Sesi mari mengumpat : Bahagian 1

I just couldn’t believe it that one of the management expectations of me this year is to correct the mentality of one of the team members. I could understand career development and personal growth, but mentality? Gosh, I didn’t study Psychology101 back in uni.

After further questioning (yup, I questioned my immediate manager), it turned out he had realized the problem with this specific team member for years, yet he couldn’t come up with an idea or approach on how to handle it. Now he’s passing the baton to me hoping that I can do some miracles.

Hahaha, I was laughing at his face. I’ve known this team member for some time and I could not accept the kind of attitude shown towards works and responsibilities.

I have never met this type of engineer. Negativity is the middle name. Every instruction and request from boss or project manager has always been getting feedbacks in the form of complains. This team member would complain about even the tiniest thing such as replying to an email where the boss asked on planned activities for the week. He’s the boss, so what’s the big deal about replying his email? Having to sit next to this team member for more than 2 years has been most unfortunate of me.

New challenges are definitely not in this team member’s dictionary. Any new type of assignment will be rejected (and OMG, the boss let her escape with that?) It just amazed me how easy she could just say NO to an assignment. She’s in the payroll, isn’t she? It amazed me even more when the boss says he’s okay with it. I don’t mind whenever boss asked each of us whether we’re comfortable to be assigned with certain tasks, but it is now being perceived as management weakness. Those who are not interested to commit can just get away with it. Can you believe that?

As a result of this unfairness in year 2007 she was only doing 3 minor tasks while the rest of the team members had to work day, night and weekends (I’m talking about myself here, lah) to complete overlapping project tasks and clashing deadlines. The 3 minor tasks she was doing dragged for a few months just because she couldn’t get ‘some info’ from ‘some parties’. Well, what a lame excuse. It’s the IT era; you don’t have any excuse anymore for not being able to get any info, okay… The manager realized about the imbalance workload and he apologized (but I didn’t say I forgave him).

This team member just doesn’t understand urgency, that’s the most difficult part. She wouldn’t take it if the boss tells her not to take her own sweet time. Maybe all her life, she has always been lying on a bed of roses; fed with delicious food in silver/golden spoons, being pampered all the time, have 20 servants etc. But this is work, okay…. And works have deadlines.

The conclusion made between the boss and I that day was that there is a tall wall built around this team member’s mind. She’s not seeing what the others do. Her wall is made of insanely negative charges that any new things that came in front will only seem negative to her.

So, my responsibility this year is to neutralize those charges. F*ck!