How Do These People Keep Getting These Jobs?!

The politest, most truthful way I can describe our sales and marketing director is that this woman is a straight-up idiot by choice. She has the potential to be brilliant, but instead, she refuses to learn exactly what her job entails and how to do it at even a mediocre level. The only reason she has her job at all is that she “knows a lot of people.” Never mind the fact that no one actually likes her due to her unsavory lack of ethics and morals.

For the four years that [Director] has worked at our company, she has stumbled her way through statements of works and proposals, typically costing us thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and customers who never want to work for us again. This woman cannot even do a basic budget projection, and rather than ask for help or learn how, she plays the blame game, normally blaming the owner. Still, the owner has this odd sense of gratitude toward her.

The best part about all of it is that I’ve learned I have a knack for project management at the ripe old age of twenty-three. Rather than engineering, I am often doing [Director]’s job, and it is actually pretty fun for someone organized and detail-oriented like me. It gives me enough sense to work toward my Master’s in Engineering Management. The owner sees this and starts to assign me more managerial tasks that [Director] has been incapable of doing up to this point.

I am currently working on a proposal for an internal project, and all that is left to do is to complete the Gantt chart and finalize the budget/cost. Like a sane person, I am using Microsoft Projects to accomplish both. I am showing both [Director] and the owner the Gantt chart, telling them that all I have left to do is level the resources to get our final cost for each portion of the project and then assign tasks to the developers/engineers using ClickUp — a Jira-esque software that allows for task tracking. [Director] selected this app personally, stating she knew how to use it already.

It should be noted that we do not have the version of ClickUp that would allow cost analysis to be put in; hence why I am using Microsoft Projects. It is also worth noting that [Director] hides a lot of her incompetence with bluster and silly little power moves that, to a sane person, just make her look more idiotic.

She doesn’t voice her concerns in the meeting, because she is a smart idiot, but I get an amusing set of tasks afterward.

Director: “The SOW shouldn’t be in ClickUp.”

Director: “Pricing should not be in ClickUp.”

Me: “The SOW nor pricing will be in ClickUp. ClickUp is solely for tasks. That is why I am using Projects for pricing.”

Director: “Thanks.”

I was left shaking my head how she got, “I am going to put pay scales on a company-wide software,” confused with, “Once I have pricing done, I will send you the finalized statement of work and start adding tasks in ClickUp.” But who understands the thought processes of the willfully ignorant?