12:00 Question from Michaelskis

[Maister]

I don't know WHY I am doing this for Michaelskis. I mean, not only is he not here to post the question, but now I am thinking up the question too. What does this have to do with Michaelskis at this point??? Oh well, since I am still raging about becoming a drive-thru order taker for Wendy's (with my telephone headset), I'll keep the question close to home: What is the pettiest, most micromanaged job demand ever made on you at any job you have held? I expect we'll hear some good ones.... :-#

 

[ludes98]

How about having to keep track of your time for job codes on a 5 minute basis? Oracle sucks.

 

[Rumpy Tunanator]

They made you wash your hands at every food place I've worked at. I mean come on, what the customers don't know, won't hurt them

Nothing petty here yet, although I find myself doing more and more work for people, that they're suppose to be doing. Postal anyone?

 

[Chet]

Having to explain to a union secreatary why another union secreatary's job was in a class comparable to her own and worth the same pay, because in her words, "That girl is a dead weight and I do five times the work for the same pay." UGG You're fifty-what years old. Grow up or file a grieveance.

 

[michaelskis]

Yea... I have a day off... I am about to take a group of HS students from my church for a weekend retreat to Nortre Dame (but I thought I would check in with everyone.

I would have to say it was when I spend a summer working for the Evil one... WALMART. I worked in the greenhouse, and I have my super visor, then the green house manager, then the section manager, then the retail manager, then the assistant manager, then the store manager, then the district manager, then the regional manager... (that is all that I had met...)

I think that everyone was a manager but me#&^%$ and I had more experence working in greenhouses then all of them put togeather, but did they think I knew anything about plants or landscaping NOOOOOO.

-maister.... thanks for the help buddy... and why did you help me out, the 6 of a hard to get beverage that I had "shipped" in was sitting on your desk this morning!

 

[Zoning Goddess]

Being told I had to shut the window blinds when I ate lunch in my office, in case a member of the public saw me, they would think a government worker was goofing off.

 

[Wannaplan?]

When I worked in casino surveillance, my department head asked me and two other camera-goons to retrieve all tapes for a certain time period - that's about 200 video tapes - in which a card counter allegedly came into the building. The object was to determine what he did prior to sitting down at the high-stakes table. Then, we had to make notes on these poorly formatted {ahem} "worksheets" the department head made. It was horrible. Luckily, at the end of my shift, as I was briefing my replacement, she said, "Oh, you mean Mr. Moneybags. Yeah, we saw him come in a couple of days ago. I just forgot to write it down in the shift log." Ugh. Thankfully I had only made it through about 6 tapes.

 

[Cardinal]

On the job training by an a$$hole at a company that will go nameless. "You want to be sure when you have a rental car that when you get out of the car you don't leave your keys in the car when you lock the door. If you leave your keys in the car it can take hours until you get someone to open it." Wow! They never taught me that in grad school!

 

[Seabishop]

Not exactly micromanagement but cleaning up a kid's vomit in the lobby of McDonalds was pretty bad.

 

[Maister]

-maister.... thanks for the help buddy... and why did you help me out, the 6 of a hard to get beverage that I had "shipped" in was sitting on your desk this morning!

I knew there was a reason in there somewhere.....

 

[Maister]

Until yesterday's headset debaucle, for me it would have been when I was a jarhead a directive came down from on high one day that spelled out what one was expected to say while answering the phone. Now normally when one of these directives came down folks took it with a grain of salt, but it so happened that in the section I was working in there was a certain sgt. who was bucking in the worst way for staff sgt, who somehow believed that by harrying his (subordinate) coworkers ceaselessly about following the letter of this directive, he would prove himself to be a rising star in the brass' eyes.....well, when I answered the phone I was required to say "Good afternoon (or morning), Marine Air Control Group twenty eight, Group Headquarters squadron twenty eight, S-2 section. This is Lance Corporal Mais speaking. You are speaking on an unsecured line. How may I help you"
Go ahead, say it out loud. Now say it out loud again. Takes about 10 seconds to say it intelligibly. Usually people calling would cut you off mid-greeting. When I complained to Sgt d$ck head he would respond "I can't believe what a whiner you're being, it ONLY takes 10 seconds is that so much to ask?" Maybe once but I figured it one time that I probably spent nearly an 8 hour shift over the course of a year reciting that stupid littany..... |-)

 

[Bangorian]

Billing every single copy I ever made. The salary paid for the time spent doing this far outweighed whatever paltry amount we billed our clients. :-#

Perhaps for major projects or major submissions (12 copies of a 300-page binder caould get expensive I suppose).

 

[Richmond Jake]

What is the pettiest, most micromanaged job demand ever made on you at any job you have held?

Having to get to work on time. It makes for a long day when you have to get to work on time. ;-)

 

[Dan]

On a planning-related basis, I got yelled at one once -- I mean literally yelled at, along with insults like "you don't know what you're doing, do you?" -- for not writing "preliminary plat" as "Preliminary Plat" in a staff report, as was the style in the agency. (coughOlathecoughCoynesucks), I got yelled at by the principal planner for just about everything else tnat went contrary to the unwritten way he liked staff reports formatted, but that was perhaps the most trivial.

I supervised another planner, and reviewed her staff reports. However, if the principal planner found anything wrong, guess who got taken to the woodshed? Yup ... me.

Being a principal planner now, and supervising two other planners, I consider my role as a mentor, and I try to support any decisions they make. I'm picky when it comes to avoiding "plannerese," but writing "the said lot split is (something something something)" just gets a bit of red ink, not a beating.

 

[Queen B]

This is a good one.
Appraiser's office. They hire two of us for the summer to measure buildings.
Then they train us for a solid week on how to do it.
Then they finally have us go with them and watch them do it.
Then when we finally think we are out there on our own. They follow around and remeasure everything that we have just done. This goes on the whole summer.

So why did they hire us if they were going to do the work themselves???