Recycled Bullsh-IT

It’s time to stumble blinking back to our home offices after surviving another XXXmas and New Yahhh!, to don our headsets and pretend we have all had a great time away from our remote colleagues (mustn’t grumble!). After checking who’s joined the Great Resignation, or didn’t survive the fallout from the Christmas party, we bin our 2022 resolutions and wonder how we are going to survive another year.

Your boss is likely to have a recycled set of objectives, tasks and other shitty jobs for you that failed to get done before Christmas and have rolled over to this year. Whether they are really needed or not. Of course, you may be brimming with energy and enthusiasm to take on whatever is thrown at you with no complaint and a smile on your face. Or you might just want to survive each day with minimum hassle and stress. It will also depend on what type of mangler you are working for. As you’d expect from me now, I have a Machiavellian manual to maliciously master your manky manager.

Manner of Manager

We all have our own view of what constitutes a good manager (normally, anyone but the current one), so here are a few crude stereotypes for you to recognise, along with sneaky stratagems to subtly sway their supervision:

Thrusting & Ambitious

If your boss is full of relentless energy and sees themself climbing the greasy pole quickly, your main issue will be avoiding/completing the unending undertakings they have promised to their soulless superiors. Try these tactics:

• Keep questioning the instructions and insist on going through detailed planning and validation until they get so frustrated that they rip it back off you and give to a less filibustering fellow. Careful, or it might lead to you being transferred to audit or accounts where such behaviours are lauded
• Deliver quickly but poorly so they have to spend so much time reworking your shoddy work, that they do it themselves as it’s quicker. Use sparingly or you may be performance-managed out
• If you are also thrustingly ambitious, go all out to satisfy this climber so they pull you up with them. Until you are ready to stab them in the back and take their place. Hah! They didn’t see that coming.

Quiet & Ineffectual

If your line manager is more mouse-like, avoiding confrontation, (and probably contact too) you may feel you can have an easy life. However, being part of the weakest link may lead to your bungling boss being bumped and replaced with a real taskmaster.  So, start scheming:

• Give them something to worry about every day so they don’t have time to bother you. Preferably something you can’t help with, so they don’t ask you to fix it
• Assure them everything is hunky dory in your area. Submit weekly updates on how wonderful life is in the team
• Appear busy at all times so they think you’re working. In the old days you could wander around with a pad and pen taking notes; these days just fill your calendar with back-to-back conf calls so they can’t get hold of you

Happy & Matey

When one of your sociable cow-orkers gets promoted to management, they sometimes want to stay friends with you, and carry on being one of the team, chatting, joking, bitching, etc., as they did before. They haven’t realised they are now part of the despised company overlords, and they are just embarrassing themselves. Opt out of obligations:

• Always wear a serious face in meetings, only laugh perfunctorily at their “jokes”
• Leave meetings when the agenda is finished, otherwise you’ll be trapped in embarrassing bantz with them
• Feed them regular snippets of problems and issues to worry them enough to either do their job properly or give up and return to colleague status, having proven the Peter Principle

Wicked & Lazy

The worst breed of managers are the conscience-free b’stards who are only in it for themselves and take great pleasure from getting others to do their work for them, and then steal the glory. Screw such shysters:

• Document everything you do to create a blockchain of evidence FOR yourself and AGAINST them, so they can’t frig you
• Always have witnesses present when you suspect misdemeanours will happen, particularly if you’re the one arranging them
• Help them fail so spectacularly that they get fired. Takes some guts, some hacking skills, and occasionally a key-logger

Feel free to guess what manner of mangler I was.  But I’ve buried most of the evidence in unmarked graves, and bankrupt companies, so good luck with that.

John “Menagerie” Moe