Micromanagement was evident when I was just the office AA, but both the Office Manager and I were brand new so I assumed it would go away. I was wrong.

One particular event that comes to mind was in January of 2007. I was preparing to send out the newsletters to 300 or so people. Monica and I had printed off the newsletters, stamped them and I was preparing labels. He, he architect and owner of the company, came over to inquire about what size labels I was using. At first I thought he was kidding, but soon realized he really wanted to know. When I brought this up at a later date, he assured me that he was just trying to be helpful, not trying to micromanage.

—

When I took on the roll of Office Manager, one of the tasks he wanted me to do was give Monica her employee evaluation. This was in the beginning of December, I had been Office Manager for less than two weeks. I didn’t think it was a good idea for me to evaluate someone that had been there 12+ years, and thought that perhaps John or Jim should do the evaluating. John persisted. I hoped it would go away, it did not.

In January, he again insisted I give Monica her evaluation, I again protested that this was not a good idea. We all (John, Jim and I) agreed to ask Monica what she wanted and do that. I approached Monica, her answer surprised me – she did want me to evaluate her performance over the last two months. I informed John and Jim, who were both in agreement that this could happen.

Monica and I scheduled a time to do her evaluation. I gave her a blank copy of the evaluation form (which was stolen outright from Children’s National Medical Center, I might add) and told her to fill hers out and I would fill one out as is procedure. As the date approached, I sent an email to John and Jim reminding them that the next day Monica and I would not be in the office for a few hours as we reviewed her evaluation.

That evening, I received an email from John telling me that it was inappropriate for me to give Monica her evaluation, that I didn’t know how very important this was and couldn’t possibly document it properly. He really thought I should have discussed this with him before proceeding.

I lost it, I knew at that point that I was purposefully being driven insane. I sent a scathing email back to John and cc’d Jim saying that this was ridiculous, I couldn’t possibly understand what my job was if they kept giving me false information, or changing the rules and reality as we went along. I went in to work anyway, was so pissed off that it didn’t really matter. Jim wanted to know what he could do to make things better, and I really wasn’t sure at this point.

I think, but have no proof, that he pulled John aside and insisted that he apologize and correct the situation. Cause John was very forthcoming with an apology, but couldn’t really bring himself to believe that he had done anything wrong. He did take me out to lunch and I assumed things would get better. This was not to be the case.