I've got divorced bosses · Jan 5, 06:30 AM by Dave Polaschek
Yesterday at work, I spent a couple idle moments pondering my situation there. I was waiting on a compile or some such, and started to think about the way I’m managed.
See, I’ve got one manager who’s located in CA. He’s in charge of part of the project I’m working on, and handles many of the technical issues I have to work with.
My other manager is local, and she’s in charge of the other part of the project I’m working on. She also tends to handle the more HR-related kind of things (although much of that belongs to the company I’m contracting with).
What struck me yesterday is that I’ve lived through this sort of situation before. I had a flashback of sorts yesterday to when I was eight and for the first time realized that I would sometimes play my divorced parents against each other. “Mom said no? Well, ask dad!” It wasn’t something I consciously took advantage of too often, but as a kid, it’s a pretty easy behavior to learn.
I still haven’t figured out all the details of how it applies to my current situation, but now that I’ve noticed it, I do plan to watch myself and try to make sure I don’t end up trying to play my managers off against each other. That might be okay when you’re eight, but I’m pretty sure it would result in unhappiness today.
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