Thanks Seesaw,

It is an absolutely great job in an organization filled with dysfunction and ruled by mad kings, bloodthirsty queens, scheming nobles and grasping climbers. In one climate survey I said we were like Game of Thrones with less blood and more paper. Because those who climb high can find themselves close to the throne in D.C., backstabbing and cronyism are common. Gals like me who just want to do the job and go home are usually roadkill for the blue flamers on their way to greatness.

And now, for another twisted fairy tale.

After the fall and abdication of King Weasel and the elevation of The Red Queen to become the Red Empress, The Kingdom of Dysfunction inherited Kendall the Simple and Tracy the Tremulous as the new rulers. Kendall the Simple rose to power on the platform that his IQ had settled at room temperature and that no one could understand him. Tracy the Tremulous rose to power on a platform of timidity in which nothing went wrong on her watch because nothing was ever accomplished.

Kendall the Simple would hold his subjects captive during folksy meetings in which he would ramble on about the free donuts and coffee that he could get nightly from the hospital while he chatted up nurses. He would frequently hold meetings to plan meetings and meetings could go on all day. Kendall would then demand to know what meeting attendees had done all day. I once had to go see him because of a mistake that I made on a voucher. My supervisor and I met with him for an hour, talking about food. In the last few seconds, he told me to change X to Y. My supervisor told me that my meeting was the fourth hour long meeting of the morning for the same thing. Kendall would frequently issue contradictory and often mutually exclusive commands and then demand to know why you didn't follow his directives. He once demanded that sections not talk to each other and only go through him. He later castigated those sections for overwhelming him and not talking to each other. I would have to show up at meetings with stacks of his emails to present when he contradicted himself over and over. This went over well. He would demand that we finish annual reports months ahead of schedule so he could tell HQ that we were way ahead and get credit, but all of the metrics would change and we would redo the annual reports over and over and over. I joked that why should we do something well once when we could do it five times, poorly. He also forced us to switch to a beta software for our records that was insanely buggy and was not yet approved because he wanted to be cutting edge. I became an expert in the software out of necessity and I had to teach a class that was very popular with the rank and file, but wildly unpopular with management. I said that the software designer quit in disgust before the software was done and numerous designers finished it, but never talked to each other. I told people that if you wanted to save your documents, pressing save would destroy your document and hours of work. You had to do several drop down menus to do it. If you wanted to sign your document, pressing, "click here to sign your document" would destroy your document. You get the picture. Work came to a screaming halt.

Kendall the Simple also developed a wild project. We would have to visit contacts and vendors in other cities, which was a good thing. However, he made every section visit the same people, over and over and over. I would walk into every contact, head held low to be told that the contact just met with another section of ours and then asked, "don't you people talk to each other?"

"No," I would always reply.

He wanted me to go to a nearly deserted island to research technology, where there were just goats and pigs and sugarcane. I told him there was nothing there but goats and pigs and sugarcane, but he wanted me to go anyway. I found goats and pigs and sugarcane. We burned through the annual travel budget in three months, whereupon he demanded to know what we were doing that burned through the annual travel budget in three months. "I's gonna be watching ya'lls," he threatened. I did get a gazillion hotel points though.

Kendall's butchery of the English language was legendary in our work circle and people would be howling in the back every time he spoke...not because he meant to be funny. We had a Kendall to English dictionary and bought him English as a Second Language lessons. He was born and raised in the US.

In mass meetings with multiple other professional organizations we would get gems like, "Ya'lls is repizenting da organizations so ya'lls needs ta behaves and mine yer professionality."

"I's juss here ta hep da pepple."

"We's needs ta papalate dose dacaments."

"Iss furly likely we's gonna needs dose tings."

"Dass machine is done obsolute."

"Ya'lls bettah makes sure dat infamation is accurage."

"Iffen too manys pepple do da same ting, dats duplicity of effert."

"We's needs ta be stroking da cat fer dis to works."

It would be laughable if he were not making close to $200,000 a year and making decisions that impacted thousands of people. It was here that I developed the managerial decision making challenge coin. On one side it said, do the right thing. On the other side it said, do the wrong thing. It would improve managerial decision making by 50%.