Stella‘s comment from the last post reminds me of the great question we ask ourselves at work.  What is it with my manager?  You’d think she has her own boss, and set of issues and objectives that are totally different from mine, because she sure doesn’t seem to be focused on how I feel and what’s going on with me! 

What’s up with that?  Well, for starters, let’s all remind ourselves that since sh*t runs down hill on the job, she’s up to her ankles and we likely don’t even know about it.  And may never know about it.

The thing about managers is they don’t go looking for trouble, they have enough of their own, so if you have some you need to share and *then* it’s added to their plate.

I worked with a business analyst kinda person and our boss was a total when-I-say-jump-you-say-how-high kinda guy.   And he would pile the projects on this woman.  Please find out x asap.  Put together some proof of y by my friday meeting.  And she’d say, “what does he think I can do here?  I’m only one person and he’s sent me 12 urgent projects in the last 4 days.  I don’t even know where to start!”

So she got really good at dropping him an email that said “Here are the 12 urgents projects you’ve sent me in the last 4 days, please prioritize them so I know I’m working on the most important thing for you.” 

Well being a total control freak – he was *thrilled* to do this for her.  And then no issue, she could just focus on the first thing on her list and not the whole list and what this meant about how thoughtless her boss was. 

Hey, I know there are lots of lousy managers out there, and that’s a whole other issue.  But this guy just wanted to get the information to make a decent decision so we could be successful and all keep our jobs.  That was his job. And he was good at it.

Here’s how bad I am with this. I had this project dumped on my plate and then the dumpee was cheesed because it wasn’t done on the date he thought it should have been completed, but he hadn’t actually shared the date with me and it didn’t matter because I was too busy on other stuff anyway. 

So I mentioned it to my manager, mostly as a butt-covering, she should hear about this from me first move.  Well she actually had really good advice about how to get it done.  She suggested how to piece it up and what to delegate to the intern.  And the sad thing?  I love my manager dearly but I was surprised.  Because I believe I need to carry my burdens all on my own.  Because I believe help isn’t in the offing. Hopefully I’ll learn – just mention it.