While working with an incompetent manager of human resources, Mark was asked to review some work she had previously completed.
Even though HR tried to make Mark*'*s job as difficult as humanly possible, it all backfired leaving her chastised by their boss and insulted by her client.
Sucks to suck!
Introducing The Manager of Human Resources And Her Assistant
There were a pair incompetent Human Resources women working at a company Mark worked at for a year. It was one of the largest engineering companies in Europe, but each contract had its own HR department, this one consisting of two permanent staff and a temporary worker, they were all women. Telling his story, Mark uses manager and manager’s assistant to distinguish between the two HR women he had to deal with during his time there.
Mark got along with the temporary worker, both of them keen horse riders (well she rode horses, and he played polo). Even after they both left the engineering company, they managed to stay in contact with one another. The temporary worker’s fiance at the time was an avid gamer, and Mark even got invited to their wedding, though he was out of the country at the time.
Anyway, then HR Manager had initially started working as a temp and got along with most people, with the exception of her manager at the time. Her manager had tried to get rid of her a few times, but her requests kept getting blocked by the people above her. She had lied on her CV, claiming she had extensive IT experience, when, simply put, she didn’t have any. Her saving grace was that she knew the (married) regional contract manager from outside of work and, after a big Holiday party, found her way into his hotel room. Tired of having to rely on someone who was both incompetent and in bed with the boss of her boss, she requested a transfer to another department. The manager’s assistant, on the other hand, instantly got offered a full-time job with the company and a promotion to HR manager, despite having no management experience.
Mark, The Company’s General Assistant
Left with a vacancy in her department, the manager hired a new temporary worker to take over. In four months, prior to Mark joining the company, she got through five different temps. All were perfectly qualified and competent in the roles they had been assigned. The problem was that they were too good, which made the manager look bad. Eventually, the temp in question showed up, who, like the manager, had lied on her CV about her IT experience. She lasted a record one month before being made a permanent staff member.
Mark was hired at the company as a general assistant and his boss was the contract manager. Even though Mark was the lowest of the low on the company totem pole, he answered directly to the most senior person on site, the same person the incompetent manager answered to. She didn’t like that one bit, as the majority of the staff on site found themselves at the HR department’s mercy while Mark was somewhat immune.
Mark’s main duty at the company was to take care of the KPIs (key performance indicators). The company had a series of targets to meet, and if successfully met, their client (the government) would give them a bonus. Each month, the government would send the company their figures, and Mark would go through the jobs that missed the target, looking for extenuating circumstances or mistakes in the paperwork. There was a six-month backlog for Mark to go through when he arrived at the company, which took him about three weeks to get through, requiring trips to various depots, calls to subcontractors, and lots of flicking through folder upon folder of job tickets.
When Mark submitted the updated KPIs to his manager, he was shocked to find that the company had scored vastly better in the six months he had reviewed, than the 8 months prior (his manager had asked him to go through the records for the 8 months prior to the backlog). This required visiting HR, as they had been dealing with KPIs prior to Mark’s arrival, and it was their incompetence that led to the six-month backlog. So, lo and behold, after a month of working at the company, Mark finally had his first dealings with the HR manager.
Playing By Her Rules
In short, the HR manager couldn’t understand how Mark could get through the six-month backlog in less than a month, as it had taken her department roughly two months to go through each month worth of KPIs. Mark explains that he has no idea why it would take anyone that long, as the work was tedious but remarkably simple. He even lists the steps to the procedure:
- Look up the number for the job in question.
- Find the ticket for the job in question.
- Check that the times match, there weren’t any client revisions, it wasn’t passed onto a subcontractor, etc. (if the had subcontractor failed, they could sue them).
- Scan the evidence, attach it to the KPI document and send it to the client for review.
The HR manager felt Mark was challenging her authority and ability when he asked for the 8 months worth of data. It was all kept in one folder in a large cupboard and all he needed from her was the folder but, she wasn’t having it. Mark couldn’t open the cupboard without her standing over him because as the HR manager claimed, there were ‘files filled with private and personal staff records’ alongside it. But as Mark recalls, this was not the case.
The files were kept in a locked filing cabinet that not even the HR manager had the key for. Mark also was told he couldn’t take the files out of her department as she couldn’t have him tampering with historical records, despite the fact that his job was to review the records and rectify any mistakes! He asked if he could take photocopies of the contents of the file so that he could work from his desk on another floor, but she wouldn’t allow that either. But Mark figured, if she wanted him to play by her rules, that he’d play by her rules.
More And More Complaints By Human Resources
There were four desks in the HR manager’s department, with only three computers and three phones and she wouldn’t let Mark use them as they were for her staff. Mark didn’t really need a computer while he was going through the records, but he most definitely needed a phone. Rather than going to his boss and complain, he called the IT department and had them install a new one.
This was the first thing Mark did to really disrupt the peace between him and the HR manager, as the only spare socket was by her desk, so she ended up with an unsightly cable running across the room. When she complained about the safety hazard (and claimed that someone might trip over the cable), Mark went to our HSE (health, safety, and environment) officer and purchased a cover for the cable, charging it to her department, which annoyed her even more.
The HR manager also couldn’t stand the way Mark chatted socially with clients over the phone when querying jobs, claiming it was inappropriate. Mark believes that she was jealous that he got to deal directly with clients. When her department dealt with this, they had never thought to phone up the client about the discrepancies between the company’s figures and theirs.
The human resources manager also regularly complained that Mark was being disruptive to her staff when he would repeatedly enter and leave the department with various files filled with tickets and questioned his ‘space and time management.’ She claimed he could do the job more efficiently if he planned ahead and got all the folders at once. Mind you, the company filled four files a month with tickets, and Mark was going through 8 months of tickets, not to mention the files were held by three different departments depending on the type of job.
Meeting The Client
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Mark’s counterpart at the client came into the office one day to see his boss. The topic of KPIs came up, and Mark’s client wanted to meet him personally, so he and Mark’s boss headed down to his desk to say hello. When they saw Mark wasn’t there, they were puzzled and were told that he was doing his work from HR department, so they went there to go see him. And the conversation went something like this:
Boss: Hey Mark. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you working from your desk?
Mark: I’m not allowed to take the file out of this office.
Boss: Eh? *looks at the HR manager as she tries to hide behind her screen
Client: Hi, I’m the client. Good work on those KPIs. I thought something was off on those months that you’re reviewing.
Mark: And you didn’t say anything?
Client: Of course not. I’ll do anything I can to avoid paying you scroungy jerks *jokingly
Mark: I’m sorry if I’m making you look bad.
Client: Nah. The only one who should look bad is the person that did the job before…
A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
Boss: Client, meet the head of HR.
Client: Oh…uhm… pleased to meet you. Is the head of quantity surveyor around? I need to talk to him.
Boss: Yes, across the hall, in the office through the break room.
Client: Thanks. Good to meet you all.
Recalling the story, Mark couldn’t get over the look on the HR manager’s face. He describes the HR manager’s emotions as shock, horror, anger, and disgust, all at once. She looked like she was going to explode.
Mark’s boss put his hand on Mark’s shoulder and simply said: ‘I think you should take this to your desk downstairs’, before handing him the folder he was allegedly not allowed to take out of the office.
Mark explains that he really didn’t get along with her after that and in all honesty, he had a whole lot of stories to tell from working at that engineering company, but none are as good as the HR manager from the fiery pits below.