Fallen

I read an interesting story yesterday that involved a donkey falling into a well.  The donkey was obviously trapped and his owner didn't know what to do.  The farmer decided to bury the donkey in the well.  He did not use the well, it was obviously dangerous and needed to be filled in, and the donkey was old.  He gathered his neighbors to help him fill in the well.  As each shovelful of dirt went into the well, the donkey shook it off his back and stomped his feet packing the dirt below him and eventually stepping up and out of the well.  There was a moral to this story.  Life will throw dirt on you, but you have to be resilient, shake it off, stomp it down, and step up out of the pit.

This story fits my day yesterday.  My boss has mood swings.  His mood yesterday towards Facebook, personal email websites, and blogs was of anger.  He wanted me to work on items that I had yet to receive information for because the suspense had yet to arrive.  In other words, it is hard to write a report without any resources.  I did as I was told and focused on the work computer writing aimless sayings on a word document that would later be deleted, but it looked like I was working intently.

Around the time I was to leave for the day, my COL calls me into his office.  He informs me that my boss wishes to write me a bad evaluation for my annual report.  I told him I was confused because I just spoke with my boss who informed me I was doing fantastically.  M COL told me that he stood up for me and blocked the bad evaluation, but that next time he would not interfere.  I had to talk to my boss.  I went back to my office and asked the boss if I could have a few moments of his time.

We walked over to the conference room.  I confronted him about what the COL informed me.  He denied ever telling me I was doing good things.  This turned into two hours of him telling me how horrible I am.  He told me that everyone in the office was complaining about me.  I asked for examples, he gave me two examples of misperception followed by, "it's basically everyone in the office."  He told me that he didn't put me in charge while he was gone, that the new cpt was in charge.  I told him that the new cpt didn't want it and thanked me for taking it.  He told me he knew I was having relationship issues, to which I replied, "Sir, I'm not in a relationship, don't you have to be in a relationship to have relationship issues?"  He told me he would support my decision to see someone to talk to professionally.  He told me I sent an email once that didn't seem to be professional in his opinion.  Ugh, what in the world is going on here? What kind of a leader keeps all this information to himself?  Before we went our separate ways, he said, "it's a good thing you are changing duty stations when we get back so you can get a fresh start." How did I go from being the previous boss's number one to being the most useless person in the office?