In my MBA program, I haven't yet had any coursework regarding how to deal with and relate to people you are managing, but it's still something AI think aboutas a part of whatever else I'm doing. I also pay attention to the actions of various higer-ups here at work, and think how their policies and decisions affect their employees. Today the management staff of my department did something resentment and lack of productivity, and I'm going to bitch about it on here.

Often when we have a holiday or somesuch day off, they'll call a meeting, tell us if we all get done with our daily work, we'll be able to leave early. They've said up to three hours before, but in reality we've never left more than an hour and a half early. That's fine, it still feels like a much shorter day. Today they called a meeting for the same purpose, saying an hour and a half early.

I need to back up a bit. My department is really two departments in one that are closely related, so we'll call them dept. A (mine) and dept. B. Everytime they do the meeting to mention that we might be able to leave early, they also say that we ALL have to be done, and that's pretty standard and makes sense. Except it's annoying because dept. A is almost always done first, as we have less work (but dept. A's work takes more thought and more diverse knowledge), so we sit around waiting. One time they did this leaving early thing, dept. A was actually behind because of some problem, so they let B go early and made us stay (and the problem was not mine, btw). This seemed completely unfair, and did not go unnoticed by the people of dept. A, and created resentment.

Fast forward to today. Dept. B, as usual, was not done by 3, but dept. A was. Were they fair, did they let A go? Not at all. Not only did they decide not to correct their previous injustice by balancing the books, but they told us to try to get done by 3, so for the last hour we've all been done and ahve been twiddling our thumbs waiting for dept. B to finish so we can leave. An hour and a half od people staring at their monitors or chatting with their coworkers. Way to push for productivity, management!!

I just simply don't see any positive value in this decision, and I don't think it's appropriate to get your employees hopes up and then only meet the words half the time, and never to the extent originally discussed. None of the people at my level actually like working in dept. A or B, and crap like this doesn't help matters.