Dodging Bullets

I’ve heard it said that experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. I’m reminded of these words by events unfolding at work of late, as I was up for a big promotion this past Fall and didn’t get it. It would have meant a pretty nice raise and expanded responsibilities that would further my career ambitions, but sadly they selected another candidate. I believe the exact words were, “We went in another direction.” Like I’d been passed over for the part of Office Drone #3 out of Central Casting. I did the job on an interim basis for eight months after the first guy they hired quit after just two weeks. After I started doing it I kind of saw why he quit, but I soldiered on anyway.

When they hired the new guy in my stead—who is now my office-mate and immediate supervisor—I had to train him how to do the job he'd won over me. Which was a delight, obviously. Especially since the eight-person selection committee had scored us overall only one point apart from each other, and my then-supervisor, Associate Director Steve, had been overruled on hiring me for the job by someone higher up the food-chain. Missed it by…that much! After they lowered the boom on me, a task Associate Director Steve refused to do, I gathered myself and every bit of magnanimity at my disposal, and set in to making way for the new guy.

I ordered my competitor’s computer, phone, desk, and chair. I scrounged up office supplies (stapler, tape dispenser, post-its, pens, calculator, etc.) for him. I picked him up in the reception lobby at the start of his first day and ferried him around to HR, Payroll, the Key Office, the Computing Center, and various orientations to get him officially established as an employee. I introduced him around to the central players that we work with in all the various departments. Finally, after a week of me getting him up to speed and rattling off price per square-foot figures on paint, drywall, carpet, etc. off the top of my head to help him create his estimates, he said that with how knowledgeable I was, he was surprised that I hadn’t applied for the job.

Up to that point, I’d said nothing about how things had evolved because I didn’t want it to be awkward between us. It’s hard enough coming to work at a new place without throwing in those kind of politics, especially since we were going to be sharing an office and working closely together for the foreseeable future. By then, we’d established a nice rapport, kibitzed about our favorite bands, and shared a few laughs. But we'd finally reached a point where I’d have to go from vague deflections and indirect answers to actually lying about the situation in order to keep a lid on it, which I was unwilling to do. Besides, he was bound to find out another way sooner or later, which would just make it worse. So I told him that I had applied for the job, and judging by his reaction it was good that I'd kept it from him for as long as I did. He got a big ol’ deer in the headlights look on his face, like he was picturing how the next phase of his career was going to go having to work in excruciating awkwardness, elbow to elbow in a steel cage death-match with the guy whose job he’d just taken.

In the end, I’m glad I gave it the week, because it allowed him a chance to get to know me, my work ethic, and personality without a filter of perceived conflict coming between us. Otherwise, without that experiential knowledge, it might have seemed like I was just making lame-ass assurances that everything was fine. Instead, I got to tell him that if he hadn’t asked I never would have said anything, and the only thing that had changed was that now he knew. So if it wasn’t awkward before, it wouldn’t be now unless he made it that way. He thought about it for a minute and decided to be cool, because he said that he’d never had an inkling that there was an issue and that if I resented it at all, he couldn’t tell, which spoke well of my character. I said, “It’s a big University and there are lots of opportunities, I’ll get the next one.” And by then, I actually meant that lame-ass assurance sincerely.

Not that I’d always been so sanguine about it, but I’d had a chance to cry in my beer Scotch about it with my boys and was acclimated to the setback weeks before he even started. Because that’s how long it takes the University to do anything. Seriously, if you jumped off the roof a building on campus it’d take you forty-five minutes to hit the ground. By the time my replacement actually got here, I’d had almost a month and half to get over feeling sorry for myself and churlish toward someone I’d never even laid eyes on. Although I do admit that I initially set it up to where the door to our office swung open into his desk, I wound up rearranging things a few days before he arrived so that wouldn’t happen.

After all, the only thing he did was have the temerity to apply for a good job and land it. Just as I had three years previous when I first came aboard, taking this job from other able candidates in the University, at least one of whom still dislikes me to this day. I’m not the kind of guy that can keep up grievances like that. It sounds exhausting, and I’m honestly just too lazy to do it. So things actually had a chance to get off on the right foot between my replacement and I, despite the odds, and he brought some great things to the job organizationally that immediately helped make our processes better. Even I had to acknowledge that, despite my greater knowledge of construction processes and estimating, he was a worthy hire who has made contributions to the department that I couldn’t have made. Hard to resent the guy for that, especially when he’s got such great taste in music.

Still, I’m not so evolved as to be above taking some enjoyment out of watching him stress over things that aren’t my responsibility anymore. It was a pretty gratifying moment when he turned to me one day and said, “You did this job by yourself for HOW long?” Because he’s feeling the heat now, even though he has me to share the workload with, while I had no one to count on but myself. Petty of me, to be sure, but I'll take my vindication wherever I can find it. And yet, over the past six months—as I’ve watched the pressure mount on him while the University piles on more responsibilities and moves the expectation goal posts yet again—there have been several occasions when I was actually glad not to have gotten the job. Days when I clocked out at four and went on to live my life without a care in the world, while a bit more of his hair turned gray as project after project came in over budget. Or when we both stayed late to work on a high priority project, but I got paid time and a half, while he just ate the time.

It’s made me think about the person at the University who wishes they'd gotten my job, and who is still holding on to bitterness about it to this day, three years later. The thing is, none of us could have predicted that two years after my hire the department would re-organize and phase out that position entirely. They slotted me into a new position that required an entirely different skill-set, which l fortunately had as well. In fact, I’m better qualified for the newly-designed position than for the one they originally hired me for. That's a bit of University politics that I don’t have time to go into but which is quite ridiculous, believe you me. Having said that, the person that wishes they had gotten my original job would not have survived the transition under the re-org because their skill-set doesn’t extend to construction estimation and project management at all. So if they’d gotten the job, they’d have found themselves out in the cold over a year ago. A bullet dodged. Not that they seem to have noticed. Granted, it took three years to go whizzing by them, but like I said, things move slowly around here.

It’s hard to be grateful for all the accidents that didn’t happen and the tragedies that pass you by, unbeknownst. And you have to broaden your perspective to realize that some of your desires would be disastrous if they actually came to pass, because when the path unchosen branches off, you rarely get to see whether it goes off a cliff or not. But if you pay attention for long enough, sometimes you do. When I was done licking my wounds and brushing off self-pity over the snub, it dawned on me that if my current job was a bullet dodged for someone at the University who still can’t see it, then perhaps the position I didn’t land was also a bullet dodged for me as well. In fact, on Monday of this week, the University laid off Associate Director Steve, who initially tried to grant me that promotion. As a result, even more stress and responsibility, that otherwise would have been mine, has piled up on my replacement—at a time when he was already sweating from the heat. And we haven’t even started the new fiscal year yet, when even more changes will be coming down the line. I guess we’ll see how long he lasts. In light of those developments, each day I find it easier to believe in dodging bullets.

I know that life must be lived going forward, but it can only truly be understood in reverse. Some apparent blessings are actually time-released poisons, while other setbacks and challenges are mercies in disguise, and we usually don't know the difference until we’re a fair piece down the road. But while hindsight may be twenty-twenty, perhaps the substance of faith is trusting in the benevolence of the outcome before the outcome is known, while life is still in the windshield and not the rearview. As Oscar Wilde said, “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” 

Seems to me, you could be dodging a bullet either way.