Patience required

I have what I shall tactfully call a “challenging” week ahead. Basically I have to do some work for my head of unit, H, all week and she keeps reminding me that it is going to involve working long hours and so on. Having said that, this may turn out to be for three weeks according to some e-mail I saw, which is definitely not what I agreed to. My head of unit is one of the most picky people I have ever dealt with but is far more concerned with presentation than content. I once spent about three days altering a chart because she kept wanting the margins to be moved and the colours to be changed, but the content was of little interest to her.

When I was asked to do this I told my boss that I really didn’t want to work for H but couldn’t come up with a legitimate excuse to get out of it. Although I could have said that I couldn’t work really long hours I suppose. There is someone else doing this work too and she has said that, as she is more senior than me, she will try and be a bit of a buffer between me and H. In fact H was not in the office on Friday and although I spoke to her a few times on the phone, basically I was able to get on with the work and just dealt with the other person in the team and that was a really good day and we got loads done. However, our pace is likely to drop considerably despite us having huge amounts more work to do this week.

H has also been taking the opportunity to have a dig at the people in my section. She got my boss to send out an e-mail to tell us that we were not following the travel rules properly. So my boss sent us this edict saying that we had to ensure we travelled by the most economic means possible etc. I sent a reply back saying that people of particular grades are entitled to travel first class for train journeys etc and that I wasn’t going to prevent them from doing so because it was part of their conditions of service. My boss spoke to me in a sort of apologetic tone to say that he’d had to send the e-mail because H had told him to and I said that I understood that but he couldn’t take away people’s entitlements. Then he sent me another e-mail of three abrupt bullets telling me to sort it out and make sure that people travelled by the cheapest fare possible. I sent back a very qualified response agreeing to remind staff of the rules but not being willing to give him the assurances he wanted when they were unreasonable. We now have a section meeting this morning and it will be discussed then.

The thing is that my boss is a nice bloke but is incredibly two faced. He will send out threatening e-mails to please my head of unit but then apologise for it – and then promptly kick you in the teeth again. So, for example, he even copied the e-mail I sent him back to my head of unit. Thanks very much.

The thing is that when he became the head of section a couple of months ago he said that his real skill was making sure that he took everyone with him when decisions were being taken. I did comment to someone else that if that was his area of expertise that it was a real shame that it didn’t apply to his own section who basically have no respect for him and think he is totally ineffective. I am hopeful that things will change when my head of unit leaves in the next few months. Maybe then it will mean that we don’t spend the whole time trying to appease our head of unit and can just get on with doing our jobs.

Anyway, it’s going to be a fun week.