April 06, 2006

Do you want the job or not?

I have all my access of today at work. At this point IÂ’m still in shock it only took three weeks. For the first time I had to do direct interviewing for work. I have two open positions I need filling, and IÂ’m the one that has to make the decision. Which leads me to where IÂ’m going here.

DAMMIT PEOPLE! If you are going to interview for a position, internal or external posting, prepare for the damn interview. How hard is it to:

A) Dress nice, or at least as nice as the interviewer? I wear a shirt and tie every day to work. ItÂ’s not a secret that I dress nicely. By god, wear something that is business appropriate, not something you would wear to go out drinking or picking up a date!

2) Know something about the position other then you want it. Good lord, how are you going to convince me that you are the best person for the job if you donÂ’t even know what the job is?

D) If you’ve ever been interviewed before, you have an idea of the types of questions they ask. Prepare for these, be honest, but prepare. When asked, “What do you think your greatest weakness is?” or “Give me an example of when you had to sacrifice a personal goal for the betterment of your team.” Don’t say, “I don’t have any” or “I’ve never had to do that.” Trust me you do, and you have! When you are put on the spot it’s better to have an obviously rehearsed answer then not to have any answer. Also it’s a good idea to have multiple examples to use for multiple questions.

5) Just because one person is asking questions and another is writing down answers, that doesnÂ’t mean the one asking the questions is making the decision. Do NOT ignore the second person. I let the person assisting me do all the talking; IÂ’m doing all the writing. The decision is ultimately mine, in 2 of the interviews I had today I swear the people being interviewed didnÂ’t even acknowledge I was in the room. No eye contact, not even looking in my general direction. Okay, so I intentionally didnÂ’t look at them very much. So how did I know? An old interviewer trick I was taught years ago. I had an object on the table in front of me that worked as a mirror; I was trying to observe their reaction and body language with out letting them know. No, IÂ’m not the only one that does this. IÂ’ve had four interviews in my life where IÂ’ve seen others do the same thing. IÂ’m not saying spend time looking for their mirror, just look in their direction and acknowledge their existence. Trust me, it makes an impression. Every time I looked up they where always looking at either my assistant interviewer or the table, yes I took marks off the interview for that.

ThatÂ’s all IÂ’m going to share with you now. Those are just the observations from today. I have three more days of interviews to complete, IÂ’m sure IÂ’ll find some other tips for you job searchers out there.

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March 28, 2006

There is no tomorrow!

At this rate IÂ’ll be able to retire before I get my access. IÂ’m going to take Leslie's advice in my previous comments and get the Exec Officer involved at this point. IÂ’ve had enough!

I had my first, uh, disagreement with my peers today. My employees are from both lines of business in our office. The supervisors from the line of business I didn’t come from didn’t like how I was doing tracking numbers. That doesn’t bother me, what bothers me is that they didn’t tell me that last week and just waited to complain about it today. I was able to make the changes and they where appeased. However, they do treat me kind of coldly. I think part of it is that I’m the “new” guy. The other part is that I think they resent someone for the “opposite” line of business supervising their people.

TheyÂ’ll get over it, because IÂ’m not going anywhere.

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March 27, 2006

Contagion in Crisis Day 8

For the love of Pete, they really need to get my access sorted out! This has been the eight straight business days that I have not had the proper access to do my job. With two of the other supervisors out this week, that leaves only one other who can get all the stuff done that needs to be! Every time I talk to someone in IT or the Help Desk I get the same story, “It should be fixed tomorrow.” Today I finally got a little testy with them. When they said “tomorrow” again I couldn’t help but to say, “Do you guys have a different definition of tomorrow then the rest of the world? I’ve heard you say “tomorrow" for the last week and it’s still not fixed. Because if by tomorrow you mean next month, you need to make sure the people you are talking to speak the same IT lingo that you do.”

They did not appreciate my observation. I’m fairly sure that when I get to work tomorrow, nothing is working right because I don’t have access and I call them back I’ll get the same song and dance, “We don’t know why that didn’t work, we’ll fix it right away and it should be up for you tomorrow.” So help me if they tell me tomorrow one more time I’m going to snap.

