[lbo-talk] Re: Beyond Cosby, ... part 2

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Sun Jul 11 17:41:57 PDT 2004


In twenty years of technical writing, I've had exactly one great manager. Her name, oddly enough, was Angel. She lasted a few years and then she went back to being a regular writer. Joanna

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That's an interesting question. How many bosses and managers have been good at their job? In my experience of say thirty-five years, skipping construction, I had two bosses and exactly zero managers who were any good. The rest sucked in varying degrees from boring and stupid to nightmares from hell.

My first real boss was one of about five guys who started the disabled students program. John H lasted about five years at UCB and then moved to Sacramento and became the chief state administrator for the county hospital system in California---he was tossed when the Republican governor Duke-something took office. And my last boss, John C was the best boss I ever had. His attitude was just do the job and don't let me hear about it. Fine with me. But he got sick and stopped coming in, except briefly during the middle of the day. He died about two weeks after I quit. Very sad. I miss him.

But managers and me really don't get along. I don't know what it is about managers. What's to manage? If you need to be managed, you need to work some where else.

I actually was a manager twice for about a year. First time, I organized the shop under AFSCME, wrote up job descriptions, hassled Personnel at UCB for a particular job classification matrix that put the four guys under me in a good job track with built-in incremental raises and got them out from under direct supervision by the project director (the one after John). The university administration was getting rid of Don, this particular PD. And behind the scenes, Don was supporting me and keeping the Dean of Student Services above him in the dark for as long as possible. I didn't trust whoever was going to be Don's replacement. Once the new PD showed up, a narrow minded, tightwad bitch from U of Iowa, that was it. Gave notice and left. It took her almost ten years to get rid of the unionized shop I built. She did it, but it almost killed her. She fired the last guy about six month before she moved up the ladder out of Student Services and into Personnel, naturally.

A few years later in private industry, I actually pushed myself up to a shop manager position to get out from under some hair-brained sales manager. I did all sorts of things, like put up a procedure system (chinese wall) between the shop and her. Then I spent money on space, tools, inventory, and a bunch of support details for three technicians under me. Made up a salary matrix with time staged raises and worked out a budget for the shop and sent the whole package down to LA to the corporate HQ, met with the big wigs, etc. Nothing came of it, of course. I got my ten minutes with Mister Big (a stone cold jerk). After the meeting, I asked the corporate personnel manager if she wanted dinner. She said, I'll buy you a drink at the airport. In other words, kiss off.

Six months later, I walked into the regional manager's office and said Goodbye Jim. (Unfortunately Jim was a nice guy, but he was too careful with Mister Big, so he was no help at all.) That was 1988, the last time I was a manager.

So let's talk more shit about managers.

CG



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