I won't bore you with too many details but basically I sent this email to my boss as my line manager is away until next week and was supposed to be sorting some more work for me.

Hi John, I haven't been left anything to work on this week. is there something I should be getting on with?

Did those discs arrive last week?

regards

Anthony

I had CC'd my line manager in and he sent me this reply:

Anthony, I will deal with this underhand email next week [when he gets off holiday].

Never ever, say you have nothing to do and send it to the MD.

We spoke before I went on leave and you stated you had plenty to be getting on with albeit not the most useful and cost effective use of time but was work. Where has this gone?

Worst case make lists, contact some local outdoor ed centres and go and see,
Eric
Names have been changed
The work he claims I had to do was completed BEFORE the deadline set and I was under the impression, following a phone conversation, that more work would arrive by the start of this week and hasn't.

given that the MD hasn't replied to my first email What do you guys make of this? should I have sent my email in the first place? should I cause a shit storm and send this to the MD for him to see or wait until next week, when my line manager gets back, and do pretty much nothing for a week apart from sit at home and reply to forum threads?

regards

Anthony

Your line manager is right IMO & you're either very naive or looking to stir things up a bit

you could have asked for more work without stitching him up. i'd be pissed off if you were working for me.

Sounds like he's worried you're making him look bad.

Politically you've made a bad move I would say, undermines your boss, shows lack of flair and may show that there is slack in the department.

It would have been far better to say you had completed your set tasks and suggest useful things that you could do.

As a middle manager I'd have been annoyed if one of my guys had done this.

Not a nice email from you IMHO, you boss should be annoyed. You should have said you had other work to do but if the 'discs' had arrived then you will get on with that as it is a bigger priority.

Naive, possibly. but I find it frustrating that I have been left without work and didn't want to seem like I was just sat at home twiddling thumbs but i wasn't intending to stir anything.

here is my reply to my line manager

Sorry Eric, I had completed the work I had last week and sent the discs and was awaiting a response regarding this. I was under the impression that John was sending me some other work and that he was aware I was awaiting this. If this is not the case I am sorry. I didn't want to trouble you while you were away, hence the email and this was not intended to put you in a bad light.

regards

I assume that you've just left school, and at the very least you've now got something on your CV for you next job applications.

Say hello to d e e e p sh!t

In fact, you're so deep in now, that you might as well forward your line manager's response to the MD as well…
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No, no, don't do that….

sounds like you've blown any chance of a reach around on your next team building weekend, be on continued look out for a donkey punch from senior management should you actually receive an "invite" though 😀

yeah you made him look like an arse 😀

I agree that my initial email was poorly worded but I never meant for it to undermine my line manager and I thought his response was worded to make out that I had lied to him about my current work load when I had told him when I expected to be finished.

Email shoudl have said;

"I've finished 'x' I'll be doing y and z for now but if there's anything slse specific you'd like me to get on in their place let me know"

MD may not have got back to you directly because he's shouted at your line manager who's now passing it on to you…

Reply something along the lines of (copying in the MD again with a copy of his email attached)

Hi eric, sorry if you feel a bit aggrieved, but all the work we agreed before your time away has been completed and therfore though it would be proactive to undertake some additional duties.

I will as you therfore suggest make a list as described together with undertaking the necessary contacts.

Should this not be sufficient for the interim period shall I contact you again by mail orawait your return before undertaking further projects.

Regards

Anthony

Why didnt youjust go on holiday with your line man ager, everyone would be happy then,

I don't know if it makes any difference but I was under the impression that my first port of call was the MD as my line Man was away and he told me before he went away that the MD was sending me some work through hence my admittedly poorly worded initial email!

my moneys on your MD getting on your line managers case after that first email – you need to be diplomatic !

no payrise or promotion for you this year!

probably. I'll have to pucker up a little I think. thanks for the replies I might get my ass handed to me and get inundated with work now!

You might want to spend the rest of today updating your CV. Any prospects you had at your current companyy are now Scotch Mist

To the OP – I sympathise. That's just the sort of emial I would have written. Some people just don't like Plain English.

Then, being me, I would have stuck to my guns and argued the toss –>

"I've done X,Y & Z that we spoke about and thought I should have been given more by now, hence my previous question"

WGAF!!!!!?
clock out.. get a life that you understand and enjoy

You might want to spend the rest of today updating your CV. Any prospects you had at your current companyy are now Scotch Mist

can you explain what I have done that's instantly sackable?

See this is the problem with email.

What you sent is in writing and on the record. A better approach would have been to wander over to the MD and say "my line manager left me x to do while he is a way but It won't take me all week. Have you got anything else I could be doing?"

If you have nothing to do just pick up a piece of paper and wander round the office occasionally glancing at it, seems to work for plenty of people where I work

You might want to spend the rest of today updating your CV. Any prospects you had at your current companyy are now Scotch Mist

can you explain what I have done that's instantly sackable?

He's not implying that it was sackable, more so that your prospects with the company may have diminished somewhat.

