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The New Guy Needs Help Dealing With The Alleged Office Tramp

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

Have you found yourself occupying the wrong corner of an office love triangle? Having trouble relating to your peers? Just looking for a little cheese with that whine? You know what to do.

Dear GC

I have an office politics question.  In my start class, there is a somewhat attractive female accountant.  If we were assigning numerical values to the eye-candy, she’d be a 7 on the street…or a 9 in public accounting.

Unfortunately, she is—for lack of a better term—a wicked witch: a flagrant self-promoter who takes credit for other people’s work and will not hesitate to throw someone else under the bus for her own mistakes.  And she gets away with it because she uses her CFM heels, secretary glasses, inadequately buttoned blouses, and skin-tight pencil skirts to charm lonely male managers.  In short, she uses anyone who she can get to drink her Kool Aid.

I’m sure there are other examples of the exact same thing going on in other offices.  How do I find a bucket of water to deal with her?

Sincerely,

Tin Man

For starters, Tin Man, may I just apologize on behalf of women everywhere for the unfairness you must feel whenever you see a remotely attractive young lady using what God gave her to get what she wants? I'm sorry, buddy, but you're fighting against thousands of years of evolution here, there's no way you'll ever be able to beat that.

That said, have you considered that perhaps she feels inadequate in a sea of public accounting drones and has learned that a short skirt will get you much further in life than brains in your head? It's an unfortunate truth but truth none-the-less. Have you also considered that maybe her heels aren't saying CFM at all but instead are a way for her to show off in front of her female coworkers? I know it might sound crazy to you but us girls do wear hot shoes for reasons other than manipulating men, namely making other women jealous if we aren't interested in making them want to be friends with us. She could be doing both or either but I wouldn't be so quick to assume she's trying to get one up on the dumb, forever alone shlubs in your office. Believe it or not, some of us simply wear shorter skirts or lower-cut tops because we like them.

So. There are two ways to handle this.

One: work whatever charm you don't seem to have (if you did, you wouldn't be worried about this broad because you'd be working your own somewhere else) and nail her. I'm not kidding. It probably won't work out for your career and she might never give you the time of day but there's a small chance here that she's got low self-esteem and might just go for it. Bang her for a few weeks and then dump her in the most obvious, embarrassing way possible. That ought to shut her up for a bit.

Two: Alright, so the serious alternative is to go find something that you actually have control over to get worked up about. Namely, your own shit. You've got your entire working life ahead of you and let me tell you, these kinds of people are everywhere. They use their connections, legs, money, brains, charm, family members and pure luck to get what they want. In many cases, these people are actually far smarter than you since they've figured out how to get what they want with what they have. They probably couldn't care less what other people do as long as they're doing their thing successfully. Why can't you be more like this chick?

What you need to do is figure out how to set yourself apart from this kind of nonsense and do something truly exceptional that does not involve short skirts, cleavage or thong panties peeking out from your business casual. Beat 'em or join 'em, kid, but if you're this upset by it now, I can assure you it only gets worse as you claw your way up the ranks.

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Layoff Watch ’10: McGladrey Makes Nationwide Cuts

Over the past month, we have heard lots about layoffs at RSM McGladrey/McGladrey & Pullen but we didn’t have much for details.

Frankly, we still don’t know a lot but we’ll go with what we’ve got. So far we know about reductions in the New York, Chicago, Quad Cities, Florida and Seattle offices and everything we’ve been told indicates that they are occurring elsewhere.


First the Emerald City:

I was ample. There is a new geographic restructuring going on. Instead of multiple “economic units” there will be only three regions. Many HRs and CFOs from different offices are losing their jobs. Consulting people talk about 100 positions that will be eliminated across the country. 10 people were let go from Seattle Economic Unit which includes Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia offices. We were informed about the reorganization somewhere around 04/12 and laid off at the end of the month. I think everybody received severance.

We’re not that familiar with past cuts in the RSM/M&P world but the big cuts in consulting seem to trail the Big 4’s by a year or two, although if some of these smaller clients are giving into the Big 4 lowballing then perhaps this is the natural progression.

Meanwhile:

Their Florida Private Club operations group closed the Club IT Consulting Group and layed off the staff. Some of the staff have been part of the firm for more than 20 years and were profitable.

Chicago just layed off the Operations Consulting Staff yesterday, [approximately] 10 people. This group was left to dangle in the wind, sink or swim on their own without marketing or sales assistance or access to the firm’s client-base Naturally it failed.

This firm’s actual layoff numbers are always reported low because they chase people out prior to layoffs in an attempt to camouflage the numbers. Their tactics to accomplish this include poor performance evaluations for staff, unreasonable margin requirements, constant peer pressure meetings regarding performance and head to head comparisons. This creates a dysfunctional relationship between groups and actually motivates groups within their own company to compete with one and other. Only so much people can take and then they leave. Just what the firm wanted.

Considering the economy in Florida, the demise of RSM’s private club operations in that corner of the over-leveraged world wouldn’t come as much of surprise. That being said, you might expect that veterans of the firm would be accommodated somehow with other internal opportunities.

As far as the “chasing” this is Jack Welch’s magical forced ranking method that the Big 4 has accepted like its own creation.

We reached out to both RSM’s corporate spokeswoman and their general counsel, both of whom have not responded to our request for comment. We also contacted an H&R Block spokesman to see if they could elaborate on these layoffs from the parent company level but again, our requests have gone unanswered. H&RB had their own layoffs last month however, there is no indication at this point whether cuts at H&RB would have anything to do with those at RSM/M&P.

We’re still accumulating details on these cuts, so get in touch with us about details on your office or discuss below. And don’t be shy, we know you McGladrey types been hesitant to call on us in the past.