uruloki’s lair

Look, I know I just do the grunt work around here. It’s my job, and I am happy to do it. So why am I the one that is thinking strategic in this office?

Here’s a little background. One of the biggest parts of my job is decorations. Writing and editing personal decorations and unit decorations is what I do more than anything else around here. I happen to think I’m pretty damn good at it, which I suppose maybe, just maybe, makes me think I know something about doing them.

Right now we have a tasker from our parent unit to provide input for the Meritorious Unit Award. Easy peasy. Go back over the time period in question (which is an issue in and of itself), pull the highlights, write them out in decoration-speak, and send them up. They asked for two pages, I’ve got three of which they will use, at most, a paragraph. No problem, that’s life. Here’s the issue: we do a lot of stuff here that, guess what, noone that doesn’t live here cares anything about. Not to mention the fact that there are multiple rotations for the time period in question which makes out local accomplishments even smaller.

I went through and pulled out some major events that our unit has contributed to over the period, and we’re looking pretty spiffy. As a matter of fact, I upgraded our chances of being in the final writeup from one sentence to one paragraph. And then I sent it in #2 as a “draft” when I know damn well that what I wrote was Grade-A. He pulls out the email that got sent out in the middle of the rotation to pat ourselves on the back and starts asking about all the stuff in it. The good parts I have already included since hey, they are a continuation of what we’ve been doing for years. Check, check, and check. The extra stuff? The stuff that only means anything to us? Didn’t make it in. This is strategic, not tactical. He buys off on that kind of logical thinking.

Added a few details, reprint, give to #2. Except… Except #1 is standing there and I (oh so thoughtful, that’s me!) included the damn laundry list of happy stuff with little marks next to the items that didn’t get in. “Waaaaaa” Guess who reverses course full throttle now? That’s right, #2 asks me to rewrite to include some of the happy bullets. Ok fine. The next draft (which I am still waiting on feedback for BTW) has the extra happy bullets. What I somehow think they are going to miss is the fact that the “spacing” on the document is such that they are all on the last page with nothing else. It’s not going to be very hard to lose that one…

Tags: Life, Stupid people //