![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 24th, 2011 08:55 amThis past week was a week from hell. At least the first half of the week
The week before, we had gone back and forth a million times on how much renewal stock to reorder. On Monday of this past week, we finally got pricing for the pieces. Just skimming them, I could tell they were too high, but there wasn't much we could do about that because the quantities were too low to get a good price. We were already ordering out to 6 months, so we were already stretching as far as we could in terms of quantity.
So I brought my concerns to my supervisor (I'll call P) who snapped back that she didn't even want to look at it unless I could show her how these costs compare to what we've been spending. I then wasted a good couple hours trying to find a cost sheet that would break down how much we were currently paying for each component so I could plug in the new numbers. At this point it was 6pm, already way after work hours, so I went home.
Tuesday morning, my assistant took my calculated numbers to P who then yelled at him because I didn't include postage, data processing, or consultant fees in the numbers. She then called me up and yelled at me a bit about how I needed to show her we could afford to mail this package as compared to budget.
Well, I KNEW we weren't going to be able to afford this mailing if we're going by budget because P had low-balled the budget.Even the reforecasted budget! She had written the costs as $0.60 a piece when in the last six months we have really been spending about $0.90 to $1.00 a piece. And the high cost wasn't because of printing costs. It was because of data processing. We hit the minimums every month.
Anyway, I pulled together all the numbers she wanted and how they compared to budget, PLUS the actual costs for the last six months AND the actuals for LAST FISCAL YEAR. That way I could go in there and say, "No, we are not going to be able to stick to budget because the budget is too low. We are budgeted to spend less than we actually spent last year and based on actuals for this year, we are likely going to end up spending about that much again." By that point it was 6 pm again, I had worked late again, and I was tired so I went home.
And then it was Wednesday. I spent all morning trying to grab P to go over my numbers but she was too busy to see me. Finally at around 4:30, I grabbed her in her office and told her the situation. SHE TOTALLY FLIPPED OUT. Among the things she screamed at me about, the top ones were:
1. How did I let our actuals go so high over budget.
2. Why didn't I tell her we needed to reprint before she wrote the reforecasted budget.
3. I needed to fix this because she doesn't have time for this.
4. Why didn't I get these numbers to her sooner.
5. How I never did my work fast enough.
6. How I never give her what she asks for the first time.
When she was done screaming at me, she told me to get pricing for 12 months out (ignoring my earlier point that it's the dp costs, not the printing costs) and then stormed off because she was going on vacation for the holidays. (P is the some supervisor that went on vacation for two weeks right after I started working there and dumped ALL her work in my hands with no explanation on what to do.)
As you could imagine, I was pretty upset by this. I don't appreciate getting blamed for mistakes I am not responsible for. I'd beat myself up over mistakes I really made, but this situation is totally not my fault and I am doing the best I can to try to sort it out.
I stormed out of the office and walked through the hallways for a bit, then washed my face because I was starting to cry. Then I closed my office door, called ben, and vented about how much I hate P and was going to quit if I had to work with her anymore. I felt a tiny bit better after that. Tiny bit.
While I was focusing my anger towards getting stuff done, the women from HR came in and asked if she could have a private talk with me. She told me:
1. P has a history of outbursts like this so I shouldn't feel like I was being singled out.
2. Her outbursts are NOT tolerated and she has been spoken to about it in the past.
3. That was her last chance.
4. HR and the president of the company are aware and addressing the issue.
5. I won't have to work with P much longer after the holidays are over.
6. Please don't look for a new job over the holidays.
I only feel a tiny bit guilty hoping that conversation means P is going to be fired.
So on Thursday, P was off on vacation and I was still left with the ongoing disaster. Ordering out 12 months like P suggested still wasn't going to get us to budget and I felt it was stupid to order that much stock in the first place because it would cross fiscal years. (And thus tie our budget down to what we've always done rather than look for new ways to mail the message.)
The only thing left to do was to go to P's supervisor, the president of the company. I brought her all my numbers, explained the situation, and suggested we print just for the next mailing since it was in progress and incurring costs already. Then I made the recommendation that we mail this package less frequently (right now we do it every month) because the big costs are the data processing minimum charges.
The president was very understanding and agreed with my recommendations. She did have a lot of questions on why the budget AND reforecasted budget were so off, which I had to tell her I didn't know because P preferred to handle that on her own. The pres. then contacted the client and made nice with them to get them to agree to print for just the current mailing while we look into ways to reduce costs in the future. The client likes reducing costs, so they agreed. I ordered the pieces we needed and felt a huge relief until I remembered P will be back on Tuesday and will probably start yelling at me for going over her head.
Our new strategy person (who started Monday) has now been tasked with making sense of the budget P wrote so the president has a better idea on where everything went so wrong. I spent much of Friday answering her questions. Unfortunately most of my answers were, "P did not include me on this, so I don't know." She discovered that the budget differs depending on which tab of the excel sheet you are looking at. THAT'S reassuring...
I'm really glad this week is over. I want to have a nice relaxing weekend with Ben and the dogs. Hopefully by next week, I'll finally stop having nightmares about P. (Last night I dreamed she showed up at my wedding and started yelling at me because the dinner course was taking too long to get to her.)
