WORK WHINES….ALREADY?!

When I was first informed of my new assignment and new supervisor at work after I returned from my operation, I knew I was going to have problems sooner or later. I just hoped it would be later.

I like my work scope now, although I have been advised to be careful not to get stuck in a rut. Now that is fodder for another post. But in the meantime, I am enjoying the work that I have been given.

The only fly in the ointment is my current supervisor, whom I have had doubts about from the very beginning. Tis not that he is a bad guy, just that our innate characters conflict and there is some history that involves some other people. As a result, we are somewhat suspicious and wary of each other, and most of the time it feels like a wary truce between us, then an amicable working relationship.

He is what we call a “micro-manager”. He tends to nitpick and control the smallest thing (like document formatting mistakes etc) and leaves the big picture dangling. Now, if I were much lower down the ladder rung, it might not have been so bad. But I am used to a boss who gave me the big picture and allowed me free rein to accomplish that, but will chip in and support me whenever I ran into problems. So mostly, I feel totally directionless when it comes to what to do next, and yet totally constraint in those little tasks.

And I hate it that he has put me under surveillance. Since I am still supporting multiple bosses, my seating has not been changed, which means I am somewhat far away from him as our office is quite large. So he often just walks over to confirm for himself that I am at my desk working. Now my job involves quite a bit of information gathering, which means I have to go around talking to people. So I have taken it upon myself to inform him of every single movement I make so that he will not get the wrong idea. Gosh! I thought I was light years away from the days when I had to raise my hand to go to the toilet!

And it also means that I have cannot openly talk to my ex-ex-supervisor and former team mates, whom I am still very close to, because there is some bad blood between them. I got caught a few times and boy, was it awkward!

I am trying not to let it affect me very much, and am managing to keep quite zen. But I can feel the situation scrap away at me slowly, so I don’t know if I will keep the zen-ness after a few more months. I have another colleague who was transferred to the same supervisor a few weeks after me, and we have been commiserating with each other. He is considering taking up a posting to our new subsidiary on the Indian East Coast just to get out of this situation. I have not gone to that extreme yet.

The thing is all opportunities which will get me out from under my supervisor’s thumb will land me in the exact situation which made me so miserable few months ago – being my own boss (running my own project). So I am now between the devil and deep blue sea.

The employee appraisal is here again and the employee self appraisal and feedback form is on my table. What do I say this time?