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Today I got one of those auto-generated notifications from LinkedIn, suggesting someone I might want to connect with. "Do you know Edwin Smith?" (Not his real name.) Well, yes, I know him, I thought, and no, I am not remotely interested in connecting with him.
Edwin was my boss for about three years, twenty-two years ago. He was a nice enough guy, I suppose, but I found him to be a poor manager. Twice a year he would deliver my performance appraisal, and the results were always the same: he would tell me that I was doing fine, he would offer no suggestions for improvement, and then he would give me a middling numerical rating.
Unfortunately, I failed to realize that several consecutive years of such mediocre appraisals had the effect of painting a target on my back, and so I got laid off in 2002. Later I found out that my performance reviews were not the only reason: I heard that Edwin had apparently been doing some creative accounting. Nothing illegal, but he had been diverting some funds from a different part of the department budget in order to pay for my position. In other words, my job did not technically exist.
So if I felt like I needed to blame someone for what had happened to me, it was easy to choose him. I wasn't bitter or anything; I didn't sit around plotting my revenge. But it was convenient for me to use him as the personification of the misfortune that had befallen me, especially if someone asked me what had happened.
But the thing is, there are several reasons why I shouldn't bear Edwin any ill will, even halfheartedly. For one thing, it turned out that he got laid off the same day I did, so it might have been more fitting to think of him as a fellow victim of a corporate decision. More to the point, though, the layoff -- as traumatic as it was in the short term -- ended up being a very good thing for me. I was rehired before my severance pay ran out, ending up in a better job with a higher salary, and with more interesting work to do. So, in retrospect, I really should have thanked Edwin for forcing a job change that I hadn't been smart enough to make myself.
I'm not actually sure what my point is with all of this. Like I said, I don't sit around nursing a grudge about a long-ago event that actually didn't do me any harm. I hadn't thought about Edwin in years, not until that LinkedIn message. But I find myself wondering now whether everyone has a similar figure somewhere in their past. Do we need to have villains in our stories? Do we go looking for them, and hold on to them even when it no longer makes sense?
I've never crossed paths with Edwin again, and it's likely that I never will. But if I do, I think I will say hi and ask how he's been.
Discussion (16)
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I certainly have a similar LinkedIn recommendation story. "No, I do not want to connect with that useless sack of used food." There was a managing consultant or some such title whom I wound up being exposed to. After the first time, I decided I never wanted to be on a gig he was leading again. All that he did was watch Porsche ads on the Internet and talk about his Porsche. In that first gig, there was one of the client offices where the guy had a Ferrari escutcheon in his office or office window or some such, and that started Mister Porsche to wondering why it only had the horse instead of the full Porsche escutcheon.
In a subsequent consulting gig, it was a large group of eleven consultants. I didn't know the gent who was leading it very well, but figured he had to be better than Mister Porsche. Except, since it was such a large group, they had an outside (customer-facing) lead and an inside lead. Mister Porsche was the inside lead. I was helping compile the report, and he decided one section was not necessary. It was the section he was assigned to write, of course.
This was about four months with traveling to another city. Mister Porsche said, "Oh, only schedule the first four weeks. We probably won't be going again until the end." Come near the end of the fourth week, he said something about being there the next week. "I'm not scheduled for that."
"Why not?"
"Because you said we would only be here up front for four weeks."
So, I got blamed for his miscommunication. I also scheduled the next week to be there from Tuesday to Friday instead of Monday to Thursday, since I figured to save the company a heap of money given the late notice. I was in trouble for that from him, but the clients loved it.
Oh, another good story. The first gig mentioned was my first traveling with that company and also the first traveling in several years. I asked the other two on my team, "How much do you guys tip at hotels for the night?"
The younger guy on the team looked poleaxed, "Tip?" He had never heard of tipping at hotels.
But Mister Porsche at least had the decency to look embarrassed, "You know, my first job was in a hotel, and I hated it when customers didn't leave a tip. But, well, I don't tip."
That told me all I needed to know about Mister Porsche.
No. In my own story, I probably am the villain, and my wife is the protagonist.
No, let 'em go.
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Sometimes we can be that guy - especially in our younger years. I like to think that I am wiser and kinder than I once was - not necessarily wiser or kinder than the next guy, but wiser and kinder than I was. King David prayed "remember not the sins of my youth". I don't think that he was just talking about the stuff surrounding Bathsheba and Uriah.
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I should add, I bless that fellow I mentioned and called Mister Porsche every time I think of him. I wound up with many stories to tell off him.
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I'm the same way. I'm hoping "my youth" extends up to at least last Thursday.
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"Edwin" sounds like one of those managers who got to the position without actually know about or being able to do the job of those he managed. So how would you really know if you were doing it well, or not?
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