Headless chickens

[SirBlade]

creampuff said:

Would you say most companies are organised, or people run around like headless chooks with no idea?

Prior to the oil price going down the toilet, I used to work in the oil and gas industry. I thought it was very organised and everyone pretty much had a clue.

Due to getting laid off, I took a general type job. Now nobody has any idea. Not only no idea, but they create work such that I spend a lot of time replying to internal emails which is totally unbillable and I have to drop doing billable work. Today I got 42 emails addressed to me. In the oil industry I was client rep for about a £700 million project, everything technical from the contractors landed on my desk and usually my desk only. I never got anywhere near 42 emails a day.

Now I'm dealing with stuff about 1/100,000th the value and I get 42 emails, most of which never needed to be sent. WTF????? Is everywhere like this?

When I lived and worked in England, I had to work with an insufferable programme management tt (complete with bald head, moustache and double chin) who would send the entire management team, at least, on average, twenty emails per day. He was a fooking spam cannon.
This was in addition to the dozens of completely unnecessary emails that brought my daily inbox average to close to 100 per day.
Hated that job and the people.

[creampuff]

I've almost always worked in large oil and gas outfits, either EPC contractors or operators. Never really found excessive emails to be a problem in any of them, even at lead engineer level where you have emails going up the chain and down too.

Now I work for a tiny company and oh fk are the emails annoying. The problem is every fker copies every other fker about everything (except I only send emails to people who actually will benefit from them, but that leads me to get an occasional bking from the director for not coping everybody in the office) so everyone is supposed to know the minute detail about what everyone else is doing. It's micromanagement and I hate micromanagement.

[Flooble]

creampuff said:

I've almost always worked in large oil and gas outfits, either EPC contractors or operators. Never really found excessive emails to be a problem in any of them, even at lead engineer level where you have emails going up the chain and down too.

Now I work for a tiny company and oh fk are the emails annoying. The problem is every fker copies every other fker about everything (except I only send emails to people who actually will benefit from them, but that leads me to get an occasional bking from the director for not coping everybody in the office) so everyone is supposed to know the minute detail about what everyone else is doing. It's micromanagement and I hate micromanagement.

Oh yes, I have had that B8llcking too, many times. Usually from someone who is utterly ineffectual at their actual job so wants to interfere with everyone elses ...

[creampuff]

Each one of the jobs we do is pretty small and one of them is in Russia and by coincidence there is some Russian or eastern Euro dude working in the office, so he can converse by email with the client or whoever it is (I can't work it out because the emails are in Russian) in his native language. So every time this projects fires up again I'll get a string of fking emails in Russian which I can't understand, but which are copied to the entire office, even though out of the whole office there is only one person (the Russian dude) dealing with it. Seriously, WTF is the point?!?!?

I know I'm going to get another blocking when I go in tomorrow, because there was about a 6 business hour period over two days when I didn't copy the director in on every fking thing so he didn't know if I had done my job to contact one of our clients, even though the client is dealing with me and me only and involving everybody in the office adds no value whatsoever, plus of course why would I be able to do my job anyway, because contacting a client about a £3000 job is a lot fking more tricky than managing the technical content of a £700m oil platform as per my oil job before oil went down the toilet!!!!!

Edited by creampuff on Sunday 22 May 14:41

[otherman]

It's been said, but everything thinks the rest of the company are idiots sending email. Everyone in the company would say the same. No-one knows how to to fix it, so they just moan about it. Imagine trying to run a government - the same thing on a far bigger scale.

[anonymous-user]

In a previous multinational one of the snr mgt had a role in outlook that replied to email he was cc'd on with 'I don't reply to cc emails, if you think it is important then email me directly'

This was fine until he realised he should have added a rule along the lines of ..{unless it's from a main board director}

[Vaud]

wsurfa said:

In a previous multinational one of the snr mgt had a role in outlook that replied to email he was cc'd on with 'I don't reply to cc emails, if you think it is important then email me directly'

This was fine until he realised he should have added a rule along the lines of ..{unless it's from a main board director}

Way too arrogant ;-)

Plenty of stuff people need to be informed about without requiring any action on behalf of the recipient... hence CC:

[48Valves]

Headless chickens is an accurate description of my industry.

