One Team, One Dream . . . or Not!

This has been an interesting week so far. I've been in three separate meetings to discuss the status of our department and the cohesiveness . . . or lack thereof. As I consider myself a short-timer (shh, don't tell them that), I figured I had nothing to lose but to tell the truth wholeheartedly. Only time will tell if my comments were accepted and implemented.

It's difficult to discuss work-related problems and find solutions when one of the main problems is the department manager. It's twice as hard to do that when said manager is sitting in the meeting as well, which was the case in our first meeting on Monday.

Interestingly enough, I was able to get most of my thoughts out there in spite of this. Again, since my outlook is one of months rather than years, I don't think I have a problem talking about these things. Also, I'm usually perfectly blunt about most things anyway. During this meeting though, other issues came to light that I weren't expecting. I should have known better though.

Our newest addition, who is coming up on her one-year anniversary, pulled out all the "pity me" stops. Oh boo hoo is what I say. She's complaining about being overwhelmed. She's complaining about not getting support. She's complaining about not knowing what to do. She can barely turn on her computer much less do real work. It annoys me that she's even on staff because we could've done everything without her and heard less complaining about it. What annoys me even more is that I've already told our manager that she's basically drowning in her obvious deficiencies, and he just continues to let her drown. WTF kind of manager is that really?

My second meeting involved our HR person pulling me into a quick follow up meeting. Apparently good and bad news travels fast in this company. He spouted off the predictable stuff about how this is a good company even if there are a few bumps every now and then; that we all need to be open to change; that change doesn't happen overnight; and how there aren't a lot of marketing jobs out there right now. You know what dude? Get real! For the three years I've been here, nothing has changed when it comes to our manager. He is literally the huge elephant in the middle of the room that no one wants to admit is there. Oh, supposedly everyone knows "how he is," but no one does anything to help us. Yes, I admit that it is our choice to work in his department. But if the management knows the situation, why did it take three years for them to do anything about it if they really cared about the well being of their employees?

The final meeting was with our vice president, which was probably only due to the fact that I told the HR person that we can't really say much with our manager in the meeting. This meeting was a bit more free flowing and cleared the air about how things are run under our manager. Of course, our VP already knew a lot of it, but now we've given him details. I have to admit that it was very good to get it off my chest, even though I'm not at all confident that anything will change. But hell, what can it hurt right? After all, I'm a short-timer.