I may have to work for a childish manager: he is older than me, which should mean he is more mature than me but he acts like a teenager, somebody I would never befriend out of the workplace. I don’t know if he is simply this childish or if this is a facade he’s been told to maintain.
I like to use downtime to learn, because my field is huge and there is so much stuff I barely understand, because learning opens doors to better jobs and because almost half of my coworkers bore me, use every excuse to smoke and if I read at least I don’t have to talk to them.
I don’t like wasting my time.
I worked for this manager, in the past: he had the guts to tell me I have to talk to him, as if I don’t give him the attention he craves for I’m not good enough for him. I told him I am all to talk about the job, the science behind it (science I barely understand), about the devices we use, not about his life, not about what he did on his weekend, not about his problems with his wife.
He didn’t say anything and to this day I don’t know if I pissed him. I neither understand why doing your job is not enough. I’m there for a paycheck and to learn.
Working for this person is a terrible idea, right?
One of my biggest pet peeves is being forced to befriend people I don’t feel attached to. It feels fake and walking on eggshells, like trying to guess what the needy person wants to hear, like he was a child. Why can’t you say hi and get things done?
I’ve worked with people who say they are all work and no talk. Their work was generally worse than others because they wouldn’t stop to coordinate with others while they worked and they should have. There were plenty of times they would make decisions when they should have talked to others, then those decisions needed to be backtracked because those decisions were wrong on the context of the project, costing time and money. They also end up being hard to work with because they devolve into screaming matches with other staff whenever there needed to be a discussion on his to proceed.
It ended up being a problem for their advancement because I couldn’t trust them in a leadership position they asked for when they wouldn’t show any leadership equivalent to their job’s roles and responsibilities.
Whenever I’ve given the direction “you need to talk to others”, it isn’t about talking to others about their day, but to talk to them about their work because their work is uncoordinated.