Practice What You Preach, Ya Pisser

i work with a fella that is considered by everybody to be superman/mr. perfect because he can work around the clock endlessly, he's an expert at everything (seriously, no joke), and everybody looooves him. when i first started, he was my mentor and i truly felt like he had my best interests at heart. i would talk with him whenever i stepped in mud or needed guidance.

things started to change for me when i hit my stride at work and i found that the more feedback he gave me, the less i wanted to hear. it would always start out kinda positive, like, "you're dotting all your i's and crossing your t's. you've got all the blocks and tackles down." and then it would turn to, "but you know, a lot of people talk to me. i don't know why. but what i've heard is blah, blah, blah." and blah, blah, blah would consist of, "you don't use resources properly." or, "you don't do this." or "you don't do that." which may or may not be true.

the last time he tried to sock a medicine ball to the gut, i threw it right back in his face. because the truth is i do a good job at work. maybe not the greatest job in the history of the world as we know it, but a pretty darn good job. i work hard, keep my nose clean and to the grindstone, and do my best to be client-oriented. and having 15 years in the industry overall, i know how to do my job. maybe because, as the adorable one pointed out, the job is beneath me. this is not an arrogant statement. it's like me being a secretary (nothing wrong witht that) when really i can do the work of a director or a vice president.

so today, mr. perfect asks me if i have time to work on a project for him. i'm thinking it will be something interesting. nope. he wants me to collate collateral and ship it to a bunch of our offices. uh, hello? we have an administrative assistant whose job it is to do that stuff. this is from the same guy who lectured me on not using resources properly. yay, right.

nevermind that i already had a meeting to attend that would conflict with me getting his stuff out the door, but the bigger issue to me was, if you preach to use resources properly, you better practice that philosophy. because i'll call you on it the minute you give me some lam-o lecture tomorrow.

here's the deal--he'll rat me out to my boss, and it will show up on my annual review, i can be sure of it. and he'll try to corner me some time in the next month to just "check in" and "see how things are going." and then he'll take the opportunity to lob all kinds of stuff at me because the real issue was--he wanted me to do his grunt work without hemming and hawing. and you know what? that didn't happen.

the difference between then (when i took his crap) and now (when i don't), is that i'm okay with failing his little tests. i'm not going to work all weekend or come in at 2:00 a.m. for weeks on end when i don't need to. know why? because i'm not going to look back on my life and wish i had put more time in at the office. i'm too selfish about my time. if that makes me some kind of no good, lazy slacker, so be it.

and if it means that mr. perfect never thinks i'm worth promoting because i don't do his grunt work, well so be it. there's more to life than work. too bad mr. perfect can't see that. guess he's not so perfect after all.