We drew straws, and as luck would have it, I was now to be known as Mickey. Needless to say, I was not pleased. Additionally, it struck me that her solution to the problem was needlessly complex. I suggested a much better one. I said it would make a lot more sense if she just called us by, and if we just signed our papers with, our first and last names. She wouldn't hear it. She liked her gay nickname system, and told me it would be fine. For the rest of the year, I cringed every time I was called Mickey. In retrospect, the nickname itself didn't bother me as much as the fact that she just completely dismissed my idea, which made a lot more sense than her solution did.
It was this experience that shaped my expectation that those with the power to implement my good idea would ignore it, or even worse, dismiss my idea and then introduce it later as their own. I held various crappy jobs during high school and college, and at all of them I felt like I was screaming into the darkness when my brilliant ideas were not acknowledged. Granted, I am willing to concede that my approach to introducing a better process hasn't always been the best. It was my mistake to believe that the GED-holding manager of the place I delivered pizzas for would appreciate my halfway college educated critiques of how he did his job. Add into this the fact that I was rarely the model employee at these jobs (see, eg, this) and I am now willing to admit that my indignation was misplaced.
Fast forward to last year, and my first "real" job; I have written numerous times about the ridiculousness that was my previous employment, so I won't rehash it here. Suffice it to say that my level headed, pragmatic approach to solving problems was not appreciated. This is no more evident than in one particular situation. The company was facing a fairly large problem, so the boss called everyone together to talk about possible solutions. I saw the problem as being relatively minor and suggested several possible ways to solve it. Because my boss had a knack for making everything much more difficult than it had to be, my initial ideas were dismissed, in no small part because I was the one who suggested them.
Finally, towards the end of the meeting, with no resolution in sight, I sarcastically threw out an obviously ridiculous idea with the hopes of illustrating to the boss how impractical she was being. Naturally, she loved it and decided to implement it right there on the spot, despite my insistence that I was joking and the solution would fail horribly. It did, and I got the blame. It remains my shining achievement of my old job.
All of the preceding brings us to now. For some reason, the managers of my current company love me. My general displeasure with most things surrounding my job is seen as "being focused". My brusque treatment of coworkers is seen as "being no-nonsense". My indifference towards parts of my job is seen as "prioritizing the important stuff". I've really been able to pull the wool over their eyes. As a result, when I voice my suggestions for making things better, they actually listen to them. In fact, one such idea was implemented, and in a department meeting I was given full credit. And you know what? I didn't like it at all. All these years, I didn't actually want credit for my ideas. I just liked to bitch. Go figure.
