Oh hell no

Right before I left for vaction over the holidays, my "supervisor" and I were talking about the manager he just hired and I was asking how much support this guy was going to require. "Well, there'll be a lot more permits coming out of this office, so that means a lot more copying, filing, and proofing of permits." I suggested that it was time to think about hiring an admin. That between the 3 of us we could keep someone busy 8 hours a day. (That's been the argument against getting some help up til now.) His reply was, "I think we need to reassess your duties and pull you back into the environmental dept."

I'm the database analysist for the Operations Support Dept. (Environmental falls under Ops Support). I also do all the Workers' Comp., write and edit the company newsletter, manage the operator qualifications, and I'm the event planner for corporate functions. My time is split 60% in Safety, 20% in Regulatory, 10% in corporate functions, and 10% in Environmental. But my expenses all come out of his Environmental budget. I think this chaps his ass, that and the fact that he rarely knows what I'm working on at any given moment. I think that the only reason I report to him is that we are in the same office.

He wants me to make copies and file! What the fuck? With what they pay me they could hire 3 admins. I fumed for several days. I wondered if he had already discussed this with his boss.

Well, the big boss was finally in town and we sat down to discuss 2 corporate events that I'm working on and a reorganization of some databases for the safety department. After we'd gone over all the details, I looked him in the eye and said "Now I'd like to talk to you about me." He had a momentary look of a deer in the headlights before he recovered his composure. "Ah, ok."

I explained the conversation I'd had with my supervisor and asked him what he thought. "Well," he said buying some time. "That doesn't make a lot of sense... unless you wanted to." I explained that I would be very unhappy if that happened. He said he thought my supervisor was only thinking about how to solve his problem of needing more support and not thinking about my upward mobility. (That's putting it nicely.)

"I will take care of this."

I was pretty sure he would take care of this before I talked to him. He sometimes moves slower than I would like but sometimes you have to wait for the right moment to move things forward. For once I was able to apply this theory by waiting 3 weeks for the big boss to show up in person instead of calling him on the phone and rambling on while I was still upset by the initial conversation with my supervisor. Here's hoping this thing resolves itself sooner, rather than later.