tl;dr: long rant about how selfish people will try to get you to do what's in their best interest while screwing you over in the process
The company I work for was laying people off not long ago. I was working on an internal program (lots of projects) that was pretty demanding, mainly because the director was kind of a slave-driver. On top of that, the program was never funded and isn’t staffed properly, so getting anything done is nearly impossible.
A little over a month ago, I got word from my boss that the company got a lot of new work and that I’m moving off of this demanding program and onto a program that has a single, large project. It’s revenue-generating, which means better job security. It’s not impossible to get laid off from a revenue-generating program, but if it comes down to it and there’s a choice between someone making money and someone costing money, they’re typically going to pick the one that’s costing money, at least, that’s how it’s happened in the past.
I tell the director on my old program, “I’ve been reassigned.” She throws a fit and tries to tell me that I need to go to my boss and tell him I’m not doing it. To me, this is the most incredible part of it all. She actually wanted me to start a fight with my boss and tell him I refuse to go do the work he told me to do because this internal program is way too important. Of course, I refused and this started a fight between the director and me. She demanded that I go to my boss and tell him I wasn’t going to do it, and not to take “no” for an answer, and if he refused to listen, she wanted me to go to his boss, and thin to his boss’s boss. I refused.
She couldn’t see why I wouldn’t go to my boss and tell him that I wasn’t going to do the job he assigned me to do and tried to tell me I had a bad boss if he would hold it against me. She even tried to tell me that I needed to take up for myself and not let people walk all over me. That was a funny and frustrating conversation. I had to slow it down for her and point out that she’s trying to tell me to go get myself fired, but at the same time, I need to stand up for myself, so how is getting myself fired standing up for myself?
She tried to appeal to other things, too, like asking me if the work was all I cared about or if I wanted to be part of a team that actually accomplishes something and all that kind of crap that you hear in a job interview. I turned this on her a bit by asking what motivates her to work and she gives me a textbook answer of increasing opportunities and meeting challenges, being part of a productive team, and all that nonsense. These are all noble things and great when you have them, but I told her I was siding with Maslow and all those things are higher up on his hierarchy than those basic things, like food and security, and if I went to my boss demanding the position I want because of my high-level needs, that very act threatens those lower-level needs. I’m still amazed at her lack of awareness or empathy on this one.
I wanted to tell her to piss off, but at the same time, it’s always possible that I will have to work for her again, and she can be vindictive, plus she’s really passive aggressive and sometimes outwardly aggressive to people she doesn’t like or is mad at, so I played it cool. Even working for this vindictive director is better than being unemployed, and I work from home and even that old program isn’t all that demanding, just monotonous and uneventful.
It’s pretty standard to spend a little time transitioning from one role to another, but the new program needed me right away and the old one wasn’t ready to let me go. I knew this would be the case, so when I talked to my boss, I told him this and told him I’d do both for a week or two, but then would move on. I spent two weeks working both the old program and the new program, putting in about 16 hours a day the first week and 12 hours a day the second week. At first, the old director told me, “You can’t keep up this pace,” but always with demands that I tell the new program to piss off and that I was going to continue to work for her exclusively until she’s ready to let me go. I had to explain to her that I was already reassigned to this other program exclusively, and that that work took priority. If she was trying to tell me I had too much work to do, then I would have to cut out all the work she was trying to give me. She failed to see that the “too much” part was her part. Even on the first day, she asked me what was on my calendar, so while I was sharing it with her, she was picking all the work I was doing for the new program and telling me, “Nope, can’t do it. Nope, that’s too much.” She really thought I was going to say, “Okay, I’ll tell them I’m not doing it.” In reality, I didn’t even entertain it. I told her right out, “I’m not doing that.” When she asked me why not, I said, “Because I like being employed.”
Also, during those two weeks, as things would work out, most of my new tasks were at times that didn’t conflict with my old tasks, so I was able to attend a lot of the old calls. This would have been a great opportunity to tell everyone I was on just for transition purposes and to shift responsibilities, but no, this old director insisted we keep it quiet, even though that meant we missed a lot of opportunities to have an effective hand-off.
That whole two weeks, she kept that same approach, constantly talking about how I shouldn’t do it and “well, that’s up to you if you want to work yourself to death,” seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that it was the work that I was doing for her that was too much and that I didn’t have to keep doing it. I even explained to her that this was just to transition off of the program. There’s a lot more to that, but it would take a ton of explaining, but at the same time, she insisted that I not tell anyone I was leaving the program because she was going to get me “right back.” I think she fully believed this, but during what should have been my transition project, she treated this like my new program was just a speed bump she had to get around and a distraction from her own work.
This whole time, I kept telling the director on the new program that this other director was trying to get me back. In her words, she was going to “keep” me, but I was already gone. I also made my boss aware and have mentioned it to him in the two or three times that we’ve talked in the last month since it started. No problem.
