four magic beans

When I started working at this company 6 months ago I was told that because we were small we had to think on our feet and take direct responsibility for hands-on problem solving. Great, I thought—room to think, room to grow, room to do my thang.

For the first three months I was left pretty much alone. I was given tasks and allowed to run free—FREE!—and develop my own processes, create my own financial tracking systems and accomplish whatever I thought needed to be done. Every once in a while my supervisor (Kat) or my boss (Tim) would stop by and bless whatever I was working on at the moment, but I was essentially autonomous.

One of my duties was coordinating reports with the engineers, which basically means that I was authorized to annoy them until they gave me all of the information I needed to submit the deliverable to the customer. Because they’re so caught up in the technical aspect of their work and get distracted when it comes to writing things down in plain English, I allowed a full week time-cushion in the schedule for them to submit their stuff. Combined with the usual 3-day delay that Fred (Tim’s boss) takes to actually submit the report through formal channels, this leaves just enough time to get things out on time.

Shortly after the beginning of the year Tim asked Kat and me to start coordinating with each other on all of the reports. Since we were already doing this we just nodded and smiled and continued on our merry way.

Then he asked us to send him the reports for approval before we forwarded them to Fred. This was annoying because we’d just grown accustomed to Fred’s upper-management time delay in getting the reports out on time, and we knew that Tim never read his email and takes forever to respond even when he does. Whatever. I added a couple more ‘delay’ days to our report schedule and we pressed on.

Then two weeks ago Tim told us that Linda (Fred’s boss) had directed him to appoint a liaison between Kat & me and the engineers. This is SUPER annoying because the only person available for this position is Bobo, the smarmy office idiot who doesn’t know anything about what the reports are about or what the engineers are working on and never shuts up never never oh god he just keeps talking.

Tim claims that he fought this extra layer of bureaucracy but we don’t believe him. He’s been fishing around for work to keep Bobo out of his hair for weeks and this is the perfect opportunity for him to foist this clown onto someone else. This added another couple days delay to the whole reporting schedule (for the patented Bobo approval process, which basically consists of hitting the ‘email forward’ button to me and Kat two days after receiving the reports from the engineers without actually approving, reading, or understanding anything in them). This now means that the engineers must submit their monthly reports two full weeks before the month that they are reporting on is actually done. Oh, the glories of management bureaucracy.

So, in sum, I have lost my independence and may soon lose my mind. Between Linda and Fred and Tim and Bobo and Kat and me and the engineers I wonder how anything will EVER get done ever again. In fact, today I got so frustrated by the snippy emails shooting back and forth between Kat and Tim, and Tim and Bobo, and Bobo and the engineers, and the engineers and Tim, and Tim and Fred, and Fred and Kat, that I nearly strangled them all during the staff meeting hosted by Lupe, the high-strung technical manager who is friends with Kat but whom Fred, Tim, and Bobo hate with thinly-veiled passion. I momentarily panicked when I saw the veins in my green-tinged hand bulging threateningly, but then I realized that I wasn’t turning into The Hulk, I was merely clutching my green pen too tightly.

God bless the person who left a gigantic bowl of Jelly Belly beans in the common room. I snagged four beans and barricaded myself in the darkest bathroom stall to enjoy them in peace: strawberry, bubble gum, piña colada and blueberry.

Fred, Tim, Bobo and Kat unknowingly owe them their pitiful bitching lives.