Revenge of the Contractor
Pete wants to get revenge on his boss and screw him up good and proper. Here’s his story.
I know a lot of screw-ups my boss has made recently. Recently, I have been keeping a list of them and have them all well documented. I am considering going to see his boss, or even the big boss to present him with the evidence.
My boss has had it in for me for a long while and has blamed me for some incidents in the past which turned out not to be my fault at all.
I‘m sure that he has held back my career.
Now it is my turn to do the same to him and, hopefully, remove him from my career path.
You‘ve got a lot of experience over the years Dr. McLaughlin. Have you come across anything like this before? Have you identified a problem this with a successful resolution?
Dr. McLaughlin’s IT Surgery
I have indeed come across this situation before Dave.
The person concerned followed exactly the same path that you are proposing, i.e. going in to see your boss‘s boss with the evidence of your boss‘s screw-ups.
Sad to say for you it was a complete disaster – as I knew that it would be.
In fact I encouraged the guy to do it. The reason for that was not that I wanted rid of his, and my, boss. It was that I wanted rid of him as he‘d stabbed me in the back earlier.
He had been talking about doing it for a while. One morning the big boss was in the office but not our boss. It was our boss’s new boss.
I said to the guy ‘Now‘s your chance. It‘s now or never. The boss will be in in about half an hour’.
So in he went – and shot himself straight in the foot.
Fools Rush In
When my boss got in I said to him, ‘I saw X going in to see Y this morning. He had been talking about telling Y about some things he said you did recently. I suspect that this is what he was in for, as he closed the normally open doors behind him’.
‘Why would he do that?’ my boss asked.
‘I don‘t know’ I replied.
Of course, my boss then asked his boss about it and he told him everything. Boss‘s tend to stick together. They also don‘t like people who go over other people‘s heads. They might do it to them in the future. It is a bad precedent.
My boss spoke to me that afternoon. ‘You were right’, he said. ‘He told me everything and was sympathetic saying he knew that errors happened in an IT department’.
Political Contractor wants Revenge
Well, that was the end of X. This contractor was sacked.
Stupidly he was a contractor who got involved in office politics. If you are going to do it, you‘ve got to be good at it – and he wasn‘t!
He thought that he was very smart and very clever and was going to ‘do for‘ his boss.
He walked into the big boss‘s office like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid walking out of that shack at the end of the movie – with pretty much the same results.
His contract was up for renewal a week later. He was in a position where it would have been hard to replace him.
However, I got one of the others who was very good to go and see the boss and to say that if a good job ever became available in that area to keep him in mind.
That is exactly what the boss did do, and 5 weeks later, the guy who tried to have him executed was out of work.
Same for You
If you follow the same route, pretty much the same is going to happen to you.
It‘s never wise to be proactive when plotting someone‘s downfall. It is best to be far more reactive.
The trouble was that the big boss was fairly new and hadn‘t got an opportunity yet to get to dislike the boss. He also wasn‘t going to have one of his senior officers executed on the say-so of a junior officer without having had an opportunity to assess him first.
Even if he didn‘t like him that much, he still couldn‘t be seen to be executing his officers because junior officers tried to get him to do it.
They would be sure to tell other people who would think that management were fair game.
I would advise against trying anything like this at all. It‘s just far too risky.
Either keep your head down, or start looking for another job.
Revenge The Smart Way
If you really want advice on how to do it, then it would be much better to give ammunition to people on the same level of the company as your boss is, rather than going over his head. Identify those who already don‘t like them.
You don‘t have to ask them this directly. Just ask around. Others will know who likes who.
You can be fairly sure though that many of the senior business managers and directors won‘t like the IT manager or director.
They are also in a very good position to ‘do for him‘. They are at the same level of the company and may see him as a rival or a threat.
He is also a supplier to them and you can bet your bottom dollar that there have been instances of bad delivery that has cost them dearly in the past. They would rather have someone else to deal with.
They are on the outside, though, and not technical enough to be able to land hard enough blows on him.
However, if, occasionally, they were fed inside information about him then they would be in a far stronger position to make trouble for him.
Revenge – Be Smart
You have to be careful though and do this gradually. You can‘t just go charging in with your dossier.
Cultivate them first of all and tell them the real reason for a few cock-ups in the past but just as anecdotes, saying that you wouldn‘t like it repeated. Do this socially if you can.
Whenever there is a major cock-up in the future, you‘ll find that your new ‘friends‘ will come to you to find out the inside ‘gen‘ on what really happened, instead of the cock and bull story that your boss has disguised in technical language.
This should not be looked on as my advice on the best way forward.
My advice would be not to do it all.
All I‘m saying is that if you are still determined to go ahead with it, this is the preferable and smarter method rather than going in there like Butch and Sundance with all guns blazing.
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