| I used to work at a cube farm polluted by
abusive managers and a couple of talentless co-workers working overtime to make life
miserable for the rest of the staff. It was a mean spirited and bizarre place. We called
it, among other things, the Office of Psychotic Reactions.
The organization had important goals, but they were seldom reached because of
spectacularly inept management. These graduates of the School of Immorality As A Lifestyle
had two major managerial strengths: 1) they micro-managed and 2) they were afraid to make
decisions. Mix in personal attributes of stupidity and vindictiveness and you get an
organization eligible for Dante's managerial hall of fame.
The managers were paranoid of anyone who was not like them, which meant most of the
staff. They attacked these staffers insistently. Their ineptitude was increased by suck-up
employees who feared being eclipsed by other staffers with superior skills and who played
to the managers' paranoia. Together, they encouraged backstabbing and skillfully sowed
dissension among the staff. Whispering campaigns were a standard administrative tool.
Paralysis by analysis was a way of life. Harassment was the norm. Eventually, most of the
staff was driven away by the craziness before the joint was finally closed down and its
duties sent elsewhere. Nothing, of course, was ever done about the management, despite the
evidence of their abusive behavior. In fact, the behavior of those with the power to
discipline the abusers was, if anything, even more unethical.
Anyway, I found some relics of that wretched time while cleaning out old files. These
top 10 lists compiled by the staff should give you an idea of what it was like to work at
the Office of Psychotic Reactions. Staff survivors will immediately recognize the
environment that inspired the lists. Except maybe the talentless drones who allied
themselves with the paranoid managers. Hard to know what they see in their own squalid
universes.
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