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Frustrated with my boss, need help! (warning long rant!)


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So I'm the office manager for a start up company. It didnt seem like the position was beneath me, I was the operations manager for a very small start up company for 6 years that remained small and it seemed like a window of opportunity had opened up because Ive been looking for a position in the new media sector for over a year.

 

The company I work for is a very young company (a little over a year), our oldest exec is 37. The company is also a division of another that handles all of our finances and payroll, from our A/R to our payables. Ive only been there for 4 months and Ive felt waves of frustration that has bothered me so much I have had restless nights unable to sleep til 3am for the last 3 months.

 

The structure of the company hardly makes any sense, I can understand that it is still growing (30 employees in our division) but I would expect that people would be a little more team oriented and focused on making the goals of the company a group effort. But for whatever reason, we are running around as if we have over 250 employees that are responsible just for themselves and I am the one person who is not only responsible for myself but also everything else that involves all of my co workers requests/needs. My boss is the COO, I dont have any managers above me, one of the apparent problems is that he rarely commmunicates to anyone else that isnt an exec or part of *their boys club*.

 

I have my own deadlines and projects that Im responsible for, Im the only one in our division who handles all of the intercompany payables requests and billing. We generate hundreds of thousands of dollars each month so those two tasks on it's own requires one person to do this on a full time basis. I also have various responsibilities that require my involvement with sales (someone needs to generate sales reporting and the invoices or we'd never make any money!), I assist the promotions team in many ways sometimes I will be the lead coordinator for an event or I'll be responsible for coming up with new promotional material for our events and I also support quite a few of our consulting promoters as well . I do so much for the company but what really shows a lack of respect for my contributions is the unreasonable requests that my boss makes--- for example:

 

He will give me an hour's notice or less to do something that a free intern could do:

 

Putting together press kits. Im pretty sure we could train a monkey to do this because it certainly doesnt take an educated, highly experienced person to --- clip articles, find a way to get them scanned, print them, and collate the material which ends up wasting an entire day just for 10 press kits. When there are none left, my boss always sends off email reminders to me that I need to make sure we always have 10 available, even though I make it clear to him that I dont have any time to do this type of work and that he needs to let me know what exactly our priorities are if he wants me to waste a day putting these together. Ive had to put together 50 at one time at one point, these things are about 60 pages worth of material and it took 2 whole days to do. At one point we were sharing one color laser printer for the entire company, not just our division, so it took twice as long to get this done until I begged for him to request the i/c get us our own.

 

Ive even had the luxury of metering the mail for co-workers, run around and do errands and send fedex packages, gee, sounds a bit like an intern or receptionist's job to me! He has given them the impression that it is my job to do this for everyone, even though they should do it themselves as my time is also valuable.

 

The one thing that sticks out the most is: I got yelled at the other day over a monitor that appeared to look like a piece of poop that was set up for a temp. The COO insisted to me that it was NOT working, he yelled at me about it in front of another co-worker of how dissapointing that was, even though I was assured by the help desk they had tested it out and it was fine. So he went on some rant that if this ever happens again ---I was told I have to go out and buy it on my own, set up the computer on my own, his words were "IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, THIS STUFF SHOULD BE TAKEN CARE OF, I DONT WANT THE STRESS OF IT". The monitor worked, it looked a little old, but who cares? Its a temp for christ's sake, but are you kidding me, my responsiblity? Everyone in the company has access to the help desk.

 

His reason for passing the buck to me is because I am good at whatever that said task may be. As I mentioned, I have a ton of other responsibilities, I also get to book everyone else's travel, yea! It seemed like a big waste of time for me to go back and forth with our travel agent and my co workers, so I decided to create a travel request form to be filled out and sent off on their own, only requesting i get a carbon copy of the request. This way I am no longer in the middle of making all the arrangements but I am still at least aware of what's going on. I realized unless I implemented a system that people would use, it was my ONLY way to know what was happening in this company.

 

Here is another situation: When we have intercompany reporting deadlines to meet, he doesnt inform me of the deadline dates, I dont ever meet or deal with the managers of the other divisions but the day the reporting is due, he'll harass me about putting all of our numbers together for him and to stay focused on that so he can work on it, but once Ive actually compiled all the info for him, he's gone for the day and the next day he's left it on my chair with a note telling me "please get this done right away". The next thing you know he'll keep coming back to my desk to see how far Ive gotten and cc's all the dept big whigs that he's passed the task onto me and they should harass me for the reporting. I love that he also promises them that I will have all of that done by a time frame that will leave me no choice but to pull an all nighter at the office. When it's 6:30pm he's getting ready to leave and he'll come up to me and say "do what you have to do to get this done". Yeah thanks, jerk.

 

Because my boss does not communicate to me what is going on until that very moment of last minute panic, I never have anytime to plan. It feels like he just creates a lot of drama in order for the work to be done because by the time he tells you whats happening, you have no other choice if you want to be a team player, you have to cave in and do what it takes to make the job gets done. I hate being in that situation, since he doesnt feel the need to respect me enough to inform me of what is going on in the company on any other occassion, I dont see why I should be the one to deal with all of the stress. I am not getting paid the amount to put up with it and even though I get paid overtime, I dont necessarily enjoy working 60 hours a week and coming in on the weekends to make up for the time Ive lost because the rest of the 40 hours I was too busy doing everyone else's work.

