Friday, January 22, 2010

Personal opinion

I was just musing over a comment my boss made and about how much it bothers me that he does this. I wanted to muse out loud and remembered I have this blog that I technically retired from. Still, I'd like to know the thoughts of my internet friends about this-if you still tune in.

Boss commonly likes to tell me his personal opinion of others. I hate that he tries to shape my opinion of colleagues before I've gotten to know them. Some of these comments are positive, but today, like most days it was negative.

I showed him an e-mail I received from someone (SO) I've just barely started working with at another firm, for a project in which they are the prime and we are the sub. It was my understanding that we were going to study Y and figure out what was significant. This e-mail made it sound like they were going to do a study on A through Z (including Y), and tell us what was significant about Y. This is actually a common procedure in the type of document we are writing but wasn't my understanding on what our role was in the project.

Boss says, after talking about the e-mail a bit, "I've never like working with SO, she does bad work and always tries to get others to do her work for her."

I can see how Boss is trying to warn me of some issue that could arise with SO, yet, it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth that he talks about other people in this way. And that he acts like he is an authority on other peoples personalities. I haven't gotten this impression for SO at all, but we have only had three or four encounters.

So what do you think. Is it ok for him to talk this way about others? I feel like the message is just but the delivery is pompous and rude.