Other then that everything seems to be going really well. I was going to wait 6 months before making any changes. Unfortunately I found some changes that needed to be made, mainly to assist my people in their jobs or to make their lives easier. Before I implemented the changes I talked with the ones affected to see if they felt it would help them. I had a resounding yes from them. Apparently it was something they had wanted but their previous two supervisors never did.

Unfortunately I did hear a bit of workplace gossip regarding me today. I overheard one of my people telling someone else “He’s not a bad guy at all. Actually he’s pretty nice and seems to actually care.” Dammit, stuff like that is going to ruin my reputation!

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March 24, 2006

Week 1

There is the old saying, “No news is good news.” I call bullshite on that. There has not been one word about my helpdesk tickets regarding my access, I’ve called multiple times everyday for the last week and I’m still not getting anywhere. Oh well I will suffer to persevere.

I discovered early today that my predecessor must have decided that she really retired back in February. Half of the employee information I need is either missing or only half filled out. Nothing has been updated since about the first week of February. I was at work from 6:30 am to 6:00 PM trying to find, replace or recover this missing info. This is information I have to have by the end of next week. If I donÂ’t have it, my employees may suffer from poor reviews and loss of wages.

And in case you where wondering why I left work so early when this information was so sorely needed, please read the below post. Clones birthday party started at 6:00. I was late as it was. Since he is only turning three, I donÂ’t think I traumatized him too much. To be honest he was too busy playing with his brother to even notice I wasnÂ’t there. Once I arrived all he wanted to do was open presents. Yea, IÂ’m a bad dad.

I have to work tomorrow. I donÂ’t know how long IÂ’m going to be there. My entire weekend might be shot. ThatÂ’s the price one pays for the position I guess. Just in case you are still wondering, yes I still love the job.

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March 23, 2006

Day 4

Again no access, the issue is starting to negatively impact the corporation and IÂ’ve had enough. Today I got one of the executive officers involved in the issue. They owe me a favor and I figure that it will make a good impression that IÂ’m calling it for an issue like this and not some kind of trivial personal issue. Hopefully tomorrow IÂ’ll have it, if not that will make 9 days with out access.

Things are starting to fall into place; I still have a couple of hot spots I need to deal with. No, they are not related to my access. Being a creative person and taking the initiative I started using an older system to get the work done. ItÂ’s not as efficient and it definitely isnÂ’t as accurate, but itÂ’s better then nothing. My employees are way behind on their work. Yay for overtime!

My employees where able to witness that I am willing to sticking up for them. Earlier this week I had to mandate 5 hours of overtime per individual to be put in between Monday and Saturday. At a meeting earlier today they decided that they wanted everyone to be here on Saturday in addition to any OT they have already put in. No one really said anything, but I voiced my concern. “I told my people on Monday they had to do five hours between then and Saturday. Many of them have been putting in their time after work so they wouldn’t have to come in on Saturday. If I told them they had to be here, trust me, many of them would not have put in the OT during the week. This whole thing is wrong; it undermines not only my integrity in their eyes, but all of management. I’m going to uphold my original statement to them, as long as they have their five hours in they don’t need to come in on Saturday.”

I must have been influential because they decided NOT to force them to come in on Saturday. Not that we donÂ’t need it, but IÂ’ve always found that low morale on a Saturday equals lack of production.

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March 22, 2006

Day 3

Still no access to the systems I need. Even though the day started out with what appeared to be a major breakthrough, it turns out that it was actually two steps back. We finally got me access to one of the systems that I desperately need. We focused a lot of time and attention on getting that access. Once I received it, we discovered that I couldnÂ’t properly use it until I have access to another system. So we wasted all that time and IÂ’m no closer.

The last of the employees that where being difficult came around today. All of them are actually laughing, joking and smiling with me. There are a couple that need some special work, but IÂ’m confident at this point that IÂ’ll have them all comfortable with me with in 2 more weeks. They told me to expect 6 months for that to happen.

