“We were just testing you...”

People won't tell you the main thing. They keep talking away and you listen, and then you find they've neglected the big thing. And they can't talk about that, which is a problem: Since no one wants to talk about the big thing, no one knows how to listen to it any more.

Of course, you can't bring it up yourself, because then you'd be talking at cross purposes, and they would accuse you of smoking crack.

Sometimes there's a meeting that goes something like this:

“Can you tell us, in rough outline, (for we want to cut your position, and those of your whole department! But we're not sure what it is you do here! ), what it is that you do here? The job we seem to have hired you to do here, pray describe it to us. That would be a boon.”

“Well, you know the thing that you do?”

“Of course (What?)”

“My job is to help you do that.”

“Ah!”

“That's kind of interesting, isn't it?”

“Yes ...” they say, “The thing that we do ... is related to the thing that ... of course, we knew that. We were just testing you.”

Labels: Hard Work