It's All In The Presentation

All of my adult life, I've worked, with only short little breaks here and there, what with the havin' babies and moving to Alabama business, BUT, for the most part, I've worked my entire adult life.  During that time, which spans 25 years of workiness, I have met and enjoyed many co-workers, supervisors, bosses, clients, and extraneous people of all ages and types.

I love it.

I love working, and love helping people, and hope that I make a positive difference in people's lives.

The first 14 years of my work life I spent in the media--radio, specifically, as an announcer/copy writer, and the skills that I used in that work have carried me through the rest of my life in a huge way--no question.  When you're 18 years old and it's part of your job to stand in front of people and present something, be it an artist about to sing a song, or a new car that your client would like to sell--any old thing--you develop what I consider to be the single most important skill in the whole wide wiggedy world:  The art of Presentation.

Seriously, if you can do an effective presentation, you can do anything.  Anything.

Think about it--think what skills are required.  Can you show up?  Check.  Are you clean and well kept?  Yes.  Did you write down a few things to say and do you speak a language that can be understood by the people you are speaking to?  Yup.  Are you enthusiastic?  YAY!  OK, then!  Now go out and conquer the world!  Because now you can sell things!  And the more enthusiastic you are, the more things (be they ideas or actual "things") you can see and the more money you'll make and blah, blah, blah, blah.

So that's what I do all day--the same thing I've been doing and loving since I was a teenager.  I present ideas, and I defend ideas.  I bend people's brains a little so they can come over to my side and if I can't get them to come over to my side, well at least they can't say I didn't try.  By the time they're done with me, even if they still disagree with me, they will at least be softened up.

That's my job, and I do it very, very well.  People who start off a conversation hating my guts end the same conversation by thanking me for enlightening them--THAT is how fucking good I am at my work.  That's how well I am able to present and communicate an idea.

Anyway....I had an encounter with a person who, for the lack of a better description, has a very small mind.  He can't think beyond his own little experience, and rather than being enthusiastic about things on his own, he likes to take things that you're enthusiastic about and destroy them so that he doesn't feel bad about not having any marketable skills.  A real yuck of a person.  

Actually--you know him you love him--it's my boss.  Today was my annual review.  As if the 12 cent raise wasn't insulting enough (but I was expecting zero cents, so whatever), I also got to be told that I didn't actually have the one skill that I know I have in abundance.  He declared that I, a person who has been making presentations and influencing other people's decisions her entire adult life (and getting paid for it, I might add), somehow needs help in that department.

To be fair, he did this (inexplicably) AFTER he said I was a "natural leader" and a great advocate and I "really sell people" on the project, etc.  That's another part of what made it so completely insane.

So, me.  The one so adept at speaking to virtually any demographic and getting them on board with whatever kind of nutty thing my company might want to throw at them, was given a low grade in "communication", specifically speaking, writing, and my ability to influence.

Bliss.

What a piece of crap this guy is.

But here's the thing, and, this is important:  He's nobody.  I mean he might be a somebody to someone, like his kids or something, but to me?  Zip.  He's a nothing.  He's a person who can't even write an email (I've caught him copying and pasting MY writing) telling me his opinion on my ability to write--that makes him less than nothing, in fact.  He's actually a vacuum.  That's how nothing he is.

And why is he nothing?  Because the only gift he uses is his ability to trash people.  Instead of being uplifting, he throws you down and kicks dirt on you.  I think we all know people like that.  They never make you feel better, only worse.

There's just no room for people like that when there is so much good in the world that should be getting my attention instead.

So while it bugs me that he gets to say shit like that (which is entirely incorrect and insane) and get away with it and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it, and it bugs me that I've had way too many drives home from work during which I had imaginary conversations with him where I told him to go fuck himself; there is a solution, and that solution is simply to forgive...myself.  I forgive myself for thinking that he might ever be a decent person and I forgive myself for falling for any of his phony-baloney nice guy crap and I forgive myself for getting pissed and wanting to jump up and down on his head with golf spikes on my feet.

These are natural reactions that any normal person would have when someone is purposely fucking with you, so honestly, there's nothing to forgive.

How about this--I'll do you one better.  I'll forgive the piece of shit for being a piece of shit.  Because just like any other piece of shit, he's just a representation of waste.  I'm sure he didn't choose to be garbage and like any and all other narcissists, he was created by someone who chewed him up and pooped him out--someone treated him like garbage and surprise, surprise, after enough of that he eventually became garbage.  A Poo Is Born. 

And, wow, sucks to be you and all, but you're still a piece of shit.  

Just because I forgive you for being poo doesn't mean I want to hang out with you.

Anyway....

That's my Friday presentation.  I hear that I suck at those, so if you must say something, please be kind...