Monday, December 20, 2010

Inappropriateness and Tactlessness

So yesterday I'm sitting at my desk in our office suite (I don't have my own office, I sit in the front room of our office suite behind the student worker desk) working on the multitude of projects I have going - mostly for the New Student Orientation happening in two weeks - when my boss comes out of her office and sits down across from me. She starts by telling me about a meeting she has later that afternoon and that one of the agenda items might change the order/process of Fall Orientation (luckily I'm working on Winter and it wouldn't effect my current projects).

She then shifts some and starts saying something about how she has something else she wants me to know about but that I should understand she heard it third-fourth hand, that she had been thinking about how best to approach me, etc etc etc....dancing around the topic and making me nervous.

"Okay" I say - expecting something along the lines of budget cuts and me loosing my raise (or worse my job)

Apparently she heard third hand that a student, with whom I am supposed to work very closely with, went to my boss's boss's boss (aka the PRESIDENT of the College) to say she can't work with me. Now I don't know the tone. I don't know the reason. What I do know is that apparently without me looking I've created an enemy at my new job. I know that I have upset this person so much that she says she can't work with me. I know that the President needs a lesson in Human Resources 101 and to learn that when you are dealing with a personnel matter of this kind you don't go burst into someone's office, where they are in the middle of a meeting with other departments, to tell my boss's boss this tidbit of information.

Yes that's right. The way my boss found out was this:
Student meets with President.
President intrudes and "discloses" this information to the Provost
(with 2 other department heads in the office)
One of these Department Heads then tells my boss.
Who then tells me.

I don't know which to be more upset about. That this student has such a chip on her shoulder that she's decided she can't (and/or won't) work with me.

I don't expect everyone to love me. Hell, I don't expect everyone to like me. 
HOWEVER, I do expect people to be professional and deal with it.

Or does it bother me more that the President has so little tact that he thinks this is the appropriate means to which share this information.

My boss says she wants to have a meeting with the President about everything that's going on (details here aren't important) and how he's encouraging and unknowingly increasing the drama.  But he's currently on vacation meaning this conversation isn't going to happen for a few weeks.

We'll see what happens I suppose.

1 comment:

  1. sorry hun...this is super lame and you are the last person I would expect this to happen to...so try not to stress...this is just beaurocracy and idiocy at its finest. Keep your head up and they will be telling you how wonderful you are soon enough.....

    ReplyDelete