I was “volunteered” for a management stunt today. I guess being the new supervisor means that I have to participate, well okay everyone has to participate, but I’m supposed to take a key roll. Fortunately for me I’m supposed to be some kind of surly, sarcastic announcer. I think I can fake that decently.

CanÂ’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!

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March 21, 2006

Day 2

Okay, I still donÂ’t have access to half of the programs I need. That is making life real difficult now. The kicker is that when they gave me access to the half I needed, they revoked me from some others that I had need to use. ItÂ’s going to be a long week if this keeps up.

One of my inherited problems is coming to a head in the next day or two. Now I have the fun of dealing with that issue, which inevitably will bring up issues with the other inherited problems I have. Right now IÂ’m in a lose-lose situation. I cannot make resolve both in a pleasant manner; I knew this going in. Knowing that does not make it any easier on me. ItÂ’s going to be a long week if this keeps up.

Two of my more resistant employees where laughing and actually joking with me today. This was a situation I thought I would have to work on for months to get to this point. There was some serious headway made today with both of them in our employee-supervisor relationship. That makes me feel good. ItÂ’s going to be a good week if this keeps up.

DonÂ’t get me wrong; IÂ’m loving the new job. There are a lot of challenges and obstacles to overcome, but IÂ’m confident that IÂ’ll be able to do it. The other supervisors have been great in assisting me when I have questions and IÂ’ve been able to work out some problems with them.

I have not enjoyed work this much in years.

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March 20, 2006

Supervisor, Day 1

My first official day as a supervisor went less then stellar.

There were system problems at work on Friday after I left. That means that people could not clock out using the online time clock system we have. When that happens, the individualÂ’s supervisor is supposed to manually enter the punches the next day when the system is working. This morning when I arrived at work I had to correct the punches for 16 people. When I went to correct them I quickly discovered I STILL donÂ’t have access to the systems that I need to do my job. Right now 16 people have some screwed up paychecks coming their way as it was all due by 10 AM, and as of 4:30 when I left, I still didnÂ’t have access.

Then the next bit of fun I had was the joy of advising all of my new employees that they have to put in 5 hours of mandatory OT this week. If you want to make an impression with 16 new employees, this is the way to do it. Now mind that I didn’t say a “good” impression, just an impression. At least they chuckled when I asked them to hold off throwing things at me until the end of the day, as I didn’t want to sit around all sticky with fruit and vegetable juices all day.

Next I had to settle into my new desk. The person I replaced retired. She was a nice lady; she was so nice she left the desk completely loaded with all of her stuff, in case I needed it. Since she didn’t want any of it anymore, she just left it where it was, including personal effects. It took me 3 hours to go through everything that she left. I’ve always been part pack rat, but I have nothing on my predecessor. She had 3 staplers, 5 staple pullers, 6 boxes of staples, 34985720987459872459872346 pens, pencils and highlighters. 4 packages of legal pads, at least 500 hanging file folders, 30 pads of post it notes, more paperclips then I could fathom and an obscene about of pushpins. I also found reports and documents from 1993 as well as three boxes of floppy disks, 5 ¼ inch, that nobody seemed to know what they where and we don’t even have a computer in the office that has that size of drive so I could check out what they were. There where corporate reports from the 80’s and 90’s.

I have to go through every item before I can toss it. I feel like an archeologist digging through a newly found, untouched site. IÂ’ve only made it through about 1/3 of the drawers so far; I have a long way to go.

I canÂ’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

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March 16, 2006

IT good

Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come. In order to get me ready for my new position on Monday, they have to change my profile on the systems at work. In doing so they had to delete my current profile. When they did that I no longer have access to half of the systems I need to do my current job. Now my job is ten times more difficult. Fortunately I only have half a day left at it.

At least everything should be working when I take over as supervisor. If not this is going to be pretty darn frustrating.

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March 15, 2006

Good times.

