He Said, She Said

Remember the post a few months ago about the small family-owed company that I worked for? It was run by an insane wife and an over bearing husband? The story gets better.

Every morning I would get a call from the male owner, I will call him "Jeff" (for those keeping score we not have Dot and Jeff, the owners) Any way, Jeff would call me every morning to find out how many hours we had billed the day before. We had billable hours targets and when we would miss that target he would read me the riot act. This man had no personality and even less tact. The main issue, and there were many, is that Dot would never enter her billable time into the system, the system that Jeff had created, so even on a good day we were always short.

The call would typically go something like this:

Jeff: How did we do yesterday?
Me: We were close. We projected 20 billable hours and we had 15. (not actual #s)
Jeff: Well we were short again! What the hell happened?
Me: Jill has not entered her time for yesterday. With her hours we would actually be over our projection.
Jeff: Well tell Jill to enter her time!
Me: I asked her to do so but she finds the tool too difficult and time consuming to use.
Jeff: That is not true. The tool is simple, I wrote it and I know.
Me: Alright. I will ask her to enter her time.
Jeff: Don't ask her to do it. Tell her to do it. We hired you to bring this company to the next level and if our numbers are not correct we will never get there.
Me: I understand. I will see what I can do.

Later that day (everyday)
Me: Dot, I noticed that you did not enter your time yesterday. In order for my reports to Jeff to be accurate, I need you to enter your time.
Dot: I hate that system, Jeff is an idiot (Jeff is her husband, remember) and I am not going to use the system until he makes the updates that I requested.
Me: Thanks.

Repeat the conversation Monday - Friday every week.

This was a nightmare. Jeff would tell me to implement a company-wide change in the morning and Dot would tell me that he was an idiot and refused to do it. The next day, Jeff would ask me for a progress report and chew me out if I had not implemented the change. Repeat the next day, and the next, and the next.

I began to hate my job.

It Always Works This Way

I completely forgot about this blog. Sorry faithful reader.

I am now employed again. I have been since January. I am working for a bigger company that I ever have before and it is difficult. The company is so large and there are so many people on my projects that is difficult to get anything done.

I am always on the phone with people all over the world. I am used to getting up and walking to talk to the people that I work with. Now they are all over the country and I have to schedule a meeting just to get 15 minutes of some one's time. Very inefficient.

I am sure that this happens all over the place but I am not used to it yet. In fact I think that it sucks.

It takes weeks to do what used to happen in days. Months to do what used to take weeks and literally YEARS to do what used to take months. What a waste of time and money.

Does this happen to you? Let me know in the comments section below.

As always, thanks for the casserole.