This story involves me, and three levels of management above me.
My immediate supervisor, let’s call him “manager A”, is nice to my team but he’s scared shit of offending his boss, “manager B”. Anyone on the team asking for something that he thinks might piss off manager B, he’d say something like: “Are you crazy? This will get both you and me into trouble with manager B. Forget about it!”
Manager B is a real piece of work. Less than 6 months on the job, he’s pissing people off left and right. A big time micro manager who also power trips non-stop. Making changes that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things just so he can leave his mark, I guess. He took away 4×10 from everyone who had it, with no reasons and no warning. This disrupted people’s lives, like having to re-arrange daycare, etc. One person complained to HR and won against him.
My beef is he also took away all OTs. This time he had a reason, he screwed up a project so bad, it ate up all the department budget. But instead of his head rolling, he decided that those of us who want OTs should pay for his stupid mistakes (that we warned him would happen).
Manager C is director level. He doesn’t know about the day to day operations because he runs multiple departments.
One day at a company wide meeting, I happened to sit next to Manager C. He asked me how are things going, and if I had any concerns about work.
I thought this was the perfect opportunity to say something, so I did. I told him all our OTs were taken away and I’d love to have it back. He looked a little shocked (remember he’s not involved in the day to day). He told me to talk to manager A, and also said he will speak to manager A about it as well. Neither one of us brought up manager B.
It’s the weekend now, so I don’t know if manager C had spoken to manager A or not (or might have forgotten).
My concern is whether I will get into trouble with either manager A or B for talking to manager C directly. But then I didn’t exactly seek him out to complain. I happened to sit next to him and he asked if I have any concerns about work. So we’ll see what happens next week.