Hazia’s Reflections

I had a tough time with my second boss today. When I first joined, I heard that most of the junior staffs couldn’t stand him. They said he was harsh, sarcastic. The funny thing was that at that time, I didn’t have any problem with him. I actually worked well with him.

Having come out from the hotel industry, this kind of things didn’t bother me. In that kind of fast paced environment, you couldn’t afford to take things to heart. You did whatever your boss asked you to do. Not only you didn’t have time to argue much, arguing would only take away precious time that you could use to clear other tasks.

Interestingly, I would have to say that the 2 years away from the ROUGH SEA had soften me a lot.

His tone has started to sound very condescending to me, especially over the last few months. I’m beginning to see him more and more as a dictator, rather than a mentor. At least with The Snake, as irresponsible and insincere as he may be, there is still room for discussion. With our second boss, it is what it is.

Of course he would ask for your opinion first, they were supposed to groom people. However, when given, he would put it down. Then, he would state what his thoughts were and in a not-for-argumentation-tone state that that was the only way to do it.

The thing with me is that I hate people asking for my opinion when they have already made up their mind. When I sensed that from him, I didn’t bother to voice my thoughts or propose anything.

As a result, I felt repressed, like all my emotions were bottled up and couldn’t roam free. I couldn’t even voice my thoughts because I knew he would shoot it. It was as if I was all choked up.

In short, he blasted me for not giving high level counseling and at the same time, he also blasted me when my advice didn’t fit in with his opinion. When he jumped in with his solutions, I couldn’t continue counselling already because I couldn’t follow his thought process. I had to start with my own opinion and take it from there instead.

Lately, I had just realised that I also had a problem in understanding his language and expressions. Nope, no foreign accent. However, we are talking about a Malay guy whose command of the English language is much higher than his Bahasa Malaysia here.

With the new account, he tend to micro-managed too much. He seemed to forget the fact that for the last retainer account that I handle, the client was happy with me alone managing it. They never asked for any of my bosses. Why? Because I was given a lot of discretion and leeway to do things my own way.

Once during an internal meeting, I misunderstood what we planned to achieve during the upcoming client’s meeting. He condescendingly blasted me for not understanding.

The Snake joined us shortly after. Coincidentally, he misunderstood just like I did. However, our second boss showed him some respect and explained nicely. Didn’t want to embarass him with us there because of his position? What about critisizing me in our junior staff’s presence? That was totally unfair.

He used to stress that results were more important than processes. Pleasing the client took precedence over pleasing our bosses. It puzzled me why he was now insisting that I followed his style. The frequency and speed of workload coming in from this new client doesn’t help either.

I was just way too tired and I really needed a breather. He wanted to settle everthing today, every client’s email should be attended to immediately. Unfortunately, the client’s request emails just kept coming in non-stop. I mean I still had to work on that new business proposal and I needed full concentration.

In fact, during our last client meeting, he asked me to bring up the fact that we have exceeded our work volume for this month. We are doing 3 months work in only 1 month. What pissed me off the most was that during the meeting, he changed his mind and said it was okay to pump up this month as long as we have a slow period at the end of the year. Mann!!

The worst part was that I have to manage the workload with only 1 junior staff and not use the other manpower in the office because the retainer fee for the client wasn’t enough to cover more people. In this business, we charge according to hours of service. And nevermind if we are doing 3 months’ work scope in 1 month. He didn’t see that as a problem.

He really didn’t know how to use psychology. When you see people all stressed out, it was natural that you give them some space. On the contrary, he continued pressuring me non-stop. Some people would have cracked at this point.

Those things that he was chasing me on were not even urgent. We already had a media event yesterday and we have 1 more media event tomorrow. With this kind of volume, he needs to be more flexible. Chill, man! You can’t have everything perfect and at top speed all the time. I am not a factory, I have my ups and downs.

Even I know when to bend a bit and at work, I am not even a people-oriented person. That was why I didn’t grill our junior staff for a major mistake she made a few days ago. Out of 100 tasks, she only screwed up once, pretty good for a fresh graduate I’d say.

Oh, just now he nearly refused to approve my leave on Tuesday. I was getting jittery, my job interview has been scheduled. You don’t re-schedule with the MD and management team. Furthermore, I had to focus on getting out asap.

He said it was so short notice and also a busy week for the client. I had to resort to lying - I said I had a medical appointment. Because I had never lied to him before, he believed me. Come on, every week is a busy week for this client. We are working for an average of 2 to 3 events per week with less than 4 days’ notice each.

And tomorrow morning (Saturday), I have a 7.30am client event! It was bad enough that they gave short notice for weekday events, weekends are not exempted.

MY GOD, I AM EXTREMELY TIRED!