The Right Thing?
How can we ever know for sure if we're doing the right thing? Even if it feels right at that moment, have we considered all possible ramifications from our actions?
Worse, what if you're doing what you believe to be absolutely the right thing but you're pretty sure that other people are viewing you in a skewed way, are looking at what you have done as something not so right?
I think this is what we're dealing with now. Now that Hans has decided to start going after the detailer. Believe me, I have seen the e-mails and I know that he is still treating this guy with the utmost of respect, though the detailer has done nothing to earn Hans' respect.
We just keep wondering if it was the right thing to do, to put flame to this fire.
I guess only time will tell...
It reminds me a little of any one of a number of dumb stories I have that still make me feel faintly nauseated. From when I worked at That Roofing Company. The instance I'm thinking of today is something that happened about 16 years ago. I was 19 years old and still pretty new to the world of full-time, real-world work. I was going along as best I could, typing letters and proposals, answering the phone, filing...
Then one day I got called into a meeting between myself, the company controller and the HR Hag (aka: the owner's sister). What was the purpose of this meeting? Why, I was in trouble and being given verbal warning that they had a problem with the correspondence I was typing. Was it messy, sloppy, not spaced correctly? No. Was I typing something wildly different than what the (damn-near illiterate) estimator was writing? Well, not exactly.
Then what was the problem? The problem was that I was IMPROVING what they were writing. Not by changing the wording or meaning of any sentence. No, the way I was daring to improve the correspondence was by changing things like "their" to "they're" if what the guy had written was not correct. You guys didn't know I had such an evil streak, right?
I was getting a verbal warning for making their company look better, for making the estimator look like someone who had a little education. I remember feeling so absolutely stunned and helpless. I knew I was doing the right thing and yet here sat these two, who were absolutely convinced of the opposite and were in fact angry that I would dare to be such a maverick as to go ahead and correct things like spelling and punctuation!
Just one of a hundred little stories from my incarceration at That Roofing Company, where--believe it or not--I spent another EIGHT years of my life after the above incident. I should have run like hell that day, but I didn't.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm sitting here today feeling the same. Helpless and stunned. The detailer doesn't seem to understand the problem with his actions and is finding any excuse to get on Hans' case. Now he's chiding Hans for taking the job in Stuttgart. Hans had to explain to him that when he graduated from War College in 2007, they were ONLY offered Joint tours and were in fact told that they were required and would be beneficial to their careers. So...believing the detailer in 2007, we (and every other SWO in his class) took Joint tours. Makes me wonder what their detailers are telling them. Besides, what are we supposed to do? Get in our magic time machine and travel back to August of 2007 and pick something different? There WAS NOTHING DIFFERENT. But the detailer makes it sound like Hans willfully took his current billet just to mess with him.
And now it comes out that the detailer is also feeling the sads that Hans is doing "unorthodox self-detailing". Meaning poor detailer's little feeeeeelings are hurt (or more like, his unbearably huge ego) that Hans went ahead and found his own billet. Twice. Well, that's a long story, but there's a perfectly spot-on and legitimate reason why Hans DID do that.
Why does the detailer have to make this about Hans? Why is he trying to point the finger at Hans, who was (a) doing what he was told was best; and (b) trying to help the situation along since the original detailer ignored him too.
Why does this smell like Hans is going to come out looking like the villain?
Worse, what if you're doing what you believe to be absolutely the right thing but you're pretty sure that other people are viewing you in a skewed way, are looking at what you have done as something not so right?
I think this is what we're dealing with now. Now that Hans has decided to start going after the detailer. Believe me, I have seen the e-mails and I know that he is still treating this guy with the utmost of respect, though the detailer has done nothing to earn Hans' respect.
We just keep wondering if it was the right thing to do, to put flame to this fire.
I guess only time will tell...
It reminds me a little of any one of a number of dumb stories I have that still make me feel faintly nauseated. From when I worked at That Roofing Company. The instance I'm thinking of today is something that happened about 16 years ago. I was 19 years old and still pretty new to the world of full-time, real-world work. I was going along as best I could, typing letters and proposals, answering the phone, filing...
Then one day I got called into a meeting between myself, the company controller and the HR Hag (aka: the owner's sister). What was the purpose of this meeting? Why, I was in trouble and being given verbal warning that they had a problem with the correspondence I was typing. Was it messy, sloppy, not spaced correctly? No. Was I typing something wildly different than what the (damn-near illiterate) estimator was writing? Well, not exactly.
Then what was the problem? The problem was that I was IMPROVING what they were writing. Not by changing the wording or meaning of any sentence. No, the way I was daring to improve the correspondence was by changing things like "their" to "they're" if what the guy had written was not correct. You guys didn't know I had such an evil streak, right?
I was getting a verbal warning for making their company look better, for making the estimator look like someone who had a little education. I remember feeling so absolutely stunned and helpless. I knew I was doing the right thing and yet here sat these two, who were absolutely convinced of the opposite and were in fact angry that I would dare to be such a maverick as to go ahead and correct things like spelling and punctuation!
Just one of a hundred little stories from my incarceration at That Roofing Company, where--believe it or not--I spent another EIGHT years of my life after the above incident. I should have run like hell that day, but I didn't.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm sitting here today feeling the same. Helpless and stunned. The detailer doesn't seem to understand the problem with his actions and is finding any excuse to get on Hans' case. Now he's chiding Hans for taking the job in Stuttgart. Hans had to explain to him that when he graduated from War College in 2007, they were ONLY offered Joint tours and were in fact told that they were required and would be beneficial to their careers. So...believing the detailer in 2007, we (and every other SWO in his class) took Joint tours. Makes me wonder what their detailers are telling them. Besides, what are we supposed to do? Get in our magic time machine and travel back to August of 2007 and pick something different? There WAS NOTHING DIFFERENT. But the detailer makes it sound like Hans willfully took his current billet just to mess with him.
And now it comes out that the detailer is also feeling the sads that Hans is doing "unorthodox self-detailing". Meaning poor detailer's little feeeeeelings are hurt (or more like, his unbearably huge ego) that Hans went ahead and found his own billet. Twice. Well, that's a long story, but there's a perfectly spot-on and legitimate reason why Hans DID do that.
Why does the detailer have to make this about Hans? Why is he trying to point the finger at Hans, who was (a) doing what he was told was best; and (b) trying to help the situation along since the original detailer ignored him too.
Why does this smell like Hans is going to come out looking like the villain?
