Different Priorities

Pretty Flowers

Here’s a true story that will, a) mean nothing to anybody but me, and b) has no real point to it - both of which, I guess, make it a perfect story for this blog...

Many years ago, I worked for a guy I’ll call “Bruce”. Bruce was hired to be my boss - and not just my boss, but the boss of everyone that worked at this particular place of business. The problem for me was, since I happened to be higher up on the food chain than anyone else, I was the one who worked most directly with Bruce.

Not long after Bruce was hired, a rumor developed that I resented Bruce because he, and not I, was put in the position of running the division where we both now worked (or maybe I should say, “where we were both now employed”). I think this was at best, only partially true - but it was nothing personal. I didn’t resent Bruce because he was my boss. If I resented Bruce at all, it was only because he had no clue what he was doing.

Because of his lack of whatever it was he was lacking, much of my time was taken up either doing the work myself - or undoing the few things which Bruce attempted to take care of on his own. I guess it was fortunate that this rarely happened.

At the time, Bruce was (and presumably still is) married to a woman who somehow got into the hat business on a part time basis. I don’t remember what her “real” job was, but whatever it was, it left her enough time to sell hats to people in her spare time. These hats were along the lines of baseball caps embroidered with little league team or company logos - stuff like that. As I recall, she would order these hats a few at a time from somewhere in China - and this was before ordering things from China was all anybody ever did. Anyway, in the evenings, Bruce would often help her in some capacity with her part-time hat selling venture.

One day at work, Bruce got it in his head that he was going to take care of a particular customer order “all by himself.” And even though I offered to help, it was, he said, something he could handle alone and I didn’t need to get involved - which, amazingly, was how it should have been all along.

The particular order that I didn’t need to be involved with, involved measuring for, and ordering forty-thousand dollars worth of doors. I don’t know exactly how many doors constituted an order worth forty-thousand dollars - but I’m pretty sure it was a lot.

The good thing was, I was told, all the doors were the exact same size - you measure for one door and you’ve measured them all. The bad thing was, I was not told (but thought), if you make a mistake, you just screwed up forty-thousand dollars worth of doors.

This was going to be a big money maker, I was told, because, not only were all the doors all the same size, but all “we” had to do was place the order - and when the forty-thousand dollars worth of doors were ready, the doors would ship directly to the contractor. This meant no storing them, no handling them - nothing. All we had to worry about was what we were going to do with the ginormous pile of profits that would be pouring in from this money maker. This is how it’s done, I was told - many, many times.

One morning, after waiting six or eight weeks for this door order to arrive, Bruce got a call from the less-than-happy contractor. It seems the doors had finally arrived but apparently, Bruce had made a mistake (see: ‘the bad thing” from above). All the doors were the wrong size.

Suddenly “we” were no longer worrying about how we were going to be spending our ginormous amount of profits. Suddenly “we” were instead wondering how such a thing could possibly have happened.

It was instant havoc. Phones were ringing, threats were being made, and since this was back-in-the-day, faxes were being faxed. I watched in semi-disbelief while all of this was happening. I did not have the acute business acumen which Bruce clearly had - but even still, I was beginning to get the impression that maybe this isn’t really “how it’s done.”

In the ensuing days and weeks, much effort was spent trying to, a) find a solution to this problem (which didn’t involve replacing forty-thousand dollars worth of doors, plus waiting another six or eight weeks) and, b) trying to figure out how this was someone else’s fault.

This problem eventually got resolved. How, I don’t remember - because, thank god, I wasn't involved. However it was resolved, I only know that it was stressful and costly - though importantly, not for me.

What I do remember about all of this is that somewhere in the midst of this fiasco, a now continually stressed-out Bruce came into work one morning, already spewing off about anything and everything - including his wife - and complaining that (and I quote), “I’ve got some guy trying to shove forty-thousand dollars worth of doors up my ass and all she wants to talk about are f’in* hats." (*Substitute any f-word you like).

There weren’t many times, if any, I felt sorry for Bruce. He could be kind of a know-it-all blowhard, someone who had all the answers, and wouldn’t listen to any advice - no matter how delicately it was offered. But even so, on that particular morning, I almost kind of felt bad for him. It was a lot of stress to be under - plus it was a heck of a lot of doors.