Company politics and management structure hell
As I wrote previously, I messed up a drill yesterday, and I mainly messed up because hubris allowed me to be overconfident.
The reaction to this from my various bosses was very typical, and how management works at my job (and I gather, most jobs)is what I am going to talk about today. It would be humorous if I wasn't involved in it.
First item I will talk about is the way our management works:
We have basically 3 tiers to our department. First there are the basic officers. These people do the door unlocking, emergency response, security card changes, day to day stuff. A second group that should be included are people like myself who dispatch officers to do these things, make sure people are awake at local sites, monitor alarms, etc. Mostly these are students who need work that is not 9-5, family men who are not particularly skilled, or (like myself) people who haven't particularly got the ambition or ability to do other sorts of work. I like to think it's just a lack of ambition and not a lack of ability for myself, but maybe I am fooling myself.. that's a side issue.
The second tier I think of as the "third floor people". These men (and women) are middle managers. They are the officer's bosses, those peoples bosses, and those peoples bosses in turn. In my company it seems that this tier changes a fairly high amount. I like to think of it like a pie. First there where (if memory serves)about 4 bosses up here, on having about 1/2 of the pie, the other 3 having a 1/6th each. These bosses mainly worry about what their bosses think. This is understandable, but there are issues that crop up with this I will mention later.
Finally the highest and last tier is the executive in charge of security, and there is only really one of these. He is a really nice guy, and a long time ago, I gather, worked in security as an officer somewhere long ago.
The problem here is this: All of these bosses to a point or another seem to have the main concern of covering their own ass. Since they want to be aware of problems, to that they can then be aware of a problem and cover their ass from it, they all want to be informed. The only exception to the above problems are the highest executive tier. So for example, if there is a computer problem, we are to inform the computer systems lowest tier boss(Guy A), plus the next guy in line above him (Guy B) , plus the boss in charge of the information that is in the computers themselves needs to be informed (Guy C), plus the guy who is overall in charge of security (computer-wise or note)(Guy D) want to be informed, and will ask us WHY they weren't informed if we didn't when they hear about the computer problem.
The end result is that we call guy B (who says to call us no matter what if there is a computer problem), who then tells us to call guy A (Who being a flunky gets so many calls that he hates it, since his pay isn't worth it, and then tries low effort solutions to the problem). Guy A says he cant fix it, causing us to call Guy B (to tell him it isn't able to be fixed)... Guy B tells us to call Guy C ( who feels that Guy A should be the one getting all calls, since he is a flunky). Guy C eventually solves the problem. Then later Guy D (who is too busy with overall security, computer or otherwise) finds out about this problem and tells us to call him no matter what if a problem happens. Problem is that Guy D is so busy with other stuff that he isn't informed about how computer problems are handled, and usually gives us uninformed instructions when ever he IS told about things.
So it goes like this: Computer problem -> Call Guy B -> Instructed to call Flunky A -> Who cannot fix, prompting call to -> Guy B who tells us to call -> Guy C (who doesn't want to be called, but fixes the problem) -> later hearing about not calling -> Guy D (who wants to hear about it but just issues uninformed, unhelpful instructions).
This is management hell. Furthermore, if we approach any of these people regarding this, trying to explain the problem, they will chalk it up to "unhelpful" "bad attitude" or something that will be held against us.
And this is just for a Computer issue.
The most dreadful thing about this is that this is actually, from my 13 years experience working in "post college" work, actually a pretty good job.
Like I said, Management Structure Hell.
The reaction to this from my various bosses was very typical, and how management works at my job (and I gather, most jobs)is what I am going to talk about today. It would be humorous if I wasn't involved in it.
First item I will talk about is the way our management works:
We have basically 3 tiers to our department. First there are the basic officers. These people do the door unlocking, emergency response, security card changes, day to day stuff. A second group that should be included are people like myself who dispatch officers to do these things, make sure people are awake at local sites, monitor alarms, etc. Mostly these are students who need work that is not 9-5, family men who are not particularly skilled, or (like myself) people who haven't particularly got the ambition or ability to do other sorts of work. I like to think it's just a lack of ambition and not a lack of ability for myself, but maybe I am fooling myself.. that's a side issue.
The second tier I think of as the "third floor people". These men (and women) are middle managers. They are the officer's bosses, those peoples bosses, and those peoples bosses in turn. In my company it seems that this tier changes a fairly high amount. I like to think of it like a pie. First there where (if memory serves)about 4 bosses up here, on having about 1/2 of the pie, the other 3 having a 1/6th each. These bosses mainly worry about what their bosses think. This is understandable, but there are issues that crop up with this I will mention later.
Finally the highest and last tier is the executive in charge of security, and there is only really one of these. He is a really nice guy, and a long time ago, I gather, worked in security as an officer somewhere long ago.
The problem here is this: All of these bosses to a point or another seem to have the main concern of covering their own ass. Since they want to be aware of problems, to that they can then be aware of a problem and cover their ass from it, they all want to be informed. The only exception to the above problems are the highest executive tier. So for example, if there is a computer problem, we are to inform the computer systems lowest tier boss(Guy A), plus the next guy in line above him (Guy B) , plus the boss in charge of the information that is in the computers themselves needs to be informed (Guy C), plus the guy who is overall in charge of security (computer-wise or note)(Guy D) want to be informed, and will ask us WHY they weren't informed if we didn't when they hear about the computer problem.
The end result is that we call guy B (who says to call us no matter what if there is a computer problem), who then tells us to call guy A (Who being a flunky gets so many calls that he hates it, since his pay isn't worth it, and then tries low effort solutions to the problem). Guy A says he cant fix it, causing us to call Guy B (to tell him it isn't able to be fixed)... Guy B tells us to call Guy C ( who feels that Guy A should be the one getting all calls, since he is a flunky). Guy C eventually solves the problem. Then later Guy D (who is too busy with overall security, computer or otherwise) finds out about this problem and tells us to call him no matter what if a problem happens. Problem is that Guy D is so busy with other stuff that he isn't informed about how computer problems are handled, and usually gives us uninformed instructions when ever he IS told about things.
So it goes like this: Computer problem -> Call Guy B -> Instructed to call Flunky A -> Who cannot fix, prompting call to -> Guy B who tells us to call -> Guy C (who doesn't want to be called, but fixes the problem) -> later hearing about not calling -> Guy D (who wants to hear about it but just issues uninformed, unhelpful instructions).
This is management hell. Furthermore, if we approach any of these people regarding this, trying to explain the problem, they will chalk it up to "unhelpful" "bad attitude" or something that will be held against us.
And this is just for a Computer issue.
The most dreadful thing about this is that this is actually, from my 13 years experience working in "post college" work, actually a pretty good job.
Like I said, Management Structure Hell.