The workplace and the act of professionalism itself are a testing ground for patience. At times, it may seem like all the workplace is a test of your temperance, your ability to show self-restraint and rationality in the face of the increasingly irrational. As with most out-of-line behavior, the external expression of unworthiness, its direction toward others, often reflects an insecurity and inadequacy that they feel and see within themselves.
In the corporate space, once a lot of people have “Peter Principled” their way into a management position that they will never grow from, they seek to cover their tracks and remove all evidence of their shoddy and inferior work so that they can enforce their iron-fisted demands for perfectionism with impunity, despite knowing full well that such work is impossible.
After growing tired of his boss’s incessant criticism and micromanagement, nitpicking every bit of formatting and every incorrect bit of grammar, while ignoring the technical proficiencies of the work, this employee decided that a little self-reflection might do her some good. When he was going through some older network files, he stumbled across some of his boss’s own work before someone had made the bewildering decision to give her a team to manage. He decided to take these files and take the boss’s formatting, along with anything that could be applied to look like her old work, even using her language and word choice.
When he drafted the reports and handed them to his boss, she didn’t catch on. Instead, she took the bait, hook, line, and sinker and blew her top, going on and on about how terrible the reports were down to every last detail. Only when she was through did the employee reveal the truth: she had been sat down and made to gaze into a mirror and bask in her own reflection.
This left the boss, for once, with nothing to say.
Author: Kayitsi.com
