Peanut Butter (see his adventures here: http://asecretaryslife.blogspot.com/2005/11/twiggys-only-happy-when-it-rains.html#links) has me doing those ridiculous letters for him again.
They are all written in a very formula, very rigid way. Reading them is as painful as attempting to swallow razor blades. I know some people would say that that simile is also apt for my blog. Hey, I don't care much how I write here. But if I am writing a business letter, I am pretty careful about how I write it.
The way he goes about this crap is so archaic. You have to manually switch around the names in the last paragraph because he tells the recipient that he is writing in order to find the most appropriate person to meet with for a 30 minute appointment. He says to them, "I have sent this letter to you and to A,B, and C. Please let me know...." blah blah blah. It just sounds incompetent. He insists on personally inspecting and signing each and every one of these letters. I hate that. My work is very good, usually error-free on the first try.
He asked for my help on the letters and for the love of God, he needs it. I rewrote his letter for him so it sounded more go-getter. He rejected most of my changes and wrote me this:
For this letter I made one of the changes you suggested but left the opening paragraph alone. I appreciate your suggestions and feel free to give me input whenever you think it's appropriate.
He makes it sound as if he's going to break my heart by not utilizing my suggestions. Trust me, Peanut Butter, you're not going to break my heart, but I will hate to see your eventual humiliation when you become unemployed. I think what drives me nuts about him is that he is such a control freak and he acts like I am affronting him by offering suggestions on how to do things better or more easily. This bit above sounds quite innocuous, right? That's because you haven't seen him in the flesh and witnessed the control freakdom. I mean, this guy will blanch at the slightest suggestion that he might be able to do something a little more easily or better. He'll blanch.
I haven't encountered this attitude with anyone else that I work with. I know how to offer suggestions in a way that doesn't come across as intimidating. Before I offer a suggestion or idea, I roll it around in my head to determine if it's worth offering, if it's workable, and how to offer it in such a way as to ensure its warm reception by the intended recipient. I am practiced in couching suggestions and ideas in non-intimidating language.
I think there is something a little wrong with him. His level of computer illiteracy seems to be higher than most of the other guys, and he seems to be trying hard to hide the fact instead of trying to learn. I would be more than happy to teach him and in my interactions with helping him with stuff, I try to be nurturing and bolster his confidence. I try to assure him that there is nothing wrong with asking questions and that I am happy to help him learn; it is what I am paid to do. Alright, no it's not, but he is a human being and I hate seeing people feeling ashamed of their ignorance when it comes to computers.
On top of that, he seems to have some strange skin ailment and a weird hair thing going on. His skin is a little pockmarked and discolored, but just under the radar of perception unless you look closely. It is as if something happened to him and he has had some kind of surgery, as though he were in some kind of accident and escaped with his life. It's like his thrusters fire a little more slowly than most people. I have seen this before, in my ex husband, who was in a car accident that caused a coma. That happened before he met me, but you could easily see there was something different about my ex husband.
Writing this blog can sometimes be cathartic for me. When I first started writing this post, it was a rant about how crazy and stupid Peanut Butter is; now that stuff has boiled away and I can sort of stand him a little more easily. I have to admit that I secretly long for his professional demise, but that is like something that I can't control, a kind of visceral disgust for people of his ilk, those who are very insecure and operating out of fear.
One can't deny, however, that Peanut Butter has been more successful in life than I. Whether he started in a better place or just has the advantage of age or whatever, I don't know. So I may rag on him a bit, but I have to acknowledge that the man must be doing something right.
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