to think that managers should not regularly, obviously make a job harder?

[umadoopaloop]

I work purely on a project basis. At any one time, employees of my level (senior - team leader type role) are involved in up to 4 projects at a time.

But it seems that MY direct line manager (the project PM - works solely on one project) has certain personality traits which just make my working life so, so much more difficult than it needs to be.

AIBU to find the days where she's in working at home much more productive? I actually hope she has emergency childcare issues on certain days just so that I can get my head down and get work done - how sad is that. I find my stress levels, level of concentration and overall quality of work worse when I'm on her project (2 days a week right now). She has good traits, many of them, but in terms of work productivity and stress, I do worse when she's here. I love it on Thursday mornings when she's in their management meeting - save all the more complicated work for then.

Basically the problems aren't huge, but added up they are:

• When she's on the phone, due to the open plan office she raises her voice level to the point where it's impossible to work - even with headphones on and turned up load, I can still hear the conversation clearly and it's a distraction (no issues with anyone else in the office)
• Constant interruptions
• Asking me to provide information that can be easily found herself e.g. documents that have been emailed to her 1 month ago

Today, I'm meant to be working on her colleague's project as a priority (NOT hers) yet the entire morning I've had interruptions to update her charts and action lists - roughly every 30/40 mins for a 10min chat. Which ends up distracting me enough to not do any work, just get BACK into what I'm doing, only for her to interrupt again.

Can anyone recommend tactics for coping with this? After 5 months of being involved in her projects, I'm getting increasingly agitated and frankly, demotivated. What's the point of starting a piece of work when I know I'm just going to get interrupted again?

I've tried:

• Being snippy ("Can't you find it? I emailed it to you on Tuesday 3rd at 1pm")
• Being polite ("Terribly sorry, but I'm just in the middle of finishing this, can you come back at 4pm?")
• Faking ignorance ("Oh I'm not sure about that either")
• Ignoring her (hoping a colleague will pipe up or she'll change targets)

I can't feed this back officially as she's the wife of the department head. Yes, conflict of interest there, but I have no faith that I can get outside support - despite hearing other colleagues moaning about the same things with her - I'm just going to have to come up with a workable solution for me.

YANBU my working circumstances changed about a year ago and it has been brilliant since I no longer report into the person I used to who was a complete time sucker and regularly seemed to require my presence at exactly the time I was due to leave (p/t) and made unflattering comments about my performance which may or may not have been true as was unable to demonstrate or substantiate them with actual examples of my failings.

So deep sympathies OP. I can recommend a good book "Dealing with People you can't stand" but I'm not sure if her actions relate to any specific personalities in the book.

You could try having a list of what you are meant to accomplish each day and each and every time she asks you something question how it fits into your days priorities. Or when she asks random questions ask her to schedule a meeting in your calender as you find it hard to focus when there are interruptions. That way at least if you don't achieve what you are meant to, you can demonstrate the calender time that is spent with her. Or you could try passively aggressively saying on the days after she has worked at home "Gosh I was so productive yesterday, yet today I don't seem to be getting through anything, I wonder why that could be?...."

Pain in the butt though.

Yabu. Talk to her about it.

LOL
are you me?

I have this issue too, its taken me a while to realise that being helpful; wont actually move me forward as I dont get measured on those adhoc things.

I had frank face to face chat about it once before but its got out of control
again.

Suggest you talk 1-2-1 with her and explain issues of priorities.

I am beyond stressed right now due to this and so need to chat again soon!

Another way to tackle is to make it into your problem rather than hers when describing so:

"XX boss I'm one of those people who finds that they really need to focus on what they are doing in order to complete it. Would it be possible for you to email some of your requests to me so that I can pick them up when I'm not working on something else, or schedule a slot in the diary to discuss. I just feel it would help me to achieve more during the day and would be much quicker for you as well as you are so busy"

Oh and re the noise levels I had a horribly noisy person opposite me for a while, it wasn't so much the talking as the guzzling and breathing and swearing at his computer that got me down. I started wearing ear plugs and they are doubly useful as it means people stop approaching you after a few times of coming up and me having to go through the rigmarole of taking them out, only started to bother me if it was really important.

My experience is that talking to managers about this sort of thing never really changes anything and if they get even a whiff of criticism it is often not worth the trouble.

Not much help but YANBU.

A few ideas:
can you work from home yourself?
is it feasible to come to an arrangement with her for an official catch-up meeting at a certain time each week, to discuss ongoing issues? Then you can try pushing her into raising said issues then, not all the time.
Could you communicate with her via notes instead of email? It sounds as if it's a weak point with her. There are certain people I work with who I never bother emailing.

The noise thing - leave it. It's crap, but she will only take it personally.

Get a pair of headphones (over the head, visible ones best) with the mouthpiece so that you can use it on the phone. Wear whenever you dont want to be disturbed.

Arrange specific times to discuss things with her. eg a morning/afternoon slot when you discuss and schedule anything she wants done. If she has to wait a little, she may find its easier to do it herself or forget about it if its not important.