Nobody amongst us might have had the good fortune of not coming across a typically complex creature called Manager in our day to day lives. Though the roles or nomenclature might change a bit from Manager to Boss or from Supervisors to Heads but the misery more or less remains the same for every one of us;). And if somebody is dedicating a write-up to a breed called Managers then there are no second thoughts on the fact that recently he/she has had a really torrid time with his/her managerJ. Of course there are various types of Managers ranging from Crackpots to Dumb Jacks, Furious Irritants to Scrimpy Morons, Suspicious Detectives to Overtly Hyper Disciplinarians, Frustrating Timetables to Rowdy Cops and from Hitler-esque Mavericks to Power maniac Egoists. But somewhere down the line I have also read or overheard from some corner that there also exists a breed of Good Managers. Although I strongly believe that this is a creature of a fictious world but the people who talked of such a specie were very strong in their belief and support towards such a creature. EUREKAJ!
Though my professional career is not long enough to have come across each of this varied category of managers but definitely whatever short time I have spent in my corporate life I have come across quite a handful of them. It hasn’t been a very pleasant experience all the while but surely it has taught me some lessons and ways to handle such weirdo bigwigs. One of my managers was such an irritating fellow that he invited the wrath of entire team for his crazy ways. He used to jot down each and every point one said in his/her weekly work update meeting and quizzed people on the things he has jotted down in the last week’s meeting but the irony was these quizzing had no relation with the actual work progress. His motto was that one should be able to answer and substantiate each and every word he spoke in the last meeting. Now who remembers each and every word verbatim he/she spoke 7 days back? This act of his was so frustrating that one day out of curiosity I asked him ‘sir did you start your career as a steno/typewriter?’ And without any surprise my appraisal ratings were the worst in the team for that particular cycleL.
Another manager had this habit of noting down the minute by minute activities of every member in the team. So if somebody talked on phone for say 15 minutes the manager will update his excel sheet for that employee and make a mark of that telephonic conversation. Similarly if somebody went out for some administrative work, the manager again updated his corresponding excel sheet with that fact. So after receiving a poor appraisal in spite of 3 client appreciation emails, 1 quarterly award, 5 ‘pat on the backs’ when I went to my manager asking for a justification for the same he took out a 56 page print out of his closet and started reading out my statistics, which read in the last 12 months I was on phone for 1611 minutes, I went to the loo 328 times, I was on my desk only for an average of 6.5 hours out of an expected 9 hours and I spent 150 hours in training so with such facts I don’t deserve a better appraisal. Obviously it was enough for me to change my job but I still appreciate the endurance and observation capabilities of that managerJ.
So when the memories of this time table manager were still fresh in my mind I came across another weirdo who took pride in causing pain to his subordinates. He was so audacious that he openly declared it once that if somebody fails to abide by what is expected out of him (subordinate), he (manager) will go to any extent to ruin that guy. He was among those sadists who derive pleasure from other’s pain and miseries. One of my very close friends became a casualty to this deadly habit of his and he had to remain unemployed for around 8 months in spite of having a rich industry experience of 8 years. He resigned in this company and requested this manager for an early relieving. So out of an expected notice period of 2 months the manager agreed to relieve him in 1 month and hence the poor guy made all his arrangements according to this 1 month notice period, he even took a joining date from his new company based on this relieving date. But much to his misery and more to the pleasure of that manager, he fell into a trap when on the second last day the manager came up to him and asked him to serve the entire notice period of two months. When asked for this sudden and last minute change in plan, the manager had just one thing to say ‘company policy’. The poor guy pleaded for help and almost cried in front of the manager to relieve him early because he has made all the arrangements accordingly but that maniac head was hell bent to cause him pain, consequently my friend’s new employers refused to accommodate him on any date later than the decided upon date and he had to remain unemployed for a long time due to this crazy attitude of that sadist manager. I am still bewildered what monetary or materialistic gain that man derived from my friend’s misery but he certainly invited loads of bad wishes from all of usL.
Another unique manager with whom I had the undesired privilege to work with had this knack of asking employees to stay late in office. Work or no work only those employees were considered good who stayed late in office. And it wasn’t this simple either, if you are coming at 9 am and leaving at 6 pm i.e. a total of 9 work hours, you don’t qualify to be a good employee, but if you are coming at 3 pm and leaving at 9 pm i.e. a total of 6 work hours, you qualify into the league of good employees just because you are in office till 9 in the night. And mind you, productivity and results had no bearing on these classifications. And over that the manager wanted to see all the team members on their seats when he was on his seat, so even if he is himself on his seat for 5hours, his subordinates should be on their seats for every single minute of those 8 hours. And hence when people who came to office at 9 am and went out for lunch from 1 pm to 2 pm had to give justifications for their absence from their seats for this period just because the manager came to office at 1 pm and found them missing for a period of 1 hour. Insane but true!
What baffles me is not the fact that why these so called Managers and Heads are more often than not unpopular characters amongst their subordinates but the fact that how they actually evolve into being one of this breed. Certainly when one starts his/her professional career he is a nobody or in plain simple terms a fresher who works a bit, gossips a lot, meanders around various quarters building relationships, falls in love, screws some tasks and to some extent or the other happens to be a popular guy in his/her own group. So what happens over a period of time that this normal happy going creature transpires into an egoist power driven guy who is bloody thirsty for nothing else but attention and pride? I am still searching for a perfect answer to this mystery but I believe most of the guys fall prey to the power assigned to them which in turn inflates their egos to such an extent that they hardly care for their popularity and amicable relationship with their subordinates. Obviously such a generalization is dangerous and unfair and there can be many perspectives to this debate because there certainly do exist those friendly, supportive and good managers too, so what if their number is much lesser than the number of tigers left in IndiaJ.
And as a matter of fact everybody has to put on this cap of a manager sometime in their career, some earn it by virtue of their good work and some do so by their experience but after donning that covetous cap not many care to be a part of that rare breed of ‘good managers’, they are just happing being on that authoritarian seat and I believe only those who finally succeed to get a place in that rare category of ‘good managers’ are the ones who can give a perfect answer to that enigmatic question J
