I’m a Professional Asshole

This is looking better and better except I’m on the ground floor and no windows are nearby almost ever.

You ever stop for a moment to look at yourself and your life and think, “I’m basically paid to be an effective asshole. This is what all those years of schooling and all that debt has brought me to: effective assholery.” This is the realization I have been having recently. I’ve had laryngitis for a week or so and I literally had to save my voice for 4 days in anticipation of the meeting I knew I was having today.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this guy before, but he’s a very thorough individual and he’s good at what he does. He takes his role very seriously and he’s one of the few people who will actually do what’s expected of him and then some.  That said, he’s been working for the company since he was 18, she’s got some 35+ years of experience by now and has a lot to say about damn near everything (and by everything I mean nothing). He’s got umpteen stories that you’ve heard already, that he’ll whip out at every chance possible, that you have to sit through whether you want to or not.

Let’s call him Paul for the sake of conversation. Paul knows he’s thorough and thinks awfully highly of himself and his opinions, and I too could probably be described in the same way … so when we work together there’s some butting of heads but we get along for the most part because we both know we’re want the same thing: a quality product at the end.

So he does his review of my work and humbles me to some extent, and I push back on the places where I think he’s being unreasonable. Let’s say that each time I go to him I have 20 items he needs to review and this is how it goes

First project:  He’s unhappy because I brought all 20 at the same time.

Second project:  He’s unhappy because I emailed them separately because there were 20 emails.

Third project:  He’s unhappy because I didn’t bring them all at the same time.

Fourth project:  He’s unhappy because I replied to his emails and insisted that we meet in person. (also unhappy because the subject line in my emails is “wrong” and asks me to resend them with a changed subject line)

Fifth project:  He’s unhappy because I just wanted to meet in person but didn’t reply to his emails.

So when he pulls that bullshit with me I usually call him on it and we get into it, often noisily so. I tried to meet with him Thursday and he didn’t want to talk to me because I was sick. (1 week into my cold so … not contagious) He almost didn’t meet with me today because I still appeared sick. But needless to say after today my throat is still sore and my voice is ragged again.

It’s because I push back when people are ridiculous with me that I’m successful at this company. That’s really depressing.

They’re sending me to Colorado next week and I need to be healthy for that. Ugh and double ugh.