(N) A situation in which multiple levels of the chain of authority recurringly issue conflicting instructions or directives for appropriate action and punish any the inevitable resulting violations. Whichever side of the subordinate lands on, he will get the crap knocked out of him by someone.
This job is total fail pong. I go to the boss and tell him the solution is Y. The boss orders me to do X. I then get an email from the boss's boss asking why the fuck I did X instead of Y, and then I get bitched out by the client. No matter which way you go, you're screwed.
by Frustrated_Monolingual January 27, 2010