I walked into my Division Officer’s office and said (quite emotionally), “I’m not going to work for that a$$hole another day!”

This wasn’t the first time my first line supervisor had screwed me over.  If he had been doing it as a “training tool” that would be one thing, but it was always personal.  This time, he had taken an idea I had (which he said wouldn’t work) and used it as his own (showing that it did work (without me or giving me the credit)).  I was at the breaking point and that is the reason I jumped the chain of command, went into my Division Officer’s office and exploded.

My Division Officer, Scott, was a smart guy, had a great sense of humor and never “knee jerked” on anything.  After my outburst, Scott leaned back in his chair, squinted his eyes while looking at me and said, “Well, Chip, where you going to go?”  He was right, as a military person I had no where else to go.  I was there for the duration!

Have you ever been there?  Stuck, working for a tool, having no recourse and no where else to go.  Where do you go (or what do you do) when you’ve got no place else to go?  It’s happened to me more than once and here’s how I try to work with it.

First, I leverage my emotion.  Anger can be constructive if you use it as a catalyst.  I take the energy from being angry and use it to fuel work.  That way, I am controlling the situation and the situation is not controlling me (and neither is the person).

Second, I try to understand.  This guy I was working for wasn’t all bad but he was my intellectual inferior (I’m not being boastful…just calling it like it is).  He lacked the creativity to develop solutions to the problems that needed solving.  In trying to understand him, I realized that he was a tad jealous of my ability to do that.  That didn’t make him evil, it just made him human.  That’s not always the case.  Sometimes a tool is a tool and that can be all the understanding we’ll have.

Third, I rock it.  I remember the Simon and Garfunkel song, “I am a rock” and let nothing penetrate.  Seriously, I visualize myself as a rock in a stream with all the murky water passing by.  Again, this gives me the control.  I have too much to do to let anyone else ruin my day or affect my productivity.  Remember, “a rock feels no pain…and an island never cries.”  It takes a long time to wear down a rock.

After my outburst with Scott, he heard me out and then I got back to work (using the methods I mentioned above).   What I’ve learned over the years is that people are people.  I can’t control them or what they do but I can control what I do.  If I control myself, I control my world.