Just a short and rather petty update to make fun of a former dick of a boss. This jerk told me that a document that I produced for internal use had "some major problems." I almost had to browbeat him to get him to sit down with me and go over said problems ('cause you know, I wanted to do my job well).
Turns out a couple minor grammatical errors and some apparently inappropriately strong phrasing (for the uses to which my employer would put it) just cripple an approximately 1000 word document. I still think it must have contained some useful information because as far as I can recall, he only had one disagreement with me on the facts presented (which he had to verify by checking with the flake of a specialist at that place, who didn't seem to know much about the area I was writing on anyway). And even on that point, I seem to recall going with my original interpretation. You see, I did the fucking research. I actually used that degree they counted in my favor when considering hiring me. A degree that was directly applicable to the subject matter at hand, unlike Bossman's (but it was okay, because once you're a manager you don't actually need to have a broad, deep understanding of what you're working with; that's what your
Some things to keep in mind here:
1. It was for internal use. This was not being released to the public.* It was, in fact, under review. It's my understanding that this is the stage of the publication process where the boss (or a proxy) looks at the work to check its accuracy, appropriateness, etc. Provide some useful critique to assist your employees in doing better work, possibly. Kind of like the editorial process at a publishing house. Bossman obviously didn't think so, seeing as how terrible it apparently was and how I had to push to get some feedback. Perhaps he's of the school that if you can't do it perfectly, you shouldn't do it at all. If everybody in that field adopted that position, almost nothing would get done. Flaws everywhere. Why not deal with them constructively? At any rate, there was no immediate danger of the organization looking bad because I had a subject/verb disagreement or wrote with too much candor.
2a. It was something that I researched and wrote on my own steam, because he gave me
2b. He couldn't even be bothered to say something positive about me trying to create something good that would help staff and (ultimately) users/caring about the place/showing some initiative/bothering to really gain an understanding of the relevant issues (something I didn't get the impression most of my predecessors had done)/trying to become a better professional. I'm not sure why they didn't just buy a scarecrow and stick a motion-activated recording of relevant information in its head. That's basically what he wanted, and it would have been a lot cheaper for him.
3. The field that I was working in created publications for users that, for best consumption, needed to be written according to certain guidelines. I did my best (which wasn't good enough, obviously), but I had never received any formal training in writing in that style. I'd barely received any formal training at all since joining that company. Seeing as he was unhappy not only with my work, but with the work of permanent, more senior employees in my division, you'd think he might have organized a few on-site training sessions (he could have headed them, since he knew it all), or sent us away to training somewhere else, or given out some assigned reading on writing to those specs and then had us write samples for him to critique, or really just done anything constructive. Nah. He just acted like minor errors in documents under review were the end of the fucking world, and we were all morons for failing to be perfect. The only training I got at that site was how to use a fire extinguisher.***
4. Some of the phrasing did need some work, but frankly it's a style thing that it takes most people years of practicing to do really well - that's why the person with the greatest expertise reviews materials and (ideally) offers a constructive critique. Constructive being the operative word in that sentence. I also basically missed the deadline for making the work valuable for that year (although the information could be reused annually). This would have been another valid critique, but it never even came up. Instead I got a nice heaping of opprobrium for a few technical errors and for being inexperienced).
Other incidents showed his interpersonal/managerial skills to be rather lacking as well. This was not a one-off thing. I'm inclined to think all those books on managing people he had in his office were rather a waste of money.
The above is basically to explain why I found an Internet post by him that I came across so funny. He posted on an organization-related website using his full name and providing his location. In his fairly brief comment I counted four spelling errors and one grammatical error. Oh dear. That doesn't look too professional. It's also interesting that in his post he mentions that colleagues should take care of each other. I suppose "...in life-or-death situations, at any rate" is probably implied. He sure didn't do a very good job of taking care of his staff at that site. When thinking about that staff, most of whom I liked, the words that spring to mind most readily are disillusioned, cynical, and dysfunctional.
Fucker.
I certainly can't think of anything he did during my time there as a young, inexperienced, temporary employee living hundreds of miles away from home that made me feel particularly welcome. Another employee (or possibly said employee's wife) mentioned to their kids that they should invite me over for Thanksgiving dinner if they happened to see me (I lived all the way next door), which they did, so I was made to feel welcome there. Nobody invited me to do anything for Christmas, aside from the staff Christmas party, which was off-site, and which another co-worker kindly drove me to. There wasn't anything to do in the little town we were in, not really anywhere to go that I knew of, and I wasn't comfortable enough driving in winter conditions to just go for a pointless, aimless ride around the countryside. Instead I spent those days getting drunk and eating frozen pizza in a dark, cold house situated between the houses of two coworkers and within a couple miles of most of the rest of them. Ho ho ho. One of my previous bosses (same organization) sounded kind of surprised when I told him, in response to his query on the subject, that no one had invited me to do anything for Christmas. Supposedly the organization I was working for instills in its employees a sense of "family", but I don't think that's true now, if it ever was. Good bosses can do that regardless of the organization, but crappy bosses who discourage their staff from working and striving to develop their professional potential, and who also often seem unable or unwilling to cut the slackers and the shirkers loose get nothing but the type of environment that I saw at that site, and that I've seen more and more at that organization's outposts, even since I've left the field. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the levels of professionalism and dedication to that profession have declined over that past ten or twenty years. That's what you get when you hire and promote bad people and discourage good people from staying, improving themselves, or doing anything other than gaming the system.
*Now, my day-to-day supervisor, who was a competent - if somewhat disillusioned and disgruntled - guy, thought what I did was okay and used it to create a document for users. The big boss had problems with that doc too, but at least I was off the hook for that once I told him that the public doc wasn't mine, it was his relatively long-serving, permanent employee's. Not that that made my boss act like any less of a dick to me, though.
** Which is what my predecessor did. I consider that pretty unprofessional, given the nature of the field. The big boss didn't have a problem with it, apparently, although my day-to-day boss did. I only knew him for a few days, but he seemed to me to be a lazy individual who provided rather indifferent customer service and couldn't even be bothered to attempt to look professional. Perhaps being a veteran makes up for choosing to not do your job.
***P-Pull (the pin)
A-Aim (the nozzle at the base of the fire)
S-Spray
S-Sweep (the nozzle back and forth while spraying the base of the fire)
See - this is an educational blog.
Like I said at the top of the post, this is really petty. But he was such a dick, and it's pleasing to see him look like a bit of a dolt on a quasi-professional, publicly accessible blog. And yeah, there are probably spelling and grammatical errors in my post, but hey - I'm publishing this anonymously, on a site with no connection to that field (or my current field, for that matter), and doing nothing other than venting some spleen. I always try to make my professional work look good, which is what I think counts. I may not always succeed, but I learn from my mistakes when they're pointed out to me. I don't need to made to feel like an idiot for that to be accomplished. At least now I have bosses who aren't complete jerks.
