It's been a long time since I've posted but this topic is more involved than what I can express on facebook. The management staff at my office won't /can't help me. I think they try but they aren't persistent enough to really bulldog the situation and get results. It seems the approach of ignoring the problems is the chosen path that most take.
Perhaps they are overworked and forget to deal with the struggles of their employees. Maybe they are wrapped up in procedures that must be followed to address issues with other departments and they can't get results. It could be that they don't care. Whatever the reason, they are no help with resolving disputes or concerns in any area.
As an example:
An employee in our pricing group took my request for rush help as an accusation of his failure to do his job. Even after I admitted (3 times) that the rush was due to my error and that it was never my intention to accuse him of anything, he continues to put up roadblocks on my requests.
He even blatantly told me that I should give him the price up front do he could just add it without having to look it up. When I refused to do his job for him, he continue to reject my price request for ridiculous reasons, delaying it by several days.
His boss has been on copy of all the emails and has said/done nothing. When I approached my manager, she suggested I say "please add appropriate pricing" instead of using the term "verify pricing". When I asked her to speak with his boss she just said that she hadn't responded to her email from 3 days ago. No follow up attempted or plan to address further.
It's the same across the board. A peer in our group consistently makes changes to my accounts without telling me. I've addressed it several times, and management claims they have as well, but it continues to happen.
When issues & concerns are brought up, it's twisted into a failure on your part with no responsibility given to the party "at fault".
I recently took on a huge deck of accounts, on top of the 30 I already had. During a particularly busy week my phone was ringing off the hook & I'd been placed on a testing team that was taking a bit of time from my day. On Thursday, I didn't answer one of my calls & the customer went to another rep. When asked if I could take the call, I advised I couldn't right then & was sorry.
Somehow, the message was given to my manager who tore me a new one because I didn't tell the other rep why I was too busy, ask her to take a message & tell her when I'd call the customer back.
Seriously?
1. It's none of their business what I'm doing. I'm just not available
2. Taking a message should've been a no brainer. If the rep didn't know that... Fire them!
3. I don't know when I'm going to call them back. I didn't answer because I'm swamped & don't know when I'll be available to do anything else.
Then, to add insult to injury...I got an email at 1pm asking for an answer on a post mortem review. That means the situation is done and there is no dire need for response. She emailed me 2 hours later and wanted to know if I was going to respond. My response to her was not as nice as it could have been but at that point, I was done with the bull$hit.
I'm sure these episodes will be the only thing she highlights in my annual review next year because she has no clue what goes on in my daily work life. She even admitted as much during my last review and used that as her reasoning for only giving me a "meets expectations" score in most categories. Next year I'm asking my sales reps for written feedback that I can provide her so she can make a better informed decision.
It's frustrating to work in an environment where the management has absolutely no clue what is happening right under their noses. It sure feels like they don't really want to know, either.
