Boss demands employee ‘stay in their lane’ after they help manager with his projects, employee complies, resulting in manager drowning in work: ‘Not my circus’

Advertisement
  • 01
    "I will not overstep"
  • Advertisement
  • 02
    I'm overstepping? OK, I'll stop.
  • 03
    Need to be a bit vague for reasons. I had a job where you work pretty independently to complete projects for customers. Each project takes
  • 04
    about a week. Week and a half if it's a really rough one. There's not a ton of supervision hour to hour, you just get your project done and check in to report progress once a day, tops.
  • Advertisement
  • 05
    My manager is bad at his job. Since I was hired, he routinely takes 2-3 weeks on a project. I had to cover several go backs to fix missed issues on "completed" projects of his, so I
  • 06
    started to go through his projects before delivery. First pointing out what needed to be completed, but also redoing bad quality projects so we still hit customer deadlines.
  • 07
    Well manager, boss, and I had a meeting. I was firmly told that I was overstepping my role by inspecting projects besides my own. They appreciated how my interventions resulted in
  • Advertisement
  • 08
    multiple projects being deliverable on time with high quality, so I was therefore not receiving an official write up, but I needed to stay in my lane. going forward.
  • 09
    WELL delivery is in 2 business days and manager calls to see if I have spare time to check on his one week difficulty project that he had 2 MONTHS on.
  • 10
    I said I would take a look, but am buried with my own projects. Sure enough, about half the project is not finished. Messaged the boss, citing the directive I was given in our
  • Advertisement
  • 11
    meeting, and was instructed not to interject into the project. "Not your circus, not your monkeys" (kudos to reasonable bosses).
  • 12
    Left manager a note about what needs completion, but I will not be "over stepping" and completing your project. Have fun. Not my circus.
  • 13
    -edit for clarity- It was my manager who specifically directed me to not interfere in his projects. Boss simply agreed on that principle, but refused to do an official write up because of the circumstances.
  • Advertisement
  • 14
    Boss was informed each time I had to do extra work to cover for manager. I get the sense they've been building documentation to ditch manager. THIS project just has
  • 15
    the situation of me being specifically told not to help and now manager face planting on it. (He is already blaming office staff for not catching that the project he marked complete is in fact not at all complete)
  • 16
    Javka42 9h ago It might have been malicious compliance if it was your manager who had told you to stop interfering with his projects.
  • Advertisement
  • 17
    As it is, this sounds like you have been contributing to the problem by protecting your manager so your boss can't fire him, and now you're doing what your boss actually wants.
  • 18
    ghandigun1 OP • 9h ago • It was the manager who told me to stop interfering with his projects, the boss was just at the meeting and agreed. Sorry wasn't clear in the original post. Trying to be a touch vauge for obvious reasons.
  • 19
    • StudioDroid 7h ago • The project is also probably one that can take the hit of being late or low quality. Boss may have. chosen this to give more rope for the manager to get tangled in. After said manager is gone, you may be handed the project mess to polish up and present.
  • Advertisement
  • 20
    ghandigun1 OP • 7h ago • Sadly, it's less "upper management will be mad they dont have their expense report" type of project and more of a "that family won't have hot water for Christmas" project.
  • 21
    maydayvoter11 • 8h ago • Sadly, that's what it takes for either the manager to learn or his boss to fire him. This may be a case where the boss needs the manager to learn sink or swim on his own.
  • 22
    • spicymato 8h ago • Depending on where you are, boss may need you to let manager fail, so they have justification to fire manager.
  • Advertisement
  • 23
    Odd Gamer_75 • 2h ago • Top 5% Commenter This is malicious compliance... but it's not your malicious compliance, it's your boss's malicious compliance. Your manager went to your boss and
  • 24
    said you were overstepping your bounds, and the boss agreed... to comply, knowing that it would destroy your manager. The fallout has yet to happen, but I suspect it will. :)
  • 25
    obxhead • 4h ago • Be ready to apply for his job the moment they are handed the notice of termination.
  • Advertisement

Tags

Scroll down for the next article

Also From FAIL Blog