Now, I am really here to rant. No, no poetry. First, work. So, it is true - that manager or generally, your immediate superior, is only human. What I mean to say is that he or she has his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Truth be told, there is no perfect manager. Likewise, there is no perfect employee or subordinate. The trick to be successful in any position in a company, provided you don't own it, I think, is to find a good match in your superior. In other words, certain type of employee will thrive with certain type of superior, and vice versa. Though, from a management perspective, there is more than one way of managing - that is, in my opinion, saying that a superior may not manage employee A, in the same way he may have to manage employee B. But to follow this rationale, time is of essence: the superior needs it to understand each individual staff in a team. LIkewise, an employee will have to adapt to the so-called different "management style" - conveniently named, but basically a combination of the superior's management strengths and weakness - to get things done, to be of value to the superior and the organisation. Again, time is of essence here. This is of course based on the assumption that neither will quit the company.
So, we have a new manager since March this year. She spent, I would say, a substantially large amount of time out of office, getting struck in another project, till recently. A regular in all her working life till now. Now the rant starts. I have to start from the side-effects of her very unfortunate presence.
She has found a nemesis in the director of our department. Sure enough, our director is one tough customer. To deal with her, you need a cool head. To do things under the table. But she is a straight-arrow - could it be due to her previous working environment? She lacks the guts to make the tough decisions, to bend the rules even a little. And I guess it was just tough luck that most often, I was her victim. Though come to think of it, the real perpetrator behind the scene is the director, but the "crime" flows through her.
What happened was, in early April, due to Covid-19, we were to work in staggered working hours and only on certain days. At one point, the manager, on behalf of the director, requested that I cleared my last year's leave entitlement. With the manager's approval, and I confirmed with her twice, I applied my leaves on my working days. It was on the first day of my leave that I received a whatapps message from the manager, stating the director has requested me to cancel the rest of the leaves I applied, and to apply on the leaves on my non-working days (that is for the days, I was not supposed to work in the first place). The reason was my "non-working days" are actually not non-working days. I was to learn much later that the so-called "non-working days" are my WFH days. And there is a difference between working from home and being on leave. Yes, our director is "evil", unethical, really. I was to learn from MOM that this was not a correct method of clearing leaves, and most importantly, there was no mutual agreement.
A series of exchanges later, you got the sense that she was just half-heartedly doing the director's bidding - no processing on her own, no fight on her side. I was ready to approach my director directly with an email from MOM. Fortunately, or maybe not, there was a change of plan, and the clearing of leaves was put off. Cut to a few months later, facing an uncertain working arrangement, the director asked us to submit our individual leave plan. After it was approved by higher management, which I deemed to mean that both employer and employees have come to a mutual agreement, again I was to apply, for example, five days of annual leave to cover a week where I was only supposed to be in the office for two days. Again the manager was silent, even at one point, saying that I am "easy to manage", because I am a male. Meanwhile, my goddess, aka Hilter's Young, advised my colleagues on her working shift, to applied their annual leaves on working days, of course, behind the director's back.
Okay, I am tired. Will be back with part 2...
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