Today, I got a text from my wife which read “I lost my position, I feel like a complete and total failure, I’m sorry”. My wife was made manager of the troubled property where she has served for two years as assistant manager four weeks ago and now she has been stripped of her position before being given a chance to prove her worth; I am fucking pissed because she was set-up to fail from the outset by the regional manager. My wife already has an inferiority complex due to her upbringing and this bullshit has just pushed her further under; and nothing I say will change the way she feels.
The bottom line here is that my wife did not fail, she was not given the tools to succeed; the property has zero money because of the regional manager / owners decisions over the past two years which put the property in this dire state. My wife was not allowed to make decisions at all; the regional manager, who is starting to go senile I might add, overrode her every decision, how can she be blamed for what has happened over the past month when she hasn’t been allowed to manage?
The same regional manager was acting as a general contractor overseeing tradesmen getting down units back up, doing a piss poor job I might add, sending tradesmen to units that had already been completed and worse, sending them to units that people had already moved into. There’s more; he also was refusing to do make readies on units that people were scheduled to move into; basically saying that unit was not scheduled so the new resident would have to wait, are you kidding me?
Oh, there’s more, he also decided to change the whole way the office is run despite the existing system working for more than two years. Also the regional manager decided to start wiping vital move-in/move-out information from the board, meaning people showed up to move in and the office staff were unaware that they were scheduled to move in, often with no unit for them to move into.
Now we get to the thing that really made my blood boil; days after my wife started her new position; he indicated that she would have to work late + weekends; or he would find someone else who would. I was ready to go down there and beat the crap out of this asshole. But my wife put in the hours, often working 12+ hours a day just trying to catch up because the regional manager, oh yes, he’s a regional for one property, wouldn’t leave her alone to get her work done during office hours. Clearly he didn’t think my wife was upto the job, so why the fuck did he even offer her the position?
The regional manager is now going to retire at the end of next week; probably being pushed as he has had complaint after complaint against him, and not just from members of staff; residents were calling the corporate office to complain. We will never know whether my wife can really manage the property as she won’t get the opportunity to do so with the current regional manager gone.
The upside is my wife has only been demoted back to assistant manager at her previous pay-rate, which ironically will be more. The pay upgrade to property manager was only the equivalent of 0.25 per hour which was salaried, now she’ll get the 0.25 less per hour but overtime pay starts immediately after going over 40 hours. And the biggest bonus is that she can go in at 9am and come home at 6pm; which is better for our personal life, which has been strained to say the least since taking the promotion. I was getting increasingly pissed that our kids hardly got to see their mother and I never got any personal time with my wife, I firmly believe you work to live, not live to work.
I think this demotion is for the best, someone else can deal with the managerial bullshit that comes with the property, and there is a hell of a lot of it! I just hope that she isn’t overlooked for future managerial opportunities at less troubled properties as she did not fail, she was set-up to fail by the owner and regional manager, it’s impossible to succeed if you are not given the tools to do so!