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Well, I was going to talk a bit about how you accused me a couple of weeks ago of having (first) a "negative" attitude, then of sounding "condescending" and "mean." And I may do that yet, if I get time. But this morning, at our weekly meeting, you made my jaw drop. Metaphorically speaking, that is. You didn't see anything but me smiling and you didn't hear anything but me agreeing.
What did you do? You lectured your entire crew, first, on being present and on time. Now, I am not knocking those things. They are important in the workplace. No denying it. But considering, Sir, that it's you that hired the recovering--well, not so recovering--pill-popper and boozer who keeps missing--oh, I'd say three or more days a month, and is late other times, and you've kept him on for well over a year now in spite of this, exactly what are you going to say to the office ladies who are sometimes twenty minutes late because of something involving their kids? Are you going to discipline them and let the other guy get off scot-free? I don't think that's going to fly, and no one believes you're going to discipline the other guy, because the reality is that attendance issues aside, he is so good at his job that nothing ever suffers when he's absent! He's always ahead! Besides that, you hired him to replace that ex-live-in girlfriend you'd hired, and then unjustly fired. Won't look good if it turns out you would have been better off keeping your ex-girlfriend, will it?
Amazingly, you were apparently so ticked off at him being absent Monday that you spent time going over almost two years of old time sheets, just so you could tell us all how long it'd been since the entire crew was present and on time for a whole week.
Productive use of your time, wasn't it? Oh, I know you thought it made your point, and in a way, it did. It also made you look a petulant horse's rear and, I promise you, made every single person in the place who's ever been late because of a child, because of car trouble, because they were stuck behind a train, because there was a wreck on the turnpike between here and the small town where they live, madder than an old wet hen. It made you look ineffectual, because, after all, it's you that has put up with it. And nobody believes you'll do anything about it, either. Why should they?
Having accomplished the by no means small feat of ticking off your entire staff with your first words of the meeting, you then lectured your entire crew on having good attitudes! It was nothing short of amazing. Either you think nobody on your staff has a good attitude, or you are unwilling to confront the women on your staff about their bad attitudes one by one (You have, of course, already lectured me and the other guy about our alleged bad attitudes). You don't come out looking good no matter how you slice this. You either have a talent for serially hiring people with bad attitudes, or you make people with good attitudes into people with bad attitudes (this would be my bet), or you see bad attitudes where none exist (also very likely), or you haven't the anatomical features necessary to confront women with bad attitudes.
Really. Did it not even occur to you to ask yourself how likely it was that everyone else in the building had bad attitudes, whilst you did not? Doesn't the answer reveal itself as soon as the question is asked?
Couple of more things, small things, but this is my rant: First thing this morning, you asked me to spray Febreze all over myself. I had--God forbid--smoked a quarter-pipeful of tobacco on my morning drive. Now, the fact that you think my tobacco reeks wouldn't bother me, except for two things: (1) It doesn't, or at least not as bad as cigarettes. I've asked the others. (2) You never ask the cigarette smokers to Febreze themselves, and those nasty cigarettes leave a worse smell than my pipe does, any day of the week. Not to mention the butts they leave outside the doors. You are just being ridiculous. It is just one more of your efforts to take me down a peg. You want to take me down a peg because...well, I may touch on that in another post.
Second: you made sure to tell me to wash the van and go to special effort to make sure all bug guts were off my windshield, because I am driving the van to New Person's Class tomorrow. What the shale? It's not that I mind doing it--takes me five minutes to run the van through the wash and a few more with some Windex for the windshield, after all--it's that it was bizarre. The van wasn't dirty. Nobody would look at it and say it was dirty. I asked people. And what do you think is going to happen when I show up for class? Do you think that everyone in attendance is going to pile out and come look at my work van? Do you think the campus administrator is going to come out and inspect it? Even if they did, nobody would say it was dirty. Even the interior is clean. I keep it empty of debris and wipe the thing down about once a week. Again, not that I mind the washing. Not that I don't want the van clean, too. It's that utterly weird connection you made between getting the van cleaned and going to that class. Weird because they have not the slightest thing to do with each other. It's like telling me,"You've got class tomorrow. Make sure you do the dishes."
You know, I initially just told our other driver that story. Then later, when the office ladies looked out the front doors and saw me cleaning my windshield, they asked her about it, and she told them what you had said. According to her, the universal reaction was, "He said what?" So it's not just me. It really was weird. But that's part for the course for you these days, isn't it? Most of us came to the conclusion some little time back that there's something wrong with you. It's gone way beyond just being a jerk. You keep doing and saying bizarre crap that nobody understands. But of course, as far as you're concerned, you are just fine. It's everyone else that needs an attitude adjustment.
Right?
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