Dance Around The Damn May Pole

I Like Alice, Part 2

Dee arrived at Yak’s a little late, and more than a little flustered. “Mr. Dickless,” she said, “walked in to my office at noon and said that he wanted to get together this afternoon to go over my progress on a report due next week. Its one of those things that involves printing out a spreadsheet and saying the three most obvious things. I can do this in my sleep. He has never asked to review these reports in the past. Somehow, he figured out that I was taking the afternoon off and wanted to give me shit.”

“You do you work with flair and personality. I bet he’d ignore you more if you didn’t get so much attention.”

“Exactly. I think he’s scared of me. His boss likes my work, is collegial and has never suggested that we go to Friday happy hour together. Dickless would like to sleep with me. He’s a creep.”

“I don’t work for creeps, just assholes.”

“How goes your project?” she asked.

Would she let me get away with complaining about my clients?

I said, “OK, I guess. Each person has a different, and generally vague idea of what they want included in the presentation.”

Three yahoos with five different, usually idiotic points of view, and collectively, the writing skills of a third grade class. One kid like conjunctions and another liked adverbs. They didn’t so much write as stew words with a robust collection of malapropisms, grammatical errors, and juvenile spelling mistakes.

I just couldn’t write something persuasive enough to get them to go wreck someone else’s work. They bickered with each other until they started to criticize my failing attempts on their behalf. If I fail, I still get paid. They might lose their jobs.

I continued, “The person with the clearest ideas is the one who no one agrees with. Given this adversity, he argues well and that only makes it worse. Of course, I’m stuck in the middle. They now all complain about me. I make things up wholesale, and try to figure out who’s approval matters most. It would be funny if it was someone else’s problem.”

They would rather set aside their arguments, bond against the common enemy - me, and dance around the damn May Pole. I spent the better part of the morning reminding them of the timeline, and pointing out the internal conflicts that had made my work very difficult. They were snarky and indignant in return. I might fire this client.

… continued

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I Like Alice

Part 2: Dance Around The Damn May Pole
Part 1: Good Just Isn’t Good Enough