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Friday, April 23, 2010

Stop stepping on my dang toes

I'm always pretty vague about my job on my blog, and Twitter. Its mostly in the interests of keeping my identity equally as vague, because this is supposed to be a place to blow off steam about people that wouldn't appreciate reading it about themselves.

I also don't need to be that chick that gets fired for her blog. Because seriously. SERIOUSLY.

That aside, work has become a hot button topic for me lately. We're going through one heck of a growing pain right now. The bar-like/pub-like business I work for is on the campus of my school (hence the vague), and is run by a combination team of a full time adult manager as well as a few assistant managers, and student assistant managers. The student management changes annually, because many of the managers are upper year students and upper years have a tendency to...yknow, graduate.

I have been promoted to student manager. This is a new position. Previously, it was a team of assistant managers, and none of them outranked each other. I now outrank them all; head of the house, so to speak. (It is a team of 8 that will be under me, if you're curious). The problem right now is that the student AMs that have been my superiors since September are now my inferiors. I didn't just jump one level up and become an equal...I'm their boss now. Awkward.

Some are taking it quite well. The non returners frankly don't care, their days are numbered. However, there is one that is making my life difficult. She's the quiet type, and unaccustomed to power. When she was my boss, she barely had the guts to approach me, but now that I'm hers, she feels the need to...I don't know, test me? She's doing the passive aggressive shit, overriding my decisions behind my back, and I have very little patience for it, and I'm having a difficult time trying to find the middle of the road to deal with it.

I'm a firm believer in "Give an inch and they'll take a mile" in situations like this and I want, and need, her to know that this isn't going to fly, and I'm not putting up with her constantly undermining me. But at the same time, as a new manager who needs a cohesive team of assistants under her, I don't need to bring the hammer down on someone without a really good reason. Even if I really, REALLY would like to. Ahem.

And thus...the politics of management begins.

Any advice is actually welcome on this one, even if you haven't been in a similar situation. Sometimes, an outsider's assessment sheds light on something I didn't even see. So feel free to comment.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Life Update

Sorry I haven't written for a while. Things have been a little insane.

Ben deserved his face time at the top of my blog, because that kind of hate and hurt from parent to child needs to be stopped right now. See my last entry if you're wondering what I'm talking about.

Otherwise, life has generally been insane. The end of the semester always brings insanity and papers and sleepless nights of studying and this one was no exception. That's really all that needs to be said.

Work, on the other hand...I could talk for days. I'm now a manager of 3 businesses, all owned by the same entity that I work for. Between said 3 businesses, we need to hire about 160 people, thanks to student turnover at the end of semesters. This means I am interviewing over 270 people. In ten days. For those of you that have done interviews, you know my pain. For those of you that haven't...be glad you don't understand.

So school insanity just wrapped up but work insanity is just beginning. Welcome to my crazy life.