My boss has been losing quite a few projects lately over the past month, and with new hires that have recently joined us, it is really not looking too good for the company.
We were quite picky with our clients earlier this year because there was a sudden influx and they were all planning to start their renovation during the same period, I was actually really overwhelmed at one point and my boss had to take projects off my hand and pass it to our other designer to handle. It was really bad.
Thankfully for me, that time has passed and now it is up to the Project Managers to take over, I am quite concern for my colleague Yan (whom I had introduced to the company earlier this year) because she is still relatively new to the company, but she has essentially being forced to take on all the projects because she is the only Project Manger left in the company, aside from my boss, who also has his own things to settle and would just toss all the projects for Yan to handle.
I expressed my concerns to him about her being overloaded with work and told him that it might be time to consider getting another Project Manager since the other one who was with us previously had gotten unwell and was probably not in any condition to return to work ever again, so he started to look for one and eventually found this new colleague to join us and become the company's 2nd Project Manager. I was initially relieved for my colleague Yan because I thought she could finally get some help, but that relief soon became more worry as we come to find out the new PM, Ruby, has very little Project Management experience.
My boss decided to have Ruby shadow Yan, so she could learn from her and observe how Yan plans the projects and talks to the sub-cons and suppliers, so Ruby ended up following her everywhere, from multiple site visits to trips back to the office, and the dynamic always felt a bit off because Ruby always kept to herself most of the time, and is just very passive.
According to Yan, Ruby would just follow her quietly everywhere, and when they have conversations, it wouldn't be related to learning more about Project Management, it would usually revolve around Ruby asking Yan about personal stuff that she wasn't very comfortable sharing with Yan. This uncomfortable line of questioning has led to Yan being a little uncomfortable around Ruby, but because Ruby has to shadow Yan, she doesn't really have much of a choice. So their travels together usually involves a lot of quiet rides in the public transport with Ruby occasionally looking at Yan's phone when she is using it for work or leisure, which adds on to the discomfort even more because that is an invasion of privacy.
Needless to say, Ruby's addition to the company has had the opposite effect of what had been intended, instead of reducing the work load, she is now extra work for Yan because apparently, when asked to take over a site of her own, Ruby was not keen to take over and told Yan.
"You can still schedule the workers and contact the homeowners, I can help by visiting the site to take photos for you."
That defeats the entire purpose of your role as a Project Manager. She wasn't hired to be Yan's assistant, but she seem to have the idea that because she is not well versed in Project Managing, she should not be given any project to run on her own yet.
Now that most of the projects that I had been working on over the past few months are moving into the renovation phase, this is the time when the Project Managers will become extremely busy, and Yan really does not have the luxury of time to be babysitting an inexperienced Project Manager. What we needed was an experienced Project Manager who could come in and take over half the workload from Yan, but what we got instead was the complete opposite of that.
I felt really bad for Yan and she has shared her concern with both the accountant and myself when she came in to the office yesterday to do some paperwork. She had instructed Ruby to go the a few sites on her own because she just needed to have a break from her, so the 3 of us all had a conversation about Ruby and we all pretty much shared the same sentiments.
She was a bad hire.
Yan had actually pulled her husband into the company 2 weeks before Ruby joined as an installer/repairman for the company, and my boss actually gave him 1 or 2 projects to manage just to let him have some things to do since we hadn't had a lot of installation works to do during that time. He outperforms Ruby by a mile, scheduling works, running through the drawings with me to ensure everything is in order and he fully understands my design brief, he was doing all that, but he wasn't hired as a Project Manager.
If the person who had been hired as an Installer/Repairman is doing a much better job at Project Management than someone who had been hired as a Project Manager, that is an issue.
Ruby came in to the office late afternoon yesterday whilst everyone was busy doing their work, Yan was planning a work schedule for one project and I was helping her do a rough work schedule for another site, our accountant was doing her finance stuff and Ruby just sat at a corner of the office, observing all of us without making a noise, I could feel her eyes darting between my computer screen and Yan's iPad.... and she was doing that for 2- 3 hours. It was extremely uncomfortable and I could finally understand the discomfort Yan was talking about first hand, which made me feel even worst for her because she had been dealing with that for days.
My boss isn't one to fire his employee unless they have done something really bad, so I think we will be stuck with Ruby. I do hope this is just an initial phase of hers and she will actually become useful once she gets more comfortable with the people in the company as well as her position as a Project Manager because all she is right now at this moment is deadweight.
Speaking of project overload, even though we are super busy during this period, we have actually lost 4 projects over the course of the month. Some we had already predicted would run away because it's those annoying customers who just want to do a price comparison with another ID that they had found, others we were happy decided to drop because the customers were quite unpleasant and very entitled.
But one project that disappeared really struck a nerve with Yan because it was a renovation project for one of our ex-colleague from the furniture store. Yan felt personally offended because this ex-colleague of ours, Ava had come to us at the beginning, telling the both of us...
"I will be giving you guys this project, I am not looking at other ID firms."
... and making it sound like we got this project and it's already in the bag. Yan was so happy at the start and telling our boss that we secured a big project from our friend and I did meet up with Ava about two times to run through her design requirements, prepared 3 different design proposals based on her requirements, which involved carving out 3 additional rooms in a 5 room flat.
Yan was informed by Ava 2 days ago that she has decided to go with someone else. This information was not shared by Ava on her own accord, it was only shared with Yan after she asked Ava for her home's full address, meaning Ava had no intention of letting us know of her decision to drop us.
I had mixed feelings about this because on one hand, I felt a bit upset that she had felt the need to look at other Interior Designers because thinks my proposal isn't good enough, but I also felt relieved for Yan because that meant she wouldn't have so many projects that she will need to handle simultaneously.
I expressed that to Yan and told her that it was probably a good thing since she was already going to be so busy next month, having one less project would lessen her burden, but she told me she had already mentally prepared herself to run Ava's site and that she felt really offended by what Ava had done.
In Ava's defense, she has the right to choose as a customer if she wants to engage us or not, but as a friend, Yan felt betrayed by her actions.
It really is quite a pity because when I first started of Ava's project, I was swamped with work and couldn't really put a lot of time into it, but now that I am more free and can actually work on it, she decided to drop us.
If it's meant to be, it's meant to be, if it's not, it's not. That's all I can say.
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