wasabe64
Flashaholic*
It\'s not you, it\'s me...
At least that's what I told my boss as I handed in my notice of resignation.
Background: a department without capable leadership for over 4 years. In the beginning (6 years ago), we were a department under the leadership of a consultant (a case study for conflict of interest), but this consultant was very tightly managed by a VP in finance (another conflict of interest) and all was good. This VP resigned four years ago, and our IT department slowly degenerated into h*ll. The only staffer that had an easy time of in this climate of abuse and weak/apathetic to non-existant leadership was the sleaziest member of the department. The rest of us tried to do our jobs and kept our heads low, waiting for the eventual changes in management, or a better job opportunity to come along.
Two months ago, a new manager was hired for our department. Things started to look up, but the department sleaze seemed to spend at least an hour in the new manager's office every morning. The purpose of that politicking became apparent when the new manager tried to have me work with the sleaze at every opportunity. The new manager viewed it as mentoring, I viewed his involvement in any project as a ticking time-bomb. I have seen this guy play the perfect zero-accountability game in our severely impaired department, reaping credit for work he did not do while avoiding taking any responsibility for any problems. I tried every trick that I could to avoid working with this guy (waste of resources for a simple tasks, I was not qualified to train, he was not qualified to learn). So the last two months have been a cat-and-mouse game in my department.
In the process, I wound up looking very uncooperative, but I did not care about that.
The straw that broke this camel's back was over a screw-up in communications in our department.
I was contacted directly last week over a system failure and I blasted the guys contacting me for breaking with protocol and contacting me directly. Their response was that they had tried contacting the on-call pager but had not had a response in over two hours. Okay, there was no fighting with that since that is an internal IT problem and they were only a customer whose business was being adversely affected. I resolved the problem and let it go.
The following day, I went and spoke to the manager about this screw-up. He called in the entire department and asked who was on the week's pager rotation. Did I mention that the pager rotation was set up by the sleaze? Well, he responded that I was on duty that week due to a change in the rotation, and that the pager was left on my desk where I would not miss it.
I hit the cieling!
I asked if he bothered to even attempt to notify me of the change. He just stood there and stared at me dumbfounded.
The manager stepped in and said that that sort of behaviour (about the pager handoff) was totally unacceptable. We basically had the sleaze dead to rights. Or did we?
When the sleaze was able to speak again, his first and only response was to claim that another staffer and I had done this to him in the past. Perfect zero accountability game. Never pulled that stunt, never will. I responded to that effect and the manager was good enough to maintain focus on what the sleaze had done and not be sidetracked into a more generalized discussion.
I immediately went to my desk after the impromptu meeting had broken up and composed my letter of resignation.
I waited for the first opportunity to speak to my manager and resigned.
He asked if this was a knee-jerk reaction over the pager incident. It was not. In the interest of mainting a good reference, I went through a song-and-dance about the lack of growth in the department prior to his arrival and the nights of soul searching about continuing to work there now that the management of the department was in more capable hands. In the end, I told him that I had already decided that it was time for me to move on, and that the day's incident was merely a strongly contributing factor. It's not you, it's me... The truth is that he had done a lot to improve working conditions for IT, and more improvements were on the way. I made that point clear to him and we concluded our business.
Lessons learned:
Weak leadership is a dangerous thing, nothing good will ever come from it.
As mentioned in other job-related threads, ***-kissing is a required to get ahead, but don't get carried away.
No job is ever so necessary, that you can't walk away from it. BTW - I start me new job in two weeks.
In a climate of open communications and responsible management, sleazes can be exposed for what they are.
Don't quit your job in an attempt to hurt someone else (don't make accusations during exit interviews). Quit in order to take care of yourself.
Thanks for 'listening'. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
At least that's what I told my boss as I handed in my notice of resignation.
Background: a department without capable leadership for over 4 years. In the beginning (6 years ago), we were a department under the leadership of a consultant (a case study for conflict of interest), but this consultant was very tightly managed by a VP in finance (another conflict of interest) and all was good. This VP resigned four years ago, and our IT department slowly degenerated into h*ll. The only staffer that had an easy time of in this climate of abuse and weak/apathetic to non-existant leadership was the sleaziest member of the department. The rest of us tried to do our jobs and kept our heads low, waiting for the eventual changes in management, or a better job opportunity to come along.
Two months ago, a new manager was hired for our department. Things started to look up, but the department sleaze seemed to spend at least an hour in the new manager's office every morning. The purpose of that politicking became apparent when the new manager tried to have me work with the sleaze at every opportunity. The new manager viewed it as mentoring, I viewed his involvement in any project as a ticking time-bomb. I have seen this guy play the perfect zero-accountability game in our severely impaired department, reaping credit for work he did not do while avoiding taking any responsibility for any problems. I tried every trick that I could to avoid working with this guy (waste of resources for a simple tasks, I was not qualified to train, he was not qualified to learn). So the last two months have been a cat-and-mouse game in my department.
In the process, I wound up looking very uncooperative, but I did not care about that.
The straw that broke this camel's back was over a screw-up in communications in our department.
I was contacted directly last week over a system failure and I blasted the guys contacting me for breaking with protocol and contacting me directly. Their response was that they had tried contacting the on-call pager but had not had a response in over two hours. Okay, there was no fighting with that since that is an internal IT problem and they were only a customer whose business was being adversely affected. I resolved the problem and let it go.
The following day, I went and spoke to the manager about this screw-up. He called in the entire department and asked who was on the week's pager rotation. Did I mention that the pager rotation was set up by the sleaze? Well, he responded that I was on duty that week due to a change in the rotation, and that the pager was left on my desk where I would not miss it.
I hit the cieling!
I asked if he bothered to even attempt to notify me of the change. He just stood there and stared at me dumbfounded.
The manager stepped in and said that that sort of behaviour (about the pager handoff) was totally unacceptable. We basically had the sleaze dead to rights. Or did we?
When the sleaze was able to speak again, his first and only response was to claim that another staffer and I had done this to him in the past. Perfect zero accountability game. Never pulled that stunt, never will. I responded to that effect and the manager was good enough to maintain focus on what the sleaze had done and not be sidetracked into a more generalized discussion.
I immediately went to my desk after the impromptu meeting had broken up and composed my letter of resignation.
I waited for the first opportunity to speak to my manager and resigned.
He asked if this was a knee-jerk reaction over the pager incident. It was not. In the interest of mainting a good reference, I went through a song-and-dance about the lack of growth in the department prior to his arrival and the nights of soul searching about continuing to work there now that the management of the department was in more capable hands. In the end, I told him that I had already decided that it was time for me to move on, and that the day's incident was merely a strongly contributing factor. It's not you, it's me... The truth is that he had done a lot to improve working conditions for IT, and more improvements were on the way. I made that point clear to him and we concluded our business.
Lessons learned:
Weak leadership is a dangerous thing, nothing good will ever come from it.
As mentioned in other job-related threads, ***-kissing is a required to get ahead, but don't get carried away.
No job is ever so necessary, that you can't walk away from it. BTW - I start me new job in two weeks.
In a climate of open communications and responsible management, sleazes can be exposed for what they are.
Don't quit your job in an attempt to hurt someone else (don't make accusations during exit interviews). Quit in order to take care of yourself.
Thanks for 'listening'. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
