Uprising

At our usual Friday morning roundtable this week, a strange thing happened. Ms. Duplicity (my manager) had to leave early, and when she exited the room, we all began to talk candidly about how we're feeling about work. It seems that everyone has been nursing a fantasy in which all of us in the department quit on the same day, in the middle of the deadline, leaving Ms. D, her oblivious boss, Mr. Head in the Clouds, and the rest of the company in a lurch. It is bad when well-adjusted adults with a commendable work ethic start to imagine ways to cause trouble.

So we all decided to call a meeting with our manager and Mr. Head in the Clouds (because we know the bulk of the impractical ideas that get communicated through her come from him). To say that she was nervous would be an understatement. The comments were kept to the work conditions (i.e., decisions that are made during crunch time that impede our ability to meet the deadline), and wanting to clarify priorities. No one said anything about the fact that we all feel micromanaged, belittled, and condescended to, because that is harder to discuss concretely--and not something we wanted to call her boss in on considering that we have not discussed it with her at this point. We were fired up, but not irrational.

Nothing changed as a result of the meeting, but it still felt like a victory, because we, the majority, stood up and made a statement. And, we heard Mr. Head in the Clouds say that he puts a higher premium on one element of our work than the other. Funny that this was never communicated to us.

The best part was seeing her try to recover a shred of dignity at the end, reducing the meeting to an unnecessary exercise by saying "there's no need to call a big meeting..."

I hope the fallout is worth it, because I'm sure there will be some.