If you are by any chance like me and work in a company that has pretensions of international affiliations, then in the ecletic mix of individuals you probably will have a boss (or bosses), usually very high up the ladder, who is/are white.
There are usually no problems if there is only one white boss. He or she, is usually bedevilled by "problems" of inter-galactic scale to be bothered with pedestrian concerns such as yours or mine.
Such problems usually include drawing a multi-million shilling salary, every month.
But things begin to quite unravel if there are some mini-white bosses. Now, don't get me wrong, a boss of any kind is extremely undesirable; But white bosses can be spectacular in their nastiness. Perhaps it stems from the superiority complex or the condescesion that they are encumbered with in regards to people of dark skin. Let me be straight. Black people.
We have quite a sprinkling of these extremely likeable fellows.
They appear, as if by magic, from the thin air. They come from far and wide. Hungary, France, Brazil, Britain, Germany. Usually, the main guy does rounds introducing the new honcho.
His or her role (when it is explained to you), is something that either you did not think your company is capable of doing, or it is something that someone else, already in the employ of the company, is capable of with his (or her) eyes closed and hands tied behind his back.
Over the next few days, the new guy produces an axe and proceeds to chop off a few heads; Those he can't chop off he bashes in. This benevolent exercise is wrapped in biz-speak as "streamlining operations". Bosses must be on a totally different plateau of "sense", mainly because the logic of firing people when there is too much work already entirely escapes me.
Or may be I am stupid.
From these colourful precedents, people have learnt caution, patience and endurance. The general wisdom is that you cannot possibly win against such guys.
For instance, if the guy without any reason decides to smack you very hard with a metal slide rule, you will not be a fool and run to complain to HR. Who has any way of knowing what relationships they have with the boss in the past years? You might run to complaints section about a certain white employee, say a lady, little did you know that she has done a bit of adventure fishing with the current boss in some obscure, godforsaken part of England.
Consequently, you will get unceremoniously booted out of the company.
On occasion, when running in cocktail parties (on company money), sending senseless junk mail, yawning and stretching does not produce palpable excitement, these distinguished ladies and gentlemen take a perverse pleasure in taking on whole departments. And of course winning, because if they did not win, they would not engage in despicable displays of pride, would they?
This they do by engaging scarce (and busy) resources/people in endeavours that have little merit in business sense, or are meant to enrich their personal experience where they work.
These "small" projects, are a mockery of people's intelligence.
To add insult to injury, these requests are either not registered, or done inappropriately at best.
These ideas are mooted at fancy tea parties held in honour of some lost cause, like racing donkeys across a dry patch of land.
We do not have the pleasure of being invited to these gatherings.
Consequently, footsoldiers, like myself, will have not the slightest idea that some bigwig would desire his or her Outlook program to do quite a number of fantastic things. Like for instance aggregate "business news" from the web. Or have reports streamed seamlessly into his/her PDA. The fact that the report has thousands of rows and cannot be rendered on a PDA because
it is too heavy or uses some exotic reporting engine, is of no consequence. All that matters is that the order is out.
EXECUTE ASAP!
Those who sit on lofty perches will think these are brilliant ideas. They make great business sense! What would be more sensible than the ability to view and analyze an operations report while sitting at home lazily on a Sunday afternoon?
Of course, project managers in a department, for instance IT, will immediately see that the assignment is non-critical. It is non-critical because there are other systems which if not developed, or maintained, the whole business will come to a crashing halt.
As a result, it will get a low ranking in the general order of things. Or not get a ranking at all.
The requestor, in his limited knowledge, will imagine an RSS/XML aggregator dll for Outlook for instance, written in say, COM or .Net is as easy as typing an email. After a mere four days from the conceptualization of the idea at the tea party, the said boss will start asking questions, sending mail in caps.
The managers in IT will start to panic. They will pick a programmer who has the best "drift" of the area of expertise required and promptly deposit the problem at his desk. Then it will be tagged "High Priority". A deadline that does not move will be set to expire approximately 3 days after the programmer is first alerted of the problem.
The programmer will pose one question:
Which of the systems I am currently developing/maintaining should I shelve so that I can pay attention to this?
The manager, invariably will have no answer to this question.
Can't you just slot in among your other duties?
At this suggestion the programmer laughs derisively.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the Manager will conceive a brilliant idea. That idea is to ask you to allocate equal time to all the systems at hand.
The deadline passes. A fresh flurry of mail begins.
Another meeting, informal, possibly held in a social gathering of white manager brethren and a few senior black judases who have licked sufficient a*s to merit invitation comes to pass without the knowledge of everybody else. At such meets, the idea of the general "inefficiency" of the IT department is discussed. All problems, known and unknown are laid at our doorstep. A list of things that should have been done is enumerated. The need to bring the place to heel is stressed. The main boss, I would imagine, nods his head pensively.
The boss, goes after our managers with a real fury. It is pointless to try arguing that there are procedures in place that are flouted with abandon by our dear cousins, leading to the mess.
Everyone scrams to cover their behind. New prompt deliveries are promised. The managers will walk down from such meetings breathing real fire. Consequent meetings follow. The general drift is:
This is direct from [name of boss]. It has to be over by [date] WITHOUT FAIL.
At this point the footsoldier tries to protest.
The answer he gets is very accomodating:
I DON'T CARE.
And that is how ladies and gentlemen, you find yourself working 16 hour days. 8 am to 11 pm.
Our other black bosses, are a miserable lot too. But they usually don't take drinks or play golf with the CEO. We are therefore quite able to run them through the mill.
How are yours?
This is not a race chant.
Have an anger-free weekend.
