What To Do?

I probably shouldn’t even be writing this as yet, but seeing as only a few people I know are actually aware I have a blog it probably doesn’t matter.

Late morning I was accosted by one of our senior project engineers. I have a lot of respect for this man as he’s a great manager and a pleasure to work with. He doesn’t often require much from me so I was a little taken back that he wanted to talk with me. He said that we needed to talk to someone downstairs with regards to a few document control issues. I was a touch confuddled as I don’t deal with anyone downstairs on the project he claimed it was about, but all was to become clear.

He took me over to a woman I’ve seen around the building regularly, but I hadn’t a clue who she was. We sat in a small meeting room just behind her desk and from the looks on their faces I was expecting my P45!

For the purpose of this blog we’ll call them Bob and Sue.

The first thing Bob said to me was, “Don’t worry; you’re not in any trouble!” I must have looked scared! He said that they wanted to talk to me regarding a team member, who we’ll call Fred, and our boss, who we’ll call Nobby.

Anyway, Fred has been off sick for about 2 and a half months now, possibly more. Nobby has always suggested that Fred has mental health issues and that’s why he’s been signed off for so long. Today was to prove otherwise. I’ll admit, Fred is a wet dish rag and not someone who I’d have hired, but he probably comes cheap. It turns out that Fred has made allegations of bullying about Nobby, and this is the real reason he’s off sick. The kick off was back in July/August time when a new fella started and was introduced around the office.

Being a male dominated environment you can well imagine everyone has a nickname of sorts, ranging from the harmless to the potentially offensive. The name for Fred generally known in the office is “Snot.” Fred was out this particular day that the new guy was introduced round and Nobby had referred to him as Snot rather than his actual name. I can only assume that in his ignorance as a new person he’d mentioned this to Fred the following day, although I’m led to believe that other personal remarks have been made along the way which are really quite nasty.

So now I’m sat in the middle of this saga. Bob and Sue asked me in this meeting what I thought of Nobby. I wasn’t sure if they were meaning personally or as a manager so I gave them both sides, but limited amounts as I’m not a grass. Now I doubt as to whether I should have mentioned a lot more stuff as Sue took particular interest in me telling her some nasty stuff he said to me once.

As it happens I don’t think much of Nobby as a person, and even less of him as a manager. He really couldn’t manage a piddle up in a brewery.