I am a prick
If I think I am at a disadvantage I am diffident and retiring and meek and timid. If I think I have the upper hand I am confident and demanding and assertive.
When my boss was talking to me (or I should say, my boss’ boss), he said, “Let’s face it, you don’t have that many things to improve on, really only one thing, and that is your ‘soft skills.'” He has always been good at talking me up and I have always admired his discernment. But I am not entirely sure that was the best thing to tell me. It only encourages me to be more presumptious and condescending to those multiply-flawed individuals I work with.
To give you an example, I am tempted to think he is telling me (not in this phrase, but in our other conversation) that he values my contribution to the team more than my supervisor’s. Now the only reason I write this out so baldly is because I have already decided it is false; it is vanity run wild.
With such streams of thought running through my head you can begin to imagine my attitude when, while my boss is enjoying his vacation, it was announced that one of our largest customers is dissatisified again and requires immediate and sustained mollification. We–my boss’s team and some others–have a call every week to monitor the status of this particular customer and I suppose we weren’t taking it seriously enough. There hadn’t been any plan to hold this call in his absence, but I took it upon myself to inform the entire group that we would be having the call in spite of his absence.
As I was reminding one of my coworkers to join the call, she replied, “Yeah, yeah, coming, Boss Jr.” Ah, now there is a prick of different sort.