Man that's bull.
I've had good managers and bad ones as well. At the ice company, my boss and I were actually pretty good friends and had immense respect and trust in one another. It was good to know that you didn't have someone contstantly breathing down your back to make sure you're doing what your supposed to be doing because they just knew you were doing a fine job. I also had the freedom to kind of do things my way. It wasn't like, "I want this to happen, and this is how I want you to get there." It was just like, "I want this to happen, what do you need to get there?"
I truly loved that job. Too bad the company itself was a piece of shit. After nine fucking years of working there I left the position of Assistant Plant Manger, making a whopping $10.75 per hour. It was ridiculous. I started my next job at that amount.
Speaking of my next job, what a mistake. I was sort of like a collection agent, except for people that didn't have auto insurance on the cars we had loans out for. I can barely count the ways in which I got fucked over there, not to mention pretty much everyone else that works there. First of all, I only took the job because there was very little on-the-phone action. My job was to go down a list of customers that didn't have auto insurance, and send out nasty letters to them or their supervisors (they were all military). It was just me and this other lady doing this, for about 5,000 customers.
Well, it didn't work really well, and that list of customers with no insurance just kept growing. So they decided to purchase a dialer and slap us on the phone. Nevermind the fact that we had no training whatsoever in customer service or in assertive, collection-type interaction. So we started doing that and stopped sending letters. Well, this worked a little, but it was stupid. Some of our customers were in the middle of an ocean. Some of them were in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, Guam, Korea, etc. Some of them were in basic training and weren't allowed to take calls. So, while we worked more customers, many more went completely untouched, when previously they'd at least be getting letters. And what a mess the list of dialer calls was. We'd be calling customers that had their loans paid off for years, customers who declared bankruptcy, customers who were 60 days delinquent, customers who had their car repossessed, customers who had their car in storage, etc. It was so fucking stupid.
But that didn't stop my bitch manager. Every month, the number of uninstured customers would come out. And every month it was the same, or got higher. The answer according to her? Less downtime, more call time. It was decided that we had to make 140 calls in eight hours... a call every 3 minutes. Keep in mind that these are customers that don't want to get insurance, or have trouble affording it. It's not as simple as saying, "Hi Private Johnson, you need insurance. You'll have it today? Thanks." You have to convince, argue, answer questions, persuade. It takes longer than 3 minutes. If we didn't make the 140 calls in a day, we got a counseling card. 2 in a month and you're gone.
I even got two e-mails in a row one morning. One said basically, "What we are doing isn't working, do you have any other ideas?" The other said, and you could just tell she Bcc'ed the VP, "It has been decided that in order to reverse the trend of the increasing number of uninsured customers, you will now be required to make 160 calls per day." So, do more of what isn't working? Fucking retarded.
She was a real bad micromanager. Instead of being focused simply on the goal of the percent of customers that are uninsured being at a certain amount, she was intensely focused on the number of phone calls you made, the number of minutes you spent in break mode, the exact times you clocked in and out, bullshit like that. I realize you don't let your employees do whatever they want, but when someone is consistently staying an extra 15 minutes every day - unpaid, mind you - you don't fucking bitch at them for being 1 minute late one day.
I tried transferring positions, but my boss was such a bitch that I had too many counselling cards to transfer within the company. I finally found another job and got out of there after a year. One of my co-workers gave her a going away card for me for her to sign, and she said, "Do I have to?" Fuck you.
Personally, I don't like female management. Sure, some are better than others. The one I described above was Satan. But I find that female managers are much more likely to be focused on stupid little bullshit and micromanage rather than looking at the big picture and letting people be creative in how they attempt to reach their goals.