The week before, we had gone back and forth a million times on how much renewal stock to reorder. On Monday of this past week, we finally got pricing for the pieces. Just skimming them, I could tell they were too high, but there wasn't much we could do about that because the quantities were too low to get a good price. We were already ordering out to 6 months, so we were already stretching as far as we could in terms of quantity.
So I brought my concerns to my supervisor (I'll call P) who snapped back that she didn't even want to look at it unless I could show her how these costs compare to what we've been spending. I then wasted a good couple hours trying to find a cost sheet that would break down how much we were currently paying for each component so I could plug in the new numbers. At this point it was 6pm, already way after work hours, so I went home.
Tuesday morning, my assistant took my calculated numbers to P who then yelled at him because I didn't include postage, data processing, or consultant fees in the numbers. She then called me up and yelled at me a bit about how I needed to show her we could afford to mail this package as compared to budget.
Well, I KNEW we weren't going to be able to afford this mailing if we're going by budget because P had low-balled the budget.Even the reforecasted budget! She had written the costs as $0.60 a piece when in the last six months we have really been spending about $0.90 to $1.00 a piece. And the high cost wasn't because of printing costs. It was because of data processing. We hit the minimums every month.
Anyway, I pulled together all the numbers she wanted and how they compared to budget, PLUS the actual costs for the last six months AND the actuals for LAST FISCAL YEAR. That way I could go in there and say, "No, we are not going to be able to stick to budget because the budget is too low. We are budgeted to spend less than we actually spent last year and based on actuals for this year, we are likely going to end up spending about that much again." By that point it was 6 pm again, I had worked late again, and I was tired so I went home.
And then it was Wednesday. I spent all morning trying to grab P to go over my numbers but she was too busy to see me. Finally at around 4:30, I grabbed her in her office and told her the situation. SHE TOTALLY FLIPPED OUT. Among the things she screamed at me about, the top ones were:
1. How did I let our actuals go so high over budget.
2. Why didn't I tell her we needed to reprint before she wrote the reforecasted budget.
3. I needed to fix this because she doesn't have time for this.
4. Why didn't I get these numbers to her sooner.
5. How I never did my work fast enough.
6. How I never give her what she asks for the first time.
When she was done screaming at me, she told me to get pricing for 12 months out (ignoring my earlier point that it's the dp costs, not the printing costs) and then stormed off because she was going on vacation for the holidays. (P is the some supervisor that went on vacation for two weeks right after I started working there and dumped ALL her work in my hands with no explanation on what to do.)
As you could imagine, I was pretty upset by this. I don't appreciate getting blamed for mistakes I am not responsible for. I'd beat myself up over mistakes I really made, but this situation is totally not my fault and I am doing the best I can to try to sort it out.
I stormed out of the office and walked through the hallways for a bit, then washed my face because I was starting to cry. Then I closed my office door, called ben, and vented about how much I hate P and was going to quit if I had to work with her anymore. I felt a tiny bit better after that. Tiny bit.
While I was focusing my anger towards getting stuff done, the women from HR came in and asked if she could have a private talk with me. She told me:
1. P has a history of outbursts like this so I shouldn't feel like I was being singled out.
2. Her outbursts are NOT tolerated and she has been spoken to about it in the past.
3. That was her last chance.
4. HR and the president of the company are aware and addressing the issue.
5. I won't have to work with P much longer after the holidays are over.
6. Please don't look for a new job over the holidays.
I only feel a tiny bit guilty hoping that conversation means P is going to be fired.
So on Thursday, P was off on vacation and I was still left with the ongoing disaster. Ordering out 12 months like P suggested still wasn't going to get us to budget and I felt it was stupid to order that much stock in the first place because it would cross fiscal years. (And thus tie our budget down to what we've always done rather than look for new ways to mail the message.)
The only thing left to do was to go to P's supervisor, the president of the company. I brought her all my numbers, explained the situation, and suggested we print just for the next mailing since it was in progress and incurring costs already. Then I made the recommendation that we mail this package less frequently (right now we do it every month) because the big costs are the data processing minimum charges.
The president was very understanding and agreed with my recommendations. She did have a lot of questions on why the budget AND reforecasted budget were so off, which I had to tell her I didn't know because P preferred to handle that on her own. The pres. then contacted the client and made nice with them to get them to agree to print for just the current mailing while we look into ways to reduce costs in the future. The client likes reducing costs, so they agreed. I ordered the pieces we needed and felt a huge relief until I remembered P will be back on Tuesday and will probably start yelling at me for going over her head.
Our new strategy person (who started Monday) has now been tasked with making sense of the budget P wrote so the president has a better idea on where everything went so wrong. I spent much of Friday answering her questions. Unfortunately most of my answers were, "P did not include me on this, so I don't know." She discovered that the budget differs depending on which tab of the excel sheet you are looking at. THAT'S reassuring...
I'm really glad this week is over. I want to have a nice relaxing weekend with Ben and the dogs. Hopefully by next week, I'll finally stop having nightmares about P. (Last night I dreamed she showed up at my wedding and started yelling at me because the dinner course was taking too long to get to her.)
