Rambo – in charge, making a bollix of it.
Right, so as ye know, I’m working in a hotel for the summer. Now, there’s an old guy, Dave, who I thought was my boss for quite some time. He arranged the roster, who got time off, our holidays and told us to go on smoke breaks. He’s been there the longest, and is most senior, both in age and ranking.
There is about 6 of us. Dave, Paul, another older guy and us 4 young guys. There’s a janitor in the hotel called Rambo, who is always running around fixing things, cutting the grass, washing windows. He’s a general handyman, and us kitchen porters, and the handyman would be both low level staff, on the same page.
Recently, Rambo was made our boss, as well as the boss of all the Waiting staff. And it has so gone to his head. like, completely. He says we can only take a 15 minute break every four hours, rather than the way we do it, where about once an hour we’d one by one, slip out for a quick cigarette. So we’re going mad over it. He says like a 3 minute toilet break every hour. He’s installed about 12 new camera’s, and when he goes home, the next day he’ll check the tapes to see if people took breaks. We’ve lost Paul, and 3 waiting staff already. They upped and walked out, sick of his shit. And fair game to them. Dave is so so hard done by.
He’s had Mondays and Tuesdays off for the last 5 years. Their his days. And now he has to work them, and more, because he doesn’t get to pick the times any more. And it’s so so horrible. Everyone is cracking up.
One of the girls snuck out for a sly cigarette, and before she had it lit, he was out giving her a verbal warning. Isn’t that ridiculous.
I had a very interesting chat with the night porter saying that the hotel were exploiting him. And I see that, Rambo is in the hotel like 18 hours a day, watching everything like it’s 1984, and reporting to the big bad bosses. it’s basic exploitation of him, because he’s spent fuck all hours with the wife.
But he sees himself at the top of the ladder now. Someone made a power coffee and gave him the used filter to play with. And he thinks they gave him a crown and sceptre. But he’s at the bottom. And always will be.
It’s interesting as to how this will work out. The next month will reveal all.
4 comments:
It sounds like he's full of shit. Hope it doesn't affect you too much.
I feel sorry for Rambo. He's been manoeuvred into a situation where he must be very unhappy, and it's not his fault. It's very hard to become the boss of your former peers. Sure it helps when you're senior in age, knowledge, and what more, but often your old peers will always have the feeling that you are also "just one of them" who suddenly got a nicer job.
Most people who are new to people's management are way too controlling. They are feeling the weight of all their new responsibilities and they don't want to fail them, certainly not at the starts. And, so they try and control everything under their responsibility. Spending far more time with it than they should.
Their only means seems to be putting pressure on people, but they forget how well they always did they former job without their boss pushing them. In fact, it's very counter-effective when you put extra pressure on people how already deliver good quality work. For them, the best way to keep them working well is to make them comfortable and acknowledge that you see they put an effort in it.
It's one of the most most common management mistakes and it's quite disastrous when you manage people. My boss promoted from peer to boss two years ago, and he too let us write us all updates on our progress, effectively killing the progress itself and talking all the responsibility away from us. He got overworked because he used most of his time at home read all the progress reposts and all in- and outgoing mail.
While some colleagues just got annoyed, I chatted with my boss about his job transfer in private a few times. He told me how terrified he'd not be competent enough. I responded, "You're lucky that you have a team under you with people whom you can trust to do their job almost autonomously and who have a great sense of responsibility. I wouldn't worry too much, you'll do fine." After that it got better and after two management courses and two years of experience I wished he didn't delegate all his responsibility away. Clearly he has learned.
Isn't there and older, former peer whom he trusts and who can have a chat with him? He must feel lonely (not being one of the old peers anymore), incompetent (it's not going well, people get fired) and stressed (you cannot take full responsibility of other people's actions that way). His bosses should have prepared him for the job somewhat better.
I've made that basic mistake in people's management too: I was a highschool teacher. But, I learned fast. The first year I was the most hated teacher, the next year I was the most popular.
One more thing: when you say "about 7" you mean "7", right?
power trippers are the most irritating people in the world - stick a fork up his arse and pull his head out of it for him
In a perfect Saved By The Bell kind of world there would be some kind of fallout with head office during an inspection and all the people that he wronged since his promotion will come together and bail him out.
He then would see the error of his ways and all would live happy ever after.
That would be till next week when all you crazy kids and Mr.Belding would have a protest rally to save the hotel from a money hungry property developer
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