Why is new boss being such a knob?

[Buggeroffboss]

Our old boss took ill suddenly in December last year and died shortly after. They been the boss for 20+ years, so appreciate we were all very used to them.

Following their illness I became interim boss. In April I was offered the role permanently but declined as it would mean returning to full time work. I'm bitterly regretting not taking it due to new boss!

We're a remote team, have been since many years before COVID. New boss clearly hates remote working. We do have an office, but it seats 10 people and us open to the whole business (approx 300 people) not just our department (40 people). New boss wants everyone in the office 2 days a week. HR have told him to go whistle - we are all on remote contracts and live across the whole of the UK, including channel Islands and 2 in France!

New boss is now insisting we schedule any "coffee breaks" (you know, where you brew up between meetings) and that under no circumstances are we to appear on screen with tea/ coffee if it isn't adjacent to our scheduled break. In addition he's put an embargo on lunch time errands, such as laundry, popping to the post office or collecting the car from the garage. All time is to be accounted for.

As you can imagine, morale has gone down the pan. We're a high performing department, there is 0 issues with productivity. Our work is largely invisible most of the time, lots of thinking time and idea generation which makes monitoring our day to day workloads difficult, but we always exceed our targets at quarter and year ends - so people are clearly working. In the 6 weeks he's been in there's been a noticeable change in how people are working, fewer people on early or late, most just working to their hours.

AIBU to think he's being a bit of a dick and just needs to chill the fuck out?

Just wondering about the 6% of people who thought the boss was reasonable.

Yes this is you
the most senior person on a team of 40 aside from him.

what about grads? Inexperienced new starters? My point is… he doesn’t know everyone in a 40 strong team. Your previous boss had been there for decades. So wanting to know when employees are going to be taking a 3 hour lunch… I get it.

Yes. 6 months probation. Time enough for a full quarter results.

But why? We are all grown ups and know we have to deliver on our projects, but if someone wants to work a few longer days and finish early on a Friday then that’s quite acceptable. If I want to take a two hour lunch break so I can meet my mum then that’s also fine, I’ll just make up the time.

We complete time sheets on a weekly basis but as long as our hours add up then no questions are asked about when we did those hours.

One colleague does the school run so is out during those times, another likes to log on really early then takes her dog out for a couple of hours at around 8am. Not one of us has ever missed a deadline so management leave us alone. They know perfectly well that we’d drop everything and do any hours necessary if they ever needed us to.

Are you not advocating for all your reports who are unhappy with him?

Seems to me that if he is going to be a stickler for waving the rule book around, then everyone needs to start working to rule and stop doing things like cancelling their own lunch break because it is busy, or rearranging their time to fit meetings in, or doing a few minutes overtime to get something finished.

It’s also ridiculous to monitor hours down to the minute when the goal is output.

Hours matter when you are staffing something that requires your presence - a customer service help line, a till in a shop, anything directly customer facing where you are being paid to be present for set hours - nursing, managing an in person office. Etc.

Or if you are billing clients for the employees time such as lawyers where the added up minutes means more profit for the business.

But if you have to deliver an advertising campaign - you don’t need to worry if your team are clocking in at 8am or 9.15am - you need to worry about the quality of work they can deliver by deadline.

He is a very poor manager. It's one thing to impose this sort of thing when everyone is present in person, and even then its not something you do with a performing motivated team. It just doesn't work with a remote team.

He badly needs some training in how to manage a remote team. I should know, I wrote a best selling book about this!

Hopefully he’ll provide enough rope to hang himself with then.

I would suspect he will be gone before long - clearly a massive culture clash between him and the company. I’ve worked in organisations with flexi before , including one where we got rid of core hours. Everyone behaved well and it helped retain staff when the pay wasn’t doing that.

Yes most people charge time to client work. I’m internal facing so all my time goes on the same few activity codes. We have to log a full week’s worth of whatever our contracted hours are. They just don’t really mind when you do the hours, provided you aren’t missing meetings or deadlines. I mean, you couldn’t say you were working nights and never be available to actually talk to! But a long lunch, or working early/finishing early is totally fine.

I’m on leave this week, but it would be fine for me to block out an hour and a half for lunch next Monday. I wouldn’t need to ask permission from my manager. I might mention it to him if I happened to speak to him in the morning, but it wouldn’t be required. Maybe some managers within the company are stricter, but given the official policy and the wording of it, I don’t think they’re really able to give a blanket “no”.
It’s the flexibility the company offers in return for sometimes needing the client teams to be working until midnight! If they took away our flexibility, they might find people suddenly decide they’re done at half 5 every day, and can’t work a minute more. As a non-client facing employee who has never needed to work particularly late, I just get the upside of it.

What is the wording of it?

I am, hence the conversation about working at the office with HR. But it's been 6 weeks and if I'm honest, I thought he was joking about some of it. He's definitely not, so I'm gathering evidence. I've told my team to ignore the brew thing and will happily take full responsibility for any come back that brings.

I think @Butnotreally1 is making a good point re your contracts.

As part of your evidence make sure to review the wording of your contracts.

Yes, this is exactly it.

Complain complain complain. If he’s new he’s on probation and you may get a chance to go for the job or get another more reasonable boss.

I've waited the relevant bits of my contract verbatim up thread. The rest is policy, which I will get the wording of when I'm next in work.

6 months. Jesus. Let’s hope no one jumps ship before then because of him.

I'd just fully ignore all of this. Unless maybe I had a 1 2 1 meeting, in which case i'd put my cup of tea in a water bottle.

Do you know if he’s ever managed before?

I'd be putting my non cup of tea in a mug with a cryptic message on, every single time.

Some people seem a bit skeptical of this type of contract - I (and everyone else in my business) work on a very similar contract - 35 hours a week, core hours of 10-2 and can work the rest of the hours however I like. I try to forecast my working hours for the week ahead in my diary so my team can see when I am available but that’s it.

The tea time thing I can sort of get. We all know people who on their 15 minute long or whatever tea break spend ten minutes gossiping while it’s brewing and THEN start their break which is obviously taking the piss. Having said that, in my workplace people aren’t confined to tea breaks for drinking tea! They can make tea whenever they like and have it while they work, including meetings. This guy is obviously a massive micromanager. And yeah probably hates wfh.
The rest of it is rubbish. He can’t control what you do on lunch as long as you are back and ready work when you are supposed to be.
Bat back to HR whatever needs to be batted back. And hope that he might settle down once he realises this constant lack of trust and micromanaging is actually exhausting!

What if your partner makes and delivers tea. We take turns. Are you alllowed to drink it then? If you don't have a wfh partner invent one!

Fingers crossed he doesn’t make it through probation!