[magnuson]

I am hoping that someone who works in HR or has worked in HR can answer this question, but anyone with any constructive advice would be appreciated.

I'm going to have to summarize greatly here, because this has been going on for over a year and over the course of that time there have been many "incidents". There's no way I could go into it all here, no one would want to read 4 pages of this stuff, so I guess you'll have to take me at my word. However, I'd be happy to answer any questions or clarify anything if it would help.

I feel my company is not handling an issue with an unreasonable boss. It’s not that their handling poorly or un-objectively, or in a manner I don’t agree with, it’s that they literally seem to just not want to deal with the situation at all. Over the course of a year I’ve documented a number of incidents in which this supervisor has crossed a line of professionalism or set unobtainable expectations for us and then used that as a reason to discipline us. He has insulted myself and other employees on a personal level multiple times. While he was somewhat careful in his wording with a few of the incidents so that to others it would sound like he was “professionally critiquing” us, but it was clear to myself and other who experienced this behavior from him that he was directly insulting us on a personal level. There were other occasions where the insults were without question flat out personal attacks.

He sets unrealistic work metrics for us and then proceeds discipline us when we don’t meet them. I have been able to demonstrate to the department manager on multiple occasions the how’s and why’s of why the supervisors expectations are unrealistic. In nearly every instance the manager has agreed with me, forcing the problem supervisor to revise his expectations a number of times.

I work in a department of 17, including my supervisor. Literally no one in the department cares for this supervisor, no one wants him there and literally everyone has had some kind of a run in with him. Regardless of all this my manager has given him chance after chance after chance. After a particularly hostile berating from my supervisor recently, I decided to finally go to HR. I just felt this had been going on too long and that after a year it was clear that my Manager wasn’t resolving the situation on his own.

I told HR what happened with the recent hostile berating and provided a brief overview of several other events that had taken place over the last year. I told them I had documented many others and could pass that information along.
Literally this is what my HR rep told me “I think you should talk this over with you manager, this doesn’t sound like something we’re equipped to deal with”. I had reminded her that this had been going on for over a year and during that year myself and a few other employees had such discussions with the manager about the supervisors’ behavior. At that point she basically said that I should talk to my manager again and that “it wasn’t HR’s policy to get involved in departmental issues”.

At this point I have no idea where to turn. It’s clear that my manager isn’t resolving the situation as he continues let this behavior go on repeatedly and HR made it clear to me and another employee who called them, that they weren’t going to get involved.

What options do I have, if any, to have the complaints and issues me and my fellow employees have regarding our supervisor?

[Fr_Chuck]

Where did you ever get the impression that a boss can not insult you and belittle you. This is common for many managers, Normally you chose to work there or change departments or change jobs.

[joypulv]

The ONLY times I have ever seen a manager fired for acting the way yours acts is if enough people QUIT. One by one, or en masse, but it has to be significant.
I don't know why you expect HR to believe your complaints. If anything, the company is probably thrilled that the manager hands out too much work and then berates you for not being able to do it. There are always a few people willing to work day and night to get it done, in the hopes of promotion.

[magnuson]

When has it ever been acceptable for an employee to continuously go beyond professional boundaries and insult another employee on a personal level? I'm sure if it were two subordinates the matter would be handled promptly, but the impression I'm getting from you Fr Chuck is that since it's a supervisor/subordinate relationship that it's OK? I suppose if I were to personally insult him back that would be wrong and grounds for discipline or worse? Not that I would go there anyway, I don't feel the need or find it appropriate to bring personal matters in to the work environment, especially when you're talking about using it to disrespect someone.

Also, responding to joypulv, two employees have already quit the company and they both directly cited this supervisor as their only motivation for leaving. Others are considering leaving as well and I would say that at least half of the department has spoken to the manager about issues with the supervisor. The other half has no love for him either, but they remain silent mostly because they fear reprisal or just a more difficult work environment.

Also, it's not that he's giving us more work than what we can do, the nature of our work isn't really like that, it's more about how he expects us to "divide" up the work.

