[BeatingSAwithastick]

I always had my suspicions but today I saw something that pretty much confirmed it. The management at my work is dishonest/lazy/indifferent and uses divide and conquer to control the employees.

I went into the office to put in a consignment note, and my manager was saying
"That ****en prick, he wants to goto "the owner" and ****in tell him he did everything by himself", "who the **** does he think he is?" and he was totally raging. I made a joke about the whole thing so I could get out of there and left.

He was referring to the stock controller, who was put in place by the owner to keep an eye on the management, who I suspect the owner does not trust. At that moment the stock controller was taking charge of an order that the warehouse manager usually supervised. He went on this rant in front of the new employees who were doing the work for the stock controller. Clearly indicating to the employees that if they worked hard for the stock controller they fell out of favour with the manager.

The next thing I noticed the stock controller came in and asks my manager a question, and boy did his tone and facial expressions change, he was suddenly the stock controllers best friend, listening intently.

How can I trust these people?

I suspect they did this to me as well. A while ago I was to take charge of a section while one of the supervisors was on holiday, this supervisor and I have a history, he actually got depromoted from the position of stock controller by the owner (the stock controller mentioned above replaced him), but was still good friends with the warehouse manager (my boss). I, along with a host of others had complained about his poor performance and his indifference. I suspect he held a grudge against me because of this. Although the reality was the owner had a long history of dissatisfaction with his performance, and that was most probably the reason for his depromotion.

Just a week before I took over the section the supervisor continuously put me down in front of the employees who worked in that section, telling them that I was a "bad person", and that "they shouldn't take me too seriously as I worked for them and not the other way around" and that "I was going to stuff everything up", the manager did nothing to stop these comments and sometimes jokingly joined in. When I took over that section, the manager offered very little support, and the employees seeing that I was not in favour with the manager went about reporting rubbish stories about me to the manager. At the time I took it personally and although I knew the employees were overreacting and that the supervisor had set me up, I really couldn't be sure of the manager's involvement. Because after that he was all friendly towards me.

Now I'm starting to see that this is some sort of "game" to these people.

Am I paranoid, or is the management colluding in order to hide and maintain their own indifference, faults and laziness and maintain their jobs while doing so?

 

[coldmorning]

I don't think you're being paranoid. I've seen all sorts of weird and ruthless behavior in the work environment. I suppose it's just survival though.. people do what they feel is necessary to move up in their jobs and make more money.

It's not impossible to be fairly treated, but one should probably have some skills down to make sure they get their work and efforts recognized. You can't always just expect to just do your job and avoid politics in most large workplaces. I'm sure there are exceptions but unless you freelance and work for yourself, or start your own business, you're probably going to run into a ruthless environment like this sooner or later.

 

[BeatingSAwithastick]

I don't think you're being paranoid. I've seen all sorts of weird and ruthless behavior in the work environment. I suppose it's just survival though.. people do what they feel is necessary to move up in their jobs and make more money.

It's not impossible to be fairly treated, but one should probably have some skills down to make sure they get their work and efforts recognized. You can't always just expect to just do your job and avoid politics in most large workplaces. I'm sure there are exceptions but unless you freelance and work for yourself, or start your own business, you're probably going to run into a ruthless environment like this sooner or later.

Thanks for your reply coldmorning. The thing is, in my workplace, there really isn't anywhere to move up to in the short term, I think some of these people are really insecure about their jobs and/or get off on power trips.

Today for example, a customer complained that a whole lot of stock was missing from an order we had sent out. Our manager denied it all on the phone to them, and blamed it on the transport company, even though the customer claimed that the pallet had reached them with the original wrapping intact. But the thing is, it WAS our mistake, the people who packed the order had missed stock, our stock controller found the stock still in the warehouse. There was NO DOUBT that it was our fault. My manager KNEW THIS and still outright lied to the customer and then made us start labeling every carton we send out. I mean W T F!

 

[smalltowngirl]

My last work place had a lot of gossip going on and people blaming each other. I couldn't stand it. I'd love to work somewhere where people took responsibility for their mistakes.