Micromanaging bosses, bad jobs.

[batchaps4me]

So we have all probably had a micromanager or general jackass as a supervisor at one point or another in our careers. Believe it or not I have a tendency to be a jackass when dealing with these kind of folks. I hope you didn't drop your coffee over my shocking admission but it had to be said. What are some of y'all's encounters and how did it go?

 

[batchaps4me]

Back in the 90s, I was hired as a maintenance mechanic for a state of the art start up plant making over the road tractor truck frames. All of the machinery was unique, unproven and untested. It was revolutionary in the fact that the machinery was able to adapt to any size or shape rail without a tooling change. We were designed to reduce the workforce needed to produce these from about 600 people to about 50 and produce one rail a minute out the back door.

We had three levels of computer controls, PLC(internal machine), zone, and plantwide. Occasionally the system would hiccup and stop when handing off a rail from one zone to another. We learned the hard way that you had two options, give it a few minutes, perhaps a half hour and it would right itself or put the PLC in manual, force a move, update the PLC. We found that the system would scramble the data plantwide if you tried to manually jumpstart it.

Enter the brand new Production Manager. On his first day on the job he held a maintenance meeting and proclaimed that he had a mechanical engineering degree from a prestigious university so we could not tell him a damned thing that he didn't already know. He was also quite proud that he had the authority to fire anyone on the spot for not doing what he said, when he said to do it.

So the computer hiccupped the following Saturday evening. I am about 70 hours into my work week and standing by the machine that is causing the pause in production. We were running Peterbuilt frames that had to leave the plant that evening or we would shut down their plant and have to pay a huge back charge for their loss in production. Out pops the production manager screaming about the idled plant. He gets to me and is furious. "What the hell are you doing?" "Waiting on the system to self correct and restart." "Dammitt! move the rails!" Oh buddy, I am your huckleberry.

When I put the machine back on automatic, you could hear the rest of the plant going offline. "What in the fuck did you do?" "Exactly what you told me to do, when you told me to do it, lest you fire me like you said you would." "What do we do now?" "Since I don't have a ME degree, I can't tell you what to do, or anything else about this plant for that matter." We missed the shipment, paid almost a quarter million to Peterbuilt, the production manager flew to Kenosha for a meeting with corporate and I had a few meetings with a corporate representative at the plant that ended with the understanding that any discipline or negative comments entered into my record would be reviewed by the Department of Labor, if not a state/federal judge.

The production manager came back from Kenosha and promptly went on an apology/reset tour. I was there for another year and never heard him speak on the production floor without phrasing everything in the form of a question.

 

[LyquidMetal]

Back in the 90s, I was hired as a maintenance mechanic for a state of the art start up plant making over the road tractor truck frames. All of the machinery was unique, unproven and untested. It was revolutionary in the fact that the machinery was able to adapt to any size or shape rail without a tooling change. We were designed to reduce the workforce needed to produce these from about 600 people to about 50 and produce one rail a minute out the back door.

We had three levels of computer controls, PLC(internal machine), zone, and plantwide. Occasionally the system would hiccup and stop when handing off a rail from one zone to another. We learned the hard way that you had two options, give it a few minutes, perhaps a half hour and it would right itself or put the PLC in manual, force a move, update the PLC. We found that the system would scramble the data plantwide if you tried to manually jumpstart it.

Enter the brand new Production Manager. On his first day on the job he held a maintenance meeting and proclaimed that he had a mechanical engineering degree from a prestigious university so we could not tell him a damned thing that he didn't already know. He was also quite proud that he had the authority to fire anyone on the spot for not doing what he said, when he said to do it.

So the computer hiccupped the following Saturday evening. I am about 70 hours into my work week and standing by the machine that is causing the pause in production. We were running Peterbuilt frames that had to leave the plant that evening or we would shut down their plant and have to pay a huge back charge for their loss in production. Out pops the production manager screaming about the idled plant. He gets to me and is furious. "What the hell are you doing?" "Waiting on the system to self correct and restart." "Dammitt! move the rails!" Oh buddy, I am your huckleberry.

When I put the machine back on automatic, you could hear the rest of the plant going offline. "What in the fuck did you do?" "Exactly what you told me to do, when you told me to do it, lest you fire me like you said you would." "What do we do now?" "Since I don't have a ME degree, I can't tell you what to do, or anything else about this plant for that matter." We missed the shipment, paid almost a quarter million to Peterbuilt, the production manager flew to Kenosha for a meeting with corporate and I had a few meetings with a corporate representative at the plant that ended with the understanding that any discipline or negative comments entered into my record would be reviewed by the Department of Labor, if not a state/federal judge.

