Inconsistent statements interpreted as dishonesty/hostility?

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On several occasions in the workplace, I have received inconsistent and self-contradictory messages from management on why certain things are happening, or even regarding what we should be doing.

My usual reaction is to believe we are deliberately being told BS, partly so we will go away for a while to mull over the "information", perhaps partly so we can be criticized later no matter what we do.

However, I wonder if these people really don't realize how inconsistent they're being? It's hard to believe it's not intentional... and my own personal gut reaction to being told BS on a regular basis is to begin considering the BSer an enemy.

One of the reasons ASers often have trouble with managers, perhaps?

I have learned that a sure way of making an enemy in management is pointing out such inconsistencies in anything other than an indirect, humorous manner...

What are some of these inconsistencies?

For me it wasn't the inconsistencies, but the consitstencies of managers answers to my questions that made me worry.

Where I worked, hours were handed out based upon performance, at least they were suppose to be, but instead, performance was the last thing considered. So after everyone got the hours they wanted, I was always getting what was left over.

Anyways, during summer 2003 I obsessed about the hours situation on a nightly basis to which everyone said I was being paranoid. But I knew that something wasn't right becasue when I'd ask why my hours were being cut so low, the response I *always* got was "there's not enough hours to go around".

Well I knew that there wasn't something right about that since all the other people in my deptartment were getting 24, 32, or 40 hours a week and I was only getting 8 or 16 hours.

I managed to recruit one of the few allies I had there to do some investigating since he was the managers pet and could do such things with out drawing suspicion.

My suspicions were more than confirmed when he came back and reported that my managers thought that I was stupid, gullable, and insolant.

Scoots,

Did you ever try to talk to your manager's superior's ( ie a supervisor) about the way he was treating you. I;m sorry but if that was my manager I would have sued his ass up and down til he went bankrupt.

[Well I knew that there wasn't something right about that since all the other people in my deptartment were getting 24, 32, or 40 hours a week and I was only getting 8 or 16 hours. ]

I worked for a Macintosh Refurbishing house. I always got the lesser
20+ hours a week and it was based on a supposed job performance.
The owner's best bud in sales got the lion share of hours. I really felt
cheated, but learned alot about Mac OS's.
This may not be of any help, but at least you can see I understand.
Currently my employer gives me 10-20 hours a week due to my HFA,
and the tasks are more administrative, not customer service based.
I now don't mind since the real reason is out in the open(HFA acknowledged in the work place) and there is no secrets to hide.

Oh God, trouble with managers.

The ones here just DON'T explain what they want done clear enough. The way people learn things at my work, is being left to it then screamed at if you screw up.

*sigh*.

These were the people who were saying those things. The shift supervisor knew I was a good person, It was the HR manager, store assistant manager, and store manager who were saying those things. My department manager wouldn't stand up for me since he was nothing more than a big ass kisser.

It's the HR manager who really had it out for me. She was my shift supervisor when I first started working there. The first three months were a disaster for me and those three months has now given her an unbreakable stereotype of me.

I could go on for hours about how AS has made my life working in retail a living hell. And the funny thing is I can't even tell them I have it becasue I'm afraid they might try to use as grounds to terminate me.

Workplace politics in an NT workplace . :evil

Week 1: We need to get a lot more XYZ done

Week 3, in a personnel meeting, after I have significantly raised our output of XYZ: Well, we need to look at whether we should be working on XYZ right now

I take that as deliberate belittlement, possibly based on a desire to assert dominance in the group by finding something to complain about no matter what.

The thing is, I've had managers who don't operate that way... though a good proportion have in fact been this petty. It's not the way I manage, when I'm in that position.

I have a low tolerance for such behavior, since I've seen better, and also since I have a low tolerance for inconsistency of any kind.

But is it deliberate, or just inattention and lack of preparedness? I tend to lean toward the former, but wonder if I'm expecting too much from the po' li'l NTs. I doubt it though.

Man, that is the worst. I had one of those managers 2 jobs ago, and it looks like the current one is shaping up to be similar.

What I was told when I accepted the position was that I would need to get a lot done, and break some new ground, since they'd been short-staffed previously.

