Thursday, October 13, 2011

The Devil You Know

 I am not good at work conflicts. I am, in fact, something of a coward when it comes to dealing with bullying, backstabbing and other inevitable high school artifacts that plague the majority of decent sized businesses.

Up until Tuesday morning I had an awesome supervisor who stood between my department the rest of the high school, which meant I could do my work and not worry about the rest. S had spent the last 10 years helping to build the company (her employee number was 5), working her way up from writing documentation to leading a unified team of testers, tech writers and support services employees.

Four weeks after I was hired, the company went through a reorganization. As part of the process, a CTO was hired to forge a development roadmap for the company's future and resolve the issues fracturing relationships between different departments.

When the CTO came on board, we all had brief meetings to discuss what we perceived to be the strengths and weaknesses of the company. S had a lot to say about the relationships between the different departments and where she felt the source of the dysfunction was coming from.

In particular, S had some choice words to say about a coworker, V. V has consistently made it difficult for other departments to effectively do their jobs. In charge of writing specifications and managing projects, she did her tasks poorly, when she did them at all. She routinely shows up late for meetings and expects all conversation to stop until she is bought up to speed. She contradicts herself constantly, when speaking and in writing. She micromanages her employees. In the past two years, four have quit and explicitly cited her as the reason for their resignation.

It is important for this narrative to mention that S was not the only employee to find herself in frequent conflict with V.

The same day the CTO's hire was announced, support services was removed from my S's sphere of responsibility. This was painted as a way for her to concentrate on her proven strengths in documentation and QA. In addition, she was informed that she would report to the CTO and her boss was moved to a client facing position. In the months that followed she was left out of meetings that she should have been attending. Her perks were cut. Her input was no longer solicited or welcomed.

Cue the firings.

First to be fired was D, who was informed that her job was not longer necessary due to the hiring of the CTO and the shuffling of departments. D had a long history of conflict with V. In the same breath that she was told that her position was being eliminated, she was asked to stay on until the end of the week to wrap up her work.

D accepted her severance and politely refused to work out the remaining week. Her job responsibilities were given to a recently hired male employee.

Two weeks ago the second firing took place. J was a direct report to V. J had been actively trying to move out from underneath V's sphere. Hired for what she believed was a specific positions, J was instead thrown into projects in which she had little knowledge, with no time to learn. J's job was taken over by a male employee.

This past Tuesday it was S's turn. The CTO told her that he could not envision a role for her in the company going forward. But instead of firing her outright, the CTO offered her the option of between coming back as a contract employee (at a reduced rate of pay, with no benefits) or taking a severance package that was 1/3 the size of the package offered to D. It is our impression that the CTO thought a crappy severance package would induce S to stay on as a contract employee.

S refused. She packed up her cubicle and was out of the building in less than an hour. Two of my coworkers helped her move 10 years worth of personal items to her car, then went out to lunch with her. I learned that she was fired when I walked into her cubicle to ask if she was ready to go to a pre-planned lunch and found it empty.

The CTO scheduled two meetings Tuesday afternoon. The first with my department, to inform us of the personnel change, the second with the entire development team to unveil his roadmap of the future. At the conclusion of our private meeting, he asked the senior qa member, L, to stay behind to discuss some transition issues before the development meeting.

And offered him S's position.

Since the meeting with the CTO, we have had two chats. The first took place on Tuesday after the development meeting. In that chat, L implied that there was some shady dealings occurring with the firings. I slept on this Tuesday night.

Wednesday we met again for our weekly department meeting, sans department head. In that meeting I pointedly asked L if the “shadiness” he was implying had anything to do with the fact that three mid-level female employees had been fired in the past four months and their responsibilities had been reassigned to male employees. L confirmed this statement and also reminded me that all three employees had a history of conflict with V.

It appears that V has trouble working with other women. So the solution to the problem was to fire the women and reassign their responsibilities to men instead of correcting the source of the problem.

The problem is that I am currently working on a project in which V is the project manager. And I may be working with her on a routine basis for the next year. With S gone, I am directly in her line of fire. This worries L.

This worries me slightly, but having already dealt with an epic incident of douche baggery in the past two years, I'm better equipped to deal with it this time around.

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Bad Day


Toddler Alien had a bad day. Instead of coming home sunny, chatty and rearing to zoom around the house chasing a ball in a fit of giggles, he was irritable, angry and cried almost non-stop. He cried because we wouldn't lift him into his high chair. He cried because he didn't want to wait for dinner. He cried because we wouldn't give him more cheese. He was rude to J and cried when I reprimanded him.

So upstairs he went after dinner, an hour earlier than usual, to get ready for bed. He cried over being changed. He cried because I put him in pajama pants instead of shorts. He cried because he I picked out the books. Believing that his fidgeting was due to extreme tiredness, I put him down in his crib, which made him cry some more.

I finally picked him back up and lay down on the bed with him. With his milk in one hand and his teddy bear in the other, he galumphed to the edge of the bed, slipped down the side and headed towards his books, pulling out the ones he wanted me to read to him.

Finally he began to calm. I asked him if he had a good day.

“No” he replied.

“Did you have a bad day then?”

“Yes” he answered.

“What happened?”

Silence.

“Was someone mean to you?” (1)

“Yes”.

“Can you tell me who?”

Silence.

We continued reading, making our way through three readings of Dr. Seuss' the Foot Book and most of the Eric Carle board books in the house, finishing with Good Night Moon and a second reading of Have You Seen My Cat?

I put Toddler Alien in his crib and closed the door. Twenty minutes later I came back to check on him. He was dozing, but still awake. I blew him a kiss and touched the side of his check. He blew me a kiss back, smiled and rolled back onto his side. I moved Teddy to the top of the crib.

“Thank you” he said as his hand reached out to grab the bear.

I can't pretend that I'm not worried. (I also can't pretend that I'm not annoyed to be burning time writing about my child instead of discussing the spreading protests, the upcoming hockey season or ten other things that have nothing to do with the mom part of my life).

I was a sensitive kid and had a rough time up until I left for college. I know I can't prevent Toddler Alien from getting his feelings hurt, but I don't know how to help him shake it off better than I did. And it is hard to explain to a kid who isn't even two years old that sometimes people suck.


(1) This was precipitated by an incident last week in which a slightly older kid informed Toddler Alien when he arrived that he was not allowed to play with the cars. This proclamation was delivered with such a hostile tone that Toddler Alien promptly burst into tears.