Quote of the Day: Lou Harrison

"We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with."


I must be growing wiser in my old age because now when I have a dispute at work I no longer charge into the Vice President's office with a printed email chain validating all my claims and then tell her, "Setting up our division for failure is a pretty poor way to run a company," when she does not decide the question in my favor. (It's a long story from back in the day when I ran a market research call center. It involves my desire to fire one of the supervisors I managed after she slept with one of her underlings while she was also supervising his pregnant girlfriend. I only felt forced to take such a drastic step after the girlfriend punched the wall hard enough to break her hand and the boyfriend slashed all my tires for telling my employee to pay more attention to her job than to flirting.) Yeah, I am glad I left that company before they pushed me out.

So anyway, at work the other day we had a group project that I was tangentially involved with that I felt like I got blamed for when it fell apart. I haven't been that mad in long time but I sat down and rationally wrote a polite fact-based email. To make a long story short, I got face time with my Executive Vice President and an apology for all the blame-shifting from the guilty parties. I think my status in the company has actually grown because of it. (My manager helped out quite a bit too in rescuing my reputation.)

Just like the Grinch, I feel like my heart has grown a few sizes. One of my more darker personal traits has always been the tendency to lash out with a disproportional use of force when someone hurts my feelings and I am quite good at being a jerk when I want to be. I am still not fully cured of that tendency - just ask my fellow drivers - but I think this event shows that I am making progress.