I’ve have succeeded in making several executives highly irritated because I had the audacity to actually tell the truth instead of telling them what they want to hear. That mistake, in turn has instigated a rash of threatening, rude, and totally inappropriate emails to my usually pleasant Inbox. And I felt obligated to point out (in a reply email) that there was not need to handle things in such an unproductive and unprofessional manner. (Mistake #2)

The plot thickens as now the next layer of managment has been called in to “set me straight”.  And of course they attempt to bully me into doing something really stupid. (Of course, “stupid” is my version of the story – I’m sure they would come up with some rationale about how we must maintain customer relationship and “do whatever it takes”.) But what do you do when “whatever it takes” is the most cost prohibitive, unrealistic, time-consuming, inefficient way of doing things?

For today - the corporate futility wins – I find myself doing something that is totally stupid and tomorrow will have graver consequences – Hopefully then I can pull out the “I told you so” card…