Work Grievance

I'm sitting at my desk, hard at work, when Cro-Magnon Man, one of my umpteen bosses, lumbers over and tosses a scrap of paper at me. On it, he's written a name and a phone number. I ask what it's about.

"I don't know," he says.

Why does he want me to call?

"I don't know," he says again. "I don't know anything about you. You look into it. You find out," he orders.

I point out to Cro-Magnon Man that I'm already knee-deep in another project, and that I have a meeting to attend in a few minutes.

"Well then," he says, trying his hardest to sound sarcastic and failing, "you will go to your meeting and then when you get back you will put all your effort into this." He gestures to the scrap of paper as he completes his sentence.

I ask again for any information he can give me about who I'm calling or what I should be asking about. I don't think I'm asking for too much. He explodes.

"I am a manager," he huffs. "My time is too important to be wasted on these things. That's why I pass them on to you. I've already wasted five minutes talking to you."

At this point, I suspect he wants to call me "subordinate" or "peon," but since he does not know what either of these two words mean, he just looks at me menacingly. Knowing that anything other than a smile and a shrug would exacerbate the situation, I say OK and get back to my project.

Later, I call the person whose name and number is on the scrap of paper. Nothing important, it turns out. I am not surprised.