Blog Fabulous

Part II - Crushed By Office Politics

by Christine(Yuna) on November 25th, 2005

This is part two of the three part story about me fighting for my rights to have some sleep and weekends on a stressful and abusive project. Here is the first part of the story if you missed it.

So I wrote a memo and met with the managers trying to alter the work schedule to give people more work/life balance and I thought I was gaining some ground and making progress?

Whoa, I was still too naïve about this corporate world.
A few more developments that sort of surprised me:

1. Some people on the same team went to the management and said they had no problems with the schedule and I shouldn’t open my big mouth. Wow! Buddy, if you want to work 18 hours a day trying to climb the corporate ladder and impress the management, go right ahead. I am too old for that!
2. I got criticized publicly for not effectively communicating the issue with direct project managers. The PMs wrote in open emails that such individual should not rely on emails to communicate. And again, my fellow PM, you sure did use the emails as your primary resource to communicate to the rest of the team. So what the hell were you saying? But my bad.. I probably shouldn’t skip a level. That’s the only thing I would do differently.
3. Communication emails have been sent out to the team about.. basically nothing. Everything we agreed upon in those “private meetings” regarding the tactical solutions is not mentioned in the emails.. But I wasn’t gonna give up. I requested second round meetings and I wanted to see how far I could go. After all, I wasn’t asking for something unreasonable.

Anyway, bullshit happens everywhere and everyday in the corporate world. After more than 9 years of struggling in such an environment trying to fight the uphill battle, I seriously think about what is more important and how long I want to be abused by such a working environment.

To be continued…

Share This

Related Stories

Part III - The Total Bullshit of Work/Life Balance
Part I - Dealing With 500 Pages On A Weekend
On Job Interviews — Positive Thinking Is Key
Another day at the office
Why Corporate Politics Is Like High School

POSTED IN: Fabulous Coffee Break