Let me give you one example of his impossible to meet metrics. There are a total of 6 people on the Service Desk I work on. He set the expectation that we should each have a minimum of 25 tickets per day. I was able to run reports that show in the last year only a small handful of times (less than a dozen) did we even receive 150 in on day, that would allow us each to meet a minimum of 25 tickets. That's also assuming that everyone is even going to have the same work load on those day for it to equal out and I can tell you from 8+ years in the tech industry that's simply not the case. Random chance means someone is going to get stuck working on an issue or issues that take longer than others. So the guy who did 35 passwords that day might look the hero because he did more tickets, but the guy who had to work on restoring a critical server that day and only closed a couple of tickets as a result, did far more actual work. Not to mention that the Tier1 guys don't have the same skill set or access to network resources as the Tier 2 guys such as myself. So the Tier 2 guys end up with generally more complex issues to resolve. More complexity generally equals more time.

I was easily able to demonstrate that case to my manager who clearly understood and then told my supervisor that he needed to revise his expectations.

Here's what he came up with after that; again there are 6 people on the Service Desk. He drafted a document that he wanted each of us to sign that stated each of us must have a minimum of 25% of all tickets that come in on a daily basis otherwise it will lead to disciplinary action and potentially termination. Now I don't know what math he learned, but elementary school math taught me that you can't divide 100% by 6 and come away with 25%. The message I get from this is that there's always going to be losers in that scenario, so disciplinary action essentially becomes arbitrary, meaning the supervisor gets to play favorites and not favorites at his own whim.

What also frustrates me is that I and other employees have been able to document and demonstrate this supervisors follies, but we all get the sense that simply because he is part of management he gets backing and support by default. We've been able to show that decisions he's made and projects he's carried out have actually been a detriment to the company by taking down critical systems because he was in more of a rush to get something done than he was concerned with actually doing something correctly and verifying things were indeed fixed. He's F'd a number of our servers so many times now that our manager finally had to tell him "hands off", but rather than delegate to some members of the team that are more knowledgeable than him in that area, he'll still "sneakily" try to "fix" it. When it doesn't work, he'll turn around and use another member of the department as a scapegoat. If a non-management employee had his rapsheet it's not a stretch at all to say they'd have been let go by now.

He's been turned in for sexual discrimination by a department manager in another department because he won't show her the same level of respect and treatment as her male counterpart in that department. There is yet another department manager that refuses to work with him on projects, so she has a direct pipeline to our manager for all inquiries now. Like I said, I could fill this board up with his exploits.

It seems that support for him comes more as a matter of principle rather than objectively assessing the situation. That's why I and my fellow co-workers find so frustrating.

Meanwhile two employees have already quit because of him, others are considering the same thing and literally everyone in the department can't stand the guy and think he's a giant F up and the company has shown no concern over that. As far as I know, no one has gone on the record as saying he should be fired, to my awareness no one is calling for that. I think everyone would be thrilled if it happened, but I think realistically what people are expecting is for some of his expectations to be questioned and reanalyzed and that some of his behavior, specifically being outright disrespectful to employees be put in check.

[Fr_Chuck]

Sexual discrimination is illegal, you can legally discriminate against someone for red hair, for being fat and so on, I know it sounds harsh, but asking too much work, making unrealistic goals is normal and it sounds like you have not worked many places before. Esp for large companies

[joypulv]

I wasn't disagreeing that he sounds impossible. I just know from being 66 years old and having had 30+ jobs that there is often no rational explanation for how some people become and stay managers. I have first hand watched as a totally incompetent and obnoxious person was promoted for some convoluted reason. Sometimes it's related to nepotism, who knows. What I was trying to say was that using reason rarely works, especially as one person, because it's seen as a sign that you can't handle your boss yourself.
What I would do is ask everyone under this guy to meet after work at a coffee shop and discuss a way to confront first him and then his supervisor. Draw up a list and keep it SHORT or eyes will glaze over at the higher echelons.
(If it's Radio Shack or Best Buy or Sears - it's hopeless, from what I hear.)