I've got one at the moment and fuck, it's so exhausting, it;s a combination of micromanaging things that don't need managing, not being a native English speaker and also being a control freak over lots of things that are outside our control (like the speed of the Amazon warehouse or wanting the old tracking number for a shipment that was already delivered and being stocked in).
My strategy for dealing with is to shut my communication down after about 4pm . since im remote, along with the other people in this company, I'm training them not to expect a response (the micromanager in question will be pinging of mails at all times, from 1am, 3am then right back at it at 5 or 6 am)
Ultimately, I might just quit but the extra work has been good for stacking.
How about you, stackers, have you defeated a micromanager before?
I have one dispatcher that isn't cut out for dispatching. He gets so panicked about close times, that he will withhold stops and only send the early closers for pick ups, and after those are done he sends you the next earliest closers, resulting in a lot of back tracking and wasted time.
Eventually I just yelled at him enough times thst he sends me everything at once. I know my customers, I know the close times, I know when they put 230 close in the system when they close at 330 because they don't want drivers showing up 5 minutes before they clock out, and I know how fast I can get to places.
That shit is frustrating.
You ever play a game called
Dispatch? I can recommendI'll take a peak. Thanks for the recommendation
i dont know much about the world of trucking, but this does remind me of my granddad a bit, who was a lorry driver (it was a tip lorry, so not delivering goods). Anyway, i always remember how the drivers fucking HATED the office guy who was probably the dispatcher. he'd come back from work and just go on about him and what everyone was sayign, i got the impression all the drivers wanted to kill the office guy lol
i used to think, man, who would want a job where you have these pissed-off lorry drivers threatening to bash you every day lol
Sucks, but there isn't a lot you can do about it except have a mental shift:
That company / work is not a reflection of you. Let the company suck....let it be far less efficient than it should be....let them waste money.
Lean into the micromanaging, wait before doing anything before you "check with him first". Ask him mundane questions like "do you prefer this color blue or that color blue for logo?"
Worse - an incompetent micromanager, who thinks they know more than you, and then you have to fight their bad ideas.
also yes, like why hire someone to do something and then not listen to them
There is always one, it's just narcissism and often incompetence.
Micromanagement drains way more energy than the work itself setting hard boundaries is usually the only thing that works, otherwise it never stops, If stacking is the trade-off, I get riding it for a while just don’t let it burn you out completely.
it was peak during q4 but it should be quieter now, so im seeing how it goes, i noticed this person has the need to control everything as well, trying to rush the warehouse things like that, but the results are usually mistakes and a mess, and no lessons get learned.
,
one time she forgot to include a load of items in a shipment, and weeks later , she was like, oh it's noones fault and everyone's fault. just one big eye roll
The thing about micromanagers is that they almost never realize the damage they cause because in their mind they are protecting the process. They see themselves as the glue holding the operation together when in reality they are often the grit in the gears. In high pace environments like trucking or logistics the skill lies in trusting the people who are actually on the ground doing the work. Dispatchers who panic over close times or who try to control every variable are essentially breaking the natural flow of operations.
The best way to deal with that often comes down to setting boundaries like you mentioned with cutting off communication after a certain hour and proving through consistent performance that you can be trusted to handle things without constant oversight. In trucking the driver knows the route the customers and the reality on the road better than someone watching a screen. When dispatch finally learns that the cost of over control is wasted time and reduced efficiency they often loosen the grip but sometimes you have to push back firmly to get there.
This is exactly right; they do see themselves as the glue and are often the grint, excellent analogy.
man, as a bonus, this thread has really made me hate dispatchers lol
Micro managing is essential nowadays.