I'm confident that I'm good for nothing

Confidence is something I must have been born with but has been eroded throughout my life, I don’t know why this happened but I refuse to do what any good physiatrist would advise and blame my parents.

In my working life I’ve encountered several colleagues who have confidence to the point of being almost arrogant and then for the other side of the coin there’s me. If someone was to ask for my date of birth I can imagine that I’d answer something along the lines of “I think it’s 02.27.57”, while my confident colleagues wouldn’t hesitate to shout out “02.27.57” leaving any audience in no doubt. Obviously I know my date of birth, so why would I give such a wimpy kind of answer, probably because I lack confidence.

I used to have a manager who no doubt will be the subject of a dedicated volume of my memoirs and at least 235 entries in this blog, he was a real piece of work who ruled by fear, he was a complete bully and should never have been given a position of power in the company. This manager was also confident, the word evil doesn’t really cover it but I’m not the kind of guy to speak ill of the dead, but have no doubts that on this particular person I will!

One time I was in a project meeting with our team, the manager asked a work related question regarding a problem that our customer was having, he looked at me for an answer and I said that I didn’t know the answer but I’d investigate and get back to him. The manager wasn’t happy with my reply and asks “Mr. Confident”, I watch in amazement as my colleague answers the managers question with such sincerity that he’d sail through a lie detector test even if it was administered by Maury’s best guy. It’s not just Mr. Confidant’s voice but also his entire body language that leaves me in no doubt that everything he says is 100% true.

My manager turns to me and says “that’s exactly the kind of reply I need and expect, why don’t you know the answer because you’ve been working here longer that him?” I find myself cornered but previous experience has told me that challenging the manager especially in a room full of people is not a good move. Somehow I manage to say I’m sorry I’m just not familiar with that part of our product. I’m not angry with Mr. Confident, more amazed that he knew the answer, even if I knew the answer to the question there was no way that I’d sound as confident as Mr. Confident.

Once I’d left the keyboard department of the Scarborough Evening News I’ve tried hard not to bullshit and always had pride in providing answers that could be relied upon, I never appreciated colleagues that “guessed answers” and presented them as facts. I don’t mind if they tell me that this is just a guess but not telling me it’s a guess really pisses me off. My approach to most issues is let me investigate and I’ll get back to you but this particular manager didn’t like this approach.

When the meeting breaks up I go back to my desk and take the time to investigate the issue and try to implement the solution that Mr. Confident had given. Not for the first time I discovered that Mr. Confident was wrong but what can I do, should I go to the manager and tell him the situation or do I just fix the problem and move on. In the past I’ve tried both, once I went into the manager’s office and told him that I’d fixed the issue by doing this and that. It had been my experience that it didn’t matter, the window of opportunity to impress had been closed, opinions had been formed with the managers personal investment. These opinions wouldn’t and couldn’t be changed because that would mean that the manager would have to admit, even if it’s just to himself, that he was wrong and that could never happen.

Only recently the garbage disposal in my kitchen sink failed, in the 20 years I’ve lived in the house this was the second time that I’d had to replace the device. My dad replaced the last failed garbage disposal, I remember him telling everyone including my neighbor from 5 doors down that he’d repaired something because I couldn’t do. In a moment of inspiration and perhaps stupidity I thought I’d try and exchange the broken disposal with a new one all by myself. From the moment I made that decision I started to have doubts but I pushed myself in the hope that I could save myself $90 for a plumber to make the repair. Once I’d bought a new garbage disposal unit I read the installation instructions and gathered all the tools that I’d need, on paper it looked like an easy repair but there was a little voice in my head saying “you can’t do this”.

I remember even after testing that the new disposal was working and just before tightening the last screw I still had doubts that I couldn’t install the disposal by myself. I can’t understand where these negative thoughts come, I do know that I’ve had them all of my life. My father was an only child, I guess just reading that fact is enough for some people not to need any more information. My dad is very talented at DIY (Do It Yourself), he’s able to attack any problem around the house and fix the issue. The only problem with that is that he’d self-publicize what he’d done for the rest of the week, of course this would involve telling people that I was so useless that he’d had to step up and make the repair.

My mother used to praise my dad all of the time, of course this was a good thing unfortunately any praise would also involve comments about how bad my brother and me were in comparison to my dad. The message from my parents has always been your dads fantastic and you are not, my mom favorite saying was “you’ll never be half the man your father is”. My dad had a spectacular career in the North Yorkshire Police force, even reaching the rank of Superintendent. My brother also joined the police and reached the rank of Detective Chief Inspector which was just one below our dad. I was there when my mother once again told my brother “you’ll never be half the man you father is” and my brother told her quietly but firmly that he’d broken that barrier many decades ago when he was promoted to Chief Inspector and became the boss of Inspector Morse, the look on my mother’s face was priceless.

Soon after leaving the keyboard I attended a “Train the trainer” seminar, one of my colleagues lectures involved how to hang wall paper and after listening to this I decided to hang wall paper in my own home. My first attempts to hang wallpaper were quite bad, think Laurel and Hardy but eventually after multiple rooms in several houses I became quite skilled at the task.

When we returned to Newbury after living for 12 months in Nelson, NZ we decided to refurbish the whole house and I decorated every room, hanging wall paper and painting trim.  it was quite an undertaking. Once I've started a project I often enjoy the challenge but I'm absolutely useless at cleaning up at the end of the day, fortunately my wife always stepped up and took care of everything. I remember feeling quite proud of myself when the main living room was finished complete with new curtains, carpet and fireplace. Everything looked great.

The next time my parents visited the house they complimented the new wall paper and asked who’d done the work, I proudly told them that I’d done it all myself. They didn’t believe me, my mother even said “I know you didn’t but you should tell however did the work that they did a wonderful job”. When my wife walked in the room they asked her who hung the wallpaper and she confirmed that I’d done it, even this wasn’t enough because my parents went so far as to ask my children when they got home from school. The next morning I came downstairs and caught my mother going through our bill drawer looking for an invoice, I laughed and told her that I don’t send myself bills for hanging wall paper. It was as if my own mother couldn’t believe I was good for anything.

That’s my reality,

Jobsonian