We lurch from one deadline to another trying to do the minimum we can get away with.

My problem is I am at the end of the line of headless chickens so I get all of the st. It's starting to really wind me up now.

[creampuff]

Oh jeez. This is reaching new levels of cluelessness. Now (because everyone emails every other fker in the company about everything) one guy has butt into one of my jobs only this time he emailed the client with a bright idea; only it was something I'd already talked to the client about and we jointly decided it wouldn't work. So now there is an email gone out which basically says to the client "we don't talk to each other in the office and we have no idea".

The area around me was devoid of other staff today so I've taken to humming little songs to myself as I work. I've made up some good little ditties like:

No idea
Oh now can everyone have no idea
It's no idea, no idea at all
Oh how can we have no idea?"

Another good one is:

Arse on fire
Oh arse on fire
Oh would not know if arse is on fire
Oh fire, fire, fire

[mike9009]

Welcome to middle management!

Subordinates not taking responsibility so an email will suffice.
Higher management dishing the dirt downwards with the latest ill conceived corporate mantra.
Customers complaining with ever increasing unreasonable, previously unspecified demands.
Suppliers arse covering for the latest issue they can't solve themselves.

I jest, but I used to work in a role like this which depressed me. Now, my main bugbear is the people who 'Reply All' to say 'Thanks' to someone elses email!

How people can effectively complete a role with 100+ emails a day is quite beyond me.

Mike

[bigkeeko]

I brought this very subject up during a meeting a few weeks back stating that half the drivel sent to me in email from company staff I have never seen and no nothing about has to stop. I get weather reports from people in the other side of the country about where I am that aren't even accurate or telling me about a task completed that was just completed by myself and my team.

A lot of people spend their time sticking their noses in other people's business, sending trivial junk in order to justify their nonessential positions.

[android]

When I joined this company 16 ago,it was a very personable and intimate setup of 30 employees working from 1 site. The Director took great pride in that he decided to leave a career with a multinational and go it alone in the belief that the big company had lost its way,didn't look after its small clients anymore and was a bloaty slow to react place totally bogged down in bureaucracy. The newly formed was doing really well and was reactive and did all the right things so gradually picked up more clients.
FFD to today,we are now 250-300 employees working out of 3 sites. The Director now seems to have forgotten his roots,ethos and what made the company successful in the 1st place. More levels of management than you can shake a stick at,people with job descriptions I don't understand let alone what they do. I believe we have a 'job description design technician' thinking em up. With so much bloat and overheads we now are suffocated with bureaucracy and procedures and aren't interested in the small outfits,only multinationals with big fat juicy margins. Any of the originals still working here will tell you which version of the company they prefer,it seems only Mr Director is happy in his hypocrisy.

[creampuff]

Not the usual volume of crap today, but I did get two monumentally stupid emails from the director and the Russian dude. This company is just barely hovering above break-even on their finances; infact this year it may well be a loss. I think I know why.

[Flooble]

I've been where you are and best thing is to relax and not worry about it. Unless you are the Financial Director, leave them to it. Otherwise you'll just raise your blood pressure without reason. Trust me - I walked from one job as I couldn't see the company going anywhere and told the MD so, I felt a fraud to be drawing a bonkers salary and being blocked from delivering anything no matter how much effort I put in. Three years later it continues to bumble along ...

[creampuff]

Flooble said:

I've been where you are and best thing is to relax and not worry about it. Unless you are the Financial Director, leave them to it. Otherwise you'll just raise your blood pressure without reason.

Mmmm, I'm not bothered at all if the company goes under or not. They are about at break-even but with a slightly south trajectory, so even if it goes under it will take 2 or 3 years, which is longer than I care. I'm just bothered that I spend about 1.5 days a week dealing with unbillable crap, which just means that I can't get other stuff done. That and considering that the internal procedures at the company are pretty poor, I dislike being told I should or should have done this or that, the petty blame culture, when it really makes no difference to the outcome and certainly make no difference taking into account that the company is running around like headless chickens.