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Published On: Jan 27, 2005 08:32 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 27, 2005 08:32 PM
Stop smiling
Believe it or not, I was once told to smile less
at work.
I used to work for a place that has so
many peculiarities that I'd never be able to document them all in one place. As
most people know, there are a number of things I CAN say and document about such
things and, in time, that's coming. As was once said in an old timey
movie..."When I talk about this, and I WILL..."
You get the idea.
So, back when I was first starting this particular job, I was coming off of having watched my business become extinct by the digital age and I had been contracting for about a year. It was a strange time when I was just learning what I now know better than anyone but after having been much more on top of the world than ever, and fallen. In short, I had a job. It was my first job ever (first W-2 job, not self employment) and I was excited to do well. I sincerely wanted to out-perform everyone and to make my boss glad he'd hired me. It was perhaps the most naive time of my new employment.
At this particular point, I was working for one of the many owners of the company who wasn't my direct superior. It turns out, everyone in the company (including the other owners) felt she was something of a talentless waste of input, but she was an owner no less. My direct boss would constantly take me off of her jobs so I could do his, but he'd never step up and tell her that her work was needless and that he was going to continue to have me work on other projects while her work was intentionally ignored.
Now, a better boss would have taken this matter into hand and he would have explained that this particular owner's input was a waste of resources and he would have curtailed the intrusions. He didn't have the backbone for that I guess so he let her continue to submit orders to me, and continued to tell me to put them below other work on the priority list. This would really piss off the other owner submitting requests, who I used to call Super Donkey. I believe most people still call her that.
So, there I was. I was a new manager, with a sincere desire to please everyone and no sense that one owner could be less than another, yet with clear directions from my direct superior that I shouldn't spend any resources on the Super Donkey's work. I didn't see how much I was being hung out to dry back then, so I tried to handle it in stride.
Whenever Super Donkey would come in and ask for her work, I'd pleasantly tell her I was trying my very best to get to it, but that a few other orders were above her work. She'd come in again...and again...and again. I'd continue to smile and pleasantly tell her that she was "next" on the list. Now, that is an interesting thing to say..."next" I mean. "Next" is the thing that you never get to...but it gives hope because it is RIGHT THERE to be done...well, next! It is like saying, "have hope, but know that it is unfounded."
So, after time passed, Super Donkey got good and pissed that her work was being ignored. Sure as there was no clear talent or value added by the Donkey, there was a certainty of her own that she was relevant and important...and seemingly she didn't see that she had been marginalized by her own peers and co-owners. Her anger grew until she complained to my boss to do something to get me in line. She added that I seemed to smirk at her every time I told her that her work wasn't done.
In the end, my superior called me into his office to tell me to continue to put off Super Donkey's work, and to stop smiling at her. He had a big theory that my smiling was "like that oriental thing" about smiling. Apparently, in his racist wisdom he concluded that my smiling was inappropriate in the same way that asian people are inappropriate to white folks. My words, but they make my point. The bigger point is that the only thing we addressed was my smiling as it was a forgone conclusion that Super Donkey's work was, under no circumstances, to be given more attention.
I marvel that a head of a big company can not only take no responsibility for controlling the waste brought by a fellow owner, but can then have such blinders on that he could actually call me in to tell me to stop smiling. It is the perfect example of a leader going through the motions, without the potential for actually doing anything to better the situation for the sensible majority. To interject the racist stuff, well, that is just the icing on the cake.
Sitting here I know that my smiling was probably odd. I was nervous as hell and didn't really know why I was doing the work of my superior (in shutting down this pathetic owner). I am sure I made everyone feel peculiar by smiling while saying I'd have to try to get to work that anyone in the know knew was never going to be slated for actual production. But, I still sit in wonder to know that Super Donkey is still submitting orders and some poor sod is trying NOT to smirk at her. If he knows she is a waste, he wants to laugh in her face...otherwise, he doesn't know what else to do.
What he does know, or soon will, is that his boss ain't going to do a damned thing about it beyond tell him to stop smiling, dammit. Instead, his boss will just continue to grin his own gummy grin and lie to the Donkey so she won't feel the sting of the truth. He won't make waves because he isn't concerned about the business first and foremost. He is just putting out fires and going through the motions by pushing on the more expendable resources. An owner is NOT such a resource. Further, an owner might pose a real threat and poor leaders never put themselves in a position of vulnerablity; not when there is a lower man on the totem who can deal with the dirty work.
