Under New Mismanagement, Part 6

(There’s some management shake-ups, and my department gets a new manager. As is common, the new manager quickly dismisses the old manager as a “crazy old man” and throws out most of the old methods. About a year under his reign, we’re subject to a government audit. It takes some long hours, but we get everything together and pass with flying colours. A few days later, the manager and I are doing a postmortem on the audit.)

Manager: “Hey, you know those reports you had to do for the audit? I’m thinking about making EVERY department head do a watered-down version of them, so we’re ready to go if this ever happens again. What do you think?”

Me: “Oh, it’d be nice to start doing that again. [Old Manager] made us do it all the time. Had it worked down to an easy-to-use, condensed form we filled out every month. ”

Manager: “WHAT? Why did everyone stop doing that?”

Me: “Um… well, you weren’t asking for them, so we all stopped doing them, I guess.”

Manager: “OH, DEAR GOD! Why won’t anyone tell me how to do my job? Why? Why?”

(I then sat there in awkward silence for the next five minutes as he had a meltdown over how difficult he found his job.)