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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1528 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 6, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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If Charlie doesn't care when Bob screws up, why would he care if you screw up due to Bob? Why are you "forced to answer" if Bob isn't? Is this an office politics situation where Charlie and Bob are friends or something?

Why would the following not work:

  1. Bob breaks a tool and there's no documentation.
  2. This negatively impacts your tools.
  3. Manager asks you "why are your tools fucking up?"
  4. You respond: "That's because of this thing Bob broke over here. He has no documentation for it, but I've alerted him to the problem. As soon as he fixes it my tools will work great. In the mean time I just have to wait for Bob to fix it."
  5. Manager: "You fix it."
  6. You: "No, that's Bob's tool and there's no documentation."

Because we are "supposed to be a team" and "supposed to help each other out". There's no refusing to work on things here because other people are incompetent. (Kind of crazy to say that out loud!) The nuances are difficult to explain over text.

Two more examples to help paint a picture:

  • Parts regularly fail on our tools and it is our responsibility to make sure we have them in stock, including parts that have never failed before. If I asked Bob to ensure we have stock of part1, but he doesn't do that and that part fails on my tool, then I'm still responsible—it doesn't matter that Bob's tools also use the part.

  • If Bob made a system-wide change and that messed up my tools, I would still be responsible and have to report out on it. I've been reprimanded before for "throwing others under the bus", despite it clearly and fully being their fault.

It seems you have rediscovered the ancient wisdom that the reward for hard work is more work. The office doesn't work based on objective principles (like any org will insist to its grave), it works on the squeaky wheel getting the grease—and the strongest links getting the heaviest loads. Don't get me wrong: being a star performer can have its benefits in the right orgs with the right incentives—but if they aren't there (which seems to be the case as evidenced by your frustration), there's absolutely nothing wrong about withholding that performance.

I imagine that at some point, you (probably implicitly) volunteered yourself to be Bob's fixer. Now that you've shown you can do it, it's expected. It's hard to unwind that expectation without drawing attention. You can't just up and stop fixing Bob's mistakes, but you can steadily fix them less and less. Your cover is that maybe his fuckups are getting worse and worse, or perhaps your own responsibilities are growing and you have less and less effort to offer for it. There are likely a dozen more angles of attack for someone who knows your situation as intimately as you do.

Don't explicitly offer these things as explanations, but try to weave them implicitly in the excuses that you offer for why you couldn't fix Bob's mistake in a timely manner that avoids pain for his higher ups. Leverage plausible deniability to the maximum extent. Feel out how much pain you can expose Bob's superiors to using which narratives as cover and lean in to the ones that work.

Good luck.

You talk a lot about how things are "supposed" to be, but it's clear that there are no consequences if things don't happen the way they are supposed to. So why does it matter what is "supposed" to happen?

There's no refusing to work on things here because other people are incompetent.

Then be incompetent like Bob, since there are no consequences for this and others will be forced to pick up your slack. If they tell you to fix Bob's mistakes, say "sure, I'll try" then just don't (or only try as hard as doesn't inconvenience you).

Parts regularly fail on our tools and it is our responsibility to make sure we have them in stock, including parts that have never failed before.

So order the parts you need for your tools. I don't see what this has to do with Bob.

If Bob made a system-wide change and that messed up my tools, I would still be responsible and have to report out on it.

So just factually report what happened, and "try" to fix it, but don't put in any extra effort because it's ultimately not your problem.

So when your tools fail, do what Bob does- let the criticism slide over you, make excuses, then move on, since apparently there are no actual consequences beyond verbal reprimands.

Do make sure to document everything to demonstrate you fill your responsibilities and any problems were because Bob's mistakes impeded you.

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