The production manager came back from Kenosha and promptly went on an apology/reset tour. I was there for another year and never heard him speak on the production floor without phrasing everything in the form of a question.

"What the hell are you doing?""What in the fuck did you do?"
Well, are those not questions? LOL!!!!
Not getting into details, but yeah. I think most folks have had bad bosses/production/plant managers.

 

[batchaps4me]

"What the hell are you doing?""What in the fuck did you do?"
Well, are those not questions? LOL!!!!
Not getting into details, but yeah. I think most folks have had bad bosses/production/plant managers.

I just have an issue of someone that is not doing the work tries to micromanage those that are. My wife found this out about a month after we married. We were living in her trailer and the bottom element went out on the water heater. It was hard to reach, old and a bit rusty. I wasn't about to pull the siding off to make it easy because I didn't have any sealant and wasn't going to introduce the possibility of a leak on our weather facing exterior wall. After about a half hour of her standing over me and giving me her directions, because she was such an expert, I climbed out and handed her a Phillips head screwdriver and water heater wrench. I told her that since she knew what to do and was going to stand there anyways, I wasn't needed. After about an hour later, I agreed to change it the next day IF she left me alone. To this day, when she is telling me how I should do something, I ask her if she wants to do it and I get left alone.

 

[LyquidMetal]

I just have an issue of someone that is not doing the work tries to micromanage those that are. My wife found this out about a month after we married. We were living in her trailer and the bottom element went out on the water heater. It was hard to reach, old and a bit rusty. I wasn't about to pull the siding off to make it easy because I didn't have any sealant and wasn't going to introduce the possibility of a leak on our weather facing exterior wall. After about a half hour of her standing over me and giving me her directions, because she was such an expert, I climbed out and handed her a Phillips head screwdriver and water heater wrench. I told her that since she knew what to do and was going to stand there anyways, I wasn't needed. After about an hour later, I agreed to change it the next day IF she left me alone. To this day, when she is telling me how I should do something, I ask her if she wants to do it and I get left alone.

Micro managing does not work for me at all. I have a resume' that can get me flown to a job interview. I know what I'm doing. Stand over me? Nope. Do it yourself then.

 

[batchaps4me]

Micro managing does not work for me at all. I have a resume' that can get me flown to a job interview. I know what I'm doing. Stand over me? Nope. Do it yourself then.

It is the same with me and I will not tolerate it by any person, at any time. Don't get me wrong, I am very open to suggestions and am too lazy to keep doing something the hard way if someone knows an easier way to do something. I don't mind presenting a plan of action on a job, being questioned about it, offering and implementing contingencies, being audited during the job, and debriefing after the job is complete. But I will be damned if someone is going to stand over me and interfere with my job for no valid reason. I don't accept "Everyone is watching because this is important/emergency" as a valid reason. I will buck up and lock a job down until the distractions are cleared out for safety reasons, if nothing else.

 

[Shower Fart]

Back in the 90s, I was hired as a maintenance mechanic for a state of the art start up plant making over the road tractor truck frames. All of the machinery was unique, unproven and untested. It was revolutionary in the fact that the machinery was able to adapt to any size or shape rail without a tooling change. We were designed to reduce the workforce needed to produce these from about 600 people to about 50 and produce one rail a minute out the back door.

We had three levels of computer controls, PLC(internal machine), zone, and plantwide. Occasionally the system would hiccup and stop when handing off a rail from one zone to another. We learned the hard way that you had two options, give it a few minutes, perhaps a half hour and it would right itself or put the PLC in manual, force a move, update the PLC. We found that the system would scramble the data plantwide if you tried to manually jumpstart it.

Enter the brand new Production Manager. On his first day on the job he held a maintenance meeting and proclaimed that he had a mechanical engineering degree from a prestigious university so we could not tell him a damned thing that he didn't already know. He was also quite proud that he had the authority to fire anyone on the spot for not doing what he said, when he said to do it.

So the computer hiccupped the following Saturday evening. I am about 70 hours into my work week and standing by the machine that is causing the pause in production. We were running Peterbuilt frames that had to leave the plant that evening or we would shut down their plant and have to pay a huge back charge for their loss in production. Out pops the production manager screaming about the idled plant. He gets to me and is furious. "What the hell are you doing?" "Waiting on the system to self correct and restart." "Dammitt! move the rails!" Oh buddy, I am your huckleberry.

