Cimorene

Background to this post is an incident that occurred in my second week on the job. I work as the secretary and sole employee to the local chapter of a volunteer organization, and the first two weeks I was shadowing the outgoing secretary to learn the job, so the most important point here is that it was his expertise that we were depending on and he okayed all the stuff we, or I, did. I made this locked post called My First Time Enduring a Long Complaining Lecture from Supervisors for Something Not My Fault about it, but in short, I emailed (with my predecessor's advice) a colleague to ask him to clarify a tip he'd given me in person at a meeting and the next day at a SURPRISE! meeting with the volunteer president and volunteer treasurer I got lectured at elevated volume for 10-15 min for "involving outsiders in our business" (I had been encouraged repeatedly to, besides relying on my predecessor, ask any of my colleagues at the district office anything at any time because they're here to help - by the volunteers who are my bosses as well as by the colleagues themselves). This was because the treasurer had come to the office outside my work hours and read the email - not an invasion of privacy; it's the chapter's official email, but it's my job, so for the most part it is my email - and opened my colleague's response which was, to paraphrase, 'Oh, in that case no worries, sounds like X is all ready for Event'. In spite of this encouraging response, the subject line & my message underneath the response flung her into a panic because the equipment WAS already all ready, and she knew that, because it was her job to get it ready and she had already done so. (Like, in terms of management and employer skills, this is terrible on both her part and the volunteer president's: this is absolutely not how to manage employees, communicate with people, etc. But at least the psychological explanation for the bad behavior kinda made sense.)

People I talked to agreed that I had sensitive micromanagers on my hands, and specfically a territorial response from a touchy self-important volunteer. But I still kept remembering the way she bellowed at one point (even after having been told exactly what happened) that 'If there's a question about Events, you ask the person in charge of events, which is ME, not any OUTSIDERS, not anybody at the DISTRICT OFFICE, and ABSOLUTELY not Bob!' (Not his actual name.) That 'absolutely' seemed... odd, so I was left with a niggling suspicion that she had something against Bob.

Well, last week she and I ordered some Christmas cards through the district office, and these fall in Bob's purview, so the online order form is one he's made and he's then the one processing the orders. We especially needed blank Christmas cards, which are a special order item from the printers: they have an array of cards that can be ordered with custom text, and these are also available blank; the order form has a little notice that these cards take longer to ship because of the custom printing, while the other cards are in stock. We ordered a small quantity of postcards as well, and they arrived hand-delivered a couple of days later because they were in stock, so I texted the treasurer 'The postcards are here, but the other ones aren't here yet, I guess because they have to be printed.' This was a careless mistake on my part - I should've realized they aren't completely POD, just the inside bits. Anyway, she called me instantly, all upset, to tell me that they absolutely don't have to be printed because we want them blank.

'Oh, you're right,' I said, 'I knew that. Yeah, the blank ones won't need to be printed. I guess the longer delivery time is just because they come from the card company instead of being in stock.'

'But they can't be printed,' she insisted, 'they wouldn't be printed because we don't want anything in them... they can't be printed... it's very important that they have NO TEXT. They have to be blank!' All this dialogue is paraphrased, but she did explain that they have to be blank and that they don't have to be printed about five times in a row, while I agreed and said that they will not be printed and that she is right, that we ordered them blank and not printed, that that means they will arrive blank and not printed, that it is indeed important to us that they be blank, that the confirmation email already definitely confirmed that they will be blank and not printed, etc.

"But this 'printed'," she said finally, "Where is this coming from? DID BOB SAY IT?"

Dun dun dun

I said no and that I hadn't talked to anybody. 'That was just my mistake,' I said. 'I just misspoke. I DID know that they are going to be blank, I just said "printed" when I was thinking about the slower shipping time.'

'But they can't be printed,' she persevered as if I had said nothing, 'I need you to contact Bob and make sure he knows. It's important that they are blank. He needs to know that they have to be blank.'

I had to agree three times in a row in order to get her to hang up. (I then had to email Bob the next day, because she's my boss, and tied myself in knots trying to make the email sound less stupid than 'I know the order confirmation email says we ordered blank cards, but it's very important that you understand that the blank cards should be blank').

My sister points out that part of this might be because she's old (she's in her 70s, but you wouldn't know it to look at her. She's more energetic and socially and physically active than I am, and she appears to be in her 50s), and she's right, this is something our parents (in their 60s) and my sister's boss (also in her 60s) are also prone to, seizing on one detail like a dog with a bone and becoming so obsessed with it that they're apparently impervious to explanation and reassurance.

However, I'm now pretty convinced that she hates Bob for some reason, and I'm dying to know why.

Her daughter is maybe 10 years older than me and works at the district office with Bob - a small collegial office with only 6 employees - so it's possible the reason comes from there somehow, although I haven't seen any signs of friction at their meetings. Her daughter is a loud, cheerful, friendly, laughter-prone, helpful, sporty type who gives the impression she might be about to run a mile at any moment and can capably arrange anything. Bob, on the other hand, is a quiet and soft-spoken but friendly and helpful type (a bit Dilberty, only permanently smiling, with a bass voice and a slow, careful way of speaking) and the sole native Finnish speaker on the staff. His Swedish is more fluent than mine, but he has an audible accent and makes the occasional small error, just like me.

Her daughter is so easy to talk to that my first impulse was to ask her, but obviously I can't risk doing that. Tragically, I can't think of any way I could find out more that wouldn't risk causing kerfluffle. I briefly fantasized about writing Ask a Manager, but I know she would tell me I can't ask my coworkers if my boss who is the mother of one of them hates Bob. I can't think of a way to ask HER if she hates Bob, but that is probably the only way I might possibly learn more in the future, if the subject comes up naturally and she is moved to expound.