Finally got home from work today. Not too bad, only about an 11 hour day. I was able to spend most of the day learning the aspects of my new position and about my new reports. For the first time in years IÂ’m excited about work. IÂ’m really looking forward to being able to work with these people and hopefully make their jobs easier.

I know there are a lot of rumors at work about me flying around. They are worried that IÂ’m going to come over and make all kinds of changes. After today I decided IÂ’m going to stick with my original game plan. If itÂ’s not broke, donÂ’t fix it. IÂ’m going to take the time to get to know my reports first and see what they need. If they have something that they feel would make their jobs easier, IÂ’ll see what I can do. Until then, I think IÂ’m going to leave things the way they are.

I just want them to be comfortable with me. From my own personal experience, I know there is nothing more stressful at work than getting a new supervisor and having them make a lot of changes.

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March 14, 2006

Busy, busy man.

One of the company offices in a different city was hit by a tornado Sunday night. Being the nice guy that I am, I volunteered to step up and do my job for both my office and their office this week. Meanwhile IÂ’m learning the systems and tasks for my supervisor position that starts on Monday. IÂ’m looking at 12 hour shifts for the rest of the week.

To say I’m busy is an understatement. Normally I wouldn’t do all of this, but if it was my office that was hit I would want someone to step up and help me. Yet, this whole time all I can think is, “My last week”. And a smile spreads across my face.

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March 13, 2006

I guess I am good.

It’s funny how someone goes from zero to hero when they are no longer going to be around. For the last 3 months I’ve been told that I suck at my job, which was one of the major motivators to put in for the position change. When it was announced that I had received the position, the manager I reported to suddenly became concerned “whether or not they could find someone capable of replacing me.” Her words, not mine. When they told her last Thursday that this Friday, the 17th was going to be my last day she flew into a panic.

An emergency meeting was called between her and my peers to go overÂ… can you guess? Reports of all things! ThatÂ’s right, the same crap weÂ’ve been going over for the last 3 months we have an emergency meeting to discuss. Why? Because IÂ’m leaving and they want them universal for when they find my replacement. We were all supposed to bring in a print out of each report we do and discuss how we use them. Then she was going to decide which reports she wanted us to use.

I went first, showed my examples, explained how they where used and where the data came from. Only one report that I use, the other office uses and they got it from me. When it was the turn of my counterpart from the other office to go over hers, she made the comment, “After looking at (Contagion’s) reports, I’m switching to those. They are quicker, they are easier to read and they have better data.” She then went on to explain that while mine take about 15-20 minutes to run, hers takes 1 to 2 hours. My one report system does the work that equates 4 of her reports.

Then we started going over one of her reports to track productivity. I was listening carefully, even though IÂ’m leaving, because this has always been something that is annoying to track. While my counterpart was going over her report, I couldnÂ’t help but ask questions and get clarification, make suggestions and in general improve the way it works. The manager was impressed because this was a problem they have had for 6 months and couldnÂ’t resolve. 30 minutes of my looking at it, I had pinpointed their problem areas, corrected it and solved a majority of their problems, including making sure they have the correct information.

This meeting that was supposed to last an hour, ended up going on for two hours. Now this week they want to pick my brain some more before I leave. It feels good to finally be appreciated for the roll that I had in the company, even if it is too late to change anything. They want to schedule more meetings this week to go over some other things, but I donÂ’t have a lot of time. ItÂ’s too bad they didnÂ’t take me up on my offer of helping them with these back in December, or ever couple of weeks since.

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March 10, 2006

Now I'm important.

It was a long day at work today. Between meetings (regarding my new position), my normal work and people who are interesting in my current position sitting with me to see if they want my job I barely finished anything. The next couple of weeks are going to be really hectic for me. I didnÂ’t realize how much blog fodder I was going to get from this whole escapade.

I’d post more tonight, but I’m getting ready to go out. One of my friends from work is relocating to Arizona and we’re having a going away party for him tonight. I will leave you with this tidbit; now that I have this new position the “Contagion sucks at his job” opinion went down the drain and has been replaced with “CRAP! Contagion is only has a week left before he transfers!”

