Two entries in two days? Have the OD floodgates opened back up? Let’s find out!
Okay. I realize it’s uncool of me to be gone for so long and then come back here and ask for advice, but….well, I’m going to anyway.
Look, the ONLY person getting in the way of me being happy pretty much every moment of every work day is Krabby Kakes, the bitchy woman I wrote about in my last entry.
We’re supposed to be peers. We’re both managers and work on the same product, only I’m the Product Manager and she’s the Sourcing Manager…so basically, I come up with the ideas and concepts for what I want to make to fill over 1000 stores that are located in the US and Canada, and she figures out what factories are going to manufacture the product and negotiates a cost for this product. I have to communicate with these factories (through an agent) and tell them exactly HOW I want them to make it from a design/aesthetic standpoint, and she tells them what the requirements are from a regulations, customs, and $$$ basis (and actually, I do that part as well, she mainly follows up to make sure that part is being done and a LOT of our responsibility tends to overlap, so we find ourselves needing and communicating a lot of the same things).
And if you looked at a chart of all the functions of the products we produce, you’d see that the Product Manager is at the center of it all, and we are the leaders of our categories, and we are responsible to make sure that the product is conceptualized, designed, developed, sampled, packaged correctly, costed, bought, manufactured, and delivered to 1000 stores by a certain date.
Okay, that’s the gist of what our jobs are.
Here’s the bad thing: Krabby Kakes was a big VP at her last job, and this job is a lower level than what she had before. She’s older than me by probably 10 years (which doesn’t mean a ton because I’m actually about 10 years older than a lot of my own fellow PMs). She’s angry about the fact that she’s a manager and has to deal with a lot of bullshit back and forth and tons and tons of paperwork and spreadsheets that many companies have an assistant position who deals with a lot of that crap (the same is true with my position–I don’t have any assistants either, and most companies have this level to do all this grunt work…our organization is 3 years new and dealing with excruciating growing pains–a GOOD thing in this economy, but painful nonetheless).
So. We both have to deal with things that we feel are a lot of nonsense, and if WE don’t take care of it quickly, the work tends to bottleneck and sometimes timely delivery is risked.
It tends to be extremely stressful–especially when there are so many passionate and drama-loving people buzzing around at all times.
Bottom line, Krabby Kakes is angry about everything, at all times. But she takes a ton of it out on me. Our cubes are side by side and the wall between us is lower than the outside walls so that we can communicate. Fine and good, right? We need constant communication because she has to get all of her incoming information from me.
But her bedside manner is AWFUL. With every email she opens, I can hear her sigh and moan and groan and cuss under her breath. Then she’ll talk to me over the wall and ask me how I want to deal with whatever issue she’s reading about at the moment (I have to make most of those decisions and she has to make sure that the costs/manufacture lines up with what I’m trying to produce).
The other day, she actually had the NERVE to interrupt a meeting I was having with the PM who is taking my place in my old position to ask me a question and THEN tell me, “You know, I’m canceling my vacation because of [this issue].”
And I turned to her and looked at her in a way that asked, why are you interrupting THIS MEETING??? and just said, “and that’s my fault because….????” Because, SERIOUSLY??????
So yesterday was the last straw.
She and I had been talking about different factories to visit during my upcoming trip to Asia. I’ve never dealt with ANY of these factories before as I’m new in my position and the only way I know them is from email and occasionally a factory rep comes to [my city] to work on specific projects.
She sent out some emails and I had to follow up and put a proposal together for my boss as we needed to finalize our plans because we’re leaving in a month.
Ugh, this is a long story.
Bottom line, my boss came into an afternoon meeting to ask me if she could talk with me (alone) about my proposal. I get up to walk with my boss to her office.
Krabby Kakes pipes in and asks, “You’re going to talk about your trip??”
And I look back to tell her yes, but she’s shaking her head and rolling her eyes and mouthing something silently to another person.
So, I asked my boss directly, “Does Krabby Kakes need to come to this meeting? Is she going on this trip with us?”
And my poss says, “No, this is a development trip. She doesn’t need to go with us.”
I know it sounds like no biggie, but the fact of the matter is, she sighs and shakes her head and rolls her eyes at EVERYTHING I say and with every decision I make.
Bottom line, here’s my dilemma:
How do I get on her good side? I don’t have to like her (I don’t know if I ever could), but we have to work harmoniously or my job doesn’t get done!!!
UGH! So, I’m coming to you for advice again. I always get some of the best ideas from you guys here. I’m going to open myself up to all notes, so I’m sure I’m going to get some shit on here, but let me have it, please.
Now, moving on to my weekend!!! Happy Weekend, everybody!
*”Good KK”, aka [Charmingly Neurotic] brings up a good point that I forgot to write here. My boss is extremely hands-off. She empowers all her PMs to run their own business. This can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. If anyone has a personal issue, she hates it when you bring it to her attention. She will always ask you to go back to that person and talk with them directly. In fact, at my last team meeting, I asked Krab Kakes about her recent Asia trip and if there’s anything she wants to discuss, and she said, “Not in front of everyone here…”, and my boss just looked at both of us and said, “You twoare going to work this out offline, right?” …as if we needed to go somewhere and duke it out! My boss wants nothing to do with personal issues. She expects her people to be able to manage their team. But that also brings up a good point as well–accountability. Krab Kakes is on my team, but I’m not her manager. My designer is on my team, but I’m not her manager, either. My quality guy is on my team, same holds true of him. My packaging specialist….and on it goes. I have to manage them like they work for me, but they don’t!!!
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