When I worked at the university, I had a manager. He was a bad person who enjoyed being a bad person. When he tried to teach me things he had a very interesting way of doing it. He wanted me to learn through repeated, pointless failure.

In a purely hypothetical example: say he wanted me to design an image with a certain amount of text.

I create a graphic and make the text blue. He tells me it’s wrong because the color is awful.

I make the text green. This is also wrong.

I make the text orange. This isn’t work either.

I make the text teal. This is too close to the incorrect blue and green.

I make the text purple. This is ridiculous of course, because purple is a girl’s color.

I make the text red. This is the correct choice.

Of course, he could have told me at the beginning that the wanted red text. He could have given me enough information for me to have made an image he would approve in far less time. But that was not how he worked.

Once I realized I wanted to look for another job, I felt like all of my interactions with him where mainly comprised of him telling me no, do it again, and why didn’t I just read his mind next time?

This is, naturally, is terrible way to attempt to teach me anything. I absolutely loathe when I am given a task but not the tools nor information required to be successful. I’m not sure anyone likes learning this way, but I have run into so many people who implement it, it feels like word needs to get out just how frustrating and tedious this is.

I also don’t understand how it happens. This trial by failure takes more time and results in more frustration than just telling someone what you want and how to do accomplish it.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a case of a manager just not knowing what they want or thinking ahead far enough to figure out exactly what they need to tell their employee to do. So they make a subordinate give them a multitude of examples to choose from. Or they change their mind multiple times through the course of events and just keep the changes coming.

As for the frustration, a lot of managers don’t care what their employees feel. So the frustration isn’t even a problem worth considering.

When I recognize this is happening, I am quick to inform the person who has tasked me that this is in no way going to complete the task quickly and I absolutely cannot stand working like this. Which, it still happens more often than it should. Probably because it should happen exactly zero times.

I feel like there is probably a name for this and studies done on it. Maybe I should do some research…

It’s called Teaching By Negative Space or Gotcha Management. I love the internet.