lox.Journal

Back to Work

Posted on 2006/05/30 10:23:31 (May 2006).

[29th-30th May 2006]

Going back to work was relatively painless this time. There is a great ferment here in the company, mostly because there are so many problems that the fact that I was holding my position at my usual desk almost fell unnoticed.
Nothing to sweat about it really, it gave me time to sort out all the expense claims and all the work done in Japan. In the late afternoon I had a quick chat with my boss, basically he told me that he was very close to handing in his notice, because he had a massive argument with the president of the company. Basically he was forbidden to look into product development in the future.
I feel quite sorry for him now, he doesn't see that he put himself in this position but now he is suffering from it.

This opens a new chapter of my book "What NOT to do in a company", basically the president hires this guy, he's got the highest wage in our company, something I dare think around 15.000/20.000 Euro per month (net), gives him the complete power of deciding everything, and then after 2 years she decides that he doesn't have to do the product development anymore (a key part in our business).
Now, why don't you get rid of him altogehter then?!

To add more stupidity to the whole thing we have this system of reviewing the delays and problems with production. Basically one of our sales assistants must go the the weaving factory and have a half day long meeting with production reviewing every single line of order.
Then the day after she comes back and has to talk with each one of us about the delays and a lot of complaints from the production side.

The whole thing is very tense and it ends up in a pointless bickering with her about all the points that we discuss. Pointless I say, mostly because she cannot do anything about it, but in a way she feels that she has to defend the position of the factory...

In any case it takes half of the day to get this thing done, ALL the production people must be there (so for half day you cannot get answers), the person from our office cannot do her proper job and she's a part timer, meaning that after the meeting she doesn't come back, then we must loose a couple of hours getting upset between each other about things that are not working.

It's a very clumsy procedure, and I don't understand the role of a person from our office, after all production has to tell us about deliveries and the likes... Oh well, talk about stupid procedures...

In all of this I have managed to create my own little oasis, where I manage to control everything about our market. I cannot avoid but thinking that a bit of proper organization efforts could be extended to the rest of the office, and maybe things might be better, but since I am good at what I do there is no way for me to get an higher position, after all they'd need to replace me if I was given more responsibilities in a different field...

Flattered about it ? Mmmmmm, not really...

Comment 1

Wow Lox! Your boss seems to be earning a lot of money! The profit margins in the fashion industry must be very large!

You are certainly collecting many great examples for that time when you do write the book!! :))

Glad you have managed to avoid all the back-biting!

Posted by Nigel at 2006/05/30 20:30:07.

Comment 2

Well lactually the fashion industry is doing good, but we are in the textile field, which is compeltely SHITE!! :( He gets so much money because he's good at selling himself, but in reality he does very little and the little he does is not very productive... Oh well... don't get me started!!