Frustrated by Idiot Managers?

[rabid1st]

As my brother once put it, "There is no evolutionary advantage to being intelligent...you can tell because most people default to doing what they already know how to do." He went on to point out that intelligent people think about having children and often choose not to, but people who don't think about costs, schooling and the pressures of breeding, just get on with breeding. So, intelligent genes are quickly outnumbered in the gene pool.

Here are some more smart people being all...useless...with their studies and stuff...

What a great article for the FINANCE section, read, no doubt, by a lot of middle managers who need new ideas.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-benefits-of-being-stupid-at-work-190339721.html

And, boy, I can tell you that being a problem solver for an organization just gets you headaches and lots of work and no respect. No matter how often you bail your idiot boss out of trouble, he will never truly appreciate it. Because, that's not his type of thought processing. He will think it is a magic trick...and you are a nice person, that he wants to keep nearby and use more often to help him out of trouble.

Rae
perhaps a little bitter about meetings full of squabbling, and bosses who never see the train heading for them, despite all the flashing warning signs. Since I'm retired, I should probably just let it go. LOL

Comments

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

It continuously astonishes me that, because I am in contact with chidren, I have been rigorously and expensively vetted, to avoid the minute risk that I might touch one of them inappropriately, and yet the most glaring, basic safety issues are ignored by the organisation I work for on a daily basis.

I have bookshelves in my library (which is also the reception area of the school) that have collapsed several times because they haven't been properly fixed. Last week I was horrified to see the parent of a four-year-old encourage him to stand on said shelf, putting his full weight on it, in order to put some vouchers he'd collected into a box. I immediately reported the incident, and moved the box to a place within reach of small children. I also had a word with the parent. I emphasised to the Head Teacher that there really did need to be, at the very least, an email warning sent out to parents, and a notice on the shelf.

He made all the right noises. I came in next day to discover no email had been sent, and the box was where it had been before. The reason (I did actually ask).

The school administrator didn't like the box being moved, and said anybody stupid enough to let their child climb up to it deserved whatever happened.

The shelf was fixed, unpaid and without the Head Teacher's knowledge, by the husband of another member of staff.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Well, we come from, essentially, the same culture, so perhaps I shouldn't draw generalizations out of our facing similar safety issues. Perhaps there is something about those in information distribution that makes us crack when put into administration. However, your school administrator does sound very like several of my middle managers.

We had a policy to call the police if a child was abandoned at the library. At closing time, 8:00 pm, I found a four year old little girl abandoned. I reported it to my supervisor and he said, just put her outside and lock the door. Now, I argued for policy in this case, because I knew that the officer would give her parents a stern talking to and there might well be deeper reasons at work for such an abandonment. A history of neglect, perhaps. But, my boss thought I just didn't want to leave the child alone (which, of course, I didn't). His solution? He assigned someone to watch her from the parking lot. That is...the management work around...was to put the tiny girl out into a lonely, vast parking lot, surrounded by woods, and make someone in the junior staff responsible for the life and well being of said child, while the rest of us went home. The staffer was told NOT to sit with the child, as that would violate policy, but to watch from their car.

What, I asked, was to happen if after we had locked the place down, someone came and put the child in a car or walked off with her? Isn't our culpability compounded? Our library was not only quite isolated, but we did have a recent incident of a child being carried off into the woods and sexually assaulted. Was the junior staffer to stop any adult and ask for ID? What if said adult were a hostile person? Were we just to assume that anyone who showed up was related? What was to stop the parents from then assuming that we would simply babysit their child if they showed up hours after the library closed? And what about the issue of abandoning a four year old little girl in a public place? The mother, as it turned out, had assumed the library closed at 10:00pm and had gone to her gym for a 30 minute workout. She arrived about 30 minutes after we closed. I stayed, of course, but, I was furious that we didn't follow policy on this one. Because, of course, I also really didn't know that it was the child's mother that arrived, other than her clucking and sorry...and her angry, "Get in the car!" which the child rushed to obey. I had no way of checking her id, and little opportunity, I did, however, explain to the mother that we were breaking policy. She was all huffy about her need to go to gym and how they didn't allow kids.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I should mention that what irked me the most in the above case was the inability of the manager to understand that I wasn't arguing for policy out of my desire to go home on time. He assigned the junior staff person with the attitude that he had to do it, because I wasn't willing to stay with the girl...so someone else had to...instead of comprehending any of the very valid reasons why we should call the authorities, as policy dictated.

I don't know, maybe he had more empathy for the mother, maybe accidentally leaving your children at places that are closing is something he understood better than I did. But I was left at school once, in the second grade, and I still remember being terrified once the parking lot cleared and I was all alone. This girl was half as old and shouldn't have been put in that situation, in my view.

[nonlinearmusing.livejournal.com]

I am with you in that instance! The little girl should not have been left alone by her mother or the library management. If something were to have happened to the little girl, I tend to think both parties would be equally responsible in a court of law. One is reckless and irresponsible and the other is morally obligated in the situation. Right or wrong, that's how I see it.

As a mother, I would NEVER leave my child alone ANYWHERE to go do ANYTHING without making arrangements with SOMEONE to watch her! Call me old fashioned but I feel parents should parent their children instead of putting the public in a precarious and morally debatable situation.

My two cents. :)