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Dear Readers,

I have to shamefully admit that I have not written very much is the past few weeks. Mainly because of work; actually, lots of things happening at work. This blog being a learning diary but perhaps not all the learning is done though books. Recently, I have heard a story that definitely qualifies as quite a learning experience. 

John's little story

Lately John has been trying to improve his career prospect and decided to change his job - easily said than done! From writing CVs, cover letters, all the interviews, it's been a lot of effort, almost too much at times. What he was not prepared for was the amount of company politics that he would find himself in. Well, it is not just any other job, he is actually moving to a different department within the same company. Sounds easy right? After all, he is already in the building. 

So, what went wrong?, you ask. Well, first of all, there is the HR department to wrestle with. Justification after justification just to convince them that it makes perfect sense. Lots of lobbying, it's like a game to see who has got more influential friends. Secondly, the fact that the new department is in constant disagreement with John's current department only make things more difficult, both sides see this as problematic.
And then there is the boss - aka SF. Initially, SF reacted towards to news by pretending it doesn't exist. Going about his little life and avoiding John wherever possible. This is not only very annoying but very immature, as you would agree. So John had no choice but to force a meeting on him by inviting all parties to his office to have a proper chat. He did not like it of course. The meeting went well, and John was allowed to continue the job change process. However, this time SF ignored John for the entire week. 

The best part is what John had told me a few days ago. I met John for dinner and he was clearly very angry about something. It turned out that SF had decided not to sign the agreement paper at the last minute, giving flimsy excuses such as "I didn't know fact A, B, C, this was not mentioned in the meeting and you have lied to me". Well, you would think that being a manager SF would know how to negotiate and have a meeting with people. Instead SF decided to put on this embarrassing and highly unprofessional act demonstrating his bumbling incompetence. 

I feel really bad for John as it seems that his boss might ruin the whole thing for him. All the parties involved in this are all now very angry with SF for going back on his words, as he rightly deserves. So perhaps there is still some hope that this case might go ahead whether SF like it or not.

So, what does this story tell us? Well, it confirms our suspicion that some of our bosses are immature imbeciles (not all, I have had several good bosses myself). But additionally, it is a reminder that sometimes people are able to carry out unimaginable evils just to get what they want in this world.

Let's just hope that my friend's story will have a good ending.

On a separate note, to cheer up this gloomy post a bit, here is an amazing video featuring the magnificent capital city of Austria - Vienna. I am so going to enjoy living there :) more about that in future posts.


Bye for now