A few days ago, my boss decided to bring in a contractor she knows to create a move plan for the new office that the remaining people at the company will be occupying on 1-October. We don’t have the time to do it ourselves nor do we have the competency to do it.
Mr Chatty’s panties are in a knot. He hates this plan even if he won’t come out and say it. Why? His incompetency is showing. Mr Chatty, as a IT manager, talks a good game, but I have never seen him actually get in the game to get things done. In fact, his team now hides from him so that he can’t talk their ear off. One of the guys who is a superstar network guy has literally told Mr Chatty (his boss) to leave him alone so he can get shit done.
The contractor (who is an Aussie who can I sit and listen to all day with his accent) asked for the right things during the first meeting. A plan for moving our email to the off-site provider. I mean, we have been talking about doing it for six months. Nope, no plan.
So, he asked how things were proceeding with a security change to our user logins. No status.
SO, he asked for something easy – an inventory of what is in the server room. Mr Chatty didn’t have one. (But I did.)
Mr Chatty, who by this time, is just talking circles around himself. He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t have a status. He’s looking like an idiot in front of his boss. He puts himself out of his own misery by bowing out of the meeting due to a personal engagement. (Read: he’s escorting his mom to some town hall meeting that he believes could get violent. It doesn’t.)
After he leaves, the Aussie looks at my boss and me and asks, “what’s his deal?”
It was quite interesting to hear the boss and her blunt assessment. He talks a good game, doesn’t execute, too many “learning opportunities”, not enough drive, can’t actually do the work he’s overseeing, etc. Wow!
What was really interesting was the Aussie’s 15 minute assessment of Mr Chatty. He said he could tell he was a cynical man too busy living in the past and didn’t spent enough time keeping his skills sharp. Wow! Nailed it.
The first full day the Aussie was onsite, Mr Chatty was lost. Our boss made it very clear to a wide variety of people that the Aussie worked for her. She outlined his tasks which included a few of his tasks. Each time I ran into Mr Chatty during that day, he looked annoyed. He was clearly NOT happy. In fact, to show what a non-team player he is, he made sure the Aussie wasn’t setup on the network. He made sure he wasn’t show the server room. He has pretty much taken the stance of ignoring him.
This is definitely going to be entertaining.
How on earth does Mr. Chatty still have a job? Seriously, what does he contribute to the company?
Mr. Chatty is (a) a relative, (b) has serious seniority or (c) knows something about someone on the Board of Directors….
Which one is it? :):):):)
Hubman – I have no fucking idea – to both questions!
Paige – D)None of the Above! At this point, he’s getting laid off, so people are just ignoring him. But, he’s Mr Chatty – he’s kind of hard to ignore.