Son 2 called this afternoon! It was great to hear from him, and it's not like I was getting anything else accomplished anyway. He said according to his call logs we hadn't talked since January. I though we had a call a month or so ago, but I'm not going to argue. As I say, it was great to hear from him.
He started by asking me what's new ("Nothing much. What's with you?"*) and then we started to talk about a problem he's been having at work. Right now today he thinks it's getting better, but he's got a new boss and he's been having a bumpy road getting to where they can communicate successfully. So we talked about it for a while.
We have done this before, and in fact in this conversation he remarked on that. I told him there was nothing strange about it ... it's just that "dealing with the workplace" happens to be an experience he and I have in common, so it makes sense we'd discuss it. I said, "If you told me you had a great idea for a new Tabletop RPG you wanted to lead, I'd be happy to listen but I wouldn't have a lot to contribute to the conversation."
But then we talked more about his new boss. He said that she drives herself too hard, trying to accomplish things that she doesn't need to do because (so far as he can tell) they're not part of her job. Certainly his old boss didn't do any of those things. And she's chronically stressed. But he has also figured out (through trial-and-error) that he needs to be very cautious about offering to help. If the offer lands just a little bit wrong, she's likely to get offended.
Then I had an idea.
"You know, a long time ago I had a job that they should really never have hired me for. I didn't know how to do it and they had no provision for training me, but the boss decided 'The vibes are right.' [That's a quote!] Also they all thought it would be easy, because the last person to hold the job (who had left to go on maternity leave) made it look easy. But she had grown up with the company since they were four people in a garage, so of course she knew everything already. Anyway, I was tossed into this job and started drowning.
"But the reason I bring it up is that even though I didn't know how to do any of the core tasks, I did learn pretty quickly how to do some of the peripheral stuff. So when I started to panic, I'd go do a lot of those peripheral things. I'd know they weren't the most important thing, but at least I knew how to do them. So I'd focus on the stuff I knew how to do, because when I got stressed I had to do something rather than sit and do nothing. And I wonder if your new boss is in the same boat?"
We talked about her some more, and I'm not sure that's really the best diagnosis for what's going on with her. But I was struck by something Son 2 said, when I described that ancient job of mine.
Right when I said, "I had to do something rather than sit and do nothing," he interjected, "Because that's a very Hosea-Tanatu way to react to that kind of situation."
"I'm sorry. What?"
"That's what you do. You dive in to do what you know. Some people would just figure, 'Hell, they haven't taught me what to do yet, so I'm just gonna sit here till they do.'"
It has been 35 years since I held that job, and that had never occurred to me before.
I don't know how to generalize the observation. In other words, I don't know what to do with it, or how to connect it to anything else that I know about myself. But I figure if I record it here tonight, maybe I'll have some insights about it later.
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* OK, that was a cheap shot. I apologize. I do keep busy—well, kind of—and I'm not at the point yet where I identify with that song.
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