Bay 12 Games Forum

Reminds me of the conversation I had with one of my new managers

Me: You know, they're going to ask you to do finance for our studies but you should just say no. The amount of work they're actually asking you to do is too much, and you won't be able to actually do it without knowing exactly what is done in the studies. You would either have to work on the studies or be able to look through all the paper and digital logs all day. They really ought to hire an actual accountant who can manage this

Her: No, it's no trouble at all, I'm more than happy to help

Me: I cannot stress enough, they are not asking for a one-off bit of assistance, but they are asking for continual invoices of multiple studies across a research unit. This is something that they should hire an accountant for

Her: No it's really not a problem

[fast forward two months. She accepted to do the finance and then realised she couldn't do it. Not for lack of effort or talent, but because the scope of the job really should go to an accountant. Then she started getting pressured by the COO to deliver weekly reports and came down on me hard for failing to support her, even though I warned her well in advance she should not accept the job as she was set up to fail from the start].

Things really took a heated turn when she accused me of being easily distracted, of being lazy, of always making tea instead of doing my job. She kept asking if I was seeing patients because I did not have enough work and was just helping with the studies. At one point she came to me with a query about finance and asked me to help her, I was actually happy to help but I asked her what help she needed and instead of telling me she kept trying to refer me to an email chain. I read the email chain and still did not know what help she wanted. I explained how if her problem was too complex to be explained in a sentence then I did not have the time to help her [hilariously, I had just helped one of the research nurses make an invoice because she asked me "can you help draft an invoice for this study?" which is an actionable request]. She gets mad and escalates things until I'm formally requested to work under her at least two contracted days a week. The whole thing just gets embarassing after I have to repeatedly explain:

1. They only saw me when I was on a break. In between seeing patients. On my break I make tea. 2. Patients come in every day of the week. I was only able to help with the admin because I had some free time due to covid-19 causing study closures. 3. Seeing patients was my job, helping with the finance was something I just did on a voluntary basis. I told them and my director to just inform the COO that weekly updates on finance was impossible without hiring an accountant, because I was clinical staff, not admin staff, and they were being incredibly cruel to censure me for not doing more when by definition, I had gone far beyond and above my pay grade just to help them. I was later able to successfully get my salary regraded up on this basis.

After resolving all of this and making it clear to them they were fortunate they got any help from me since this was all unpaid work, my director tried to get me to teach this really lovely girl who hated numbers & spreadsheets how to draft these invoices. I asked her if she wanted to do this work and she said no, but they keep pushing her to do it. Eventually I ask my director about this and he asks me if there's any way I can spread my "enthusiasm" to her and I said: "Well I make spreadsheets for fun." He replied "ah."

It does still amuse me to this day though that I did such a good job of it, all the new hires thought it was my full time job

What makes this conflict unique? Israel is one of the sides, that's what. It means that the core motivation of those protests is either hatred of specifically Israel or hatred towards "the West" and "its Israeli outpost on Muslim lands" or good old antisemitism.