On_the_ledge

If one of my friends came to me upset because they had been treated disrespectfully by someone at work, I'd ask them not to let themselves be defined by some random rude person. The world is full of assholes and unfortunately, we all encounter them from time to time. I'd let my friend talk it out and vent because that can help people begin to deescalate a bit. I'd help them come up with the best way to handle the situation. Was the asshole a peer, a supervisor, or a customer? Most of the time, the best advice will be to just go on living your life, doing your job and not to give the offender the satisfaction of knowing that they got to you. I would feel some compassion and gladly help them work through it because that's what friends are for.

I don't do so well when I have to give myself the same treatment. For the second time this year, I got absolutely blindsided by someone at work today. I was setting up a workstation for a chemistry professor when the admin for his department came in and announced "Make sure you check everything before he leaves because when they set up my stuff, nothing worked for two weeks." I looked at her dumbfounded.WTF? I set her up when she was hired and never got a single ticket from her afterwords. I've deployed workstations to hundreds of people on the campus and have never gotten that kind of feedback. I was embarrassed and knew better than to engage in front of the professor. I later emailed the admin and found out that part of her original issue was with her telephone, which isn't something IT handles. She doubled down on the rest of her story, though, claiming I'd left her with a laptop that couldn't access the network or print. That would be pretty difficult because part of deploying a computer is printing a page from a network printer that the user has to sign. 

Wonder Woman, who actually has an important, high-powered job at the same university, unlike my low-pressure, just doing it to pass the time job, did her best to talk me off the ledge. She swears that I am a well-loved and valued person who has a reputation for being super-helpful and nice. That's absolutely what I strive to do. I swear I'm not one of those mean IT guys that fusses at people. Nor am I a slacker. I'd never want to embarrass my wife or myself like that. I genuinely like helping people out with computer issues. I've been doing this for 30 years. During my career in public K-12 education, people were more professional and respectful than what I have encountered in higher ed.

I wrote an angry email that I didn't send. As the hours pass, I am less and less upset, but I am still bothered. I know I am not responsible for this person's lack of social skills. I don't question my ability to do something as simple as issue a workstation to a new employee. I don't know what it will take for me to feel whole after this. I plan to talk to my boss tomorrow to ask him to have a word with this lady's boss. I fear that my boss, who is very much a "don't make waves" type, will opt for ignoring it, and I don't know how to handle that. I'm not working these days for the dough as much as I am to have something to get me out of the house and keep me busy. If it starts feeling like a net negative, I can just head right back into retirement.

Anyway, thanks for listening/reading as I work this out in my own head.

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