Quote:
Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Generally, most encounters with my ex-'s wife were uncomfortable, especially the first.
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Because? Geez.
Sort of in this vein, I have changed the station every time they started talking about Ford's god-awful financial performance. It makes me feel uncomfortable (sad and guilty? Guilty probably is not the right word).
The situations in which I feel most uncomfortable (that are coming to mind) are too upsetting to type for public consumption, because they involve family members . . . but, here goes.
I went to a multi-day manager training course that was intended to help people new-ish to managing other people learn how to do it effectively. (It was actually really interesting, but that's not the point.) Some of the stuff we did was role-playing, where one person would be the manager, one would be the employee, and then there was an observer. Everyone was doing these at the same time, so if you were stupid, there were only a couple witnesses. And it was done in sets of three, so everyone got to have each role. But after one session of it, somehow, when they asked if everyone had played each of the roles, one woman hadn't been the manager yet. This was after we'd had like 3 days of training in how to be supportive and take a leadership role and take responsibility etc. etc.
So, they said hey, run through this extra scenario, and you be the manager. The scenario was two peer managers having a discussion to resolve an issue where Manager 1's department was giving bad product to Manager 2's department, which was fucking up Manager 2's department's ability to do their jobs, and made them look bad. The woman was, of course, Manager 1. And her strategy for dealing with the problem? First, deny that there is any issue. Then, when faced with hard evidence of the issue, say, "Oh, that work comes from Joe. Joe is a real problem." (There were actually gasps from the audience at this point.) Manager 2 said (politely, professionally), no, really, we get them from a lot of people; this is just the example that was at hand. Manager 1 goes back into denial mode and does nothing to try to get to the root of the issue.
So, after they finished this run-through, people politely asked what her intent was in the whole "Joe is a problem" part of her explanations. She said, totally seriously, "Well, you have to have a scapegoat!" Jesus. This made me particularly uncomfortable because she, like me, was part of Corporate, and there were only like 5 Corporate people there -- the rest of the people were in a business unit, and business unit people nearly always see Corporate as unnecessary overhead and a drag on their profitability.
