Miasmatic Review

No wonder they think I'm a math god.

I can't seem to get my peers and upper management at my company to understand basic math. I have 5 people that are trained on a product, only five. It takes about 4.25 people a day to get all the work done for that product. I end up loaning one of my people out to help with other products at least once or twice a week.

Well, I had one of my five get promoted. That left me with four. I have a second one that is being sent to another office to help train new employees there, that leaves me with three. I have one off each week on vacation for the next month that leaves me with two. Two people to do the job of 4.25 people.

Today one of my peers comes to me and says that one of her people is off on medical leave for the next couple of weeks and I have to give up one of my people for the next month to cover it. This was a surprise meeting with upper management and all. I explained the hardship that giving up one more person is going to put my one last remaining employee into. That didn't matter, they felt the one last remaining employee can hold the department together for at least a month.

Of course I'm going to hire a new employee to replace the one promoting, but that could take at least a week or two. Plus when they start they need to be trained and brought up to speed.

I can't wait until the end of June when I have to send my last remaining employee into a class for support... because they HAVE to be there. In fact they even tried to force me to give up two. I'm not kidding, I litteraly sat there with counters and did basic math with them to show them I didn't have anyone else. One of the upper management said, "It doesn't matter, they have to be in there." So at this point I asked who they wanted me to send. They gave me a name... Nope, she promoted. They gave me another name... Nope she is in a class out of state. They gave me a third name... Nope she's already in the class. They gave me a fourth name... Nope, she's on Vacation. They gave me the fifth name... Nope, they are taking the place of my peer's missing employee. That's when I got, "Well who's left?" and I kid you not people, my answer was rather calm and collected.

I responded back with, "Why there is no one left. That is what I'm trying to tell you. The only person that I'll have at that time is possibly a new trainee, for which I won't have anyone to train. And I can't put a trainee in a class to train other trainees."

... and they still said I had to get someone. So I asked them which project is least important and I'll pull that employee off of it and reassign them to the training room. To which my manager responded that I couldn't pull any of them. At the end of the meeting, they still couldn't grasp basic math and I still had to give up an employee I don't have at the end of the month. Plus I have to keep my regular work running smoothly and evenly.

So you'll have to excuse me while I wait for the three Advil to kick in so I can figure out a way to bend the space/time continuum.