muckefuck | Part of the precipitate (Reply)

As I know I've bitched about before, it's evaluation time here, and the forms for my employees are due by the end of the day. I've been stuck on them all week. It's so tedious every year to try to come up with new ways of saying that they're all excellent. I mean, that, too; I wouldn't trade any one of them for any two people who have worked for me before.

The whole awful process also forces some evaluation of my workplace as well. I've long accepted that it's a hopelessly screwed-up place, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that it was no more screwed up than any other department here and still better overall than the last place I worked. But there are a couple of recent realisations which have cast doubt on at least the first prong of that.

The first was a discussion I had with a co-worker last week. Two years ago, he led a communications survey of the various departments. This consisted of him and another colleague visiting with each department in the absence of the heads and asking a series of questions. He describe a "chill" in the air when he met with ours which was unlike what he found anywhere else.

Then yesterday, our head called a meeting to discuss the ready reference shelves. Because I'd already discussed my ideas in detail with both the head and her assistant, I made a serious effort to sit back and let them run things. It gave me something of the sensation of watching the events unfold as an outsider. And it was appalling. My boss managed to present the changes in just about the worst possible way I could imagine.

I would've deemphasised the weeding and focused on the positive: The opportunity to upgrade to actually useful titles rather than the ragtag leftovers that have accumulated over the years. I also would've led with our intention to jump-start the "web subgroup" and give them the useful task of collecting and maintaining links to online resources which will make most of the print obsolete.

She did the reverse, of course. But what really got to me was the tone. She managed to put the most depressing spin imaginable on every aspect. The impetus for the weeding was having to move the resources so we could use these shelves to unify inflow of materials from another department; she made it sound like the other department was forcing us to do this. It was she who insisted on a central location, since she was convinced our people couldn't be trusted to remember to pick up the materials otherwise. She said as much, in pretty much those terms (although omitting to mention her responsibility). When it came--at last--to mentioning online resources, she ominously warned that members of the subcommittee "will be coming for you" to collect useful links.

And on and on. When I gave

monshu the blow-by-blow afterwards, his response was, "Frankly, I would describe that as passive-aggressive"--making it clear it was something she really didn't want to do while nominally agreeing to it. When I asked him what he expected the immediate outcome to be, he said, "I expect everyone wandered back to their desks without doing anything or talking to anyone." And he was right. Am I wrong that any healthy department would've concluded that meeting with a gaggle of co-workers cooperatively pawing through the items on the shelf?

I've always seen my boss as something of a bulwark against some of the greater idiocies of the institution, but now I'm beginning to wonder how much she personally is contributing to demoralising us all. I'm not sure where my conclusions would lead to, since she'll serve until death or retirement anyway, but there may be creative ways to mitigate some of the harm she's doing.