Miasmatic Review

It's just rude.

I can’t believe the gall of the upper management in my office. Last month they advised us that on June 21 and 28, both Saturdays, we are going to be open to work It is expected that all management at my level be there 7:00AM to 3:00PM both days to support the staff that is there. Fine, not really a whole lot I can do on a Saturday, but okay. The problem is that one of my peers is getting married at 2:00PM on the 21st. This has been planned months prior to them deciding this was going to be a mandatory workday. Many of my peers, including myself, were planning on attending the wedding. Since I’m going to be on vacation on the 28th, I volunteered to cover the entire afternoon shift and not go to the wedding.

It was decided that we were going to provide a meal for those that came in to work 8 hours as a token of our appreciation for working during the summer months. They discussed everything from salad bars, box lunches, potato bars, pizza, pasta, catered food and sandwiches. The problem is that this is all very pricey stuff and requires manpower to over see. Since it was originally going to be myself after 12:00PM, I wanted something easy. So I volunteered to grill Hot Dogs for those that committed to working 8 hours. Our department has about 80 people in it, there are a lot of people on vacation, and I figured we’d get maybe 15 that were going to work the full 8 hours. I could handle this easily enough. I grill the hot dogs outside, between noon and 1 they come out get two hot dogs a bag of chips and a bottle of water on their lunch. Easy as pie.

Then the micromanagement began. “We should extend this to anyone that works over 6 hours. Fine. That’s still only maybe 30 people. Then it was anyone that works 5 or more hours. Okay, now we are about 40 people. Still, that’s not too bad, I had to make some changes in my plans to make sure that I could cover everything… remember I was doing this alone.

Finally the mentally obtuse upper management in my office got together and decided that they were going to extend this to the other department in the office. The one that has about 250 people in it. With out consulting me they sent out to the management of the other department notice that ANY of their people working on Saturday will be given Hot Dogs and that I would be doing the cooking and shopping for it. Again, I’m doing this by myself.

Now the kicker is that my peers in that department would pitch a fit if they planned something like this and my department was invited by management to participate. Case in point, last January’s pancake breakfast. They had one and we had to hold our own on a different day as to not interfere with theirs. They really are a group of manky gobshite gits.

Well the manky gobshite gits got upset with me because I said “NO!” That’s right, I said I was not going to do the cooking and overseeing of a food distribution of about 300 people estimated to be here by myself. I said that if they want to come in and bring their own damn grill and do their own damn cooking, they are more than welcome too. If the people that have are coming in to help with claims processing and are putting in over 5 hours, I’d feed them too. But I am, nay, I WILL not solo handle this entire thing. Now of course because I stupidly pointed out to management I was doing this alone, they are making some of the peers in my department come in and stay the afternoon, despite my saying they didn’t need to. But my peers from the other department are refusing to, so they today decided they were not going to participate. Happy me.

Anyways I went shopping based on 40 people, and then one person added 5 more. Fortunately it worked out just right that I’ll have enough for exactly 45 people, no extras.

And when upper management returns to the office Friday, I’m giving them an earful. What they did was rude, disrespectful and just down right idiotic. I volunteered to do this for a specific group of people, but they just kept adding on more. It will be a long time before they see me try to do anything nice to help out anyone in that office again. I seem to get burned every time.