Forgive me for sharing a personal moment with you all, but something happened today that made me laugh so much, I nearly lost control of my bladder. First some background.
About 18 months ago, I was deliriously happy in my job, a highly-motivated, specialist performer in a specialist field of dispute resolution in financial services. I was on a decent salary, with lots of share options and 20 years' continuous service in a final-salary pension scheme.
Then, a new senior manager was appointed in charge of our department. For someone whose role was 90% people management, he was utterly devoid of any management, motivational or even basic inter-personal skills. He had the amazing ability to pi$$ off every person he came into contact with, on a daily basis. For me personally, he was a particular disaster, because he decided the departmental roles should not be specialised, but everyone should all do little bits of everything. It would have meant the gradual erosion of a service delivery system for a key external stakeholder (& a very high profile stakeholder at that) that I had developed over ten years. It would have severely damaged the company's reputation with said stakeholder, and left me with a nothing job.
Almost a year ago to the day, I resigned out of the blue and took up a new job with the afore-mentioned external stakeholder, with whom my personal reputation was still pretty high. This caused massive consternation among the departmental directors, and when they asked why I was leaving, I gave it to them straight. (Well, after all, they'd appointed the tw@t!)
When the directors did a bit more digging, they realised it wasn't just me whose life he was making a misery, but in fact he was a total incompetent. They set about "performance-managing" him out of the company. I continued to get bit of information fed to me from time to time by old friends, and in August, I heard that he'd resigned himself, just before he was due to be given the final push.
In retrospect, he probably did me a favour. Although the move cost me a massive cut in income, I'm happier in the new job than I could ever have imagined. The pressure levels are miniscule, stress is non-existent, and the professional standards very high indeed. I was still delighted the little fcuker had left, though, LOL!
Sorry about the tedious build-up, but that's the background to today, when I had lunch with half a dozen of my old colleagues. I asked them what the latest gossip was from the old place. Someone said "Apparently, whatsiname has got a new job."
"Anyone know what's he doing?", I asked.
Various vague looks, then one guy looked up & said:"He's the safety office at an oil depot in Hertfordshire."
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif
About 18 months ago, I was deliriously happy in my job, a highly-motivated, specialist performer in a specialist field of dispute resolution in financial services. I was on a decent salary, with lots of share options and 20 years' continuous service in a final-salary pension scheme.
Then, a new senior manager was appointed in charge of our department. For someone whose role was 90% people management, he was utterly devoid of any management, motivational or even basic inter-personal skills. He had the amazing ability to pi$$ off every person he came into contact with, on a daily basis. For me personally, he was a particular disaster, because he decided the departmental roles should not be specialised, but everyone should all do little bits of everything. It would have meant the gradual erosion of a service delivery system for a key external stakeholder (& a very high profile stakeholder at that) that I had developed over ten years. It would have severely damaged the company's reputation with said stakeholder, and left me with a nothing job.
Almost a year ago to the day, I resigned out of the blue and took up a new job with the afore-mentioned external stakeholder, with whom my personal reputation was still pretty high. This caused massive consternation among the departmental directors, and when they asked why I was leaving, I gave it to them straight. (Well, after all, they'd appointed the tw@t!)
When the directors did a bit more digging, they realised it wasn't just me whose life he was making a misery, but in fact he was a total incompetent. They set about "performance-managing" him out of the company. I continued to get bit of information fed to me from time to time by old friends, and in August, I heard that he'd resigned himself, just before he was due to be given the final push.
In retrospect, he probably did me a favour. Although the move cost me a massive cut in income, I'm happier in the new job than I could ever have imagined. The pressure levels are miniscule, stress is non-existent, and the professional standards very high indeed. I was still delighted the little fcuker had left, though, LOL!
Sorry about the tedious build-up, but that's the background to today, when I had lunch with half a dozen of my old colleagues. I asked them what the latest gossip was from the old place. Someone said "Apparently, whatsiname has got a new job."
"Anyone know what's he doing?", I asked.
Various vague looks, then one guy looked up & said:"He's the safety office at an oil depot in Hertfordshire."
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif
