Irritated

In my current job I don't have a local direct manager. This is both good and bad. My manager, Brian, currently works up in the Fort Collins office. He is a great boss, and I respect him a lot. I would never do anything to make him regret hiring me.

When I was hired I was told that since I don't have a local manager that this guy Doug would be a "dotted-line" manager to me. Doug is the manager of the software test department. I see the need for this arrangement, but I have been annoyed more than once with Doug. Brian has asked me from time to time how the arrangement is working with Doug. There was an incident early on that made Brian shut Doug down on something having to do with my responsibilities. I didn't know the details, but Brian wanted me to let him know if Doug over-steps his boundaries.

Doug seems to think that this "dotted-line" arrangement means he has some power over how I do my job (technically). Well, simply put, he hasn't a clue.

Doug invites me to his department meetings every week, maybe to give me a sense of belonging. I'm not sure. A couple weeks ago in Doug's weekly meeting he announced that we needed to cut way back on the working from home (what we call WFH). Every morning you will typically see at least 2 messages to the project e-mail group where someone is announcing that they are working from home, and how to contact them. Doug said we need to cut way back. I wasn't sure he was counting me in this "order" until he singled me out as needing special arrangements due to the weeks I have my kids. I thought this was odd. He now wants us to request a WFH day through him instead of just deciding to do it, and announcing it to the project.

I don't necessarily need "special arrangements", and especially not arranged by him. Brian, my REAL boss, told me months ago that he understands that sometimes you can't get things done in the office when you are constantly interrupted by the developers. He specifically told me that if I needed to work from home that I could. I don't abuse this privilege, and typically when I am WFH I am busy from the first thing in the morning until sometime late in the evening. Working from home does cause a slowdown because of the VPN connection.

On the weeks I have my kids I leave work early if I am requested to do a special "build" of our software late in the afternoon. It takes at least 2.5 hours to build our product, and many times these requests come in after 3. Once it gets to be that late I will leave and do the build from home. I have to get Erik from daycare before 6, so after 3 and I am pushing the time.

Anyway, right after Doug's meeting he had to leave town because of a death in the family (mother-in-law). He was gone for a week. He returned last Friday for half a day, then went on vacation for a few days until returning to the office yesterday.

Early this week since Brian is not here, and Doug was not available, another manager, Brad had to give me my written Work Force Management package. This is the contract that the company has put in place since they are moving the project to Scotland. The package states when my last day will be (June 30, 2006) and all of the payouts I will have (roughly 5 months of pay as a severance package). Brad told me how he was so glad that they hired me. He complimented me on the fact that I don't need a lot of hand-holding, and came in and figured things out and made some immediate improvement in their processes. He offered a lot of advice that managers are not supposed to give us for these coming months before the lay-offs. He also said he will gladly provide me a letter of recommendation even though I don't report to him in any way (although he benefits greatly from me keeping things on track). That was a great ego boost.

While Doug was gone I had 2 days that I needed to work from home. The first was because of icy streets after our snow storm. I worked at home until from 7:30 until noon, then I went in to the office and worked until 6. Then I stayed home with my kids one day while they were on their fall break (some people did WFH most of that week).

Yesterday after Doug got back in the office he asked if I could walk down the hall with him. He wanted to discuss the WFM. At first he was very calm and was clarifying his point from the meeting 2 weeks ago. I told him I understood. He told me that he knows I work very hard and everyone is very pleased with the work I do. He then got an attitude with me and said that I was insubordinate when I was WFM those 2 days. Well I stayed calm, but I was thinking 2 things. How the FUCK am I supposed to get his "permission" for WFM when he is not here, and I don't need him getting in my face about this when I work my fucking ass off.

I was totally pissed off, but hid it well. I explained to him that since he had to be gone right after that meeting I didn't know I needed to inform him, it wasn't like he could determine if it was going to cause a problem. He said that he appointed Antoine (one of his Sr. Testers) as in charge while he was gone. I felt like saying "Excuse me, but I don't fucking report to you OR Antoine", but I held my tongue.

Most of the time I like Doug. He's a reasonable person. I am going to send Brian an e-mail about all this. I am 90% sure he'll be on my side on this, but you never know with management types. He is swamped with relocating the Fort Collins office to Loveland next weekend. I know he is totally stressed out without having to deal with this.

I was going to do a Arch Enemy/Nemesis post like Steph and Chrissie wrote, then this popped in my head and I needed to get it off my chest. Thanks for letting me vent. As usual I have way too much to spew.