The famous pretentious are those of Molière, “The Pretentious Young Ladies”, but even nowadays we can still find some of them, especially in the corporate world of big enterprises, nothing to do all day and dispersing the discord everywhere! Enjoy the 2th part of this story that speaks of the most characteristic attitudes of the pretentious ladies in the corporate world of today :-)
The 1st part of the story is still online to catch up!
In two words:
"Why I am not a manager?"
Her Journal (…)
Eliane, Aronce’s new consultant, had to face big problems following the GO LIVE of Aronce’s project and thank God she was really good on technical aspects and quite kind with everybody. She had to call Aronce during her vacation to get some additional information because Aronce did not leave her enough. Aronce had repeated several times that their department was not critical to calm her down as for Aronce it was not very problematic that the Director of Human Resources got faulty emails! But Eliane was taking business very seriously. Aronce was optimistic that she was going to get along with her because she was actually a nice person and knew how to deal with Aronce’s technical project even without a lot of information.
When she came back from her holydays, Eliane had managed to stabilize the situation, which was some kind of a miracle considering the problems she had to face. However, I forgot to tell you that Aronce was not happy at all with her new manager on the Business side as well, actually she hated him. “This Bernard is a huge jerk” she often used to say, “he is the only one who stays up late working and makes us cut-off the time of our lunches and instead of 2h to come back to work earlier”. Furthermore, since the arrival of Eliane at the office, the Management made her to have a face to face meeting with him every Monday morning to catch up regarding work. “Thankfully” she was thinking “following all the problems we had since this technical project, I managed to keep this other consultant who is quite novice for the price I am paying but it does not matter after all I am not in the mood of working so let the Management pay in order to get things done”. You see “she”, she was worth to be a manager in Bernard’s position because as she often used to brag she was the “ear” of all the office problems, and of course she was not helping Bernard at all! As a matter of fact, she constantly discredited him and at the end she managed to turn everybody against him, or almost everybody :)
"Fortunately” Eliane often went out to lunch with Aronce at the restaurant because Aronce hated to have lunch at the company restaurant with her colleagues, she hated them as well; she was thinking that she was more important than they so they did not worth her presence. Eliane was very kind and she even used to offer her lunch and this quite often. Aronce used to think that she was really lucky to have her as a consultant because she was an expert in technical matters and she supported her everywhere in the office by explaining why it was difficult for Aronce to work. “It’s normal” she was telling to all, “she has no technical background and on top of that she has three kids to manage, it’s difficult for her”. Aronce really liked her for that but she hated the fact that Eliane was very popular within the department. Everybody in the department loved her and she was helping everybody. Furthermore, she was giving often her support to Bernand, and this really got on her nerves even if Eliane was trying to explain her that everyone should try to put theirselves in the other’s person shoes in order to understand their actions. But Aronce did not agree with that at all, for her, when someone did not respect the office life made by the employees of the department (and not by Management) and stays up late working, he deserved the worst. Besides, Eliane stayed up late working and this quite often, they had received emails at 2:00 in the morning! “They are surly programmed emails” Aronce thought “even if she tells us that she does not know how to do so”. But she managed to take her revenge because when they’ve planned a weekly meeting with the another team that shared work, Aronce managed to push back all the work on Eliane’s back; the funny part was that she wasn’t even the one who took care of the minutes, because as we know she hated that. So she was the “ruler” in every aspect :)
By the way Aronce used to tell Eliane that she lived in an “ideal” world, they call it “the world of little bears” in France, because she was just asking why they could not have some kind of specifications for the applications they managed. But Aronce was “above” specifications, she used to be deputy (a management position) and she managed everything orally so why writing? Managing everything orally was a proven method, her colleagues and her manager at the time, loved her, they offered her peonies and when she left to give birth to one of her children, they offered her a golden neckless! Aronce, “at her level”, she was not made to write specifications!
Eliane got on her nerves as she always tried to find procedures and apply them in their everyday life to better organize their work. She used to save all files in the servers (!), instead of small pieces of paper or in emails as Aronce used to do. She was really getting on her nerves but she could not upset her much because Bernard loved Eliane and her way of doing things so he supported her. The funny thing in all this was that the trainee and the other consultant preferred to work as Eliane did but as Aronce often was saying “they are young, they will learn someday”.
