Mangers lie

I am trying to figure out why my manager lies in this fashion. This is about the third time this has happened.


In this circumstance the school districts want a service from us that will tell them and help them control what is eating their precious (expensive) bandwidth.

Sites such as YouTube and gaming can sap all the bandwidth, thus leaving nothing available for actual work.

Where are the teachers? I don't know. I have been in some situations where there is no teacher to be found and the kids are really going to town on the computers and the Internet.

I think a lot of teachers treat the computer lab as a babysitter. Plop the kids down in front of the TV computer and go to the teachers' lounge.

Back to the application. We (as a department) have been talking about such a program for a year. We have a program in place that monitors our equipment and lets us know when a device loses connection, etc. We can investigate - did the building lose power, did a janitor unplug the equipment, what happened? Stuff like that.

This application has a sister app that will tell the district what their traffic is. For example: Pandora. If you are not familiar with Pandora - it is a streaming music application.  Streaming radio is a huge hit with office personnel. I can't tell you how many times I will go to work on a secretary's computer just to find she has the radio streaming to her PC, but the volume is turned down low or muted - she forgot it was running.

Big bandwidth sucker there. Another one - video. YouTube. If a computer lab teacher tells students to watch a video and 25 end users all go to the same video and watch it - wow. Bandwidth usage skyrockets. The teacher is supposed to stream it to an overhead projector so all the class can watch it at one time. Thus only one machine is viewing the video and streaming it down the Internet pipe, instead of 25.

Or, the teacher is out of the room and some kid finds a great dirt bike video and the kids around him see him watching it and they in turn, look it up and watch it.

Chaos.

Anyway. This post is already getting too long.

I told my manager that I was very interested in working with this program when we get it.

Now, I am not a perfect employee. I slack off now and then. But there I was sitting around this summer, knowing that I have three huge projects looming. I am always waiting for something. Somebody to get this ready, somebody to order that. I sigh. I fear that everything will come at me at once. It usually does and then I do things half assed because I don't have the proper time to work with it.

Don't misunderstand. I call or communicate many times asking my co-workers or managers who I am waiting for, if there is anything "I" can do to speed up the process.Can I make some phone calls, can I come to the office and physically install equipment? Can I do the legwork?  ANYTHING! Nope. Zilch.

I get anxious and I decide to download the evaluation copy of the program. I try and do not succeed. I am naive and try to run it on my stand alone laptop with just adequate CPU power and memory. The program (even the evaluation part) needs a server with more power than my piddly laptop.

The company that sells the program contacts me and is very anxious (salesmen) to get me using this. I am stalled but at our staff meeting at the end of June my manager tells me we have it and he needs to install it on a VM (virtual machine) then I can begin to use it.

I am beside myself with excitement! Okay! I ask "Can I tell the techs about this program?" 

And this is how I remember this incident vividly.

He meant to say "You will want to play with it for a while first" instead saying something like "Play with yourself".  Well, that was all me and my delinquent co-workers needed. We started laughing and making jokes. That kind of conversation sticks with you, you know?

A month goes by and - nothing. Just e-mails back and forth where he says "Next week, I can get that done." I began calling him "Next week Andy".  Not his real name.

I sit and try to think of a way that I can be proactive instead of bitching about how much of a slacker my manager is. He is not a slacker, I am sure he works his ass off. But I found myself grumbling because I was anxious to go and here I was - waiting again.

I heave a big sigh and I decide to use an old server that was given to me a few years ago to "play" with. It may not have the power, but I have to do something. I had installed Linux on it (my Linux playing days) and decided next time I was in my organization's home office I would ask for a Windows Server disk and install that OS so I could download and work with the evaluation copy properly.

I was there on Wednesday for training. My manager was at lunch. I asked a co-worker for Windows Server disks and he began looking through a tray of disks. Another department co-worker asked me what we were looking for. I explained the situation to her. She said "I can have you a VM up and running in 30 minutes."

My heart sank. Really? I explained to her that the manager has been promising me a VM for weeks. She said "I'll do it." I gave her the specs. I told her that this was an evaluation copy and after 30 days we hoped to roll it over to the real program. The company that sells this product told me we could do that.

By this time our manager came back and got in on the conversation. I told him and he said "We haven't bought the program, yet."

I just looked at him. Somehow I knew this. Deep down I suspected as much.

I should have called him on it right then and there.

But to tell you the truth, I was so damn happy to have a VM to work with and they had just purchased me a new laptop I did not want to spoil my good luck.

I have been told many times that I have a "bad attitude" so I try very hard to never say anything negative.

I like my manager. I have to believe that he does not mean any harm when he lies like this. I am trying to figure out why he tells me they bought the program (remember the play with yourself conversation - I did not imagine that) when they did not.

Some things that come to mind are - he does not want to disappoint me. Or maybe he likes to make me happy. That is my "positive" thinking. What he does not realize is that he jeapardizes his integrity with every lie. When I discover the lie, I think less of him.

I am just trying to understand. There are many reasons I never take a management position when it is offered to me and it happens at every job I have worked at.

I was an "office manager" in my early twenties and really just managed myself. I didn't have big staffs or have to decide pay raises, etc...

I would not want to be a manager. Just like I would never want to be the president or the mayor.

I am a worker bee. I do best working by myself. Managers need to delegate and make hard decisions. And lie, I guess. For whatever reasons, managers need to lie and I have to tell you - I'd have more trouble with that than anything else.