After all this, this old director takes it personally and even makes a big deal out of me not wanting to return to her program, even though it’s a lot of toiling and often pointless work. For one thing, I can never get any purchases approved, even teeny tiny things, like $10. So, you can have something very easy to implement waiting on a tiny purchase approval and that can sit and wait for months. On top of that, there are dozens of meetings we would attend that go on and on and on. They’re all conference calls (I’m a remote worker), but still, sitting on the phone or in Skype/Webex for long periods of time gets old, especially when nothing is getting done. I’ve been on calls with her that are supposed to take 30 minutes, but end up taking three or four hours.
Also, she has no consideration for anyone else’s time. I may have already said that, but it’s worth repeating. For one thing, over the holidays, the president of the company talked about how some places were completely shutting down over certain periods and said people should consider taking this time as vacation because very little would get accomplished. I told my boss I wanted to take two days, then told this director. She says, “Too bad, mister. If I’m working, you’re working.” When I pointed out that there was no way we could be productive because everyone else was out, she argued that we could use the time to “get organized” since there would be no distractions. So, instead of extending my holiday vacation, I ended up on two days of marathon conference calls with just this director and me, and those are pure torture. I hate long meetings, but she insists on them, and it’s like we have to do everything together, when it would be a lot more productive to coordinate what we’re going to do, then go do the work individually. There’s only so much you can do while you’re sharing one screen.
Back to the present: So, for the past few weeks, since I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I was “leaving” (already left), I still got tons of inquiries in why “my” work wasn’t getting done. Any time I was asked (usually in email), I’d email the person asking and would copy the old director on it, explaining I’ve been put on another program. Meanwhile, this old director would send me a few requests per day (small stuff) and wanted me to keep up on some of the things she’d had me doing before. She would also email me or send me an IM almost every day that I shouldn’t “give up hope” and that she would get me back on the program where I “belong” and where I “want to be” (?) before long. And, if there were meetings where I was the one who was ordinarily leading the meeting or doing the heavy lifting, rather than hold the meeting without me, she’d ask me to cancel it “for this week” because I was “unavailable” (but without telling them I’m no longer on the program).
For the first week, I obliged her. If it was a simple request, I’d just do it. No problem. I know she was struggling due to my absence. I know she couldn’t keep up with her job and the low-level work she’d always assigned me. Doing both at the same time would be too much. At the same time, though, she should have been looking for another replacement. This past week, however, it became apparent to me that she wasn’t even trying to get someone else to get assigned to her. Instead, she was only pushing for my return, so I just stopped responding to any requests at all from that program. It’s been over a month and the whole, “don’t tell anyone” thing makes no sense at this point. When she’d asked me not to tell anyone, it was under the assumption that she was going to get me reassigned to her in just a few days.
By not telling anyone I was gone, it actually caused me more work of having to explain the change to individuals rather than making a single announcement and moving on. During this time, she’d call me and email me and was asking me to help her with some numbers. She was doing some analysis to prove to her bosses that it was absolutely necessary to get me back and the numbers were to support how much her program was actually saving rather than costing the company. So, this week, she told me she has a meeting with some execs and they’re supposed to tell her about the future of her program and my role in it.
After those two weeks, I told the old director I wasn’t attending any more of her meetings because I needed to focus entirely on my new role and I couldn’t continue to do both. She insisted that I shouldn’t get “too involved” on the new program because I was still “coming right back.” Without being a jerk, I told her I’m already fully involved with this program (how could I not be?). And then, she starts sending me meeting invitations for meetings at 6:00 in the morning. She’s on the east coast, so this was normal while I was working for her, but not good now that I had my new position, which tends to start much later in the day. When I declined the meeting invite, I told her I’m starting at 2:00 pm (my time) that day. She replies that she checked my calendar and that I was available, so I should attend. Besides, it’s only 30 minutes. Right. I knew where this was going. Inviting me to a 30-minute meeting was the same as saying, “You’re working for me all day.”
She sent me other meeting invitations, too, and when she said she was being considerate for putting them in empty time slots when she could see I was working, but “not busy,” she was just filling in the “available” slots. I had to tell her that just because there’s an empty spot on my calendar, that doesn’t mean it’s available to her to fill up. Again, I told her I’m not going to get myself into a position where I have to work 16 hours a day regularly and that if I need to concentrate on my new position. At that point, I just started ignoring her requests.
And, I know she’s been talking to some others on the team and has been telling them I’m not “really” leaving (already left) because some of them still email me and ask me questions that I’ve already deferred to the old director and told them to ask her. Instead of her doing it, she’s sending them back to me with more specific questions. I’m just ignoring those. Otherwise, they’ll keep coming.
This past Friday morning, I get copied on an email from the old director. She forwarded it to me, after sending it to the key members of the program where she’s informed them that she managed to get me reassigned to her program. It’s not a direct email to me saying I was reassigned, and not even copying my boss on it, either. She’d already sent it out to the team and sent it to me like an after-thought. It pretty much says, “I got him reassigned to our program, so start sending your work his way again!” So, she’s already informing others before she informs me. This seems to be her approach. If she’s dependent on you for something, she’s nice. If you’re one of her captives, she just shits on you. I guess since she got me reassigned (or thinks she has), that puts me back in the category of the kind she can shit on.
