Some managers are thick

 As more more companies employee managers who have no technical ability and yet they are managing technical teams, so it is important to protect the young new professionals.

In my first job straight from university in my early 20s, I was working as a laboratory technician, operating both a quality controller, operatory and a research laboratory. 

My research involved, a spectrometer, which operated with an air acetylene flame on a titanium head and ionised material, and then read the spectrum so that you could work out the chemical component of the material passed into it. For this operation, the material needed to be fully dissolved and so preparation of the samples required a furnace and the digestion with acid of the material into a liquid.

Naturally, my managing director was keen to take advantage of the technology and the research I was completing. He called me to his office and asked me how soon a set of results could be reported upon.

I calculated in my head the steps that needed to be completed and the earliest possible time they could be completed by. Wanting to deliver I stated the earliest possible time if I pushed my luck a bit and that was Thursday. « Thursday », I said. My managing director said, I want it by Wednesday.

I was shocked. It just wasn’t possible, but my managing director just Demanded it. I felt upset and worried. I turned to get straight on with it because it wasn’t possible. It had already been tight for Thursday and it just wasn’t possible so I just went straight off to do it. The only possible way of doing this was day and night. Acid digestion, using hot acid of material prepared in a furnace all day and all night so that I could dissolve the materials and prepare them for use in the spectrometer. I nearly started a fire. And of course, the results really weren’t up to any thing much because it had just been rushed there hadn’t been a long enough acid digestion. There wasn’t time for a long enough acid digestion. There would’ve been time if I’ve had till Thursday and I’ve worked really hard at it. Which I always did. I was doing a great deal of unpaid overtime to keep up with these demands and I was prepared to do unpaid overtime in my first job upon graduation to get it done by Thursday. 

This is what I should’ve said

« It can’t be done by Wednesday, it can be done by Thursday that’s why I answered Thursday. »

 [(Stating this should be unnecessary as I had already answered as soon as it could be done this Thursday) But we’re dealing with the fact that we’ve just been delivered the nonsense of being out aside by Wednesday that the soonest be done is Thursday.]

« If you want it by Wednesday, the results will be poor, but I could work day and night for the next 72 hours.

We will need a risk assessment. There needs to be a second person aware that I am boiling acid overnight.

I will need childcare for my children. I will need more tampons and sanitary towels than I have brought with me. I will need some provision for food and drink. »

Has anyone ever said this to their boss? If they haven’t they should have. Imagining it now I see my managing director staring, blinking. Hopefully realising that he had asked the impossible.

So if businesses continue to employ managers without any technical ability, then young professionals need to learn how to push back, for their own safety, To allow them to do excellent work to protect their professional pride, To protect the manager from his own foolishness, To deliver excellent work for a business so that the business and the rest of the team can succeeded.