I told one of the folks I work with/for that I feel like I’ve landed on the Island of Misfit Toys.

This small company is a tightly enmeshed family of co-dependents, a dysfunctional clan.  They're whacked.

The intricate and triplicate forms completed only prop up one problem child and serve to make others look bad whenever the problem child needs an opportunity to lash out at the others.  Another problem child throws things in pique, can’t stay on a schedule to save his life, demands constant enabling.  The rest of the staff are damaged and abused children, unable to stand up against tyranny.

The organization is flat – but it’s not a benefit, not an opportunity to operate using lean manufacturing techniques.  It’s flat in no small part because there is no organizational chart.  Staff members really don’t know who reports to whom; nobody knows what their relationship is to the others save for the tasks they do repetitively.

Consequently, everybody questions what the other person is doing, wants a justification for the other person’s existence on the payroll.  But they don’t see that others around them also have the same questions about them.

I’m the latest wrinkle; in this undocumented environment, I’m perceived as the reason why nobody’s getting a raise.  My contractor’s fees and the IT equipment I’m ordering and implementing are cutting into the wages of the line workers.

Never mind that they are incredibly lucky to have jobs in their industry in this state or that they haven’t had to take pay cuts like employees at competitors have done over the last several years.  Never mind that this business operates as if it’s 1985 – on the infrequent good day, maybe even like 1995 – without technology that would make everything so much more transparent, would facilitate better communication.

There are little whispers here and there, all over the place, toxic stuff building up in the corners, lying like soot over everything.

Do I stick it out?  Pull the plug?

Or do I continue to wonder exactly what kind of misfit toy I might be to have landed on this island?

9:25:48 PM    comment []