By Maritza Crouse

By my calculations, I am about three layers away from middle management. I have been a part of corporate America for some time now – keenly observing middle managers along the way and desperately wanting what they have. With a college degree finally within my reach, I can now be considered a worthy middle management candidate where I hope to make a difference. I can just picture my 8X8 compact yet quaint windowless office – right in front of a cube farm of MY OWN underlings. Just thinking about it makes my pulse quicken. Why this lofty goal? Simply put… middle managers have it made.

Think about it. Where else can you make $74,243.15 a year for doing absolutely nothing? No place I know of. Sure you have to attend occasional meetings and answer some email, but no one expects you to make any significant contribution to those meetings or email… that is what the 3-5 layers of supervisors and team leads underneath you are there for. They give you the research/answers that you can just regurgitate at meetings or copy and paste into an email as your own original reply… all you have to do is end it with “let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns”, type your name and ‘middle management’ title and hit send. It is that easy.

Another perk of middle management is the unlimited vacation and sick time available to you. Since no one expects you to do anything all day, you can come in to the office when you want and leave when you want – no questions asked. If you have the option to work remotely, you can even take a vacation or remodel your house and still count it as a regular work day. I heard of a middle manager who was off the entire months of December and January and never used a single hour of personal time. She just logged in from home every 2 or 3 hours, asked her supervisors how things were going and ‘voila’! Although it was the team’s busiest time of year, she just made sure that the underlings were not allowed to take more than 2 vacation days in a row – thereby keeping the office fully staffed and herself free from any unnecessary worry. Brilliant!

Being a middle manager can also improve your love life. Even though the middle manager has no knowledge of the day-in and day-out job duties of the worker bees, he/she is responsible for hiring them. Once a couple of competent and high functioning underlings are running the show (Middle managers are cautioned to covertly protect these valuable assets by blocking any attempt of a promotion or lateral move to a different team or department), the middle manager can focus on hiring the most attractive and vulnerable job applicant – versus the most qualified and competent. New employees want to please, so the middle manager can take full advantage of the situation by assigning newbies special projects that require a lot of one on one time behind closed doors and inviting them to extended cocktail lunches at nearby hotel restaurants. This definitely helps increase the middle manager’s confidence and self-esteem as the newbie is fearful of saying ‘no’. If the newbie plays his/her cards right, they may soon be on the path to middle management – probably within the year. It is a win-win! Middle managers can also solicit relationship advice or use their underlings as a sounding board since subordinates will feel obligated to listen to anything their manager has to say – no matter how inappropriate. I once had to sit and listen to a manager talk for an hour about her underwhelming sex life and I just kept thinking ‘someday that will be me’…

The best benefit of middle management by far has to be the total lack of accountability. While usually responsible for a team, that team is just part of a bigger whole. The middle manager is ideally buried in the ‘middle’ of countless layers in an organization. Responsibility or culpability is easily deflected to underlings or executives. You are not high enough or low enough to see or feel any real repercussions. Occasional corrective measures may be required, but you can have an underling do that for you.

Is it not clear why I have allowed myself to dream this dream? If I am lucky and secure my goal of becoming a middle manager, I can probably sit comfortably until retirement and then be hired back as a consultant.

 

Maritza Crouse is a New College English Major whose interests include books, music, movies, and travel. She currently lives in Austin with her husband and two daughters.

Photo in Header by Marcos Morales