Week 5: Day 1-3

During my fifth week working at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, I mastered the art of navigating interoffice conflict. I began the first three days of the week by mapping Meridel’s Printing Process and reconciling Tarik and Shirley’s information on the Training Procurement Process into a single document. After completing those tasks, I scheduled two interviews for Thursday and Friday in order to garner more details on the Status of Funds and Training Forms processes. I was under the initial assumption that the week was going to be quiet until Meridel arrived in our office for our regular meeting. She inquired into our status, asking why we were taking so long to complete the tasks that we were assigned. My teammates and I were flustered by her disapproval. We quickly informed her of how much work we had completed so far, raising awareness to our completion of one map per week. Meridel nodded, tacitly admitting to us that she was just trying to keep us on task. In retrospect, I appreciated her intervention. It is always encouraging knowing that your supervisor is watching the work that you do and aims to make it better.
An hour after Meridel left, Brian came into our office to ask us several questions about progress reports that we have been sending him every Friday since our second week at the BEA. Judging by Meridel’s prior reception of our work speed, I was prepared for him to follow suit by scolding us for taking too long to finish our projects. Surprisingly, that is not what he wanted to talk to us about at all. Brian wanted to discuss his difficulty with understanding our document, claiming that it was confusing and counterintuitive. His harsh criticism surprised me. I tried my best to hide the irritated expression on my face as he continued to speak.
Brian spent the next hour presenting several layout changes that he felt would make our document easier to read. I found it hard to believe that the head of a critical government agency could not understand the one-page Microsoft Excel document that we have been sending him every week. My teammates and I were curious as to whether or not he even attempted to read the documents at all. We began asked him several questions in order to see if he read them or not. The questions were crafted in a way that would gauge his opinion on several details delineated in the sheets. His less than satisfactory answers helped us realize that he never put much effort into reading what we sent him. As the meeting concluded, he pressured us to increase our pace even though he had no idea about our current accomplishments.
Honestly, I was very resentful of Brian’s interference. First, what is the point of directly answering to your supervisor’s boss? I cannot imagine a management structure in any other organization where that would be the norm. Second, how can a manager accurately gauge the quality of an employee’s work without making an honest attempt to look at it? I do not think that is fair to the employee at all. Third, how can you run a major government agency and not have the necessary skills to analyze simple sentences in a Microsoft Excel file? You have to be kidding me. Fourth, I do not like being micromanaged. As a future public manager, I aim to empower my employees to make decisions and get work done. Workers should be terminated or marginalized if they cannot be trusted to perform a task. An employer that micromanages their workers wastes everyone’s time.