A Long Past Week

I like my boss.  I respect him. I think he is a good leader.  I think he knows where things need to go – in a positive way.   It is one of the reasons why I went to this company.

But – and you knew there would be a “but” –

But – the way he works to pull shit together fucking drives me nutty.

When I have an “assignment”, if you will, and it has a due date, I start working on it right away.  I like having extra time to get it done – time to revise – time to confirm.  My boss? He waits until the last fucking minute.

A couple months ago (or more), we put together this huge list of “shit people have asked for”.  He presented it on a slide as a big blob of work with the disclaimer that we don’t know how to prioritize it or rack and stack it.    The result? The board of directors asked him to suggest a priority based on how big the requests are, etc.  Due date? End of this week.

He knew what we needed to do to get to the end product.  We needed to figure out how big the requests are.  We needed to determine our allocation of time to do these requests.  And we needed to get from the different groups their top 3 requests.  Then we would figure out what we could actually get done.   Done.

We started it a week ago.

A FUCKING WEEK AGO.

50 project requests – and we have a fucking week to do all of this work.

And – one of the guys on this management team is someone who actually says that while he may be wrong, he likes to argue, so he will argue it to death.  And he does.  Hours and fucking hours have been spent debating something simple like what the definition of administrative work means.  Seriously.

So, we have a week to do all of this crap – debates included.

We spent the first 3 hours arguing with him about how big projects are and how, in his opinion, it was a misrepresentation of the actual work that needs to be done and the resources needed.

Finally, in the last 20 minutes, we sized everything.

Yes, you read that correctly – we spent over 3 hours arguing about something that took 20 minutes to do.

We spent a few more hours arguing about if it was right.  Then when my boss commented to me that we need to do the next step – figuring out the capacity of the team – and actually asked him how we were going to keep this guy focused.  His response? It is why I’m talking to you – help me.

My meetings got cancelled, so I spent the few hours before the meeting putting together a model for how we could do this.  When the boss was late for the meeting, I had already convinced these guys that my model was solid – and we were already going down the path of fleshing it out, agreeing to next steps, and completing the exercise.  My argumentative friend got all giddy at how he could program a solution and ran to his desk to do it.

I was pretty happy with the results of that meeting.  We moved forward – made a huge leap forward – and no arguing.

Score!

Yeah, that ended.

We spent 3 hours last night – end of the day – debating shit again.  At one point, my snark kicked in, and I thank the gods new and old that people found it funny.  Today – not so funny especially after someone made the comment about me needing to stay “late”.  My response: “Fuck you – people – I get in before all of you all, including my boss – so staying until 5:30 doing shit that could have been done already? Yeah, fuck that shit.”

Tomorrow, he had to put together his presentation.  There is no more tweaking.  I’m drawing the line.   He is already late – and we do not need to do this by committee.  The reality is that he has the info he needs.  Debates will be had – it is expected.  He has his magic formula.  It tells him what all of the years should be and say.  He just needs to pull it together.

It is no longer about us – and the consensus  – and the other crap — it is in his court – as our leader, as our boss – to just get it done.

Besides, tomorrow, I have a date with a bad Daddy – and well, I won’t miss it.

My boss – well, it’s his turn to get this done.  Not mine.

Plus, his procrastination is not my fault – nor is it how I work — so…..it is time for the consequences to be mainly his, not mine.

What do you think?

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