When I put the machine back on automatic, you could hear the rest of the plant going offline. "What in the fuck did you do?" "Exactly what you told me to do, when you told me to do it, lest you fire me like you said you would." "What do we do now?" "Since I don't have a ME degree, I can't tell you what to do, or anything else about this plant for that matter." We missed the shipment, paid almost a quarter million to Peterbuilt, the production manager flew to Kenosha for a meeting with corporate and I had a few meetings with a corporate representative at the plant that ended with the understanding that any discipline or negative comments entered into my record would be reviewed by the Department of Labor, if not a state/federal judge.

The production manager came back from Kenosha and promptly went on an apology/reset tour. I was there for another year and never heard him speak on the production floor without phrasing everything in the form of a question.

Engineers are notoriously bad at effectively managing people. I think a lot of places accept it too readily. They sometimes confuse being smart for knowing WTF they’re talking about.

It probably matters less when they’re managing other engineers, though my brother in law ran into issues because when he was promoted, most of the people he had to manage had interviewed for the job too. Some of them decided to low key sabotage their work, thinking it would get them another shot at the job.

These large companies would be wise to insist on some soft skills training when an engineer wants to move into a position that isn’t explicitly technical. I’ve worked with engineers that were great at communicating, but they are the exception…at least compared to upper management that came from a sales background.

 

[batchaps4me]

Engineers are notoriously bad at effectively managing people. I think a lot of places accept it too readily. They sometimes confuse being smart for knowing WTF they’re talking about.

It probably matters less when they’re managing other engineers, though my brother in law ran into issues because when he was promoted, most of the people he had to manage had interviewed for the job too. Some of them decided to low key sabotage their work, thinking it would get them another shot at the job.

These large companies would be wise to insist on some soft skills training when an engineer wants to move into a position that isn’t explicitly technical. I’ve worked with engineers that were great at communicating, but they are the exception…at least compared to upper management that came from a sales background.

I cannot ever remember having any issues with engineers that were acting in the role of engineer. To be fair, I have had micromanagers from several disciplines so I don't even view it as an engineer characteristic. The common thread seems to be a personality type that must announce their education as a basis of their unquestionable decision making and authority. My SIL is that way and although she has a masters in chemical engineering, she has never practiced her discipline. From day one with ExxonMobil, she was placed in facilities management and rose through the ranks to division head. I really think it bothers her that she could have had the exact same career with a degree in Human Resources. Her personality is that of a person that thinks anyone without a master's degree is more than uneducated, they are ignorant, lazy and unable to function effectively in society. Hell, she even looks down on the engineers she works with that aren't in the management group. The sad part about that is her own daughter has an electrical engineering degree from Baylor, working on her masters as she works for Exxon and somehow she has failed early in her career because EEs can't join the management group until later in their careers. She really puts her down at times because of that. It freaking amazes me ... I will leave it at that.

 

[Toadman005]

My last job I took a career step backwards and worked under an “art director” who was a no talent, goon ass, green card abusing drunken Canadian PUSSY who would create a lime green Coca-Cola ad. I loathed having to stomach his suggestions. I’m well accustomed to turning filet mignon into fog shit at the request of the customer- comes with the territory. You’re paying? Sure I’ll give you what you want even if that’s 100 times worse and will cost you 10x as much as what I designed the first time. Clients privilege and expect them not to know shit. But an “art director” of a team of 2? Dude was a jackoff fifth rate photographer who conned himself into a position he didn’t deserve by taking advantage of the ignorance of the brass, and he knew he was in a good spot and never planning on going anywhere. Basically a minnow in a tiny puddle who acted arrogant as a megaladon. Hated working under some shit that should have been working under me, except, I’d never suffer anyone as talentless as him.

 

[OldDevilDawg]

Holy shit, I don't even know where to start. I've been at my current job for seven and a half years and my most common phrase/question in that time has been, "What fucking idiot came up with that idea?".

I'm a maintenance tech at a wood pellet production plant. It was built about a year and a half before I started. It is currently the largest wood pellet production plant east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the world.

