If you haven’t yet, read Part 1.
It took years for me to figure out the collective mindset of Hicks and his group. I always wondered, why did they want me to come out with them at all? What did they get out of it? Before I explain, there are a couple of other examples I’ve endured without realising.
Around the time this was happening, mid 2010s, I had a manager called HS. Although I’m reluctant to discuss work, this was a long time ago and this woman doesn’t work for my employer any more. Traditionally good-looking, tall, a go-getter, young-and-upwardly-mobile, HS had moved to my building from head office, where she’d apparently well suited the corporate world.
My office (now closed) wasn’t anything like that. The visitors we had lived with certain health and cerebral conditions, and they preferred it more homely and laid back. That obviously didn’t go down to well with HS. She joined the team a little after I did, where she realised that the reception work I was doing wasn’t really right for me. There was too much happening at the same time, and too many individual responsibilities to remember, so she was right to take me off that work.
I went to a back office in the building, but immediately, she gave me percentage work to do.
I explained this wouldn’t be right for me, that numeracy is a particular weakness due to my memory difficulties. When memory issues are lifelong, performing multi-step tasks like maths equations were always going to be particularly difficult.
HS responded with nothing other that a platitudinous pep talk, the ‘I believe this is something you can do’ spiel.
The next day I gave her a copy of my psych assessment, ironically that was performed and written in the same building a few years before. It clearly outlined a problem with numeracy. She reluctantly took the percentage work off me, but then replaced it with seemingly endless addition project, counting up the numbers of people coming through the building and their reasons for attending. Again, I told her this is not appropriate for me.
Her response? ‘There’s nothing else for you to do.’
Science news site Psychology Today tells us ‘Narcissistic overachieving elicits some of the worst traits of narcissism, including grandiosity, egocentricity, conceit, false superiority, condescension, snobbishness, and contempt.’
I remember HS coming into my team’s room one time and telling us, out of the blue, ‘Everyone was celebrating in my office because I smashed a PB in the gym this morning.’ She was met with a certain air of bemusement.
After she’d left the room, a teammate commented, ‘I don’t give a stuff.’
‘Everyone was celebrating? It’s all a bit North Korea, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Dear Leader has smashed a PB! We must celebrate!’
Another incident involved a woman going through the process of being assessed and diagnosed wth autism. She'd been placed into our office as part of her treatment, possibly on a voluntary basis. The work HS gave her to do was so inappropriate and beyond the client's abilities that the woman burst into tears. HS refuse to take the work off her, instructing 'no more tears.'
In retrospect, I should have grown a set and gone to the union. HS eventually resigned. After this, another manager told a story of HS’ move from head office, where someone had warned the other manager: ‘she thinks she’s really good, but she’s not.’ In essence, she ignored the needs of others around her, something WebMD defines as a key trait of narcissism.
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