have is clueless: they have "processes" which they thought up entirely on their own for micromanaging projects, without ever considering that there is already much expertise out there in the business world that could have helped them run things smoothly, with better quality, on time delivery, and within budget.

That frustration with inefficient and useless "process" and micromanagement literally made me crazy (severe depression, self injury, anxiety) and caused me to request ADA accommodations to work from home to insulate myself from the dysfunction in the office.

Here is the group I work with now:

There's a manager (in name only, apparently) who is just the latest in a long list of short-lived overseers of that department. Managing the people in his group on a day to day basis is apparently beneath him as he has much grander ideas. Under him are the following characters:

There's one guy who's been trying to get rid of me for years who is at least as crazy as I am (he has obvious paranoia with visual hallucinations he readily admits to, that he attributes to psychic phenomena).

There's a 50 something drama queen supposedly "running" the department who is fabulous at throwing lavish parties but not much else. She has no actual supervisory skills or training other than having been a mom and has never actually had people with professional qualifications working under her, just temps, general clerical workers and interns, so she treats everyone as if they're naughty children.

There's a 20 something putita with a sense of entitlement caused by a mail-order degree who thinks her degree exempts her from learning any skills she doesn't already have, who spends most of her time flirting with the guys with the occasional break to berate me (I have more years of experience in this line of work than she even has being alive).

And another 20 something bubbly airhead who doesn't actually have any annoying personality qualities, just an inability to figure out that project commitments she makes to outsiders on behalf of the entire department just might cost the company tons of money that wasn't in the budget and throw all her co-workers' other projects into chaos. Result: five figures of unbudgeted expenditures to meet this commitment, and another full time professional level salary, while other departments are continually short staffed.

And I'm the devil for pointing out the cultural problems and disorganization, and suggesting industry-proven methods and processes to improve our product delivery without increasing costs. It could be any of these nitwits who used my identity for this ridiculous and abusive prank.

Yes, I'm actively hunting for another job. It's going to be a long search because the area I live in doesn't have a lot of other employers for people skilled in the kind of work I do, and the nearest place that does is a 100+ mile commute each way. I either spend four hours commuting every day and wear out a new car every 3 years, or I spend five days a week camping in a hotel room or apartment, away from my DH and the rest of the things that are enjoyable for me. And much higher expenses, for a salary no better than I'm earning out here in the sticks. The company has to be very generous just to get people to consider living here, and they still have trouble recruiting skilled workers -- the labor pool here is overwhelmingly non-skilled and poorly educated.

I could change careers completely but would have to start again at a much reduced salary, which will cause difficulty for DH and me as our investments and retirement savings have been severely devalued because of the current economic fiasco, and owing to our current debt load we would have to put too many of our future plans on hold if we took a serious financial hit.