In the past, I have posted hereabouts about a colleague of mine whom I will call “Barbie” because I feel like it. Like me Barbie is, or rather was, a manager of an inside sales team. Over the past several months she has done things like break up a winning sales duo because she was not the one who came up with the idea of them teaming up; writing people up for using the Word y’all in conversation with customers; and complaining about me buying lunch for the people on my team when they exceed their productivity goals.
You may note that my use of the past tense a couple sentences back. This is because Barbie, as of this coming Monday, will not longer be a sales manager; she is being demoted to account exec, with a corresponding drop in pay and of course a great heaping plate of humiliation.
I should be all schaudenfreude about this. I WAS all schaudenfredue about this, even given my inability to spell schaudenfreude. But this morning Barbie came in to clean out her office, and in the middle of it she came into my office and started crying and now I AM FEELING EMPATHY FOR THE BITCHY NITWIT.
Stupid empathy. I never had this problem when I was an unrepetent jackass.
Seeing people in distress is hard, even if they’re flaming assholes. We’re social creatures and so our knee-jerk reaction to someone in distress feel some distress ourselves.
You’ll get over it. In a year, this will be schaudenfreude material again. Maybe even a month. A week. Tomorrow?
That may have been your chance to give her some gentle advice she might actually take to heart.
… Or to have done your best Nelson Muntz impersonation. Up to you.
Edit: I somehow completely missed your Nelson Muntz comment. I think I had this thread open in a tab way too long before I actually read it.
Why, StGermain! And you looked like such a little angel at Blackstone!
It did get to my Inner Dragon when she wrote people up for using “y’all.” Is she from the Northern Wilderness or something?
However, Skald, I am touched by your humanity and not at all surprised after all these years. She wouldn’t have let herself cry with you unless she already thought you were a good guy and trustworthy.
Can you teach her compassion too? (And about dialects?)
It’s not really Skald. Someone has stolen his keyboard. We must dispatch someone to his place of work immediately and free him from the supply closet. The true **Skald **would be rigging the office computers to boot up and play “Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead.”
I can sort of relate. Our Director of IT got shit-canned recently. Everyone in the department knew it was coming, cause once they hired a VP of IT instead of giving it to him, the writing was on the wall. The director wasn’t well-liked. He was an accountant that got into IT because our antique chain-of-command still has IT under Accounting. He was also a spineless, waffling jackass.
When the word came down though, I felt some twinges of empathy for the guy. Then I remembered I had won $50.00 because I had ‘6 weeks’ in the IT ‘how many weeks after the new VP is hired do they shit-can timmy’ pool, and the strange feeling passed.
I expect so. I can’t read her accent. What really vexed me about that was that she actually argued at one point that merely because some of our customers sound uneducated was no reason for the sales reps to do so.
Don’'t worry one bit about it.
I a few mere weeks at best she will take back up her banner of stupidity and pfiiit you empathy will evaporate painlessly.
Oooohhhh…rubs hands together evilly…whatever shall we hold out for? A bigger office? Foot rubs every afternoon? Beer runs on Friday? I’m sure we can put together a lovely little list of demands.
