The Glade 4.0

Oh how do I hate it when people do this **** to avoid having to do anything or make themselves look bad, and in the process make me look like a useless idiot.

My supervisor asks me to go get person X to do Y for him. X is not a part of his department, doesn't answer to him, and has her own **** to do, so I'm not expecting this to end well. So I go and ask her to do Y. She of course doesn't refuse, because that would make her look bad, but gives a series of noncommittal answers. So I go back to my boss and tell him that she didn't outright say no, but I doubt she has time to do it. He insists I go back and demand X go do it. So what, am I supposed to go over there and angrily demand someone to ditch their own work and do someone elses? So I go back and say it would really help me and supervisor out if she would do it. Again no refusal, but she says she'll get to it. This of course never happens. So supervisor comes after me and demands to know why Y isn't done. I tell him that she said she would get to it. He insists I go back tomorrow and "make" her do what he wants. How I'm going to survive tomorrow, I have no bloody clue.

You need a new boss. Your current one is broken...

Schedule a conference call. Useless people are always impressed by conference calls.

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Why do you have a boss if you're doing his job for him?

I'm guessing it's because he knows he can't order her to do it himself, so he's trying to see if he can somehow force me to get compliance out of her.

Write an email to her, CC her boss and your boss, explaining politely that your boss asked you to ask her for some help...

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I would suggest a bcc.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Nah, keep it all above board. Make sure everyone knows what's going on...

It's a passive-aggressive response to his passive-aggressive BS, so proceed at your own peril..

Keep it all about your boss; don't interject things like "It would really help me...", then take Midgen's advice. If your boss asks why you cc'd her boss, explain that you didn't believe that you had the authority to "force" her to perform the request, and that since your boss needed it done so badly, you thought her boss could make it happen.

Good luck, I hate office politics.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Yup email and cc both of them. You need her to do something so you need her manager to instruct her to do it. If the manager has a problem he can talk to your manager and you've removed yourself from the situation.

If your boss gives you **** - leave their office and go to hr.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Seconding Midgen's suggestion. Email her boss explaining that your boss needs for Y to be done, and that he feels X is the best person to do it/only person who can do it. Then just ask him politely if he would be willing to make <whatever of her time is necessary> available to do Y.

And that's all. I wouldn't go into any history or "second level" explanation; just the direct causal "why". Boss wants A, therefore B. I think the less you say, the better. You haven't said anything that looks like you're blaming your boss, or that you're blaming X, but X is free to believe the former and your boss is free to believe the latter, if they want to. Meanwhile, it's just a vanilla, proper-channel, cross-department resource request as far as X's boss is concerned.


This is almost always the best policy. Having a bunch of BCCs flying around is a good way to create more drama.

That said, since you've already talked to X about this twice before, even a no-frills email like this could be interpreted as going behind her back, and leave her wondering what conversations might have been had about her that she wasn't CC'd on. I would be inclined to give her a head's up and a (private) word of explanation about the situation before you send the email just to make it clear that you aren't in any way complaining about her to either boss. Perhaps just something simple along the lines of "I'm sorry, X, but my boss is really insisting that you're the only person who can do Y. Apparently he wants this more urgently than I initially thought, and I realize it just wouldn't be fair to you to ask you to totally rearrange your schedule for another department without clearing it with your boss first".

If she's someone you can trust, you might even just level with her about the whole situation (i.e. "I'm caught between my boss and looking like a huge jerk. I hope you understand.")

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

This is very nearly sig-worthy.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Don't forget to schedule a huddle 1 hour before the conference call, to discuss "what we're going to discuss in the conference call".

My former place of employment operated this way and it drove me insane. Meetings are bad enough, but pre-meeting meetings are even worse.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister