Manage-mental Issues

I don’t usually talk about my work life, but the past couple of days were a roller coaster ride that so rocked the management – something that went live the day before brought half the system down and we for the life of it couldn’t figure out what the heck was going wrong.

The entire corporation met to discuss this in endless meetings and I had the privilege of being in one such meeting with the top of the top management. The following are excerpts from that meeting.

(The statements in quotes were made by one of the morons managers. The italics are my thoughts at the time.)

“We need to fix this as soon as possible”
Tell me something I don’t know!

“I’m starting to lose my patience here with this problem”
You moron, I lost sleep last night, had to skip lunch and breaking my skull over this, you think I’m having fun here?

“The way I see it, there are two things that could have gone wrong”
The way you see it? Dude, when was the last time you looked at code. There’s a zillion things that can go wrong.

“You guys go ahead with your work, we’ll take care of the management issues”
So why the heck’d you bring me to this meeting? This isn’t exactly a technical discussion.

To another person on a call:
“Don’t worry; we have our people working on this as we speak”
No you’re not! I’m right here - listening to this stupid call.

“Do you require our assistance here any longer”
Any longer? Since when did you help us with to begin with? And what are you gonna do, compile a couple of programs for us? Maybe load a library?

“If we have to work over the weekend, then we will work over the weekend”
We? You mean “I” am going to work over the weekend. You’re probably gonna be sitting home watching TV asking me for a status every half hour.


Now, everybody has told me top managers are a waste of time, but after that call, I was convinced! How do these guys run the business without a clue of what’s going on!

14 comments:

Arun Sundar said...

Thats wat management is all about! I'm telling ya - 10 years down the line, you might be a manager like him. And there might be a guy who'd do a blog post on you :)

"Corporate-Curse" it is!!

Anonymous said...

Well written ! And I agree with Arun ^.

Rayees Ahamed said...

hahaha :D

thats reality :)

mothalillku moota thooka theriyuma ? :P
Does the shop owner knows how to lift the basket :) ..

Anonymous said...

ARN:

Man, that must have been a gruesome day. Anyhow, I hope the issue has been surmounted by now. And I'd like to mention a pertinent caution here, taken from a great section on the dangers of blogging from Wikipedia, specifically in matters of employment:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging#Employment

Deserves giving a thought.

Have a rocking day dude.

Unknown said...

Hehe, you must enjoy Dilbert.

Anonymous said...

It is probably that you fail to see the 'big picture', something which is exclusive to the top management.. ;)

(ippadi solli samalika vendiyadhu thaan)

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@arun
Yeah I guess. And I dread to think of the day a guy'd make a post on me :)

@Jaffer
thx bro!

@rayees
yup. Although in this case, the owner didn't even know which basket needed to be lifted.

@firas
Well, let's just say the issue's kinda "under the table" at the moment.
And you're right abt the blogging-danger thing too.
That is why (if you hadn't noticed) I never involved any names in there....after all, I still need this job you know :D

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@alok
lol...Actually I do, really.
Think it quite accurately paints the corporate picture don't you think?

@victorious
Hmm...I don't think so.
(Its not just me, I guess every guy at the end of the managerial chain feels the same way I do)
btw, you wouldn't happen to be a manager yourself would you?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hari Vishnu said...

hehehe nice description of work and management..

u know, we had this course called principles of management, and it said that one lady actually defined management as 'the art of getting things done by people'.. the balls of that lady (no pun) to define like that..

there are a ton of management jokes out there that come to mind.. hahaha..

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@hari

thx dude. But joke? dude, this stuff really happened to me...but now that I think of it, does seem quite funny.
and alok is right...everyone shld read Dilbert - you get more management lessons there than all the management courses we learn in college.

busy-writer said...

not good! not good! my whole idea of how worlk life is gonna be like, just came crashin down!

thanks for droppin by my blog. :)

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@busy-writer
Welcome to the ugly world of corporate business.
Might as well make the most of your college days while you still can...
:D

Aravind said...

hi rahman,

this is Aravind from lh-mosaik project. Actually prasana said that your blog would be nice. So with a sort of curiosity i dropped into your blog. Each and every posting is amazing, thought provoking with a good sense of humuour. now i became a fan for your postings. Kudos to you.
Continue with blogging.

Aravind.