The Law and the way around it.

She, almost always, comes late to work (2-3 hours for the most part) and stays behind (2-4 hours after closing time).  She has often demanded that someone  stay with her while she is still at the office.  That means that a regular employee will have to come in at 7.30am and leave at 7.30 - 8.00pm.  So far her secretary, I and one more employee have been trying hard to cope but has been impossible mostly because while she's still at her house getting ready for work, we've already dealt with half of the working day. 

An open conversation was made about it.  Her secretary declared unable to stay after closing time for personal reasons,  another employee (Syria) that was asked said she couldn't possibly spend 5 days a week working from 8am to 8pm non-stop and when I was asked I said I m not exactly inclined  being a secretary in my spare time (spare time used sarcastically).   The final decision was hers of course and it was that Syria would fill in for the secretary from 3.30pm til whenever she decided the day was over.  Of course Syria would still be at the office in the early morning not being granted a flexible schedule and  she will get paid overtime...  that's if her overtime is in within the legal time limits.  

Work law defines as maximum allowed overtime compensation one and half hour after closing time every day, except Fridays and 2 hours after closing time on Fridays.  After this no overtime is paid and in certain cases both the Manager and the Employer are responsible for keeping the employee at work.  

Work law also defines that upper management is not to be paid any overtime as this is already included in their payment.  

Syria, has been staying at work, doing overtime on an average of 3 hours every day for the past 4 or 5 days. The printed timer indicated this clearly! I, being responsible for keeping practices lawful at work (at least for things that concern HR) printed out the relative legislation and brought it to the manager, willing to discuss the matter on every level (figure out if we could hire someone else, find out whether we could switch Syria's schedule to flexible etc).  

Her response was a mad woman screaming and blackmailing talking about bad work ethic and unacceptable practices. Because it is impossible to transfer the conversation as it exactly happened I will try to highlight the main points (her points actually):

• At her previous division, employees worked without getting paid  overtime.
• Employees in our division should voluntarily work overtime without wanting to get paid for it
• A good employee is the one who will dedicate his life to the bank.
• If the bank bankrupts and needs to lay off people, when she's asked she will have to be objective and point out who the good employees are (meaning those who work overtime without getting paid -by the way, this is pure blackmail).  Apparently efficacy, knowledge, ability to deal with issues and complicated matters are not good qualities unless you stay at work overtime without getting paid.
• She doesn't care what the law says, there has to be a way around it (in fact she didn't even read the law).
• I or whoever should find her a way to have someone stay with her til late cause she's very busy and needs help.
• She doesn't wish to talk about overtime any longer, this is ridiculous stuff
• Employees in our division are out of work when the time is over and this is bad work ethics -according to her-  (which is a lie because many of them stay behind if there's work to be done).
• When the time for judgement comes she will show us (didn't exactly phrase it that way but this was the essence of it). 
• Times are hard and we don't realize it (she's telling us! she who gets the highest level of pay, compared to all of us!) and we should give our best to the Bank that's supporting us (while she's straightening out periods and commas).   

By the time the conversation, that had turned into an argument, was almost over, she was screaming furiously and I was feeling the blood in my veins boiling - my  eyes ready to pop out of their eyeballs, but being generally cordial I did not answer to her insults for either my co-workers and myself. As a result, 5 hours after the actual event, I still think about it and feel my blood pressure rising.  

I think my time in this division is limited...  thought I'd be able to deal with her with humour but this is becoming a mission impossible.  

Things she does that are annoying

• Every day, she calls from her car, a little before she arrives to her parking lot, and asks the intern to meet her there and carry her plastic bags (with documents and other personal things) to the division. 
• Once her secretary leaves, she calls me on the phone every 10 minutes and asks me to her office.
• She belittles my co-workers in every given opportunity.
• She thinks she's the cleverest, most able, omniscient person in the division.
• She constantly mentions her connections with the upper management.
• She never fails to compare our work with her previous division's stating that our work is kindergarten material, compared to what she had to do there (yet she constantly fails to grasp the essence of our job). 
• She believes nobody in the division is capable to undertake any major responsibility and will often transfer her belief to the upper management. 
• She doesn't listen to what anyone has to say, instead she will always interrupt someone when he/she speaks, often without even being coherent.
• She feels compelled to congratulate herself whenever she confronts someone who's in the upper management.  
• She is extremely disorganized and will often lose documents that have been handed to her more than once.  
• She will insist on minutiae even though she realizes they are such, because she thinks this is a way to assert her authority.
• She will disrupt any cooperation to read an email or to answer a phone call, never to return to what has been left in the middle, either because she's forgotten it or because something else has been asked from her.  

Enough said for now... more to come later! 

The Car

The bank leases cars for its managers.  Pays for parking in the city centre, gas, services, insurance, sticker, tyre changes and free access to the city centre every day. 


Once you become a manager you receive note of the cars available to you. So the note came in November of the cars among which she would have to choose: A 1800cc Volvo S60, or a 1800cc Audi A4, or a 1800cc Toyota Auris Hybrid or a previously used 2000cc Mercedes Compressor.  


