What’s the best (or rather, worst) backhanded compliment you’ve ever received? If you can’t think of any — when’s the last time someone paid you a compliment you didn’t actually deserve?
My boss told me once that I was always perfect in my work at the newsroom. But It wasn’t a compliment. It was a complain. He was angry, trying to tell me that I was too slow delivering my reportage because of my obsession to check and re-check the facts, and edit and re-edit the texts to make sure that all was accurate and without errors. He preferred speed. The deadline was pressing him. (To me too). To convince me to stop reviewing my work and deliver immediately whatever I was doing, he used to tell me a Spanish saying who goes: “Best is enemy of Good.” I ended hating those words.
Why, Thank You?.
In several of his “bitch sessions”, where he bitched at me over and over again about the same piddling issues and problems that he and supposed other people had with me, my last boss told me I needed to stop doing what I did, but not to change who I was. He would tell me that perfect is enemy of good. Compliments like that are the reason I retired.
Who I am sounds a lot like who you are, at least as far as work ethic. I found a statement in a comic strip moved me away from perfectionism in my personal like: Sometimes OK is good enough. I just couldn’t apply this principle in my job because in the three years that I was there, they kept changing the definitions of OK and good enough.
I understand you so well! It seems we had similar experiences. Thank you for sharing yours. I managed to keep my job for 25 years, but at the end I fell in a deep depression and had to leave. Probably would have been wiser to quit sooner. But I loved my job and didn’t see the danger untill it was too late. I’ll take note the comic strip’s advice. Thanks and good luck.