I turned in the brief I’d written to my boss. He read it, then called me in.
“This is great!” he said. (That’s the point at which I should have known I was being had.) He continued, “this is probably the best plaintiff’s brief I’ve ever read.”
Long pause, while I’m trying to figure out what to say.
He says, “but, as you know, we represent the defendant. So when am I going to see our brief?”
What’s the best critique of your work you’ve gotten?
“One of the best fund-raising letters I have ever read.”
From a VP at a large & famous non-profit, about a letter I wrote for a major donor.
And no, we didn’t get the gift. But I still have the letter.
I can think of two times.
The first was from my high-school Ethics and Philosophy teacher. After spending the year reading all the typical introduction to philosophy stuff (Socrates, Plato, Acquinas, Kant, Calvin, etc. etc.) our final exam was a series of very tough essay questions requiring citations from the various stuff we read. After I handed it in he stopped me in the hallway and said it was “one of the best exams I’ve ever read.” That absolutely floored me, as this guy was an incredible teacher and about ten thousand times smarter than me.
The next time was shortly after I was “politely asked” to take some time off from college and took my first programming job. I was working with one of the sysadmins trying to figure out why something wasn’t working. When we solved the problem, he said “You know, you’re one of the few programmers around here who really understands what’s going on.” That was a hell of a compliment since I was the youngest guy there and had never even had a full-time job before.
Uh, was that a couple of “whooshes” I just heard?
Does the OP need to change the title of the thread to “Cleverest eviscerations of your work ever,” or am I missing something?