Paging my boss' balls—boss' balls, are you there?

Not too long ago I got a raise and a promotion. So I should be thrilled, right? Well, I do appreciate the extra 10 percent padding to my paycheck. And the title is good for a bargaining chip for future jobs, I guess (though it’s really a bullshit title and doesn’t mean much to me). But right now I am not a happy camper.

Basically, without going into too much detail, I just don’t feel my boss has any balls. He is kowtowing to the Corner Office guys who seem to be making decisions about our product that, in the past, have been none of their beeswax. The last two years or so, the President of our division (or whatever powers that be that have Supreme Budget Control) cut our budgets so much that our product looked like shit basically. (Those who are reading this blog who know me know what our product is; I’ll just say that it has a design element to it.) Then in division meetings Mr. Pres will trash our product without acknowledging that we never had MONEY to make it look better.

About six months ago, they decide all of a sudden that they are going to give us money to make the product look better; more money for photo shoots (though no raise or promotion yet). It looks great, yes—but only because we had the resources to make it so.
Except along with the money, we also get more bureaucracy; seems our product has been so bad Mr. Pres decides he wants to have more of a hand in our decisionmaking, and one of his minions takes over the art part of it. So even though we make suggestions, the ultimate thumbs up has to come from Corner Office folks.

ARRGGGHHHH…is all I can think to say. Amidst all this, my old boss, whom I liked, leaves for another job, and our staff is basically three people. The New Guy is…eh. Initially, I just thought maybe it was because of the age gap. I had been used to female bosses not even a decade older than me for a while, so having a middle-aged male boss, I knew, would take some getting used to. But then New Guy’s balls start shriveling into his sac. I know that all new bosses want to make a good impression, they want to make their mark, and they feel pressure to ramp up quickly, especially when a product is at sort of a cross-roads like ours. I know that. I understand all that. I know he has pressure. But New Guy immediately starts instituting all these changes, of which we are feeling the affects right now. (I am in a deadline-oriented business, and with changes comes extra time to deal with those changes.) Why not phase in changes? No, that would be too practical, too common sensical. (Yes, I know that is not a word.) But NO…someone is so quick to change everything, without even thinking how it would affect us underlings, and before he truly understands the market and how our product serves our market.

I was particularly unhappy with one assignment in which Mr. Pres makes a decision that directly affects my job, even though no one runs it by me to check whether it’s possible—not too mention that Mr. Pres’ decisionmaking is based on totally stupid, and possibly sexist, rationale. I express unhappiness to New Boss; new boss and another higher up say it’s too late, they’ve made a promise to Mr. Pres that his wish shall be done, and we can’t go back and tell him no now because Mr. Pres holds grudges. Harrumph!!!!!!!! Forget that I have been at the job for nearly four years and New Guy has been there for two weeks. I don’t win this battle, but I at least get it off my chest—and am happy to have been straightforward with my unhappiness rather than use the passive aggressive shit my new boss seems to use. (Other things that annoy me about him: He OVEREXPLAINS everything—leaves me five minute messages to ask me to do something that only takes one.)

The sad part is, some of the changes that are being made, which may degrade the quality of the product, will likely produce more revenue. And added revenue will result in happier corner office guys, which will result in them patting themselves on the back for making our formerly shitty product better.

Why is there always such a disconnect between what managers see and what employees see? Why is it that when people go higher up the corporate ladder, they get stupider, can’t do anything on their own, and their balls start shriveling up? And when I actually want to start going on interviews, why I can’t find any jobs I like? (It doesn’t help that I’m at this weird middle level point in my career—not entry, not exactly management—that makes it so hard to find jobs, particularly in my field.)

I have one dash of hope: My company has been in the news of late as a candidate for a takeover, and if that happens, then I’m hoping they will dissolve our division, lay us all off, and give us severance. Of course, I would only be happy about this if the severance was enough to last me for at least two months—enough to do some serious job hunting. But a girl can hope, right? Unfortunately, have not seen much on my company on fuckedcompany.com so maybe the takeover is not as imminent as some of the media reports are making it seem. Oh well.