The horror, the horror ... of middle management
On the way into work this morning, I heard a couple of talk show hosts talking about some survey that claimed that nobody wants to be middle management anymore. I haven't found the survey they were talking about, but my first reaction was, "Any more???"
Nobody wants to be in middle management. Even the middle managers don't want to be there. Talk about living your life in fear - that defines middle management.
You spend your days worrying about the proletariart drones beneath you rising up and storming your noncorner office with torches and pitchforks. And at the same time, you fret about about what edicts and bad news will descend from above.
The old saw about "getting rid of the middleman'' doesn't always refer to retail, you know.
A lot of middle managers view their stint as a kind of purgatory that will eventually give way to the beatific vision of upper management - except that, given the laws of Euclidian geometry and the hierarchical nature of corporate America, there just ain't that much room.
Better, in some ways, to start out at the top or find some way to be happy near the flexible and option-laded bottom.
Nobody wants to be in middle management. Even the middle managers don't want to be there. Talk about living your life in fear - that defines middle management.
You spend your days worrying about the proletariart drones beneath you rising up and storming your noncorner office with torches and pitchforks. And at the same time, you fret about about what edicts and bad news will descend from above.
The old saw about "getting rid of the middleman'' doesn't always refer to retail, you know.
A lot of middle managers view their stint as a kind of purgatory that will eventually give way to the beatific vision of upper management - except that, given the laws of Euclidian geometry and the hierarchical nature of corporate America, there just ain't that much room.
Better, in some ways, to start out at the top or find some way to be happy near the flexible and option-laded bottom.
posted by Michael Riley at 11:07 AM
14 Comments:
Middle management is just a hoax. The only reason it exists is so that people with MBAs have a place to work besides the mail room.
English majors need an idea like that to get them employed in the... what?... English business?
I don't know what business that would be. So far it's gotten me extensive kitchen work. The kitchen I work in now has two people with English degrees and one with a history degree.
You can always teach.
You can always be a professional blogger.
You can always take over your Dad's column when he croaks.
What? No philosophy degrees? That place doesn't sound like an equal opportunity employer to me.
What? No blatant cynics?? ..What Ray said!
The philosophy majors I went to school with probably won't be joining the workforce in any useful capacity for a few more years. They're still mostly convinced that stooping to kitchen work would be the equivalent of handing their souls over to some consumer-military-industrial complex.
I give them until the end of their 6 month Stafford loan grace period.
Thank you all for your suggestions, with the exception of anonymous of 5:17PM.
Just a little creepy, buddy.
"The Blatant Cynics" would be a great name for a rock band.
It would!
A Christian Rock Band.
Isn't it funny how the religious set used to complain about the evils of rock and roll and yet now they've come around to using rock and roll as their schtick?
We live and learn, don't we? :)
Margaret
Sometimes... while kicking and screaming.
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