What's Your "Good Deed"?

[TickTock]

[I was going to post this in the other thread, but I didn't want to mess up street's positive thread momentum.]

What "good deed" have you done?

For me, it was *not* punching megacorp's Senior Director in the nose when he sent an email to me, cc'ing my boss and another dotted-line boss, reminding me (he started the email with "Team", but it was addressed to me [and I was the one charged with handling the matter]) that he had requested weekly updates on the matter, had not seen anything in two weeks, and that this was the "final reminder".

Me (in my mind) - Here is the update you were sent eight days ago. And here is the update from one day ago, from the Teams meeting which you attended and where I presented the update. *Punch in the nose* I am leaving three days earlier than previously announced. This is your first, final, and only reminder.

Me (in real life) - Seeing that my boss had already replied with a nice, megacorp-approved politically correct explanation (which included, "I apologize for any confusion") I decided that I had nothing constructive to add and backed away from the keyboard.

 

[Route246]

I find the best way to handle those situations when someone is trying to throw me under the bus is to respond as if my late mother or someone else I respect is watching me and try my best to make them proud of me. Punching out a jerk is not a mature thing to do and only presents very short term satisfaction. If the guy is like this it is best to let your boss handle it the way it was handled. This is not an anomaly. Jerks are everywhere in corporate-ville. You just have to hope karma gets them while you are both still around to watch the show.

 

[FlaGator]

If the theme really is "what action did I NOT take that was the polite and gracious thing to avoid doing?" I'll add:

Professionally, it took me several years to learn that discretion is the better part of valor. Bosses come and go, they have different needs than subordinates, so silent, if begrudging compliance is often the best way to go.
Glad I learned it when I did, might have had an even better career if I had learned it earlier. As it is, I feel lucky to have had a career at all after my 20's given my arrogance and mouth.

On the interpersonal/dating side, I am starting to forego that acquired patience and acquiescence, but slowly.

Recently:
-Didn't tell the now ex-GF that strongly suggesting I buy a specific style of shoe before a date 36 hours later was poor form
-Choose to not tell the same lady that her response of "my last boyfriend said the same thing about that song" when I told her a certain song made me think of her was a bad idea
-Bypassed the opportunity to tell her I didn't like being the unintentional bit player at a dance club where her last BF was likely to show up. He did with a date and the former partners put on quite a show with me and the other woman becoming extras in their show.
-On the other hand, I head shot that relationship (figuratively) after she unfavorably compared me to her ex of 35 years after knowing me for just 3 months. I've made a point of never making comparisons to "formers" in the 10 years since my wife died. That's a bright line for me.

Valuable lessons for me about being better attuned to skillful manipulation in relationships. Good luck to her, and the next guy who falls under her spell, and that's easy to do. There were a few before me with the same outcome.

I'm out of patience with dating situations that involve that kind of manipulation and control, especially at the outset. Now in my mid-60's, I've realized the behavior of my cohort it set and unlikely to change. More than ever before in my life, what you see is what you'll get - forever. Not going to accept things like the above for the rest of my life.

 

[TickTock]

I find the best way to handle those situations when someone is trying to throw me under the bus is to respond as if my late mother or someone else I respect is watching me and try my best to make them proud of me.

Oh, absolutely.

This wasn't intended to be a serious discussion; more of a fun 'what-if' exercise. That may not have been clear.

On a more serious note, I wouldn't resort to physical violence for an asinine corporate thing like that. As I only had three days left at that site, I did consider forwarding him the two updates he'd been given in the last two weeks. But that would have burned an unnecessary bridge. You *don't* point out an error of someone at that level in megacorp, particularly as a contractor, unless you never want to w*rk there again.

Back to the fun now!

 

[TickTock]

If the theme really is "what action did I NOT take that was the polite and gracious thing to avoid doing?" I'll add:

I like your title better than mine! And I like your examples.

 

[Ready-4-ER-at-14]

Was at the gym this morning doing back extensions on a machine next to a guy on my left doing chest work. He got done and cut between us and i noticed a bill on the floor about where he had just stepped so caught up to him and said you may have dropped this. He was appreciative but said not his, so went to the machine just behind, back and to the left of me and just behind where he was and offered to guy doing pull downs who did not refuse it.

Probably silly to have done and if no one was around would have just pocketed it and forgot about it. Felt good for a moment anyway. Turned out it was just $1 when unfolded.

 

[ncbill]

Because I knew he was only a couple years from his pension I didn't rat out my department head.

Whose heavy social drinking had tipped over into something much more serious after (as best as I could figure out) his wife caught him cheating.

But the above situation made my life so miserable I just walked away from what would have been an enjoyable career, with a decent pension.

Don't know if I did him a favor since he died just a few years ago from a simple fall...bled out internally, despite emergency surgery.

IIRC, most clotting factors are made in the liver.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

A couple months ago I was driving to church and saw a pickup smoking by the road ( I live in a rural area)

I stopped going to church and went to the smoking truck. His radiator was killing him. I went home and got a bunch of water and anti freeze. We got him cooled down and he went on his way.

This morning, two months later, he stops by and insisted on giving me $10 for the antifreeze. I told him to give it to the next buy in need, he stuffed the bill in my shirt and told me he would and that I should do the same.

 

[frayne]

More often than not these days I find my good deed is accomplished by simply keeping my pie hole shut. Especially when the topics of religion, politics or money management are brought up. The older I get the more I realize some people are doomed by their own destructive behavior and nothing I can say or do is going to change that dynamic. TickTok's post brought to mind the story of Ray Dalio punching out one of his first bosses and things didn't turn out too badly for old Ray.

 

[CaptTom]

That passive-aggressive corporate speak used to grate me. "Perhaps you misunderstood..." and such. Although I did get pretty good at it, I'm not proud of that.

If you really want good innuendo, look at the legal profession. Attorneys have a way of couching insults in pompous-sounding words.

I was recently going through some very old and very boring legal documents we unearthed about the founding days of an organization I belong to. One of the founders was an attorney who dealt with a lot of legal wrangling to get the thing going.

In the middle of a 20-some-odd page legal filing, I came across a long dissertation of the history of herring farming in the waterfront region of the property in question. It went on for a couple of pages, explaining how the industry was born, the processes involved, the different species of herring which came and went over the years, and how the fishery had faded in modern times.

I didn't get the punch line until the very end, when the writer pointed out that stocks of the species "red" herring had diminished to the point where we not only wouldn't, but couldn't present one to the other party if we wanted to.

Yeah. It was a crack about the opposing attorney calling one of his points in a previous brief a "red herring."

 

[TickTock]

More often than not these days I find my good deed is accomplished by simply keeping my pie hole shut.

Me too. Or fingers off of the keyboard.

 

[Al18]

TickTock,
Now that you're retired as of 3/8, time to stop thinking about the old j*b and spend more time focusing on your retirement plans.

 

[TickTock]

Al18,

Already done.