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That depends. Are you finding these errors frequently, or just one or two over an extended period of time? If it's the latter than just realize even managers are human and can make errors. If it's the former, then that is an issue that needs to be addressed.
In the case of my bad supervisor, he would stare at the monitor and all he would do would hit F5 to see what how another department was doing. I'm in receiving so the stuff that I'm doing isn't in the system yet. He wouldn't send emails, he rarely passed along information that was emailed to him. In fact, there were at least 15 times where I had to go ask another supervisor on the shift something because my supervisor wouldn't follow up on anything. I asked him once about our Christmas schedule because we would often work Christmas even to avoid going in on Christmas night. He told me that I could ask HR about it myself. The other employee in my department wanted to know about working on a Saturday because it was being offered on the other shifts, but nothing was said to us about it by any supervisors. He told my coworker that he (the coworker) would have to call the 2nd shift supervisor the next day to see if he would be allowed to come in.
I agree that most supervisors are doing more than they appear to be doing, but that was totally not the case with the supervisor I had. He was an extremely nice person, but as a supervisor, he sucked. This guy once printed out the wrong report and had the employee take the time to verify everything on it and then when she pointed out that it was the wrong report, he wanted her to hurry up and fix everything that HE did. We were once supposed to take a survey about management. Most of the questions were about our immediate supervisor, but towards the end, there were a few about upper management. They decided on a day that we were all going to take the survey, but it was busy that day so they said people could stay over an hour and do the survey if they chose to do it. The survey itself was anonymous so the only proof of who did the survey was that certain people clocked out late that day. Our supervisor decided it wasn't important and never passed along the information to us that the survey was being done that day and that we would get overtime also. Now, had he passed along the information like he was supposed to, then I may have decided not to do it and not worried about the overtime either. Since he didn't take the time to do HIS job or he was trying to tell us what was important to us, then we complained and got to do the survey a couple of days later and I made sure to do the survey then and they saw nothing good about my boss. He went into the receiving office one night when I was in there making copies. A trucker came to the window and wanted to get unloaded. This guy was early, but he was the first truck on the schedule in the morning so if we had room, we should have been able to unload him. This supervisor, for whatever reason, believed that all truckers were just trying to sneak in anytime they wanted. I was going to just go ahead an unload the guy since we had room and like I said, he was the first truck on the schedule for the morning. My boss decided to start talking to the guy and was being rude to him telling him that he should plan his times better so he doesn't show up so early and then decided that he wasn't going to let me unload him, so instead the guy could wait. A few days later, during our meeting, the boss asks me and my coworker if we'd had any problems with truckers or if we had been rude to any of them. Of course, we both said no because we hadn't been. He said that he got a complaint from a trucker. The complaint was against him, but he was just looking for a way to nail us on it.
We would also have a board that would show our monthly production for the department and the department's accuracy. The year this guy became our supervisor, the department didn't make an error until June of that year. When I got my review in February the following year, he tried saying I made an error. Now, if you get hit with an error in my company, they document it and talk to you about it, mainly just to see if you know what you did wrong, not to punish you unless you make a bunch of them. So I asked him when I made this error and why wasn't I ever spoken to about it. He started looking and tried saying I made an error in March. I knew that was wrong so I argued it, but he wouldn't take the error off even after the first shift supervisor told him that there were no errors made in our department until June. Another time, I was processing and as part of the processing job, we were told to open up one case at random on each pallet. So I do that and everything inside matches up with what the outside of the case says and what my paperwork said. So I receive the product and the only discrepancy was that I had 2 pieces more than I was supposed to. I was supposed to have a partial case of 4 pieces, but I had 6 instead. It gets checked, staged, and put away and everything is ok. Once another department started pulling the product, they discovered that there were 3 layers, all on the bottom, on 6 different pallets that had the wrong product inside, but everything on the outside of the case showed it was the right product. So there was 162 cases of the wrong product of 1620 pieces of the wrong product. Everybody that looked at this product said it would have been impossible to avoid this error unless the procedure would have been to open up every case we got and that simply wasn't an efficient way to do it. Every single one of them also said it was a vendor error, not my error. My boss tried counting that as 162 errors against me (1 for each case that was wrong) and would then remind me not to make the same mistake every time it was my turn to process. How can I make the same mistake when it wasn't even my mistake to begin with?