You should email your line manager first NOT the MD unless the MD requests you directly to do something.

Your email sounds like backstabbing your line manager no matter how innocent the email may sound, there is hierarchical order so you need to follow that.

Remedy:

Apologise to your line manager and your MD in person. Not email.

Face the music. Learn the hard way. You need to repair your relationship with your line manager after this.

🙂

can you explain what I have done that's instantly sackable?

The MD (probably) won't have had too much idea about exactly what you/your boss are doing – a vague idea certainly but probably not the specifics.
Your line manager is on holiday and therefore doesn't expect/want emails like this which effectively show him to be a poor manager. You've alluded to that in your email, you may as well just have said "My boss is on holiday and has left me nothing to do, what should I do?"

The MD is now actually having to do something, you line manager is going to walk back in after his holiday and get the third degree about his management and you've come across as someone with no initiative, unable to "take the lead" or "think outside the box" or whatever other phrase they use these days.

Emails have a very nasty habit of snowballing with other people being cc'd in – if you absolutely *have* to ask a question like that, you do it in person or over the phone.

The 'site' meeting was invented for the very purpose keeping your head down when there's not much to do
Nobody has ever actually been on a site meeting for more than 5 mins – it's just usually en route to the pub/golf course/bike ride

I was told I would be sent more work last week and my line manager said that the MD was sending it. I don't get the work I was promised and emailed the next superior person who wasn't on holiday.

He's not implying that it was sackable, more so that your prospects with the company may have diminished somewhat.

things go round , wont be long before someone does something stupider ! just make sure you do high quality work so its forgotten about quickly

Been there mate, a few years ago in the private sector I made the mistake of emailing my line manager calling into question our companies ability to cover me if I went off sick (I was genuinly concerned and trying to be helpful) and ended up on a disciplinary charges as his manager viewed it as an attack on his ability to manage and an attempt to discredit the company.

i do that shiz all the time m8, it's who i am. Screw buisness talk, theres too much pussy footing around. That's why i'll never be at the top and i am ok with it.

Your line manager is on holiday and therefore doesn't expect/want emails like this

the email wasn't for the line manager and the fact that I CC him into it means that I didn't do it behind his back and was not intentionally to show him up. my reply to him shows this.

I agree very strongly with richmtb. Email is very bad for anything likely to lead to someone feeling criticised (or sexually harassed).

Your line manager is being overly-sensitive

You were being naive/worded your email in a way that could be read as 'my manager's sodded off and hasn't done his job properly and left me anything/enough to do'

You aren't in trouble for asking for work, you're in trouble for the way you asked for it.

I guess it's like answering a woman when she asks if x item of clothing makes her look fat 🙂

Having not worked at somewhere with a formal structure, I'm pretty amazed by this. My line manager's (well, equivalent of) job was getting stupidly complicated stuff done, and mine was getting mildly complicated stuff done. Work got allocated to whoever any of the line managers wanted to do it. It was perfectly normal to bang out an email with "XYZ needs doing, anyone free?" or the reverse…

That's why i'll never be at the top and i am ok with it.

Oh, I know this too. the job is a means to an end. I know I'm not the most tactful person but I was mistakenly led to beleive that I would have some work to do. I don't get work and email my superior regarding this (poorly worded i now know)

I am a man, I can take criticism and apologise when I get it wrong. I learn from mistakes but I can't help feeling there was some ambiguity as to whom I was to contact as my line manager is supposedly on holiday!

I placed someone with a company last year who whilst having a conversation with one of the warehouse chaps was told if you want some good porn films go and see Paul (name changed), so this person being new to the company only knew one Paul and he happened to be the regional Manager who was based on site, not the other Paul who worked in the warehouse who used to lend people his porn stash.

Needless to say the Regional Manager was not impressed when the new lad asked him for some porn.

This tale will not help your dilemma, but it goes to show people other people do bloody stupid things at work as well.

Your line manager is a mug for checking his email while on holiday.

I am a man, I can take criticism and apologise when I get it wrong. I learn from mistakes but I can't help feeling there was some ambiguity as to whom I was to contact as my line manager is supposedly on holiday!

That's the point, in fact I was having a similar discussion with a friend the other day.

Companies don't like people who "rock the boat". I appreciate that you didn't mean to do that but it's how it's come across in your email. Rather than the company standing back and saying "hang on, our poor management procedures left one of our valued employees direction-less for a while" they will simply take the easy route and hang you out to dry for bringing it up!

I had similar at a previous place of work with an issue regarding the lack of a bike shed. I kept bringing my bike indoors and asking them to sort a bike shed (even offering to sort it myself), they kept telling me to leave it in the car park and in the end, rather than the company doing the decent thing of getting a shed, they took the easy route of disciplining me for bringing my bike indoors!

I'd always value someone who went looking for work over someone who twiddled their thumbs for a week trying to look busy. You're not always in a position to make your own work, I've been there and it's incredibly boring to be left with nothing to do.