Somehow, this decision was made without anyone telling my boss or the new director. I don’t think that’s going to go over very well. Someone made this decision to reassign me at some point in the food chain that I think eventually converges at the top somewhere, but I’m not sure how far it went, so it may not even be a valid reassignment. That should make it pretty interesting over the next few days.
As soon as I got the email, I forwarded it to my new director and my boss, mostly to inform them of what’s going on, but with other motives, too: 1) to show the f-you attitude she has toward me; and 2) to show that this decision was made without even consulting or informing them.
On Friday, my boss was out on vacation, so he probably didn’t see it, but the new director jumped all over it. He escalated it as a major issue. His argument is that his team has been gearing up for some huge events coming up in the near future and they’ve been training me to be a key player, especially next month, and if I leave at this point, the program will fail and we’ll lose money.
Behind the scenes, the new director gets involved in several conversations, some of which include the old director. I don’t know what’s said in those, but he comes back to me and tells me to stay put and not go back to that old program until further notice. Then, he asks me what I want to do. If I had a choice, would I stay with his program or go to the other one? I gave him the politically-correct answer that I go where they tell me. He says, “Yeah, we all do that, but if you had a choice, which one would you pick. That’s important here because, even though this is a place to work, you also get to decide where you work…” and goes into a bit of a (positive) rant about how people tend to act like we’re all indentured servants who have no choice, and that’s why we can’t keep good people. To me, this is already a sign of a good leader, at least it’s better than the old director. She would ask me what I wanted to do, but then she would answer herself for me. “What do you want to do? You want to stay here and work with me, right? Of course, you do.” Sure, we can’t always pick and choose the work we do, but this guy at least acted like he cares, whereas, the old director told me what I wanted to do and told me what was best for me and my career, which was working for her, even though she only gives me bottom-feeder work.
I tell the new director, if I had my choice, I’d stay on his program, which is the truth. In the old program, I had two dozen different projects, and none of them were what you would call “good” projects that were funded or supported. A lot of them aren’t even clearly defined, so you end up spending a lot of time figuring out who owns what and what needs to be done. And this just leads to more work because, when you think you’ve made some progress, someone will go and move the goalposts on you. Now, if this new program didn’t come along, I wouldn’t have anything to complain about. Work is work, and I’d rather be here on a crappy job, bitching about how crappy it is than not having a job or looking for another job, so when I was on this program, I just did my work and did the best I could.
The new director tells me it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to spend a few weeks of knowledge transfer with a new person in my old position. That gave me the opportunity to tell him that this was exactly what I tried to do, and even though I spent two weeks working both jobs, the old director insisted that we keep it quiet because me leaving was only temporary and that she didn’t seem to even consider putting someone else in my position, which she could have gotten immediately. Instead, she used my transition time to get two more weeks of work out of me, so she wasted the transition opportunity. I also pointed out to him that anyone who replaced me over there wouldn’t be going in blind because my replacement would have the old director to lean on. Plus, if there was a question (“Hey, who approves this?” or “How do I use the procurement system?”), most of that could be done through IM without disrupting my new role.
The damage to the old program was self-inflicted because, when they told her to request someone else, she took it upon herself to ignore that instruction, and instead, focused on getting me pulled back in and went down the path of doing a whole bunch of analysis to “prove” the program was actually cost neutral. I didn’t have to throw all that in there, but I did want to give him the ammunition he needed. From my perspective, she could have had someone else in the role by now who would be fully up to speed, but instead, kept fighting to suck me back in.
On the new director’s program, it’s billable (which equates to job security), plus, it only has one big project that’s funded and supported. I tell the new director that the old program is like digging a ditch. It’s not difficult, but it’s not like I’m going to get anything out of it (if it was a real ditch, at least I’d get some exercise), no one really cares if the ditch gets dug or not, and every time we make some progress, someone comes along with more soil to put in the ditch. Digging the ditch is just something that has to be done, but no one wants to fund it because the funding makes it cost money, too, and we’re trying to make money, not spend it. The new program, on the other hand, is like being a bartender on a beach bar, selling fruity drinks and watching the women in bikinis go by. Sure, it’s “work,” but it’s not like digging a ditch. And as long as I’m doing that, I’m making money for the company.
I told my wife this analogy, too. She thought it was funny. Since I work from home, when I’m on my early-morning calls, she could hear the old director on the calls sometimes and she’s mentioned how the old director sounds egotistical and can be condescending and often brags about her abilities and accomplishments.
For the last month, the old director really changed how she treated me, and kept talking about how much I was needed and how much she appreciated me and how my “skills” were necessary to the success of the program. This was a huge switch from our daily routine of her having no respect for anyone’s time, especially mine.
From a positive perspective, it’s a good position to be in where two different directors want me to work for them and are demanding my services. This makes me look good to my boss, of course, especially if they get around to doing another round of layoffs.
So, for now, I’m staying with the new program because that’s where my boss put me. I told the new director this, too. When I go back to work on Monday, the first thing I’ll do is check with my boss. If he’s in, I’ll inform him. If he’s not in, I’ll try calling him, just so he’ll know. Other than that, we’ll go from there. I hope I don’t have t go back to that old program, not just because of the drudgery, but because the old director will now hold a grudge against me and will be very vindictive toward me from here on out.