These would be a good case of a manager not knowing what they are doing. However, I would still caution anyone to make a broad assumption that all management follow these same paths.
These would be a good case of a manager not knowing what they are doing. However, I would still caution anyone to make a broad assumption that all management follow these same paths.
I would be fine with it if it was simply a case of him not knowing what he's doing, but he's willing to learn. This supervisor didn't want to know anything about either of his 2 departments and didn't mind letting everybody know. There is a big difference between not knowing something because you're inexperienced and not wanting to know anything at all.
This particular supervisor had more than his fair share of complaints against him. The last complaint I made about him was that I put in to leave early and he said no because I was taking somebody else's place that night, but the person who I was supposed to be replacing that night wasn't in my department and I didn't even know how to do his job. I do know how now, but at the time, I didn't. In fact, I only made 4 complaints that would have concerned him at all. I complained about the 2 errors that he tried saying I made which every piece of documentation in the warehouse said I didn't make, the issue with the survey, and me being denied leaving to do a job that I hadn't been trained on at that time. I can't say what the response was when other people complained, but the response to me was always, "Just let it go and don't put yourself in that position again." What position do they mean exactly? Don't make errors? Well, I didn't make errors in the cases that I brought to their attention. Don't expect information to be passed along to me by my supervisor? He made it very clear that he would only pass something along if HE thought it was important and it didn't matter if anybody else thought it was important or not. BTW, I eventually say a couple of the email regarding that survey and right at the top, it said, "ALL SUPERVISORS: PLEASE ADDRESS IN YOUR START-UP MEETING." So whether he thought it was important or not, the company sure thought it was important enough to want EVERY employee to at least have the information. Am I not supposed to request time off? I'll be careful with my sick and personal time, but my vacation time and anything else we get throughout the year, I will use as I see fit and our policy, concerning my shift and my department since there are only 2 of us, specifically says that as long as one of us is there, the other one is free to leave as long as they have the time to cover it. I did have the time to cover it and if I hadn't, I think it's safe to assume that the supervisor would have used that as his reason for denying me instead of using the excuse he used.
That depends. Are you finding these errors frequently, or just one or two over an extended period of time? If it's the latter than just realize even managers are human and can make errors. If it's the former, then that is an issue that needs to be addressed.
With little more than two years in the workforce, how many could you have possibly seen????
I've seen it in other departments in places I've worked. Also, my very first day at my new temp job two of the women approached me within minutes to tell me who to avoid/trust, suck up too etc. it was crazy.
These would be a good case of a manager not knowing what they are doing. However, I would still caution anyone to make a broad assumption that all management follow these same paths.
But haven't you gone off your own experiences in this where you said management has been good? If a person has worked in two to three companies it with two to three managers in the same company that fits it, it shows that there are strength to their view rather than one lone example.
I've seen it in other departments in places I've worked. Also, my very first day at my new temp job two of the women approached me within minutes to tell me who to avoid/trust, suck up too etc. it was crazy.
There are instances where a person is ill suited for their current position but is well suited for a management position. For example, someone in an analytical position may have poor analytical skills, which give the appearance of incompetence. However, the same person may be a visionary and/or a superb communicator, which makes them better suited for certain leadership roles.
One of my co-workers at my formal employer was borderline incompetent in his position. He took four times as long as others to perform the same amount of work (financial analysis field). However, he was a superb communicator and gave fantastic presentations (so long as someone else prepared the presentation for him). Initially, I was pissed when he was promoted, because I produced far superior work in far less time. However, by all accounts, he is a fantastic supervisor. His particular skill set is perfect for a supervisory role.
I'm really impressed by whoever made the decision to promote your former co-worker then. You don't run into one like that everyday...
I've seen it in other departments in places I've worked. Also, my very first day at my new temp job two of the women approached me within minutes to tell me who to avoid/trust, suck up too etc. it was crazy.
It's hard enough to know what your manager is doing and why, let alone what is going on in other departments. So you've seen this twice, maybe three times. That hardly translates into the point you're trying to make that most incompetent people are promoted.
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If a person has worked in two to three companies it with two to three managers in the same company that fits it, it shows that there are strength to their view rather than one lone example.
