Lazy Delegating

One thing that is really starting to bother me about my job is that I am asked to do tasks that either my bosses could do easier, or that I cannot actually accomplish. Usually, it is being asked to print things that bothers me. Either I wrote something, attached it to an e-mail, and sent it to them, and then got an e-mail back telling me to print it, or they forwarded me attachments they received and said, print this. Both ways aggravate me like no other. Not only do they have printers in their offices, and we don't, but also the act of sending me an e-mail takes longer than it does to press print. Oh, and to top it all off, they usually lose what you print and you end up printing the same things a good 4 times. Include the fact that we have hard copies of everything in file folders in the office and my bosses are pretty much the bad guy in Ferngully (who by the way might have been scarier than Scar, Jafar, and Ursula combined...at least visually. Seriously, I think I would still have nightmares of him now. Good Job Tree Huggers).

Yet, in the past few days this style of managing (and my subsequent annoyance and anger about it) has gotten OUT of CONTROL. First, I was asked to write powerpoints for both of my bosses speeches. I was given the article they were presenting and based on it I made a slideshow. One day later, the mean boss comes into my office and goes, "I made a lot of suggestions...this does not follow what I am saying in my speech". Well..DUH...I never saw her speech, never knew what she wanted to say, and never had any idea who or what the presentation was for. Obviously my slides do not correlate. She then proceeds to hand me a stack of the slides, with edits, and inserted full sheets of paper representing new slides to add. Though she is moderately computer illiterate, there is no way that the time it took her to write all of that out (full sentences, full titles, etc), and then have me type it all out, is less than the time it would have taken for her to just go into the slides and change them herself. What a serious waste of both of our lives.

Then this morning my nice boss showed me that both of them manage the same way, incorrectly. I arrived at work and had an e-mail that said: " Can you fill this out for me? Let's discuss before you send it in." What she was referring to was a link to a survey in a forwarded e-mail. This e-mail said: "As part of our Continuing Medical Education (CME) process, we would like your input on the value and impact of the event, "Promoting Health Equity in Adolescent Care: A Two-part Web cast Series." You participated in the "Practical Approaches" session on August 11, 2009. Please take a few minutes to respond to this follow-up evaluation, the survey should take about 10 minutes to complete." Yes, my boss would like me to provide my input, via survey monkey, to evaluate a course I did not take and was not even employed by the office when she took it. Not only is this evaluation not mandatory in any way, it is PERSONAL opinion. Sure I could lie, but who is that helping?! It would just be better to hit delete and go on with our lives. Also, discussing it before sending it in (which with survey monkey I am not sure you can actually do) will take longer than it would for my boss to just quickly click through it herself and provide her ACTUAL opinion. Can you say LAZY?!? I really want to write back: I did not take this class...I believe you have me mistaken with you. But, I guess that is a little snide.