I spent a considerable portion of the week angry, and in fact woke up angry Monday morning after dreaming about workplace injustices. I don’t care to revisit the details, but, like Western pioneers marking bad water, I will give a brief notice on these ill fortunes. Perhaps when some history has accumulated around these events there will be something useful to learn from them.

Since I found out that I have a new job I have been waiting to be taught what it is. At last I heard when my new boss would arrive to explain my new job: next week, present Monday afternoon and Tuesday. This was the gleaming light in the distance signalling a change of routine, a relief from boredom and an escape from the some of the daggers of role uncertainty being thrown my way. Positioned as I am within a department with inadequate (and recently reduced) manpower, I play a part in many roles but none with excellence, and so I am liable for criticism on whatever part of my job the critic things I should have done completely.

The inadequacies of this situation have been building up over time, especially since I stopped trying to cover the gaps with liberal overtime months ago. In recent weeks it has become more acute and I have been weathering the storm by telling myself a measure of clarity will be brought when my boss arrives and tells those various critics just how far my responsibilities extend. During this last week the attacks have gotten worse, more directly against my ally P.B. than against myself. But I have been hoping for a double advantage from my new role; one, in concentrating my duties to allow me to point to the actual source of the problems (which is not P.B.), and two, in cutting away some of the duties I have been partly fulfilling, prompt the hiring of a replacement that would relieve some of the strain on P.B.’s department.

I spent about four hours of overtime one night lining up meetings and preparing presentations to set the stage for my boss’ visit, planning to get him thoroughly acquainted with the personalties inclined to redefine my job and resist my execution of assigned duties. One of the key meetings on this agenda was with the plant manager, and I hoped that he and my new boss could reach a solid understanding of my role that would not be shaken by the blustering of lesser players. But I found out on Friday that the whole visit had been sidelined by visits in the same week by much higher-ranking personalities to discuss much more momentous subjects. Most of the people on the schedule of meetings would be preoccupied with these dignitaries and their strategy sessions, including my own boss; rather than being a principle focus of these two days, the question of my responsibilities is now a trifling matter to be taken care of in free time, as it is found. Undoubtedly many of the people in the factory who are most likely to cause me trouble will be unable to find any time at all to have their hands tied by some visiting manager whose importance is vastly overshadowed by the other royalty they could be courting.

So now instead of anticipating a few days to hammer out the finer details of my job, I am looking forward to a hectic week in which I receive more instructions that are not clearly defined in priority, and no clear obsolescence of existing duties; and when the week is over dealing with the same cast of characters who have their own notions of what I ought to do safely intact, so that I will spend half my energy convincing people that I have the right and responsibility to ask and to attempt what I do.

Incidentally, the big meeting is to discuss a mammoth backward step that some unenlightened potentate of the sales force has proposed to our order fulfillment strategy. So that’s the uranium lining to that dark cloud.