Burning Budget

An important topic that is regularly covered during Ethics Training is "Incorrect Labor Charging". They really emphasize this subject not only because of the consequences, such as fines from the government, but also because it is so tempting for managers to do so.

Management inherently wants to burn budget. It's in their nature. They want employees to charge as many hours as possible to their projects because 1) the company gets more money the higher the costs are (See Cost-Plus) and 2) the more the manager spends, the more he can justify needing a larger budget next year to preserve his micro-empire. But thanks to Ethics Training, managers know that they would be in hot water if they were to ever tell anyone to charge hours inappropriately. So instead they rely on other methods to burn up their budgets.

Almost two weeks after taking the Ethics Training, our Team Manager (Duckface's boss) comes over to yell at me for not charging enough hours to his budget and wanted to know why. I told him I was asked to work on a special assignment for another team and have been using their charge number. The special project was a much better use of my talents compared to the brainless busywork I had been working on, so I was eager to accept.

 He got angry and said "Well our work is just as important! I can't afford to have you working for another team when there's way too much work to be done over here,"

 "Well actually," I told him, "This special assignment hasn't impacted anything. I'm actually ahead of schedule on all of my current assignments because I've learned to manage my time more efficiently"

 "Well, we'll see about that," he said and walked away.

Over the next week, he complained to every manager he could find about how I'm falling behind on my work because of "this special project thing." Two weeks later, I was pulled off the special project to be once again working full-time on brainless assignments that, before,  I was doing in half the time.

So now I have two options: I can finish my assignments early, just to sit there and wait for Duckface to approve them, which he won't until the day they are due. Or I can work slowly, use up all the budget assigned to me, and give it to Duckface for review when he is expecting it. It doesn't matter. Either way, I only have one charge number to charge to and  burn up their budget, and that's all they care about.

Because burning budget is a priority over getting work done,  I throw rocks.