Anger Management (long) - Democratic Underground

SOteric

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Sun Oct-05-03 05:26 PM
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Anger Management (long)

I have change the names to protect...well...everybody.

Over the past year, I’ve had ongoing struggles with one of the guys at work. Technically not a member of the same department, he notheless felt compelled to pass comment and judgement on much that was my responsibility. Which, honestly, I would have respected in him had he been competent or even remotely correct. But ‘Dick’ was neither. In that position previous to him was a brilliant fellow, who corrected and prodded me often, and I was appreciative of his mentoring. But ‘Dick’ seemed to generate nothing but panic, misinformation, hysteria and dislike wherever his comment might fall.

Dick was responsible for ordering data and managing the budgets with regard to one specific aspect of our work, as was the mentor before him. Dick mismanaged it, always either under or over ordering. The effect was that either it left a lot of people in the office sitting on their arse with nothing to do (at a high rate of pay), or it significantly overspent our weekly budget for ordering protocols. After I time, and tired of my withering looks, he’d come to me, asking me exactly how much data to order and when. And I would tell him. But Dick never ordered what I told him, or for when I told him we would need it.

Dick drank. All of management knew this, but Dick was an old friend of some highly placed members of the corporate team, and he was trying to ‘beat his addictions.’ Or so we were told, but most mornings that the data pulls were wonky were the ones following times where Dick came to work smelling like a distillery. Regrettably this was often.

I began writing down my recommendations for data pulls and I got one member of the management team to check my recommendations against the order logs. It quickly became apparent that there was a problem, and it wasn’t me. We were powerless to do anything, I was told.

In blatant disgust-fueled frustration one day I attempted to grab the reigns of the data ordering out from under him. After much hemming and hawwing it was decided by ‘Slick’ (a person in authority over both of us) that I would be given the responsibility for the data ordering after, and only ‘if’ I successfully jumped through a set of hoops. So I began my hoop-jumping. Before I’d anytime to complete the hoop-jumping Dick had convinced Slick that to pass the reigns to me would be a fatal fiscal mistake and Slick withdrew the offer. And Dick continued to mismanage the data in our department.

I seethed, but sometimes one has to suck these things up and drive on.

It all turned out for the best, however, when a few months later Slick left the company to pursue other opportunities, and I reinstated my attempted power-grab. At the same time, Dick’s responsibilities had dramatically increased and he was blatantly in over his head. Not only did he not resist giving me the reigns of the data pulls, - he was in an enthusiastic hurry to do so.

Through it all, Dick remained dependent on the bottle and resolutely taciturn and disapproving of pretty much everything. He knew more than we did and was far too good to be working with such peasants. With regularity he’d blow air about the elbows he’d rubbed and the places he’d worked, how important he was and things he’d seen. We’d roll our eyes behind his back. One day he found out who my father was and it shut him up for the better part of a month.

Unfortunately it then started his bitter and angry speculations on how I’d gotten my job and just how worthless an employee I truly was. The man who was my boss at the time was having none of that, however, ’H’ knew what a valuable employee I was and was unafraid to say so, even to powerful people with nasty dispositions.

Fast forward a few more months, Slick has left, my boss ’H’ has left, my responsibilities are increasing while Dick’s are being more and more limited. They gave the more important of Dick’s responsibilities to Sam for the heaviest work days and left Dick in charge only for the lighter, less urgent work.

Then Rob, the efficiency expert, came to the office. He spent 3 days examining the process in both departments and recommended some pretty drastic changes. I tried to be flexible with them, the ultimate goal is to make sure the expense is low and the profit is high, and nothing suggested for our department seemed unrealistic toward that goal.

Dick, on the other hand, began pitching fits as soon as Rob was out the door and didn’t stop for the better part of a week. He was required to do more and more paperwork to show an audit trail of the departmental expenditures. Dick knew almost nothing of how to work a computer and had no desire to learn. He did everything with a pencil and some accountant logs. Rob pretty much insisted on a spreadsheet tracking system in a specific format showing 2 dozen or so specific points of data.

Dick quit. He did not give notice, he pretty much went into the office of the uberboss and said ‘this is total B.S. - I’m outta here.’ And so he was.

Yet rumours trickled throught the grapevine. He’d apparently marched himself the next day into the offices of some highly-placed corporate muckety-mucks and pumped bilge. He cursed Rob (who thankfully was in Europe on holiday) as the reason the company was going down the tubes (it’s not, but … it would seem Dick knew better), and called a few S.O.B’s S.O.B’s.

We hired someone else in to fill his position. A fellow who’d been with us in the past and knew the work, but had been out on medical leave.

Yesterday I learnt that last Tuesday, Dick killed himself. He ate a gun.

I won’t pretend after his death that Dick was a lovable character and I’ll miss him. I won’t pretend to regret or guilt over not having tried to understand the man or warm up to him. He was a bitter, angry man whose elitism, pretensions and perfectionism were driven entirely by insecurities. He was an unpleasant person with an ugly character.

What I will say is that I find it sad. Somewhere in his youth he had potential. There was no doubt he could write and write well. Dick wasted his life in a bottle and ended it in bitterness, anger, disappointment and futility. I do not wish that on anyone.

I’m not sorry for you, Dick. But I’m deeply sorry for the young man you once were.