To this day, she hasn't yet got one and this is why:


To begin with, all the proposed cars are big for her size (she's 5 feet nothing).  All of them are higher horsepower than what she would like to drive but most importantly all of them are cars she didn't choose!  


Since then, a vast number of emails has been exchanged between her and the division handling supplies and leases. In those emails she's stated that she would prefer the A3 Audi, or another Toyota model or a BMW 1series. All of them are cars of almost the same or even lower price to the ones suggested but obviously not in the bank's lease deal with the said companies.  The bank has explained this more than once but she believes their approach is wrong and has been trying to convince them since.  


Meanwhile, she simply refuses to accept the bank's offers.  Instead, she is sticking to her old Renault Clio without any of the above mentioned allowances (except monthly gas payments) until the bank folks realize their car choices are very restrictive.


Good luck with that! 

Corporate vs Retail

It has been a while since I last visited here but 1. It has been busy, 2. it comes a point when you're fed up with idiocy and you're not into writing about it.  This day's events though are a driving force for ventilation so here I go:

The Bank has its CEO, under whom there are three Deputy CEO's under whom there are assorted General Mangers (GMs) who supervise Division Managers (DMs). 

My division has been supervised by a GM, woman, really effective, really knowing the job, really good at what she was there for.  Reachable, clear, helping  and mostly just.  The only problem has been her interaction with our Manager.  

You know how word of mouth is stronger than anything else, and you know how things, especially when they're bad, circulate into a corporation, with the speed of lightning.  So it's been circulating that lately their relationship (GM's and DM's) hasn't been as good as they'd want it to be and that our DM has on occasion refused to cooperate with the GM on at least three important projects.   In fact, I witnessed at least one of these three occasions.  

So we knew for sometime now that the GM did not exactly like the DM.  That alone brought some hope that we'd see our manager vanish from our division pretty fast... and this would be a somewhat logical assumption or hope, right?  Wrong!

Today we were transferred to a new GM. This normally shouldn't affect us, as most of us are there to just do our jobs, but many times in the past, we had to resort to the GM to solve in-job issues that the Manager didn't understand or didn't bother to respond to.  Plus, the previous GM knew what each of us was worth while the new one knows nothing about us or our job.

My phone rings, the manager's on the line...  

-You know, our tomorrow's appointment with the GM to set up 2011's goals is cancelled. 

(We've been working our asses off on the project and the meeting had already been cancelled once).

-Ah!...  Why?

-Because we now belong to another GM

-Ah!

(Long pause) 

(I hear her breathing on the phone and decide to talk).

-Why did "Barbie" (previous GM) decide to shoo us?

-She didn't decide to shoo us, she just realized that our division has nothing to do with the rest of the divisions she supervises and that we're more affiliated to retail banking 

(Our division's title is Corporate Key Account Services!) 

-Um, we're not retail banking, we're corporate banking.

-Well, now we're retail banking and we belong to the Retail GM.

-When did this change?

-It never changed, you were always retail banking but you hadn't realized!

(Really!)

(Long pause)

(Pause gets even longer and I start feeling awkward thinking she expects me to say something, but there's nothing to say).

Eventually she speaks:

-Did they approve of my laptop and data plan?

-No, they cut off data plans for managers, they only give those to GMs and CEOs and they're out of stock for laptops so you ll have to wait till they get the new ones.

-You really think we're corporate banking?

-Doesn't our division's title suggest so? Doesn't the fact that we deal with corporations suggest so? Doesn't the fact that we're dealing with authoritative work suggest so? Doesn't the fact that we set up or approve deals suggest so?

-Well, then how could the GM make such a mistake? 

-I don't think she made a mistake.

-No - no - no this must have been a mistake. One of you is wrong. 

-Okay.

-Okay.

The rest of the day went as expected...  shitty.  

Resilience

"Resilience: The physical property of a material that can return to its original shape or position after deformation that does not exceed its elastic limit." 


This could also describe her daily moods and voice, both of which can stretch with almost unlimited elasticity, to rebound within seconds.  And while with voice it can be expected, how she does this with her mood, is beyond me. Because any normal person will need a certain amount of time to come back to normal after an argument, but not her.  She will go berserk without a reason and when she realizes she's losing the argument she' ll end it with a pretentious smile and the word "kisses".    This leaves you wondering whether it's worth arguing with her at all. Besides... she entirely lacks the ability to listen to anyone but herself.  


Have you ever thought that being polite has nothing to do with what you say but how you say it?  Well, try to imagine someone's face after she's immersed her tongue in a squeezed half lemon, add squinted eyes to the already sour face, stretch your imagination a bit and try a squealing voice with a little staccato, picture her tiny little existence with hands on the sides palms facing outwards and make this person say anything you want.  Will it sound polite to you? 
That's her, when she asks people to do work.  