I did that, polititely, quietly and with good politicking... but part of what I did was prove certain things could be done (working demos even), when apparently there were some nay-sayers in the company who'd been saying these things weren't possible.

I think a lot of turf pressure then came back on my own manager, who quickly showed her true nature by a) telling me to "play nice", without first asking if the other folks were (as I stood bleeding on her carpet with several knives in my back), and b) that those projects were "on hold" until some bureaucratic stuff was out of the way.

I have been making quick work of the bureaucratic stuff... and the more progress I make, the less pleased she seems, and the more dissing comes my way. The next few weeks should be interesting...

Whatever her motivations, such inconsistency of message and direction is hard for me to tolerate.

Most managers will say anything to get things done their way. This includes inconsistent statements and flat out lies.

I've been there... and pointing out the inconsistency doesn't seem to help.

Well after a very frustrating day... all I want to do is scream -- NTS are so yuck!! !! !

It is summer time again and that means a new crop of collage grads and interns to deal with. Not to mention my old boss left and now I am the boss/exper on human factoirs/usability. Help - I'm an aspie trying to get a bunch of ego rich NTs to work together and cooperate.


Augh.. I am really confused about how to build the rapor with the newbies. They assume because they have not researched something - the data does not exist or was not analyzed correctly or they can do a better job!! !

They also seem to think the path to career growth is to be as obstructionist as possible and dump on their co-workers so they look smarter.


Does anyone have examples about how to:

1) Calibrate myself to so many newbies at once
2) Explain that do onto others is not a sugguestion - but the golden rule

My boss has sugguested that I do nothing and let them sink or swim

I dealt with one of those at my last job, too.

One day he actually told me with a straight face: "You gotta do a really good job on this project, I want to show it off because my performance review is coming up soon and I gotta look good so maybe they'll get me a new company car!"

My response: "I'll do a good job, but it'll be because I take pride in my work. If it makes you happy and gets you a new car that's a great side benefit, but it's really quite irrelevant to me."

He just gave me a really stunned look and changed the subject.

I didn't last long at that company. They loved to talk (and talk, and talk, and talk) about doing new things. They held meetings about meetings about great new ideas and products, they wined and dined sales reps, the higher-ups flew all over the country to businesses and conferences.. But when it came to actually MAKING SOMETHING HAPPEN, everything would just fizzle out. That was an incredibly infuriating place to work. And from what I hear, that kind of situation is pretty much the norm.

I do my job as effiecently and good as possible, never letting down. When most people panic and raise their performance because of a safety inspection or audit, I simply don't have to do anything except what I normally do. My managers and supervisors give me distance and pretty much let me do my own thing. If they disrespect me I will openly argue and yell at them. The way I see it is that I can be out the door whenever. I was sick of trying to impress people all the time and sick of being polite and smily to managers. Now I approach my bosses, only if I need to get orders or talk about procedures. I am a strange and rare kind of catalyst , something like a quarterback. When I work a shift, I roam up and down the floors, making sure that everything is functioning well. If anyone needs help, I help them. If something is out of place, I report it or fix it. My bosses know how I work and they seem to like it. A lower manager tried to throw me out one time and the higher ones wouldn't let me go. My job is full a**holes but the great thing is that I get along with the bigger fellas who are further up the ladder than them.

Hear, hear. I've been despised in almost all of my workplaces because I refuse to tolerate the bullsh1t; "pointing out the inconsistency" makes them resent me even more. Wheeee!

Um, yeah. Imagine people like that actually *doing* what they say they're gonna do... Hell would freakin' freeze over.

vits3k,

Are you keeping a daily diary of everything you're seeing day to day at work? If not, would you think about doing that even if you have to do it surrepticiously?

I get the impression there is a power struggle in the upper echelons or your superiors are scared of you because you seem to be so good at what you do.

I would think that keeping a record of your transactions, observations, experiences, and what colleagues said or did would sooner or later reveal a regular pattern and eventually, you'd get a pretty good picture of what your collegues' real intentions are. If you are recording your experiences, then by all means keep doing so.

It would also be advantageous to be able to refresh your memory if your superiors ever question you about anything. You could say: "On the date you ask about, this happened, s/he said this, s/he said that, etc", and nobody could deny your answers.

Give it a try, see what happens next, and good luck!