So, I’ve been meaning to share this for a bit. It’s one of those experiences that just sticks with you, you know? It really crystalized a thought for me, a pretty blunt one, but here we are. It’s about my recent attempt – my “practice,” let’s call it – in trying to get something, anything, productive done when you’re up against a certain kind of people.
I was working on this little project, something I genuinely thought would make things a tad smoother for everyone involved in our local club. Nothing groundbreaking, just a simple streamlining of how we managed our shared resources. I’d spent a good few weeks mapping it all out, talking to folks who actually used the stuff, and came up with a plan. Solid plan, I thought. Easy to implement, saved time, saved headaches. Who wouldn’t want that, right?
Well, then I had to present it to “the committee.” And oh boy, let me tell you about these guys. It was like walking into a brick wall, but a brick wall that could talk back and make your life miserable with pointless questions.
My “practice” quickly turned from “how to implement this efficiently” to “how to survive a meeting without screaming.” Here’s a little taste of what I went through:
- First, they didn’t even seem to have read the proposal I sent a week in advance. Standard stuff, I guess.
- Then, the questions. Not questions to understand, mind you. Questions to show how smart they were, or to pick tiny, irrelevant nits. “Have you considered the implications for the theoretical Martian colony?” Kinda stuff. Utterly disconnected from the reality of just wanting to book a piece of equipment without seven layers of paperwork.
- One guy, the main one, let’s call him Mr. Knows-It-All, just kept shaking his head. Didn’t matter what I said, what data I presented. He had this smirk, like I was a kid asking for candy. Infuriating.
- They wanted more reports. More projections. More meetings to discuss the possibility of future meetings. It was a masterclass in bureaucratic stalling.
I tried to be patient. I really did. I went back, gathered more “data” they asked for (which mostly felt like busywork), and rewrote sections to be even simpler. I explained things like I was talking to a five-year-old, not because I thought they were dumb, but because they were acting like they didn’t want to understand. They just wanted to be obstacles.
The whole process dragged on for months. Months! For something that should have taken a week to approve and another to set up. My enthusiasm just drained away, replaced by this dull ache of frustration. It felt like they were actively trying to crush any initiative. Maybe that was the point, keep things exactly as they are, no matter how inefficient or annoying.
And the way they talked to me, and to others who had ideas before me, I heard. Condescending. Dismissive. Like any new idea was a personal affront to their entrenched little kingdom. It wasn’t about the project’s merits at all; it was about them, their power, their resistance to anything that wasn’t their idea.
So, what was the result of my “practice”? Well, the project got watered down to the point of being almost useless. A shadow of its original self. They “approved” a version so toothless it barely changed anything. Victory by attrition, their style.
And that’s when it hit me. These guys, they weren’t just being difficult. They weren’t just “old-fashioned” or “cautious.” No, it was simpler than that. They were just being assholes. Plain and simple. It’s not a professional term, I know, but sometimes, it’s the only one that truly fits the bill. That’s the real record from this whole sorry practice. Some guys are just assholes, and they love to make things hard just because they can.
