The Boss Is On His Way Out!

A couple weeks ago, my direct manager announced that after several years of service, he would be leaving the company to work on independent consulting projects. Phillip has given us about three months notice, so we have plenty of time to get our act together.

Naturally, he is gradually being phased out of projects he once contributed to and some of his more central responsibilities are being moved to others. This means he suddenly has more free time. In his desire to be a strong "team player" until the end, he has offered to help his management staff (me included) with a variety of tasks. While his intentions are good, I cannot help but cringe every time he approaches me with a potential project he could help me with.

Phillip's interest started out with spreadsheets. As if I don't already have enough spreadsheets to maintain every day, he wanted to run reports from our database in order to create more! Not only is this a nightmare idea for the obvious reason I've just explained, but the idea makes me crazy for many other reasons as well.

First of all, it should be known up front that I am somewhat of a perfectionist. When I put a document together, I'm not only concerned about its content, but I obsess over appearance as well. Desperate to infuse some creativity, I spend time finding just the right balance of basic professionalism with a hint of unique style. Phillip, on the other hand, brings out his creative side by making his reports as flashy as they can possibly be. In the context of an Excel spreadsheet, that usually means large text, varied fonts, and many bright colors. Given his lack of understanding of some of the nuances of Excel, the result also tends to involve inconsistent formatting, cells out of alignment, and information that is simply difficult to follow.

A second reason I'm opposed to him working on anything that I'm going to have to maintain going forward is his lack of basic mathematical understanding. I've always found it ironic that someone with poor math skills could get so far in a business, but apparently his charismatic presence makes up for it. The thought of him putting together countless spreadsheets with complex mathematical formulas to calculate cost and projected revenue brings on a surge of anxiety. After all, once he's gone, guess who's going to be held accountable for their accuracy!

The final reason I've continued to talk him out of his various spreadsheet ideas is because there simply isn't a need for the sheets he's proposing. Even if he were an Excel whiz, it still wouldn't be necessary to spend time plugging countless figures into a spreadsheet that can easily be accessed from our mainframe program with just a few mouse clicks. Now, I realize that some data is worth tracking in an alternate form for the sake of being able to compare it to other data or to simply look for trends. But trust me...with the data he is proposing, it really isn't necessary.

Please tell me that this won't go on for the NEXT THREE MONTHS!