Being A Manager

What is a manager's role, or at least being a superior? It is like a bed of roses - more lepak and throw commands to the staff under you, or is it the other way round - more responsibilities & more headaches?

I don't know lar, but NR seems to have the former role. By the way, NR is my manager and he's the nose-digging fella (yuck!). I believe a lot of you are probably in the management department, or at least, supervising other people. Perhaps you can enlighten me on what responsibilities do a manager hold. And maybe you can tell me if what NR do is correct.

For starters, he reads novels during office hours. Once a while, understandable. But he reads them day in day out, from morning till evening. And it's very obvious. From so far away, you can actually see his monitor screen. Bright orange background page, with dark orange Chinese fonts. A lot of chapters too. Whenever someone passes by his place, he minimizes the window. Sometimes I call his name, I walk over and I stand beside him, he knows I am there, the windows was still on full screen mode, he looks at me for a few seconds, then he minimizes it. Which is really, really dumb lar.

When it comes to presentation, he prepares the Powerpoint slides. Once he's finished, every morning, he leaves the one of the slides up at the background while he reads his novels. When people passes by, he displays that slide and he pretends to think until coast is clear, then the novel is back. It goes on until evening, and it's still at the very same slide. "Takkan" 1 page of slide also so hard to do meh?? But of course, during his presentation, we must be 'amazed' at it, he took suuuuuuuch a long time to do wohh..

Oh, and he's a very good "tai chi" master. He throws every single thing to me and my teammates. We are sooooo overloaded with our own projects, yet he still do that. He even throws his own projects to us! I was realllllly, reallllly frustrated at this today. Me and my teammates already have too much of things on our plates. Bosses using their authoritive powers to tell us to do their things. He told Furball that "you got 12 things to fix (in a project). You take 1 minute to fix one thing, 12 minutes also 'kow tim'". I pulak, am stuck with a lot of "highest" priority projects. I told him I need a few days then only work on one of it, he said, "Wah.. Like this also need few days ar? One day also can lar". I was soooo geram, I just told him off, "Then you do for me lar". His reply? "If I got time, I don't mind doing. But I don't have time now". Guess what he's doing? Chatting on MSN and reading novels. What the *^#$&*!! By the way, did I tell you that his favourite phrase is "Your problem, not my problem"?

And he knows that we're overloaded, he does not even offer to help us out. For me, regardless of how much of things I have on my own plate, I offer Furball my help because I know he can't possibly do 'one leg kick' in his project. Shouldn't a manager be more busier than the rest of us? Best part is, whenever there are suggestions to add to his projects, he will give all sorts of excuses to not add them. This busy lar, that busy lar, here meeting lar, there meeting lar, this cannot do, that cannot do. But suggestions to add to our projects, fuiyoh, everything also can!! No problem! Can be done within so-and-so days/weeks, without discussing with us! 'Cham' lar we all.. Don't fall sick also cannot lar. I don't think I need to talk about the nose-digging part, right?

Is this how a manager is supposed to be? My colleagues and I really can't stand him any much longer. But how are we supposed to voice it out and to whom? He appraises my performance, no matter how much I hate it, I still have to suck up to him a bit. How do we get him to change his attitude and that we are all supposed to be in the same boat together?

Hhm... I just realized I have 2 entries (including this one) specially dedicated to him. I wonder what will he say if he happens to read them! Shhh.... And by the way, I seem to be complaining quite a lot in the blog. But I'm not always a Grumpy Bear. Really!!! Oh well, shall stop writing. Time to get back to my work. Doing OT at home. Got deadlines mar.

PS :- Please don't mind my grammar. I'm too frustrated to check on it. ;)