July 26, 2007
The somewhat inclement weather has today, inadvertently, caused something of a ruckus at work.
It's fair to say that the rain today has been persistent, and has caused further flooding in the area. As a result, one member of our workforce came up to see me to ask if she could leave early.
As is standard, I pointed out that she should speak to her local Manager as they would need to give ultimate consent, but that we, of course, would have no problem with her leaving if she had to.
What happened next will teach me to be so nice.
About 20 minutes after this initial conversation, I had an email from her local Manager, copied into the Senior Management team, stating that the employee had left as HR had given permission.
The next thing I know, I'm getting emails (don't you just love them?!) from all directions berating me for giving permission without prior consent from a Manager. As you will see from the above, this is not exactly what happened in reality, and this was pointed out to those who jumped the gun with their accusations.
The emails and phone calls that followed this seemed to show that some of the key members of our management team are not willing to let the facts get in the way of a good argument. As such, I can only fear that the company is being run by idiots.
At least I'm out of the office on a course until Wednesday, and then I'll be off on my hols. Far, far away from the ridiculous politics that can seemingly dominate work...
Comments (1)
That's happened to me a couple of times.
Apparently i told one person that the company would pay for all his course books and another that he was entitled to 4 weeks paternity leave (that was before companies gave paternity leave at all).
I couldn't recall having said either of those things.
People often go to HR when they don't think they'll get the right answer from their line manager - hoping they can then go back and say "HR say it's OK".
Unfortunately, even when HR say it isn't OK, some of them lie.
Posted by Rick | July 27, 2007 12:57 PM
Posted on July 27, 2007 12:57