Counting to sum

1. Begin
2. Don’t finish
3. Start over
4. Get distracted
5. Forget to remember

A Matching Catastrophe

1. We’re going to spend 45 minutes or so now to discuss all the things I need you to do to cover up for my incompetence.
2. In addition to providing you some insight into the job I should be doing that you will now have to…
3. I will also be explaining the things you will have to play catch-up with because I wasn’t doing my job to help you keep up to date this year.
4. Guess what? There are lots of things that will be harder this time because I wasn’t smart enough to advocate for the easy way.
5. The one thing I did get done is to stick my nose in your business so I can point out ways that you have let me down.

There’s a hypothetical landmine in this resume…

Never mind the veiled critiques behind the generalizations about the set up of the workplace, the order of the questions, the strategy about absentee employees, and the claim about humility. And pay no attention to the pair of jacks in common between the reference list and the interview committee. The real beef, like the beef he ate at the $60 all-you-can-consume grill, is the lackadaisical candor explaining the absence of the hard sale.

Like I told the grin peddler…

Acting before asking

When they find you a new office without including you in the discussion that results in giving away your current one, there may be a silver lining in the implication that they plan on keeping you around.  Or, they may be soaring to new heights of passive-aggressive behavior, figuring that this is an extremely non-confrontational way of getting you to clear out your desk.

Just because you’re integral doesn’t mean you’re irreplaceable.

The internal candidate is doing a solid job keeping everybody happy, keeping the work flowing, maintaining morale…

But there may be some crises coming yet. It’s remarkable how different her approach to solo-ing is to mine. Of course it’s very different circumstances, but she’s running a very loose group with a lot of decentralized (effectively delegated!) tasks going on. There’s some folks that are at least off-ranch if not AWOL, due to our very own Fred Astaire doing his Alfred E Neuman impression. Really, is it so much to ask that all of his people get the same memos that ours are getting? Or that he not countermand the things we agree to, especially in the areas of projects he takes charge of? Well, actually, yes, it is.

The present virtue of absentia

Sometimes, if you’re really sure that you’re going to have a hard time stomaching the disconnect between the collective memory and your individual perception, it’s better to just not show up.  Sometimes it’s worth being able to believe the hype and not question the rhetoric and just avoid the cognitive dissonance.

I can make my stomach churn on cue.

I guess the tightness of chest and clammy sweat are de rigeur, given the nature of my complaint.  I’m at least as put off by myself as I suppose everyone else must be by me, though I can’t say as whether the feelings are mutual or reciprocal, given the problem of minds.

Fatigue is like the end of a long time traveling

Things speed up and then all of a sudden there’s a time shear like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse 5.  Part of me is here and part of me is here when I first got here and part of me is there where I’m going back to but actually back then when I came from it…

The entirety of history is a bunch of stuff people heard other people say. So when you go out of your way to mention that, “There’s nothing further that I’m at liberty to say,” you make it very clear that there is in fact a story to be told.

In the name of dignity, propriety, and the very reverence you project and gratitude you proclaim, shut the fuck up about the fact that you aren’t able to make any further comment.  Yeah, I said that, so go tell somebody about it.

By the by, this is about work, and that’s all it’s about is about work, although I appreciate the somewhat gut wrenching irony given the very other thing that I’m also in the middle of.  And it perhaps should also be said that by appreciate I mean recognize, not relish nor take any amusement therefrom.

Advice for the power hungry

1.  Count your friends before you make enemies.

2.  Ask more questions than you give answers.

3.  Know your own job best.

4.  Feign attentive disinterest in your objectives, until they are within your grasp.

5.  Naked ambition is, itself, a persuasive argument, but no one wants to watch you disrobe.