Posted on 08/22/2005 by JobHopper
Viewed: 930 times
Years ago I worked at a company that build construction products that had been around for many years.
90% of the people who worked there had started right out of high school and had been there forever and had gone through many cultural shifts and had adapted. Except for one individual.
When this person started, she was an "office manager" which meant she walked around looking for people
to yell at and be-little in order to get them to work harder. Unfortunately it was a task she took
to with great zeal. I swear she was like straight out of a kids high school movie! She would wander around
fussing at the 40 year old in her department who were all heavy, scared, and not very educated and at the end
of each day she would go into a closed door meeting with her boss to report all the "improprieties" that went on
during the day. Such as "Jan (gasp) took an extra five minutes for lunch!"
At one point she was the manager of the computer department and harrassed one girl who worked the night shift by
calling her at random times during the night to insure she had not sneaked off. This girl nearly had a nervous
breakdown and you can still make her eye twitch by mentioning this managers name!
This woman so loved her job that it caused her marriage to fail. Her husband was in the military and was assigned to another state and she refused to go because she did not want to give up her power!
Towards the end of my career there, she was (for some reason) assigned to a major project which was supposed
to streamline the sales order system. Why she was assigned we never knew because the only thing she really was
clueless about systems. The project team sent down orders that they needed a PC setup with the system out
on the line for a test to be run in one week. Nurse Ratched came marching over and demanded I go ahead and setup the system so she could run a test with her boss, since I had some free time I decided I would go ahead and do it.
I began setting up the system when suddenly the plant intercom cut on and the receptionist paged me to call her and added "NOW". I knew her well enough to know that something was up, so I picked up a nearby phone and sure enough, my pregnant wife was having some problems and needed me to come home asap (false alarm I was to find out later).
So I hung up the phone and said "I have to go NOW my wife is having problems" and began walking off. Nurse Ratched
began saying "You may NOT leave until you are finished! You come back here RIGHT NOW and finish this!" I simply
said over my back "Watch me!" and left.
Naturally, nothing happened.
A few weeks later, there was a major meeting involving this woman and in the meeting was a fast tracker who came up
with a very good idea. She dismissed the idea and basically called him an idiot and who did he think he was?
A few months later, this man became the plant manager and she suddenly found her whole department dismantled and she
was an order entry clerk. Not much later after that she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and there were not many
tears shed.
I honestly felt sorry for her, in this case it was tragic to see someone so consumed by meanness...
POST A COMMENTsotia(08/23/2005)
Sadly, I think some people need to have a role like this at work to validate themselves. Or they're so unhappy with themselves that they try to exert some form of control over others in the workplace to make themselves seem more important. She probably was unhappy anyway in her marriage if she put the job first and refused to move. Sad that things turned out how they did for her and she never learned the old, "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."
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