Let’s share our craziest micromanaged stories.
Related Posts
Conversation Starter
Bowl Leader
Conversation Starter
Kab tak aayega yaar yeh appraisal
Additional Posts in Law
What’s the answer comrades?
Insight on Venable?
Rising Star
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Handling remote oral argument on a minor discovery motion as a junior attorney. Run my argument by the partner. Partner says, “You got this.” Waiting for case to be called. Partner inches through my office door. Proceeds to sit off-screen coaching me the whole time with nods, whispers, and written notes on a legal pad. I swear I performed worse because I was trying to interpret what he was doing half the time…
For sure. I think micromanagement can come from good intentions. That partner is still a great mentor and friend, even if he tends to be very, very involved in a way that I think stifles growth and independence. But it sucked to feel like he wouldn’t let the training wheels come off. I also think my personality doesn’t respond well to that type of management… 🤣
Being asked why am I on vacation and where I’m going. After getting a memo to work remote approved and following proper firm protocols. Also after giving a heads up to that same person that i will be working remote in a few weeks.
My favorite didn’t involve me directly, but I worked closely as an associate in big law with a corner office partner who was, to say the least, difficult. We were working on a brief and our assistant apparently wasn’t making a table of contents fast enough. She locked our assistant out of the document, told the assistant to stop all work, and began to make the toc herself. Literally typing in headings, holding the period button down, and typing in page numbers. I convinced her to stop and let our assistant continue with the toc.
I put in for reimbursement of McDonalds for dinner at an airport during business travel. I’m entitled to $100 for dinner when I travel. My meal was $12.50 or so. Didn’t get reimbursed because the receipt said I paid by credit card, but I didn’t — I paid cash — and I didn’t have a credit card charge for McDonalds, so I couldn’t prove I paid for it. (Yes. I know. If the receipt had said I paid cash there would still be no way to prove I paid for it.)
Counts as micromanagement because there is someone at my firm whose job it is to chase down not only the food receipt, but the credit card charge statement for a dinner that is 1/9 of the expense allowance.
When I worked at a pool, a manager would direct us as we swept. Literally over our shoulder managing us around the entry room. It's not like we didn't know how to sweep we all did it fine when other managers worked.
Rising Star
In my paralegal days, department of 2. My co-worker was gunning for a manager title, so she started trying to tell me when I should be doing what work (as in this task needs to be done by 11 am), completely arbitrarily and ignoring the workflow needed to actually complete tasks on actual deadlines. I ignored her so she tried to report me. Since she couldn’t make it about me refusing to obey her or not meeting real deadlines, she tried to make it a race issue. Unfortunately for her, I’m a racial minority too, so I threw it back at her, combined with her history of running off the past 4 co-workers. HR let it go and eventually she moved on to greener pastures.
Being told to check in every day on my honeymoon, having to run all my billing by the partner before I enter it into the system, coworker getting called at 11pm if his time for the day isn’t in or if it’s less than 7 hours
That’s insanity!!
Worked somewhere that watched when we came in and when we left. If you left at 5, you were a clock watcher. Even if you had nothing to do, you were expected to sit around after hours
Working in-house on a team project where each attny was to schedule meetings with heads of the LOBs we supported to align on strategic business goals. MM wanted to do the scheduling of meetings and write the intro email for each of us to use.
I worked in the legal department of a major oil company and was very young. My assignment was to review a stack of contracts and create a compliance manual. The attorney in charge told me I had to report every hour.
Sorry buddy that’s a no for me dawg.
Being forced to write a weekly report on every single file we touched, what we did on it, and what we think we will do the next week even though we also turn in our bills detailing the exact same info