Mentorship

You learn a lot at jobs you don’t like. You learn more when you leave them. One of the things I’ve learned about my old job is that no matter how good my work was—and no matter how much better I was able to do it than my so-called “superiors”—I was never going to be promoted to any of the positions I wanted. There were a few reasons for this.

First, I hadn’t been in the profession long enough. There were—and still are—some things I needed to learn, at least in terms of taking a managerial role at the very top. I’m not familiar enough with what happens on the upper levels there, and I’m not entirely sure how the game is played. With that said, however, talent is talent. I have some, so my learning curve is vastly different from those of the people who were hired over me—who, incidentally, have very little talent, if any at all. Time has proven me correct here. I could have learned what I needed to learn in a very short period of time, and I would have done the job exponentially better than several people who’ve now been exposed as frauds and failures.

I was, for a long time, in a position where all I was doing was working in my office with the door closed. I wasn’t networking with upper management, so when promotions were available, nobody knew who the fuck I was with regard to the positions I wanted. If I had an employee like me, however, I’d be scared, too. I don’t blame anyone for trying to keep me occupied. This was an excellent strategy, and probably the only smart thing any of my “bosses” ever did.

Finally, the upper level of management at my old company—and particularly the CEO—has a very negative opinion of the people who work there. They refuse to promote from within, because the CEO thinks there must be something wrong with you if you’re already working there. In most cases, he has a point.

When one of my “bosses” left, the company hired someone over me. That guy became my “boss.” His credentials were dubious, his resume was very thin, and as I came to find out, he wasn’t very good at his job—which makes this story even funnier.

The day he arrived, he called the staff into his office for one-on-one introductory meetings. When my turn came, he read over my record and history, looked me in the eye, and said, with a straight face, “I’m really looking forward to mentoring you.”

Now, I don’t really know how to write the rest of this without going into specific examples of why this was so absolutely fucking absurd. I can’t do that, because I’d likely be opening myself up to a lawsuit or three—although I’d take great pleasure in that, because nothing would amuse me more than watching these mediocrities attempt to justify themselves and their mediocrity in open court.

I’m aware that this analogy will sound arrogant, but this was the equivalent of the Miami Heat signing Kwame Brown, who promptly walks up to Lebron James and says, “Hi, Lebron. I know you’re a pretty good player, but I’ve been around a few years longer than you, so I’m really looking forward to teaching you how to play basketball.”

I may not have been the Lebron James of my company—close e-fucking-nough, though—but in this case, the disparity in talent was essentially the same. In other words, this guy, although I didn’t dislike him personally, was one of the most delusional human beings I’ve ever met—a condition that seemed to have reached epidemic proportions with several other people within the company’s offices by the time I left.

I don’t typically revel in other people’s misfortune, especially when it comes to losing one’s means of support, but since so many of these idiots have been working on borrowed time for so long, it promises to be very amusing to me when they’re out learning what it’s like to compete in the real world with people who actually know what they’re doing.