if you can't say something nice...
The Navy has this really ugly way of doing performance evaluations for its officers. It ranks them. You become number 2 of 20, or 10 of 20, or God forbid, 20 of 20. Being number one in your group is a really good thing and being the bottom is a career killer. Therefore, it doesn't matter if everyone you work with is stellar or pond scum. What matters is being at the top of the list of stellar or pond scum people. If you work with all superstars and you end up 18th of 20. You can be a superstar too, but you officially suck. What this does, is lead to a shitload of politics and back stabbing, and people trying to look better by belittling their contemporaries. If someone is higher than you in the pecking order, they become a target. So, the two basic ways of looking good were being good, and making everyone else look worse than you. (Can't you tell I miss all that?)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I taught flight school in that Navy. I was in a group of a lot of instructors who were, of course, ranked against each other. I wasn't #1, but I was close. I was damn good at what I did. One day, I left my locker unlocked in the instructors' locker room. Somebody grabbed my little survival vest (we wore this thing outside our flight suit in case we went down somewhere and needed a band aid, flare or something) and draped it over the Commanding Officer's chair in his office. It was a stupid move made by someone feeling the need to move up the pecking order at my expense. It didn't work. The next day I went around frantically looking for the thing, not believing someone would steal it from the instructors' locker room. The C.O. came out of his office with it, asking if I was looking for something. He and I had a chuckle about it all. Never found out who the asshole was though.
The point of this is...you are who you are. You aren't who you are because of some comparison to anyone else, and if your only way of making yourself look good is to paint someone else as less than you, your game needs a lot of work. "Well, so-and-so didn't do it either, and not only that, he..." doesn't cut it.
A work related incident brought on this little trip up to the soapbox, and it's not that important here, but if a lame attempt to make someone else look worse than you is all you got...you don't have much to hang your hat on.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I taught flight school in that Navy. I was in a group of a lot of instructors who were, of course, ranked against each other. I wasn't #1, but I was close. I was damn good at what I did. One day, I left my locker unlocked in the instructors' locker room. Somebody grabbed my little survival vest (we wore this thing outside our flight suit in case we went down somewhere and needed a band aid, flare or something) and draped it over the Commanding Officer's chair in his office. It was a stupid move made by someone feeling the need to move up the pecking order at my expense. It didn't work. The next day I went around frantically looking for the thing, not believing someone would steal it from the instructors' locker room. The C.O. came out of his office with it, asking if I was looking for something. He and I had a chuckle about it all. Never found out who the asshole was though.
The point of this is...you are who you are. You aren't who you are because of some comparison to anyone else, and if your only way of making yourself look good is to paint someone else as less than you, your game needs a lot of work. "Well, so-and-so didn't do it either, and not only that, he..." doesn't cut it.
A work related incident brought on this little trip up to the soapbox, and it's not that important here, but if a lame attempt to make someone else look worse than you is all you got...you don't have much to hang your hat on.
John put this out here at 8:08 AM
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