This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 14
I had a boss who was a decent enough guy, but prone to silently changing his mind, in that somewhere deep inside his head, he’d alter the priorities or objectives of some task and seemingly assume this would osmotically propagate through the team actually doing the work. Later, he would be surprised/upset that they had instead ignored his quiet meditations and instead done what he’d asked.
One day, a colleague saw a little framed card with the famous McCloskey quote on it.
“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure that you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.”
We bought and gave it to the boss for a work anniversary, with the rest of the team cheering on.
The boss immediately put it in pride of place on his desk, and every time afterwards, someone would hark back to before one of his invisible decisions, he would just tap the sign with his pen. He’d effectively weaponized our gag gift against us!
Well played, sir, well played.
Related:
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 13
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 12
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 11
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 10
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 9
