Bring me a rock!

[minoanmiss]

https://jonathanbecher.com/2020/08/30/the-bring-me-a-rock-phenomenon/

I thought this was just how managers manage?

Comments

[amaebi]

Thank you for giving me a name for (an also) a family phenomenon that sends me spare!

[dine]

*hands you a rock*
what? you didn't specify!

[bikergeek]

*looks at userpic* Paige, no!

[bikergeek]

Some managers manage like that, yes.

Your parents also parented, for some values of that term.

I had one manager like this, about thirty years ago. I didn't last long there. She was a nasty combination of gaslighting ("I never said that") and "Find me a rock." And got irritated when I asked specific questions and/or made notes on what she said.

[armiphlage]

My former manager would say, "Why didn't you bring me a rock? I was clearly told at a corporate meeting last year (that you weren't invited to) that I needed a rock by yesterday. Why didn't you provide me one?"

[xenacryst]

Fortunately, most of my managers have been in one of the camps of "I like rocks, but you're a geologist, so clearly whatever rock you think is best here will be" or "they want a rock that looks like this - I'm not sure any such rocks exist, but you would probably know better than I" or "I pay you to make the rocks go away, and while I still see rocks, there are fewer and they're different, so you must be working." And for the external (outside of my team, I mean) folks who want rocks, I learned early on to get very precise descriptions of the rocks so that I would know exactly which ones to lob at them at high velocity when they changed their minds (which they did).

[minoanmiss]

*beams at you*

[xenacryst]

Come to think of it, a large amount of my interactions outside my direct team, for much of my career across multiple jobs has taken this form:

Person: Bring me a rock.

Me: Great, we specialize in rocks. How would you like your rock?

Person: Ok, this rock has to be about yay big, a little off round at one end with points at the other, have a decent heft, shiny purple spots, and make a satisfying "thud" when it hits the floor. We need it by Fintober 34 at foothirty.

Me: Cool, I like this rock. starts building rock

Me, some time later, a week or two before Fintober 34: Ok, I have a rock that I think will work, but I want you to test it out for thuddiness and I wasn't sure if the shiny purple needed to be metallic or glassy - you might not even care. In any case, please let me know at your earliest convenience whether this rock is good or if you'd like some tweaks.

crickets

crickets

the crickets get bored

Me: Hey, Fintober 34 is coming up this week, have you had a chance to look at the rock?

crickets perk up, but then get bored again

Fintober 34 arrives, memfifteen in the morning

Me: Hey, so we can't put this rock into production without your go ahead, can you let me know?

foothirty rolls around, looks both ways, and shrugs, then rolls off again

Ginvember 1 arrives

Person: OMGWTFBBQJFCONAPOGOSTICK, WHY ISN'T THIS ROCK IN PRODUCTION YET?!?!?!?

crickets play a tiny violin

A good many other interactions are more along the lines of:

Person: Bring me a rock. It needs to be squishy, taste like berries, and photosynthesize.

Me: That's not a rock.

[jadelennox]

This doesn't happen because incomplete communication, this happens because management doesn't want to do the work of really speccing what they want/need (often because it's contradictory or impossible) and they want to make failure to deliver their reports' fault, not their own. 😫

[cellio]

Indeed.

For a humorous take on this very real attitude, see Jordin Kare's The Designer. There is a sequel, The Engineer.

[stranger]

I am now recalling a corporate training module that gave some basic instructions on how to specify what kind of rock was wanted, to a vendor. It was for a job I didn't do, but the corporation was very big on training modules, and this one was actually more useful than most. It became *important*, of course, when vendor fees were on the line rather than employee effort.

[xenacryst]

Of course, now every time I scroll by this, I get earwormed...

Bring me a rock in the wintertime
When they're hard to find...

(clearly they have snow on them)

Of course, everybody wants a rock. If only to tie a piece of string around.

A rock is sweet
most any time
and yet,
Bring me a rock in the wintertime
That does not match this spec!

[rmc28]

I try not to manage like this.

I am amused at a certain department my team works with, who have apparently got very offended because my department head has asked them for more information on what rock they want before he will ask us to do any more work to bring them rocks.

[minoanmiss]

I have faith you would of course do better. Go your department head!