For the record, I would like to state that I took a nice 5.5 mile run, had a hot shower, a Diet Sunkist Lemonade, and I’m in much better spirits.

I’m still mad about the work thing, but I am not my job.

Repeat:

I AM NOT MY JOB.

Denny’s cooking me dinner. He’s nice.

Warning: this is a post bitching about my job. If you are my coworker, you will commiserate. If you are my boss…maybe you’d better just stop reading right now to save us both some embarrassment.

So a while back, my boss asked me to write up a proposal for this situation that the Deans of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences cooked up, in which each department chair would have access to all the course websites within his/her department, and the Deans would have access to every course website within the department (these are password-protected sites that are usually only accessible to the people teaching or taking the course). My boss wanted me to do this because he feels it’s important for me to take leadership as the campus CMS Administrator.

I am not necessarily opposed to the Deans’ idea, because it has merits that I won’t go into detail about here, but I anticipate some resistance from faculty. For that reason, I feel strongly that the message needs to come from the Deans and not from us. My über-boss (my boss’s boss, whom I respect a lot) is always concerned about the relationship ITS has with the rest of campus, including a need to avoid any perception that we are overstepping our bounds and violating faculty autonomy, so that’s an area in which I try to be sensitive. I drafted a three-phase proposal, including recommended discussion points for the Deans to use in their communications with department chairs and faculty. I worked hard on it, and I sent it to my boss last week. We discussed it at a meeting yesterday, and I got some feedback from other coworkers that I thought was good, so I did another draft of it.

This morning I went to discuss the new draft with my boss, and I found out that he had already communicated with the Deans’ office and they had already written an email to the department chairs. This email completely bypassed me; my boss didn’t CC me on any of his communications with the Deans’ office, and it didn’t include what I felt was the most important part: the fact that we’re doing this on request of the Deans.

OK.

So the message I get from this is that my boss wants me to take leadership and gives me the task of devising a plan for working with the Deans’ office, which is a very leadershippy thing to do. But then when I effing try to DO it, he completely ignores my contributions and goes along as if I don’t even exist.

It was really insulting, and he might have mentioned in the meeting yesterday that I shouldn’t waste my time tweaking the proposal, because he had already skipped over what I considered to be the most important part.

Fortunately, after I very strongly stated my case, we were able to get a hold of the Deans’ office and intercept the message so it includes some rewording. I still would have been more comfortable actually using the plan I devised, but it’s better than it was.

I hate being told that my opinion matters when it clearly doesn’t. Either I’m a drone or I’m not; don’t flatter me with responsibility if you don’t really want me to have it.