What is the 17th way, oh mighty ExTank?
The path to serenity is often cleverly obscured. You must endeavor to perservere.
Or check your email.
Several of mine tried. Unfortunately for him, the person taking credit did not understand it well enough to explain how it worked, the bigger boss who he was showing off to did. It took him about 3 minutes to figure out the brains behind this tool and contacted me the next day to A: Thank me, B: to ask for a few minor adjustments to be made.
Drach - 3 time Scholastic Inc Innovator Award Winner
Or just go all Josey Wales on his ass.
“My words of steel are right here in this filing cabinet that I’m going to shove up your ass if you ever try to steal credit for my work again.”
I would say to let it drop. I had to when the same type of thing happened to me. It was more of a productivity thing then a money thing though.
We had purchased a piece of software to use for a project. The project went belly up but it occured to me that we could us it for internal testing. I started playing with it and developed any easy way to test mass amounts of claims rather than a “one claim at a time using a modem at a snails pace”
I brought the idea up to my boss who sort of “thought” it sounded good but sort of set it on the back burner. One of her other employers who actually did the testing was not into new technology and balked about using it over and over again.
It came to head one day when we were bringing on a new client. We needed to bombard the line with claims. I was not really involved but had heard about their plans for most of the day. They were rallying people to come in on a Saturday to key claims.
I got my software ready, my batches set and waited. An hour before the end of the day on a Friday my boss asked me if I could come in and key claims.
I told her I would but I was going to use the software and the batches I built. I did not want to sit there keying claims one at a time by hand and then send them one at a time.
I came in Saturday and started up the software, hit the send and went for a cigarette.
On Monday the department was so thrilled with the new way we could send claims at such a fast pace.
My boss took all the credit because “she told me I could use it”
Yeah. She continued to take credit everytime we used it for anything else, ever.
Thankfully she no longer works there and I don’t have to hear every year on my review how “I” continued to improve the use of the software that was “her” idea to “let” me use.
a fight with your boss is phyrric victory. You could take the high road, and say “dude, I helped drive this so spread the love and give me some credit.” It might be an oversight, and the boss might be a jerk. either way you’re in a better place because you’ll either have some cred or prove your boss is a dickweed.
Of course, the type of person who who steal credit for your ideas is also the type of person who would likely be vindictive if you upstage them. In Liar’s Poker Michael Lewis describes a superior who takes credit for a new idea. They get revenge by coming up with a similar plan without the superior, which caused the superior to lose face. The guy collected his next bonus and left, but Michael said it left a bad taste in his mouth.
I’m with the others in knowing that you’re not going to get ahead by fighting him. Just be more aware in the future.