Super Vision! : Boys Talk.

Since I started with my present employers last October I've had 9 different line-managers.
4 of them left the company, two sacked, two jumping ship before they were throw overboard.

I notice this kind of thing.

My new task is beginning to take shape.
As ever the situation is not the paradise of contented clients and happy workers I'd been led to believe it was by my predecessor.
Most of the teams are surprised to see me when I visit because they'd never seen the previous supervisor.
They're even more surprised when I deliver the supplies and equipment they've been screaming for over the last year or so.

I'm now resolved to the fact that the situation will never be an easy one with everybody doing what they should be doing, when and where they're supposed to be doing it.
There will always be some unpaid/overpaid wages issue with the amount of team members covering each others holiday or sickness absences.
Clients will always be on the phone asking why the bin in the room marked 'DO NOT ENTER ON PAIN OF DEATH' hasn't been emptied since the new sign was put up.

I spent sometime with my latest line-manager.
We toured a few sites, glad handed a few clients, and then visited the site manager of a large educational facility.
Not the one I was managing, but in the same city, and of equal size.

I'd met the fellow at a couple of times at the monthly managers' meetings.
I thought to myself 'that bloke knows what he's doing'.
Ex services, no nonsense, everything under control, unflappable.
Not like me.
Made me feel I was unfit to deal with the pressures of the role.

We sat in his office, drinking coffee, and eating Bourbon biscuits.
He then began to jabber like a madman about all the same things I'd jabbered like a madman about - to anyone who had the misfortune to engage me on the most trivial of subjects - for about an hour.

Stressed to f$%k.

So, it wasn't just me.

My most recent line-manager, who trusts me to get on with what I'm supposed to be doing, won't be with me for long he tells me.
He has ambitions to go regional!
He's had the nod BTW.

I picked up a piece office goss' concerning an alleged relationship between two senior members of the operations team (the team I'm on).
It surprised me.
Not because it was happening, but because I'd sort of worked it out myself a while back.
As it didn't directly concern me- and why should it? - I paid no attention to what they may, or may not, be getting up to.

Trouble is...
One of the alleged participants' son has, to the surprise of no one, just been made a manager.
He's 19 years old.
Word has it he's a bit out of his depth and the company want to place him with a 'safe pair of hands'.

That'll be me then.... on the day the honeymoon is over.

That's assuming that I'm going to apply for my position of course.