Hi, I work as an IT consultant a few days a month for a particular firm and I'm having trouble dealing with the IT director/CIO who is the person I take orders from. This IT director has taken over from somebody else who quit the job a few months back.
I'm also taking over from my colleague who has worked under this IT director for about 3.5 years a few days a month as well so now I'm taking over his work as my colleague will be focussed on other customers while I run the day to day operational stuff for this customer. Right now I already have a few days worth of experience in this firm, not knowing everything yet but getting there.
To be honest, the place is a total shitshow when it comes to organization : 1 IT director/CIO, no IT manager, no system engineer, no internal support engineer. And then there's me who will take care of the day to day IT stuff. They are part of a larger firm but recently split off from the main firm, while the main firm still has most of the shares in their name. There is a lot of history and probably a lot of bad blood I'm not aware of right now. I say this because there are a lot of mails and tickets who are simply ignored and a lot of assumptions and actions who are never communicated by this firm they are part of.
To get to my point : this IT director, who is the person I take orders from, is being a total dickhead to me. He's at all times passive aggressive, gives me orders like they should have been done yesterday and insists on micromanaging everything I do, while keeping a véry close eye on whatever report I need to throw his way while giving me shit along the way and it's just never good enough. Whenever I'm on site with him, anything IT related he will throw my way, even though it's probably something I've never even heard about before while he actually doesn't do jack shit. Oh and he interrupts whatever I'm saying a lot of the time, and this gets my blood boiling the most.
Me : I'm honest about anything I do, humble and polite to this IT director while I feel like he's being completely passive aggressive and disrespectful to me most of the times, without actually calling names or anything like that. This IT director is probably bitter about a lot of shit that has happened in the past so he needs to clean it up or sort it out. My colleague has caught him at least twice talking shit about a few of his colleagues so that's not good…
I should probably point out I do have sufficient experience and knowledge in this area so that is not the issue here. This IT director actually really has no technical knowledge about whatever it is I do, which is part of the reason I really hate whatever critique he throws my way.
Long story short : I'm this close to calling my teamleader at my own firm and telling him I do not want to go anymore as I do not feel I deserve him treating me like this, and I'm only a few days in.
The real question here : How could or should I proceed next time he does this again?
– Do I get passive aggressive back at him?
– Do I just suck it up and keep my head down?
– Do I pull him in a booth and straight up ask him what his problem is with me? (I feel like this will backfire at me, because he is the CIO after all)
– … ?
To be fair, when I'm not at work, I'm an entirely different person. I'm humble honest and try to avoid conflict in the workplace because this gets the best professional results.
Outside of work, I hardly ever bottle up emotions and confront the person if there is a problem so the difference is pretty much night and day.
This has been quite a rant, I realise that, but I just don't wanna call it quits when I'm only a few days in, I simply would like to hear your thoughts on how to deal with this type of person. I usually avoid these types of persons, but now I have no choice but to work with them.