In a twist of weirdness that only my lunatic corporate life could throw up, everything seems as though it’s about to change (well, not everything, but you’ll see what I mean).
As I revealed in my last post, I have decided to leave and had blown the whistle on Dumb Boss’s bullying and madness and was set to head off into the sunset with a stack of cash and a plan to do nothing for a whole year. I think I also told you our company was bought out, which I was thrilled beyond belief about – a fantastic smokescreen for my departure that could form the basis of an explanation for decades to come!
The two events however seem to be incompatible. The head of HR called me and said our deal’s off. No signed deed was in place because I didn’t trust Dumb Boss and wanted to stitch them up so he’d never as much as raise an eyebrow about me to anyone else. So, now the new owners will “repoint” the support roles like mine (meaning freedom from Dumb Boss perhaps???) and seem to have called a freeze to any big staff changes. DAMMMMMMMNNNNNNN!
So many factors now in this equation, where do I start? I was OK about it at first (hell, at least I’d keep getting paid) and maybe I could wrangle a deal anyway if they took responsibility from me and made me report to someone less senior in the organisation. But…HANG ON…I might now look like a lunatic in front of the CEO and head of HR and can’t ride into the sunset after spilling my guts on Dumb Boss…and what if I am stuck reporting to him after all, making no change and continued imprisonment in my dark musty hole?
OK, I decided the plan was to carry on as usual. Pretend nothing was wrong. Stay calm. Until I went to a meeting of Dumb Boss’s direct reports, and he hands out the revised department budgets for 2010 and HE HAS CUT MINE BY 10%! I have probably not told you yet about how DumBo [NEW NICKNAME -CHECK IT OUT] sets budgets. Oh, please let me. When I first arrived in my job (and remember my mandate was to bring change to a desperately under-performing and low morale team), I found out in my first week that he had cut my budget the week before I got there. Yep, you read that right. The week before I got there. A pattern seemed to be forming – he had also cut part of my role out without telling me the week after I signed my contract, but that’s another story.
Then, a few weeks later, I was asked to cut it by another 5%. Except no-one gave me my budget so I spent nights in my sad new office in pathetic tears not being able to work out how much money I had. How was I to turn around this team, many of whom were dramatically underpaid, without money to do it?? Then, in the budgeting process, he cut my budget again by ANOTHER 5%. When I rang him / emailed him asking to discuss the budget with him and tried to explain to him that we needed MORE money, not less, I got the Dumb Boss Brick Wall. “The budget is the budget” was the reply. “You are a senior person; you should be able to work out how to make the department work with the budget you have.” And that was it.
No meeting. No engagement. No discussion. And this process has repeated itself again and again for the last 3 years. My team is barely coping with our workload – my PA is non-existent as she’s on maternity leave and I wasn’t allowed to replace her. I have people stretched to breaking point. But, because we were all asked to save money, we went without. Doing the right thing. And now, because we have “coped” with the lower resourcing, DumBo has decided we can afford to lose more money. “There’s no longer a GFC” he proclaims, “so we don’t need all these lawyers”. He seems not to have noticed that we have had more lawyers than this for years, with diminishing numbers, the massive wave upon wave of post-GFC regulatory reform coming through, and the humungous legal workload that integrating the two companies will involve. Or how tired my team and I are.
Plus, it seems we were the only team in his area being asked to work to a lower budget in 2010 than we had in 2009. All his Flying Monkeys got MORE dough. They of course claimed they didn’t through the use of dodgy accounting techniques like using provisions to pay for their areas. But, on paper, it didn’t seem fair and my management team were furious as well.
OK, now it’s time for me to confess something bad: I have a midnight email compulsion. As I felt the wave of stress return to my mind and body because I was trapped, I reverted to my wicked ways (it’s been well over a year since my last fierce email to DumBo I promise). So I drafted him an email telling him how unfair this was, and could we discuss it, and practically accusing him of stacking the finance budgets and taking money from legal before we were cut loose and he could no longer dip into our cost centre to fund the Flying Monkeys who suck up to him. I suggested that he remove MY role to save his money. Naturally, although I drafted it just to make me feel better, I went just that leeeeeetle bit far. And sent it. To him and the head of HR.
Yes: oh dear.
Not quite sure of what I was thinking. In my defence, it WAS 2.07am. The guilt kicked in pretty quickly. Part of me wanted them to turn around and give me the flick. Part of me wanted the HR chick to see how desperately stressed I became again under his evil empire. Then the part of me that wished it was still in my drafts folder started wondering if I should do something to avert disaster. Apologise?? Heck no! He’d sent me WAY worse emails than that. Plus, I had to make the point…
One of the Flying Monkeys from Accounts fronts up 2 days later and declares that my budget was targeted because I had asked for 4 new resources…so they cut them out. WHAT? “in what universe do you think I would imagine I would have 4 new roles approved?” I shrieked. He confessed he found it illogical. And then when I worked through my budget with him, he realised he had it wrong. I felt a little better and a little worse at the same time. “I need to go back and see DumBo” he promises, “We’ll have to revise your budget target”.
Not sure how this one will turn out. However, the good news is that something nice happened as well.
One of my team connected with her counterpart at our new owners in their legal team. Despite my whipping myself for months and my massive loss of confidence due to DumBo, the reaction of the legal team of our new owners (a monster-sized company) was somehwat unexpected. Dumb Boss had told me I might have some reporting line into the General Counsel for our country…someone I had met, and who was WAY too junior to be my boss. “It’s like you reporting to one of us!” declared my management team.
However, one of my old team works at our new owner in the legal team, and it seems she had been providing wonderful reports about me. Their general reaction was ”Fantastic! We hear such great things about [me]. She’s a really rigorous lawyer and charismatic leader. It will be great to have her in our team. Of course, she’s really senior so she’ll have to report straight to the Group General Counsel.”
Pathetic old me cried - I really understood then the depth of what Dumb Boss had done. I remembered again what it was to be respected and highly regarded. One of my managers was with me – her reassurance was that our team gave me that praise, that they knew how good I was, and what I could do; that it was only Dumb Boss who had no idea.
The next day, I managed to speak with the leader of our integration stream, a very senior employee of our new owners, and a former lawyer herself. She confirmed I would report to the Group GC, that he was a wonderful man. I hinted that I would love the change to happen sooner rather than later. “Message received” she purred. “Dumb Boss has asked to be consulted about the new reporting lines for the legal, risk and secretariat areas but he’ll be pissed off. We don’t do that around here. We just make the decisions and get on with it.”
Is this a new future? And have I screwed myself over with that damn email? Has the CEO seen it and written me off?
Is Dumb Boss finally losing power?