She thinks recycling has to do solely with paper and that the more paper you consume the more you contribute to the bank's recycling program. She entirely failed to realize the whole concept! 


  
  

The Coffee

She drinks instant coffee. Heat water, throw coffee in, stir and voila, ready to drink. That's the warm version, the cold version is called frappe...  but we' ll stick to the warm one for now.  

Second day at work and she needs her morning coffee. Calls the intern to ask for warm water.  

I ll transfer her exact instructions as the door was open and I could hear the conversation. 

"You take this cup and wash it well, then put it on a small plate and next to it put a tablespoon.  You warm the water not to boil, not too cold, when it's about to start bubbling you take it down and fill the cup, not to the top, leave a couple fingers to the top because i want to add milk."

Intern takes the cup and leaves her office mumbling.  

A few minutes later the intern delivers the cup to the boss's office... 

"No - no - no, you add a bit more water." 

(Crap... the intern's thrown all the remaining hot water away).  

Starts heating water again. Fills the cup, takes it to the boss.  

"No - no - no, the water's not warm enough...  you warm it a bit more."

Intern gets out of her office chuckling  (thankfully). 

Starts heating water for a third time -since we got the portion right it should be easy to get the temperature right- she thinks.  Refills the cup, delivers it to the boss. 

"NO - NO - NO (annoyed now)...  you've put too much water in there..." 

The intern breaks out laughing, i start laughing, boss's secretary starts laughing...  boss goes and heats her own water.  

Next day she tried the water thing with another intern...!

Merry Christmas!

Or merry as can be. 

While I'm writing about the past, new things happen so I decided to go with the incidents as they occur and when nothing happens, I will be writing about past events. In fear that I might forget to write about something really funny or odd or weird or even ugly I will keep this thing as updated as possible. 

It's Christmas Eve but a working day anyway.  The mood is festive, folks come to work a bit later, are dressed a bit fancier, bring something sweet or salty to share with each other, are nicer, kinder, smile more, and we're  all hopeful that the day will be a little shorter, a little merrier a little less professional.  

The boss, shows up around 10am, dressed in a blindingly bright red suit, carrying a plastic bag with previous day's paperwork that she'd taken with her  at home.  Smiles,  says good morning, rushes in her office, shuts the door and stays in there quietly for a few minutes.  A little later her door opens and calls for an intern who's working in my department to go fetch her a bunch of homoeopath medication but not from the pharmacy that's close to where we work cause their medicines suck!  Instead, the intern has to go farther to a better pharmacy.  This figured out, she brings out a document that she'd corrected at home and called for the one who'd written it, to get it back and deal with the corrections.  

Time was passing, phones were ringing, work was getting done, hopes were kept high for an earlier departure, the intern came and went a few times until she got the right homoeopath and this particular document kept going back and forth from (let's call this employee Olga) Olga's office to the boss's.  Was past noon... actually way into the afternoon when I heard Olga screaming and saw her supervising deputy manager storming into the boss's office.  The door closed behind them but their voices raised higher and higher and for one more time, penetrated the walls and doors and travelled into the entire division and to the nearby streets.   

Apparently this document was in constant motion between the two offices all day.  Corrections for periods, commas, bulletins, numbering, alignment, more commas and periods, apostrophes, tabs, spaces between words....  but nothing about the content!  From what I found out later on, she would correct one period, give the document back, they'd return it to be signed,  the boss would again give it back with something new added or excluded... never in content always in punctuation or form (sometimes even correcting herself).    

Things exploded when Olga lost her patience and started weeping and complaining that it has been impossible for her to finish anything for the past couple of months, that each document was a struggle, that the boss's corrections have no substance or meaning.  Deputy decided to solve the issue (rather radically) by confronting the boss.  

Niceties were exchanged in the context of "you are impossible, you can't be serious making such corrections all day", "talk better to me and don't throw papers on my desk", "I'm holding the papers I didn't throw them on your desk", "you did", "you are a liar and you're out of your mind", "get out of my office now", "I am getting out and not coming back", "tell Olga to come here immediately", "I m not taking orders from you"...   boss getting out of the office, screaming Olga's name, Olga rushing in -door open- "you've been impossible with your corrections", "you shouldn't mind corrections, I have been corrected millions of times in my life", "yes but for serious matters not for minutiae", "instead of crying and going to your deputy you should have come to me", "come to you for what?", "to say you were bugged by my corrections", "I was overwhelmed, you're clearly impossible with what you do to documents, particularly to ones that stay here and nobody sees them", "no one of you knows how to write a correct document and you have to learn"..... argument climaxed and I no longer had patience to listen to them so I closed my office door. 

It was way past our designated leaving time when things calmed down eventually and we were able to exchange wishes and finally go home, leaving the boss, the document and office life behind.  

Merry Christmas...  

P.S.  She (the boss) stated, she should be a doctor first and foremost (because she knows things about homoeopath  medicine -medicine she actually "prescribes" to everyone at the office who might complain for a flu or a headache- without her holding a license for that!).