My Winter of Discontent

My post-relocation contract was up in April 2007. I planned on approaching Augustus and letting him know I wasn't happy, but he announced his resignation at about the same time. Lovely. I felt trapped and increasingly discontent with my job and myself.

Il Duce gave me a substandard review for the 2005 year for pitiful reasons, but the next year I tried really hard to get along with him and do what he asked. True, I was back to my usual above average review for 2006 (and therefore back up to my usual raise and bonus), but I felt unclean about it. This is not a game I wanted to play. There is a fine line between trying to play ball with a new boss and selling out. I was unclear as to which side of the line I was on.

Fact: He raped my team to build a new one. Inflammatory rhetoric aside, that's exactly what he did. My team suffered, while his new team was growing. He didn't care about us because we did not represent his path to career advancement.

Posit: Since he did this for no other reason than to bolster his own career, this shows me that he cares little or nothing for the people around him (those not sleeping with him, anyway), and that he's willing to sacrifice any of us to serve his own purposes.

Fact: He carried on an unethical affair with one of my own employees, and passed up several good people for promotions in the process.

Fact: He micromanaged me into a corner. My team was hemorrhaging staff at about the same rate his was back in the day when he ran the U.K. division by himself, and there's little I could do about it. If I challenge him, he punishes me. If I don't challenge him, my team gets inadvertently punished by his poor management style. Thus the corner.

I talked to a friend of mine back in May about this, after I found out that Augustus was leaving. He works for my company, too, this friend of mine, but not in my department. I told him that I was thinking of leaving. This guy, who is higher up in management than I am, said he'd heard things were afoot that might change my mind and suggested I stick it out.

So I arranged a meeting with Il Duce's new boss (Augustus' replacement) and the guy above him (Il Duce's boss' boss) and told them both the same thing, that I was having a very difficult time working with Il Duce and that I wasn't very happy. Much to my surprise they both sympathized with me and seemed to agree with my opinion of him. (Apparently he hasn't made a lot of friends with this empire building of his.) They both told me that plans were underway to move him and the Business Intelligence Team to another part of the company, which would leave me to run the team my way, again, finally.

Just hold out a little longer, they said.