The Awful Truth About My Workplace Leadership, Part I

Well, for the longest time, I have been steamed at my place of employment.  I am hardly the only one.  All across our system, people are steamed.  I am in a position to know.

But I can't do much about it.  I don't want to quit right now; I have a few small personal matters I want to tend to and keeping this job for a little while longer will suit me.  Also, the job market stinks on ice, as everyone knows.  So there's that.

But I do want to vent a bit, and--lucky you!--for various reasons, I have kept notes of some of the more outrageous things over the years.  I think I am going to make a series of posts about them.  I will alter names, dates, places, and subject matter enough to disguise who I am and where I work.  The very small number of people who already know who I am and where I work will not give me away. Many will find it immature and boring, but I will enjoy writing the rants.

These little rants will be written as though addressed to my company leadership.  Today's is short.  I hope you enjoy it.

Why don't I just quit, you ask?  Like I  say, I have my reasons. Plus, I like the job. It's the leadership that has me ready to pull out my hair.

******

Well, you've finally seen fit to send me to New Person's Class.  It's kind of funny.  I'm sure you would deny that sending me now, five years after they started giving these classes, and more than ten years after I started with the company, is related to the alleged attitude problem that you've given me you've recently accused me of having, and the lecture about which I've already meekly absorbed.  I'm sure you would remind me that when they started having these classes, I was told then that everyone would eventually have to take it, no matter whether they'd been with the Company five weeks or five years.

And they did say that.  I remember.  I think the unique demands of my weirdo schedule--and let's not forget that you set my schedule--made it practically impossible for me to attend, and everyone just kind of forgot about it.  But now that you've scheduled me to take the class in a few days, a few memories come to mind.

For instance, I remember why they started these classes in the first place.  We had high turnover throughout the system (Though the administrators, if you asked them directly, would deny this. "Oh, MOTW, we have a wonderful turnover rate," even though it was a running joke throughout the system at the time.) and it was hoped that the New Person's Class would slow turnover, give everyone a sense of being on the same team, a sense of our "mission."  This did no good, of course, because you have no idea what you're doing half the time and that kind of thing makes it hard for anyone to have a real sense of "mission."  Plus, your repeated habit (to be detailed in other posts) of royally screwing your employees makes it hard for them to feel like part of a team, class or no class.

At any rate, turnover is still high.

Another thing I remember: you have facilities in multiple places throughout the state, but for the first two or three years, the classes were offered only in the City!  Yes, you made your poor low-level staffers, people making just 8.50 an hour, drive a hundred and fifty miles in some cases, just so they could listen to you characters congratulate yourselves and tell them how well you treat your people.  Really.  It took you two or three years to start offering the classes in another part of the state, and even now, some people from some facilities still have to drive more than 90 minutes so they can partake of the wondrous rapture that was prepared, if I recall correctly and I think I do, by one of your little office drones that has never actually been in the field and done the kind of work that we do.

You thought you were building team spirit with that?  No, what you were building--adding on to, really, you've been building it for years and years--was a sense of resentment and a deep-seated conviction that you were a collection of clueless horse's rears.  I know.  I've been all over the system and talked to people.

You know,speaking of that negative attitude you accused me of having, it'll be interesting to see how they handle that. You see, I also know that people used to see me in the class material. It seems I am a legend in customer service. It seems, according to some (including some of you), that I am "the most beloved employee in the system." So I wonder if my smiling face is still in the class material. It would be rich if it is.

Oh, don't worry.  I'll go, and I guarantee you'll be told later, if you ask, that I was tremendously enthusiastic and a positive element in the class.

Or didn't you know?  Acting runs in the family.