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March 09, 2006

How to introduce yourself to your new employees.

When being introduced to someone of the opposite sex it is a good idea to not great them by saying, “I’m looking forward to having you under me.”

It could be taken the wrong way.

Fortunately for all that heard, there was much laughter.

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March 08, 2006

Contagion the Supervisor

I GOT IT! Well it looks like my charm paid out. I over came the stigma of it being a lateral transfer for the supervisor position. That means no more minions. Since IÂ’ll have direct reports IÂ’m going to have to be more polite in my nicknames for them. This of course means no more minion stories; IÂ’ll actually have to be nice to my reports. But maybe when I need to pull a stunt IÂ’ll go over to my old stomping grounds. The timing couldnÂ’t have been better either. My new manager (From the other office) is up to old tricks again. Now I donÂ’t have to care as that in a week IÂ’ll no longer be reporting to her.

And before anyone starts in on the EEOC BS about me getting the position; the candidate I beat out would have also filled more EEOC requirements than I did.

Now if youÂ’ll excuse me, IÂ’m going to go do a little celebrating.

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March 03, 2006

Interview Part 2

I had my second interview earlier today. Normally I have a good idea how the interview went. Either by the interviewerÂ’s body language or ad-libbed questions at the end gives you a feeling of the interviewerÂ’s oppinion. This time the two of them both sent off very neutral vibes, which is not a good sign. That and when I was leaving I went to shake one of the managerÂ’s hands and instead she wiped her nose with a tissue. She did have a cold and I honestly donÂ’t believe it was intentional. Her hand may have been moving toward her nose before my hand was extended in a handshake.

ItÂ’s not like I expect to get the position, in fact if you recall I didnÂ’t expect to make it to the second round. Right now I just look as if IÂ’m on borrowed time. If they do pass me over, then I will just apply again the next time something opens up. The experience of interviewing really was what I was looking for. This whole ordeal has been worth it just for that.

IÂ’ll know for sure by the end of next week at the latest.

I sure could go for a beer about now.

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February 28, 2006

Interviews

This morning I had my interview for the supervisory position. It was easy enough, IÂ’ve been in management long enough to know what kind of answers they wanted for the questions asked. My entire interview lasted about 50 minutes. Mainly because I always go into great detail when answering questions.

It also is because I turned on the olÂ’ Contagion charm. Most of you havenÂ’t seen this rumored trait in me. In fact most of you probably think this something IÂ’m making up. Those that have seen it in action know exactly what IÂ’m describing. ItÂ’s about 25% humor, 25% positive attitude and 40% friendliness and 10% subtle flirting (unless IÂ’m dealing with males and then I substitute with positive attitude). Over the years IÂ’ve relied on that charm to get three jobs, two promotions, a wife and countless other things.

Only four people, including myself, put in for the position. For three of them it would be a big promotion, and one of the others is a friend of mine. She wants this position bad, very bad. This would be a big promotion and raise for her. The last couple of times she put in for a supervisory position she was passed over, as was I. What IÂ’m wondering is what will happen if I actually get it and she is passed over again. ItÂ’s nothing but a change in duties for me, where for her it is an important promotion.

That train of thought is all for naught. They pretty much told me at the end of the interview that IÂ’m not going to get the position. Since itÂ’s not a promotion for me, itÂ’s a lateral transfer and they donÂ’t like doing lateral transfers. They would rather promote someone. Either way I should know for sure by the end of next week.

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February 24, 2006

Bet they didn't see that coming.

The next salvo in the Contagion work saga took place yesterday. At 3:00 PM the other office asst. manager (Whom I now report to as they are “combining” offices. Yea, this sucks.) comes over and asks me if I had received the new flows for customer surveys. I told her I hadn’t heard anything about it. She tells me she’ll have it forwarded to me and if I have any questions to ask her. She told me that I would be responsible for tracking them. Great, I needed more on my plate.