 

I really like the company and I feel that it has a lot of potential, I care a lot about how it runs and where it will be a year from now and I think Ive made that clear in all of my efforts and the time I put into my job. It is also very clear to me that they need someone who has the leadership and management skills to just step up and make it happen. I asked him several times "why do we never have staff meetings". The only meeting we've ever had was with the entire company that announced some big achievement of ours, woohoo.

 

Im a very curious and inquisitive person, I want to know that the time and energy we put in reflects on the company's performance and financial status. To be honest, I dont think my boss even knows, he just looks at what we make each month and automatically believes we need to push more sales, so currently they are seeking out yet another sales person.

We spend thousands of dollars on marketing materials that never gets tracked to figure if it has driven any business, it seems silly to me to not want to know these things! People that are managers and business owners do!

 

 

Ive brought it up to my boss that we should really try to get more people on the front end of the business in administration so I could free up more of my time to work on creating various systems we could use to measure, streamline and maximize our productivity. I have pushed a lot of ideas which he has agreed is something we need to do--- but I can never get my co workers to follow through using the system and my boss doesnt go to bat for me, either. Instead he will just tell me to do what it takes to do what my co-workers needs/wants instead.

 

He's also told me that corporate wont allow him to hire more people when Ive asked about getting help and even free interns, though we manage to hire more sales staff and programmers. UH, we're really unorganized and need help, why would corporate say no to helping us out??? I think he is also afraid to admit that he cannot handle his job and so the only reason why we would hire more sales people and programmers is a sign we are on our way, hiring add'l staff to help run the organizational end of your business, looks like he cant do his job.

 

I dont know what to do at this point, I am really beginning to hate my job because I am obviously overqualified to be an office lackey. The truth is that I have been honest and upfront with my boss and he does nothing about it, either. He just lets everyone run off to do their own thing so I am constantly at the mercy of everyone else's needs because it doesnt really seem like productivity is as big of a deal as our revenue. I dont know if this is something I need to discuss with someone else (HR perhaps?) or If Im just expecting too much. I have others that will bat for me that know I should be at a better place than I currently am right now.

 

I had suggested a while back we need to keep better track of where our marketing costs are going and try to plan our spending budgets in advance, a few days ago he asked me to compile an inventory/cost analysis, without really telling me the reason why. I had to badger another co worker to find out all of a sudden he wanted this info, so once it was done, he told me some changes he wanted to make with it and once I finished it up, I got a CC: of that same report forwarded by him to my co workers telling them that this is a cost analysis of what we've been spending, we should plan out budgets in advance and without mentioning I did the report or I would be the person to be in charge of the budgetary analysis process, he just told them if they had anything to add to the list to forward to me. When I privately emailed him a few suggestions and feedback to that, he didnt even respond. He only told me to add some add'l items to the list. He does that often, takes credit for my work and ideas and on top of it, instead of being the office manager, sending a message out to everyone that I am his personal assistant/lackey.

 

I know I can do so much more and I dont know if he's just waiting for the right time to move me up or until Ive spent more time there, but I really dont know what else it is I have to proove at this point. Im bored, overworked, this job is sucking the life out of me and I'm frustrated. Any suggestions?

 

Sorry for the long rant.

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I tried to figure out what is the real cause of his yelling at you. He may be harboring some feelings ( positive/negative) that are driving him creazy for no good reason. The boss is unprofessional I believe. He may be in need of somebody to help him. You may be that needed one if you can figure it out.

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Could yu delegate somes tasks to the interns and temps?

 

Truthfully, I am in almost the same postitions and I am trying like H@ll to get out of it. Very small company. Boss that micromanages, etc. I, too am stressed out my his behavior and find myself not sleeping well at night because of it.

 

I say try to make it a better place for yourself but alos keep your eyes open for a new position.

 

Personally, I would ask to talk to him and lay it all out. SCHEDULE a time with him so you are not 'interferring' with his tasks and tell him where you are at and how you feel. I did this and it got better.....for a little while. Now I am back at square one so I need to get out.

 

Good luck!!

 

K

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I would do the same, try to delegate some tasks to people yourself and deffinately set up a time to talk to him and explain your frustrations. Go prepared with ideas of ways other people could help out. Dont' be afraid to tell people that you just don't have time to do a bunch of junk crap. If that doesn't work I'd find a new job and completely let them fall on their A##es!!!! Then they'll relalize your worth.

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i have nobody else below me to assign any of these tasks, too. unfortunately they dont want to hire any interns and the temps that come are here as programmers/developers. i first have to convince why we need help and why i shouldnt be doing these things. im going to start documenting everything i do on a daily basis vs what i'd like to accomplish, then submit that to him. for now, ive been avoiding him as much as possible because any interaction with him would really aggrevate me.

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