Standing Up In The Boat Without Rocking It

There is a difference it appears between rocking the boat and standing up for yourself.

I’m still struggling to see where the line is exactly.  I could picture my father frowning in disapproval as I made my decision this morning to stand up for myself and rock the boat just a little.

I’ve described my co-teammates drama queens on more than one occassion, but the queeniest of them all is definitely FW.  He certainly gets himself into these pissy, martyr-like moods.  Mind you, he certainly knows pretty much everything about everything and he deserves respect and I am certainly in awe of his knowledge but the diva belittling ‘tude can go.

Last night, something went horribly wrong with our ancient, on it’s last legs, no longer supported by anyone by us interface engine that’s connected to our ancient and barely supported HIS (Hospital Info System) and pretty much everything else.  (We have 2 other interface engines — one really terrible one that kind of goes with a package of software that doesn’t really work with it and one we just got to replace the dying engine.)   Now, while I was the one on call, I felt unsure about a few things and there were a few things beyond me.  I admit it.  However, I’m not completely stupid.  I do have 8 years working in Hospital IS and over 10 years in IT.  However, one of the problems I’ve run into with training on the ancient interface is that it’s pretty stable and when it does go into crisis, no one really wants to take the time to show me how to fix it; they generally want me to get out of the way and let them do the fixing.  There never seems to be any real follow up either.

Let’s just say that through a series of events I ended up on the phone multiple times with FW and his increased pissy Drama Queen attitude telling me to butt out.  He basically wouldn’t even give me the chance to do the things I actually do know how to do and there was a lot of miscommunication because he was talking to some of the users and I was talking to users and who knows who was saying what, but what I was hearing wasn’t right and I know it couldn’t be what he was saying.

But to me personally, he was dismissive, snotty, unprofessional.  He treated me like I knew nothing and was worth nothing and the more I thought about it, I got angry because I’ve heard him talk to our users like that and I realzed that it was kind of abusive.

I normally try to stay out of the drama at work.  That’s pretty much my motto.  Stay out of work drama.

So, after getting paged repeatedly through the night and not having much sleep, I had plenty of time to think about it.  I never complain about anything where I work now.  In two years, I’ve hardly had a complaint other than that issue with my monitor which was an ergnomic problem.  I mean, I’ve been told that I have a calming effect on the integration team.  Certainly, of the four of us, I’m the least likely to cause a scene.  I’m considered the most laid back and the least likely to be bothered by anything in particular — all of these things, I’m sure, would surprise my former co-workers and bosses.  I’ve worked very hard to make myself over, learning from my mistakes at my last job.  I have no desire to be the boat rocking Diva I used to be.

Well, apparently, all of my hard work  to be laid back has paid off.  When I emailed my boss that I needed to discuss something with him, he took it very seriously.  I think he was actually worried that I was going to tell him I was going to quit or something.  He asked me if he should he “scared”.

When I explained that I was concerned about FW’s treatment of me last evening and how he speaks to users lately, he took me seriously.  We discussed that FW does seem to cycle through this and sometimes he needs to be taken aside and reminded to tone it down.  My boss pointed out that FW may have been brushing me off because he likes to play the hero and I pointed out that I like to play the hero too.  I did make a point of commenting that I understand that FW does in fact have more experience and knowledge about the engine than I do and that I value and respect both which is why I was wary of commenting at all.

My boss was very glad that I came to him and he recognized that since I never come to him with a complaint it must have been very important to me that I bring it up.

I’m quite proud of myself.  I recognized that FW was abusive to me.  I tried to talk to him last night.  When he continued to be a prick, I stood up for myself in a professional manner, even if my father is frowning at me in my mind.  I just don’t understand how he could have taught me to stand up for myself and yet expect me not to make waves at work.  Anyway, I think it’s possible to stand up for yourself without rocking the boat.

tags: work, drama queen

One comment

1. on March 29, 2006 at 9:02 pm

   Tamara said:

   Kudos! Sounds like you handled it perfectly, and you’ve really earned the respect of your boss since you’ve been in this job.

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