I leave work at 3:30 PM, so when the e-mail came I just glanced at it and figured I could set up the tracking it today when I had more time. By the time I actually received the e-mail it was about 3:15 PM. Over night I had forgotten about this new project until about 8:30 this morning. When I pulled open my email and started reading the new guidelines, I could feel my blood start to boil.

The first thing I noticed is that this “new” flow went into effect last week, everyone knew about it but me for a week now. Next I noticed that I’m not supposed to just track them, but I’m supposed to also review them. If there is a complaint on one, I am supposed to ensure that someone works it and responds to the member. Since this effects every inventory manager in corporation, I wasn’t as upset over that. The fact that they held it for a week before telling me pisses me off.

Those damn things spent a week building up and they all had to be out today. Every single one of them had to be touched, reviewed and assigned today. There were 304 of these things to be exact. Most of my day was spent sorting through these things and assigning them to people to work. Meanwhile my counterpart from the other office has been doing it for a week now, so hers was a daily manageable 40.

Now donÂ’t you go worrying, I did just fine. What they underestimate is my ability to deal with high-pressure situations and short deadlines. At 2:15 I finished the last one. Setting a divisional record, I cleared 304 surveys. I canÂ’t wait until Monday. In my mind I can picture the smug looks on their faces when they ask me if or why (because you know they wonÂ’t check first) all the surveys werenÂ’t done. Then I can smack them down with the hammer of Greatness that is me! The best part was that I took 40 minutes to donate blood and I still got them all done. Not only where they done, but they where done properly.

Now if youÂ’ll excuse me, IÂ’m going to go build up a mass of troops and kill me some French! Slaughtering the villagers makes me happy

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February 16, 2006

Here I go again.

With all the raging at work about how bad I am, it inspired me. They all seem to think I suck at my job. It seems that the current promotions have been based on incompetence and desperation to get someone out of a position. They even made a crack about this today in a meeting about an employee that is incompetent. I believe the exact quote was, “Well I guess we know who the next promotion goes to.”

Based on this, I put in for a promotion. Well, itÂ’s not really a promotion; itÂ’s a lateral transfer. IÂ’m putting in for a supervisory position. Yes, people will actually directly report to me if I get it. There will be no raise or even a tangible benefit to this. Why would I put in for it then? Because right now my current position is in a dead-end track, there are only 2 more positions I can promote to in it. Those positions open up rarely. The last time was 5 years ago, and the people in them donÂ’t appear to be going anyplace soon.

If I spend some time as a supervisor it opens up a lot more opportunities for me. IÂ’m all about the opportunities. Anything that makes me more marketable is a good thing. Sure, maybe itÂ’s wrong for me to work hard to make a better life for my family and myself. (At least that seems to be the message the government is sending me.) IÂ’m still going to do it. Maybe this will be the move that leads to my total world domination.

There is a very good chance I wonÂ’t get the position, not because IÂ’m not qualified, but because they donÂ’t like doing lateral transfers. They would rather promote someone into a position then transfer someone. ItÂ’s rare that they actually do a lateral. ThereÂ’s also the fact that IÂ’m not the most well liked person on the management staff, maybe thatÂ’s because I have a penis. Yes, you read that right.

The total management staff in our office is around 85% female. They are a very tight group and tend not like adding y-chromosomes to their numbers. Now, to be fair the office itself is about 75% female, so it could be the ratio of applicants to positions. Then again I know of 3 male management position individuals that were fired or demoted for trumped up harassment charges. I know personally two of them and the remaing one the other management admit it was BS.

Either way I guess IÂ’ll wait and see what happens. We just have to see what is mightier, sucking or the penis

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I'll take my experience over their ego.

It just never ends. Tuesday in our morning state of the office meeting, we were discussing same day responses to inquiries and the obstacles we have in meeting our goals for them. Out of the blue, the manager I now report to (from the other office) states she wants me to start running the reports and giving feed back to my minions that donÂ’t have below a 92% same day responses. This request comes at least once a year from someone who thinks they are the first person to come up with this brilliant plan. IÂ’ve been doing this job for four years and not once have I ever thought of doing that! < /sarcasm>.