Let's go back early in my time there.......I'd been there for maybe 6 months. My shift supervisor was a micromanaging midget that thought he knew everything. (I don't take kindly to people that think they know everything.) So anyways, I was working on a press and he was standing behind me non stop barking like the little chihuahua that he physically resembled. Apparently I wasn't going fast enough for him, so he took the wrench out of my hand and done it himself. THEN, he wrote me up for not doing my job. I got a demotion and a $3/hr pay cut. They put me on a front-end loader feeding material to the plant. I came home from work the day I signed the write up and told my wife I was probably gonna find another job. After a few , I turned to her and said, "No, I'm a better man than he is, I'll be there when he's gone," Fast forward about 2 years, my shift supervisor came to me and asked me if I wanted to go back on maintenance. My response, "I'll do whatever y'all want me to, but I ain't fighting you over the fucking wrench." Back on maintenance for about a year, and then they promoted me to shift supervisor. I'd been shift supervisor for close to a year when the micromanaging midget (now a complete failure as production manager because he refused to listen to his shift supervisors and was STILL micromanaging us) loaded up his stuff and left for good. It took me nearly 4 years to outlast that motherfucker, but I did it. The week after he left, our plant had the highest weekly production tonnage in it's short history.

 

[Big 8 Rules]

Holy shit, I don't even know where to start. I've been at my current job for seven and a half years and my most common phrase/question in that time has been, "What fucking idiot came up with that idea?".

I'm a maintenance tech at a wood pellet production plant. It was built about a year and a half before I started. It is currently the largest wood pellet production plant east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the world.

Let's go back early in my time there.......I'd been there for maybe 6 months. My shift supervisor was a micromanaging midget that thought he knew everything. (I don't take kindly to people that think they know everything.) So anyways, I was working on a press and he was standing behind my non stop barking like the little chihuahua that he physically resembled. Apparently I wasn't going fast enough for him, so he took the wrench out of my hand and done it himself. THEN, he wrote me up for not doing my job. I got a demotion and a $3/hr pay cut. They put me on a front-end loader feeding material to the plant. I came home from work the day I signed the write up and told my wife I was probably gonna find another job. After a few , I turned to her and said, "No, I'm a better man than he is, I'll be there when he's gone," Fast forward about 2 years, my shift supervisor came to me and asked me if I wanted to go back on maintenance. My response, "I'll do whatever y'all want me to, but I ain't fighting you over the fucking wrench." Back on maintenance for about a year, and then they promoted me to shift supervisor. I'd been shift supervisor for close to a year when the micromanaging midget (now a complete failure as production manager because he refused to listen to his shift supervisors and was STILL micromanaging us) loaded up his stuff and left for good. It took me nearly 4 years to outlast that motherfucker, but I did it. The week after he left, our plant had the highest weekly production tonnage in it's short history.

People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who do.

 

[Hard2Bluff]

People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who do.

I bought my buddy in college a beer coozie for a birthday present that read "He who knows everything has a lot to learn." We repeated that phrase forever. And that was way before GOOGLE.

 

[Hard2Bluff]

Holy shit, I don't even know where to start. I've been at my current job for seven and a half years and my most common phrase/question in that time has been, "What fucking idiot came up with that idea?".

I'm a maintenance tech at a wood pellet production plant. It was built about a year and a half before I started. It is currently the largest wood pellet production plant east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the world.

Let's go back early in my time there.......I'd been there for maybe 6 months. My shift supervisor was a micromanaging midget that thought he knew everything. (I don't take kindly to people that think they know everything.) So anyways, I was working on a press and he was standing behind me non stop barking like the little chihuahua that he physically resembled. Apparently I wasn't going fast enough for him, so he took the wrench out of my hand and done it himself. THEN, he wrote me up for not doing my job. I got a demotion and a $3/hr pay cut. They put me on a front-end loader feeding material to the plant. I came home from work the day I signed the write up and told my wife I was probably gonna find another job. After a few , I turned to her and said, "No, I'm a better man than he is, I'll be there when he's gone," Fast forward about 2 years, my shift supervisor came to me and asked me if I wanted to go back on maintenance. My response, "I'll do whatever y'all want me to, but I ain't fighting you over the fucking wrench." Back on maintenance for about a year, and then they promoted me to shift supervisor. I'd been shift supervisor for close to a year when the micromanaging midget (now a complete failure as production manager because he refused to listen to his shift supervisors and was STILL micromanaging us) loaded up his stuff and left for good. It took me nearly 4 years to outlast that motherfucker, but I did it. The week after he left, our plant had the highest weekly production tonnage in it's short history.

Micro managing is demeaning especially when you are more competent than them. I wouldnt have lasted 4 years. I did out last a CEO once tho, but he was several steps above me and I had to put food on the table. The new CEO since is the best damn CEO you could ask for. Annual raises and pay increases. Thats when I really know Im appreciated on a macro level.