About Me

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Decision Making and Responsibility: Out with the Old, In With the New

I am being buried under loads of work lately. On top of that, everybody is asking me everything.

I am so tired of having to answer all questions.

- The lawnmover is broken. What should we do?
- Get it fixed if fixing costs below such and such amount.

- We shall be letting this person go. What should we do?
-Ask the lawyer.
- The lawyaer says this and that. How should we proceed?
- Do this and that.

- May I leave ten minutes early?
- Yes.

- So and so has worked all night, shall I give him the day off?
- Yesss! Sure! (Or rather no, make him work like a slave so that he finally leaves the company and sues our artses off).

All day long I probably answer 100 questions 95 of which are plain simple or dumb. I simply cannot concentrate.

And no, they are not asking me all the time just because they look up to me or they value my opinion or they find me reliable. They are asking because they do not want to take on the responsibility associated with decision making.

Today, I stayed home to catch up on my work in silence. Thankfully, I only got 20 calls or so.


9 comments:

  1. Sometimes it sure seems like common sense has been lost.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You expressed it better than I did. Thank You!

      Delete
  2. Maybe some of the time you should look them in the face and say, "What do you think?" Or "Figure it out." That would make me nuts and exhausted. I am glad you are home where you can concentrate. What do they do when you are not there?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. There is this guy who constantly calls me during the weekends. He thinks about something and then he gets excited about that and immediately calls me. Three weeks ago I told him specifically this: If the office catches fire or if one of our people sabotage a client and flee the country, call me. Unless whatever is the reason you call me about is as serious as those, do not call me at night or over the weekend. 99.9% of the stuff can wait until Monday. Guess what? One weekend passed in peace and the next weekend he calls me with a "I have been thinking, what if so and so does not do this?" kind of a question. Arrrggh!

      Delete
    3. T'Pol,
      Have an answer ready--Tell me about it Monday. Or, put it in a memo, I was feeding my cat/painting my toenails/burning something on the stove now that I am talking to you/taking a nap. Let's talk shop at shop.

      Talking shop is talking about work outside of work. Not sure if you know that idiom. You could also call him after his bedtime. Or in the middle of the night when you cannot sleep or just before you know he might be arising.

      Or, send a memo to all and explain what you told him. Then, when he calls, just remain silent. When he asks what you think or if you are still there, ask him to reread the memo while you continue with...whatever you want to tell him.

      Delete
  3. It must the the moon... People are doing it all over the world... No common sense for sure!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ugh. It's hard when you know all the answers! ;) People are so afraid of making decisions sometimes. What has happened to us? Hope you can find some peace. Perhaps it's all the new changes? xx

    ReplyDelete
  5. As a special education teacher with 8 teaching assistants I was continuously bombarded with stupid questions. You're absolutely on the money when you say they don't want the responsibility of decision making. It got so bad that I answered the questions with another question - "what do YOU think?"

    ReplyDelete