In fact a couple of years ago, I was damn near being a Nazi about it. That is when I discovered that itÂ’s not possible to find out the exact percentage of the individual CSR. Sure, corporate gives us reports saying what each individuals percentage is, but itÂ’s wrong. They know it, and any Inventory Manager worth a damn knows it. Meanwhile my counterpart is smiling and nodding like itÂ’s a great idea. To burst the bubble, I spoke out.

“It’s not possible. The reports are inaccurate. They may show someone had an 80% closure rate, but it’s not their fault. They transferred the inquiry to someone else and they finished it. The person that originally took the call doesn’t get credit for the closure, even though it’s closed. I tried this a couple of years ago and all I succeeded in doing was dragging the morale through the mud. The employees end up getting upset that we are chastising them for doing something that they didn’t do, and rightfully so.”

Well that wasn’t good enough; nope they still wanted to do it anyways. Of course, the wonderful support from peers really helped me, that’s right; they cowered in their chairs not saying a word. This went back and forth for a good 15 minutes. Then I made this statement, “Look, I’ve done this before. It doesn’t work. All we succeed in doing is pissing off the employees. This has no benefit to anything. I can’t get the data you want and I am not about to stir up trouble and make a bigger headache for me just to prove I’m right. I’ve been using this software for 4 years, if you don’t want to learn from my experience then do it yourselves.” For the record, most of the people in the room had only been dealing with this system for about 8 months, and even my peers that have been working on it as long as I have acknowledge that I am the guru of what the software can and can’t do.

At the meeting, they decided to discuss this more at a later time. WednesdayÂ’s morning meeting arrives and there I sat. Sure enough in walks the other office manager all smiles with a stack of papers under her arm. As soon as the meeting starts, she says that her and my counterpart found a report that shows what each person's same day responses are. I kept my face schooled as she spoke about this great find. Just so you know, this report has been on the system for 6 years, they damn well should have known about it before yesterday.

She passes the stack around and wants everyone to take one. Soon enough all of the supervisors are Ooohing and ahhhing like the yes men they are. With a slightly smug look, the manager looks at me and says, “What do you think?” I grin big. Unknowing to her, she just played into plan perfectly. I figured they where going to try to blindside me, so I came prepared. Standing up I personally hand to each individual in the room a packet that includes an example of the same report. Next I proceeded on this little spiel, “I didn’t figure you would believe what I said yesterday so I took the liberty of gathering some examples of how this report is flawed. Since I didn’t want to spend much time on this, I figured two examples would be sufficient, if you would like more just come see me after the meeting. Here we have production on two of our employees. Employee A shows at a 100% same day response, employee B shows at a 90% same day response rate. Based on what you where saying yesterday you would want me to provide feed back to Employee B, while praising employee B, correct?”

They all acknowledged that was correct.

“Here is the problem. Even though the report shows that employee B had a 100% same day response rate, she never takes a phone call. She is one of my off the phone employees. Thus, she is closing other people’s inquiries. In fact if you look at employee A, two of her inquiries that she didn’t get counted for was closed by employee B. If you turn to page three you will see a separate report, this is a list of all the inquiries employee A started yesterday. You will notice that 2 of them where closed by employee B. They are the highlighted ones for your convenience. Now the other 3 of Employee A’s non-closures are sitting in our Technician queues.”

“Employee A did nothing wrong, all of her pends where proper. Yet you want me to give her feedback and tell her to do better? I think not. I think we as management need to give feedback to the people that are supposed to work these items and aren’t. To me, part of being a leader is knowing not only when to address and issue, but with whom.”

When I finished I think any one of them would rather have been hunting buddies with VP Cheney, than sitting in that room with me. They conceded my point and dropped it like a bag full of rotting mayo and horseradish. ItÂ’ll be interesting to see what happens today.

Posted by: Contagion at 03:54 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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