...in the next Donkey Chapter, mabye I'll tell the story of the time the Donkey reworked a meeting with a client that had to then be re-reworked to re-exclude her from her own department's business dealings. I forget what a waste of space Super Donkey really is. I'd say "was" but...
"She's still there and I'm all gone..."
You get the idea.
So, back when I was first starting this particular job, I was coming off of having watched my business become extinct by the digital age and I had been contracting for about a year. It was a strange time when I was just learning what I now know better than anyone but after having been much more on top of the world than ever, and fallen. In short, I had a job. It was my first job ever (first W-2 job, not self employment) and I was excited to do well. I sincerely wanted to out-perform everyone and to make my boss glad he'd hired me. It was perhaps the most naive time of my new employment.
At this particular point, I was working for one of the many owners of the company who wasn't my direct superior. It turns out, everyone in the company (including the other owners) felt she was something of a talentless waste of input, but she was an owner no less. My direct boss would constantly take me off of her jobs so I could do his, but he'd never step up and tell her that her work was needless and that he was going to continue to have me work on other projects while her work was intentionally ignored.
Now, a better boss would have taken this matter into hand and he would have explained that this particular owner's input was a waste of resources and he would have curtailed the intrusions. He didn't have the backbone for that I guess so he let her continue to submit orders to me, and continued to tell me to put them below other work on the priority list. This would really piss off the other owner submitting requests, who I used to call Super Donkey. I believe most people still call her that.
So, there I was. I was a new manager, with a sincere desire to please everyone and no sense that one owner could be less than another, yet with clear directions from my direct superior that I shouldn't spend any resources on the Super Donkey's work. I didn't see how much I was being hung out to dry back then, so I tried to handle it in stride.
Whenever Super Donkey would come in and ask for her work, I'd pleasantly tell her I was trying my very best to get to it, but that a few other orders were above her work. She'd come in again...and again...and again. I'd continue to smile and pleasantly tell her that she was "next" on the list. Now, that is an interesting thing to say..."next" I mean. "Next" is the thing that you never get to...but it gives hope because it is RIGHT THERE to be done...well, next! It is like saying, "have hope, but know that it is unfounded."
So, after time passed, Super Donkey got good and pissed that her work was being ignored. Sure as there was no clear talent or value added by the Donkey, there was a certainty of her own that she was relevant and important...and seemingly she didn't see that she had been marginalized by her own peers and co-owners. Her anger grew until she complained to my boss to do something to get me in line. She added that I seemed to smirk at her every time I told her that her work wasn't done.
In the end, my superior called me into his office to tell me to continue to put off Super Donkey's work, and to stop smiling at her. He had a big theory that my smiling was "like that oriental thing" about smiling. Apparently, in his racist wisdom he concluded that my smiling was inappropriate in the same way that asian people are inappropriate to white folks. My words, but they make my point. The bigger point is that the only thing we addressed was my smiling as it was a forgone conclusion that Super Donkey's work was, under no circumstances, to be given more attention.
I marvel that a head of a big company can not only take no responsibility for controlling the waste brought by a fellow owner, but can then have such blinders on that he could actually call me in to tell me to stop smiling. It is the perfect example of a leader going through the motions, without the potential for actually doing anything to better the situation for the sensible majority. To interject the racist stuff, well, that is just the icing on the cake.
Sitting here I know that my smiling was probably odd. I was nervous as hell and didn't really know why I was doing the work of my superior (in shutting down this pathetic owner). I am sure I made everyone feel peculiar by smiling while saying I'd have to try to get to work that anyone in the know knew was never going to be slated for actual production. But, I still sit in wonder to know that Super Donkey is still submitting orders and some poor sod is trying NOT to smirk at her. If he knows she is a waste, he wants to laugh in her face...otherwise, he doesn't know what else to do.
What he does know, or soon will, is that his boss ain't going to do a damned thing about it beyond tell him to stop smiling, dammit. Instead, his boss will just continue to grin his own gummy grin and lie to the Donkey so she won't feel the sting of the truth. He won't make waves because he isn't concerned about the business first and foremost. He is just putting out fires and going through the motions by pushing on the more expendable resources. An owner is NOT such a resource. Further, an owner might pose a real threat and poor leaders never put themselves in a position of vulnerablity; not when there is a lower man on the totem who can deal with the dirty work.
...in the next Donkey Chapter, mabye I'll tell the story of the time the Donkey reworked a meeting with a client that had to then be re-reworked to re-exclude her from her own department's business dealings. I forget what a waste of space Super Donkey really is. I'd say "was" but...
"She's still there and I'm all gone..."
Posted: Wed - January 5, 2005 at 07:09 PM